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Chapter Forty-Two: Photographs, Nostalgia and Words of Sage Advice

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The hallway was silent and shadowy at night, with none of the hall lights turned on. The heavily polished banister gleamed as the moon cast a shine into the house through the windows, and a few faint lines of artificial light could be seen from underneath the doors, but the blackness was otherwise unbroken.

Dark didn't bother Kurt Wagner. Really, it seemed to swallow him gently, to consume his body and become a part of him, making him indistinguishable from the inky gloom. Glancing around, he could see that the lights were on in Rogue's and Evan's bedrooms, but the others were either asleep or out doing something else. Scott, of course, was still at the hospital, watching over the professor.

There had been no recent news of a change in Xavier's condition, except for a rather encouraging report a day or so earlier that he was slowly regaining a more normal tone to his brainwave patterns. Jean had been keeping tabs on Xavier as well, trying now and again to break into his mind telepathically, but so far with no success. Moira and Hank, ever the scientists, and good friends of Xavier's, were working diligently on their own data, trying to determine just what it had been that had led the professor into his current state.

As if to break him away from the potentially troubling thoughts, his stomach gurgled again, and he tried not to grin at the unexpected sound in the quiet of the corridor. Skipping several meals a day could do that to a guy, especially a guy who practically had the metabolism of a hummingbird. Golden eyes glowing faintly, he found the stairway without a moment of hesitation, aided by familiarity and his own personal stealth, and started to make his way down. There was probably still some cold chicken or something left from dinner. His tail flicked in eager anticipation.

A whisper from behind derailed his train of thought, as tenuous as was. "Psst! Hey, Kurt!"

He turned around quickly, surprised that someone had been able to see him in the dark, all the while keeping his hand on the smooth handrail. Evan was standing in his doorway, barefoot and wearing a baggy white T-shirt over his pajama bottoms. He looked tired, but was grinning nonetheless.

Kurt smiled warily and whispered back, "Ja?"

Evan frowned, looking nervously down at his feet. Kurt inwardly sighed, but relaxed when the younger X-Man frowned and shook his head, ducking back into his bedroom while quietly uttering, "Never mind."

Once again alone in the darkened corridor, the blue mutant shrugged and made his way the rest of the way down the stairs and toward the kitchen. There, he found the door open, and could make out the dim shape of a female sitting slumped at the breakfast island. She looked devastatingly tired, and dark pits beneath her eyes highlighted her cheeks. Her auburn hair looked oddly silver in the faint light from over the stove, and she was cradling a cup of coffee that had long since grown cold and undrinkable. She sat with her eyelids closed behind the rims of her glasses, as if she were asleep on her stool.

He paused, watching Moira silently sip her unpleasant drink, trying not to make himself known. Urges warred within him. Part of him wanted to go into the kitchen and smile politely, grab something from the refrigerator and disappear back up to his room to eat, think and sleep. Another part of him wanted to simply forget about it and slink back to bed, hungry but uninterrupted from the flow of his thoughts. Yet another part, a slightly bigger part perhaps, told him that he should sit down and talk with her.

Perhaps he paused a moment too long to make a getaway, or perhaps he meant it that way. Clearly, she could not have heard him approach, and it took her a moment of close examination of the doorway to make out his faint outline. Moira set her mug aside and smiled, and he noticed for the first time that she had thin smile lines around her lips, tiny marks of a youth that had mostly gone by.

Kurt smiled back, a little awkwardly. "Mind if I join you?"

The doctor shook her head and chuckled softly, pulling out a stool beside her. "Not at all, Kurt. Would nae mind a bit o' comp'ny about now. Is this house…always so quiet at night?"

Laughing a little, he slid onto the stool beside her, taking the slice of slightly burnt toast that she offered him. "Nein, not alvays. But it's a school night, and…vell," he paused long enough to shrug and take a bite of the toast, "there's been a lot going on lately. I guess ve're tired."

Moira nodded, the shadows returning to her face, and she gazed down at the tabletop, which was strewn with newspapers and document folders that she had been picking through. "Aye. I see how tha' must be f'r this household, all bein' so young." She slowly ran her thumb across the handle of her cup, feeling the porcelain against her skin, and glanced at him sideways. "Our resident former trapeze artist most of all, I suppose."

He might have blushed, but instead just shook his head emphatically. "Nein, that's Scott, for sure. He's going insane over this."

"He'll be alright, lad. I'm quite sure."

