Ech. Sorry it took me so long to update, folks. I kind of get depressed when I get so few reviews—*cough cough*—so I kind of held off updating. Oh, and for the record, I know now that Scott and Jean are instructors. ^.^
For a reference, this story is set…oh, maybe 10 years or so in the future from 'Shift.'
Enjoy!
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"Well, team, that was a good effort there!" Cyclops said cheerily, and if you were only listening to his voice, you would have been unable to tell that he was bruised and battered.
"Oh, give it a rest, Cyclops," Shadowcat muttered, voicing the opinion of most of the rest of the team. "We got our sorry little asses beaten, and you know it." A chorus of angry mutters confirmed this statement.
"Well, maybe we didn't win, but we did put up a good fight, and we stopped Magneto," he said, somewhat defensively. "That's the important thing." The gathered X-Men all sort of stared at Cyclops for a moment, before turning away with varying comments of dissent. The only one not offering an opinion was Nightcrawler, who was perched on the wing of the Blackbird, looking down at the proceedings below. He ached all over, and like the others below, his X-Men uniform was torn in many places and spattered liberally with shed blood, both his own and that of his teammates and enemies. Though he wasn't seriously injured, he was feeling seriously stressed. He needed a break.
Scott, you haven't changed a bit in ten years, he thought, shaking his head and leaping lightly from the wing of the jet. He winced as he made contact, and did not bother to hide it. He felt like shit. He approached Cyclops, laying on hand on the taller man's shoulder to get his attention. He turned.
"Yes? Oh, Nightcrawler. Can I do something for you?" The weary blue elf nodded.
"Actually, ja," he said with a nod. "You can grant me leave. I'm sorry, Cyke, but I need a few veeks off, to recover."
"But, Nightcrawler," Cyclops protested as the pair of them began walking towards the jet's hatch, "we've been through worse than this, and came out worse off and you never needed any time off."
"Ach. Ja, I know," he explained. "I just…I don't know. I need time to regain my equilibrium. I need to get avay, and…I just need to go through things, sort things out." He looked pleadingly at the man into whose hands he placed his life regularly. Cyclops shrugged.
"You know I can't stop you," Cyclops said, spreading his hands. "Just…is there anywhere we can drop you?" Nightcrawler looked out over the valley below. They were perched up in the Rocky Mountains, the shattered remains of a mountain stronghold of Magneto's visible on the next ridge over.
"Vhat's the nearest big city?" he asked.
"I'm not sure," he said slowly. "I think Bozeman's pretty big, and they do have an airport there."
"That sounds good," Nightcrawler said abruptly. "You can drop me there."
"Don't you want to go back to the Institute to get supplies or anything?" Cyclops asked. Nightcrawler shook his head.
"Nein," he said. "My pack ought to be enough stuff for me if I get them all." Cyclops nodded. The packs Nightcrawler was referring to were an emergency pack kept in each of the airborne vehicles used by the X-Men, each of which contained an extra uniform, a change of civilian clothing, water, about a day's worth of dried food, and a wad of cash, with a few other miscellaneous survival items, and in Kurt's case they also held an image inducer. They were there in case of emergencies, but they could also come in handy at times like now. Nightcrawler stuck out his hand, and Cyclops shook it warmly.
"Kurt, be careful," was his parting comment as the blue-furred mutant walked off