There was a moment of silence. "Do you mean Scott…or our Lehrer?"

A pained look crossed her light-skinned face, and she glanced away, biting her tongue to keep from blurting things out too quickly. A crease formed on her forehead and she dipped her gaze downward. "Lad, I…I'm nae positive what I meant. Wish I could be, I swear, but tha' joost is nae the way."

He eyed her gently frowning brow, the slight plunge of her chin, and decided to try to change the course the conversation was taking. He smiled, nodding his head at the stack of documents scattered around her. "Vy are you drinking coffee so late at night? And vy all the papers?" He made a grab for the nearest stack, carefully reaching around the manila folders. "Can I have the funnies?"

Moira laughed loudly, making her dark auburn curls shake around her shoulders, but it wasn't a particularly humorous sound. "Research. Sometimes I work best durin' the night. An' take the damn things…worthless, is what they are."

Grinning, he snatched the Sunday paper and shook it open. To his surprise, another folder, this one more worn and dog-eared than the rest, had been tucked inside, and its contents spilled onto the floor at his feet. Moira looked surprised, then embarrassed, and she dropped to her knees on the tile to pick it up. Kurt did the same, and she averted her eyes as his hand landed on a single ragged sheet of semi-glossy paper.

Shock flooded throughout his body when he turned it over, and he felt slightly cold. Two vaguely familiar faces gazed back at him, both looking extremely happy. They were young and vital, and the bright deluge of joy had apparently overcome them at the perfect time in their lives. They wore the sheen of love, but even more potent was the friendship that radiated from the decades-old paper scrap. Their hands were intertwined, with his fingertips laid gently upon her chin to lift her gaze closer to his so her ginger-colored hair tumbled around her throat. But even at his young age, he was glowingly, blatantly bald. Of course he was. It was the result of his powerful telepathic mutation.

Kurt's mouth went slightly dry. He'd known that the professor and Moira had been friends for many years, but the photograph seemed to bring much more to light than either of the doctors ever had. Moira snatched the photo away and slipped it back into the folder, dropping back into her seat with a sigh. Her head collapsed into her hands, exhausted.

"Shocker, eh?" She paused, her voice wavering a little. "Tha' was th' day Charley proposed t' me."

"Dr. MacTaggart…Moira…" He slowly sat back down beside her, unblinking. "I didn't know. I'm sorry."

She nodded quickly, waving her hand in the air to dismiss his self-conscious apologies. "Aye, well, 'tis nae ye're fault. I know Charles is nae the kind o' man to share much about his past. He never has been. Could nae expect ye t' know unless ye spoke to Scott or Jean. Besides, 'tis nothin' to be sorry about anyway. We were an item, sure enough, but that was a long time ago."

He sat silently, staring at the side of her immobile face. It might have been best for him to leave at that point, and let Moira alone with her grief, but the urge didn't seem to cross his mind. It didn't seem right. Instead, he propped his chin up on his hand, his elbow resting on the edge of the island.

Kurt let the silence sit between them, more tranquil than awkward. He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable with the act of asking, but painfully curious. "How did you meet?"

She glanced up at him, frowning again, in confusion this time. Her expression softened when she registered what he was asking, and she slowly lifted herself back up again, so she was seated straight-backed on her stool. She stirred her black coffee with the tip of her finger, suddenly aware that it had cooled considerably. "We went t' school together, years ago. Oxford. An' we've been friends ever since." She sighed, and a gentle smile tugging on the corners of her lips had stolen away much of her appearance of exhaustion. "He and I were…quite close."

He smiled, watching her dreamy expression and trying to quell the ache in his own belly. "Ven did you know?"

"Know?"

"That the two of you vere…"

"That we were in love?" Her lips stretched into a smile that was a little wider, her eyes becoming distant. "I think I might hae known since th' beginning, Kurt." She looked away, her expression slightly pained. "Even when things were hard, an' we were nae on the best o' terms, I could always count on Charlie to be there f'r me."

"He's alvays been that vay, then." He bit his bottom lip, his brow puckering slightly. "So…things didn't…go the vay that you hoped they vould?"

Rolling her eyes, Moira chuckled again, and Kurt went along with her. "Do they ever?"

"Nein. Nein, I guess they don't." He shrugged. "Not around here, at least."

With a bright, sudden yelp of laughter, Moira slapped at the young man's shoulder. "Tha' is the most truthful thing I've heard in days, lad." She sipped her coffee again, slowly, and eyed him oddly. "There's no way of tellin' when things are goin' th' way they should. Sometimes, ye joost hae to…trust."

He broke the pattern of speech again, muttering something in German under his breath that Moira didn't catch. He rose his eyes to meet hers again, looking somewhere between desperate and unwilling to hear another word. "Are ve still talking about you and the professor?"

"Could be," she added with a wink, taking a sip and turning her attention back to the papers, as if she were trying to end the conversation on a mysterious note. "All I know is tha' we've got t' hae faith with those tha' we love. Otherwise, what would be th' point in lovin' someone?"

The mutant teenager licked his lips, scowling down at his hands in thought. "You don't think she did it, then?"

A flash of something that couldn't quite be called anger burst in the doctor's eyes, and she stood suddenly, using the excuse of rinsing her cup out in the sink before returning slowly to her seat, but she didn't sit down. Instead, she stood beside him, wringing her hands on a dish towel to dry them of the water droplets, and perhaps to wipe them clean of something else, too. "I didnae say tha', Kurt. Believe me, I wish with all me heart tha' I could believe that Natty hae nothin' t' do with what happened that night, but I honestly cannae be sure. If she did do it, there's a part o' me tha' is very angry with her, about that I will nae lie," she caught sight of his pained expression and paused, smiling tightly, "but I cannae help but doubt it, myself. Still, I joost don't know."

He glanced at her, his eyes meeting hers with an almost startling conviction flashing in them. They gave off a yellow brightness that glowed eerily in the darkness of the kitchen, and Moira shivered unconsciously. He was such a frightening looking boy, but with such a strange beauty, too. Kurt nodded, his jaw set. "I don't think she did it, either. I don't know vy, but I just don't think she could do something like that. Not after…"

"After how close the two o' ye were, lad?"

Glancing away sadly, he nodded. "Ja."

Shaking her head, she noted absently that her hand had curled into a tight fist, and was trembling slightly. She pulled it beneath the top of the island, but not so soon that Kurt didn't notice it. She nodded slowly, sadly. "I betrayed him, too, Kurt. An' we moved on."

He blinked, his attention squarely on Moira. "Was? Vat…vat do you mean?"

Tears glimmered faintly in her eyes. "Sometimes, things work out differently than we hope they will. When Charlie went off t' fight th' good fight, I could nae wait f'r him. I had t' go on with me life, and tha' meant movin' on without him, f'r better or worse."

He watched her closely, trying to decipher the odd expression on her face. "I can't 'move on', Moira. She vas more than a teammate to me, und vether or not she had a part in vat happened to the prof, vile you and I seem to be the only vuns who even begin to disbelieve it, I'm not going to abandon her. Besides, she hasn't exactly gone off to 'fight the good fight'."

"Maybe we do nae think so, but she might." Sighing, Moira shook her head quickly, bringing her hand up from under the island to firmly grasp Kurt's. "This is nae about whether she did it, Kurt. It's about whether you can move on. Even if she is innocent, she is nae here, and you need to be able to accept it."

Her hand felt warm and delicate around his larger one, but surprisingly strong. He pulled his fingers away anyway, and stuffed them angrily into his pockets. This wasn't what he had wanted to talk about. "So, was ist next, then? Forgive and forget? Das ist nicht...not possible, Moira."

"Because ye cannae forget her, or because ye cannae forgive her?"

"I'm not supposed to forgive her, not matter how much I vant to! I'm surrounded by people that think she tried to kill the prof. You know her as vell as anyvun, except maybe me, and even you think she may have done it." He slumped down on the stool, his head resting lightly on the back. His tail twitched viciously in the air.

"I do nae know one way or the other, Kurt. Only she and Charles do, and neither o' them are talkin', are they?"

He sighed. "I guess not," he mumbled. "Still, I can't move on…not just yet."

Moira patted his shoulder gently, smiling sadly down at him. "I understand, Kurt. Really I do." She got to her feet, cracking her spine and yawning widely as she did so. "Now, I think we'd both be better off with a bit o' sleep. We can talk again in th' mornin', if ye want."

"Nein, bitte. I think I'm done talking for a vile."

She nodded slowly, understanding far more than what he spoke out loud. There was a moment of stillness as the two stood, pondering, before Moira MacTaggart turned on her heel and disappeared into the dark hallway, leaving Kurt alone with his thoughts.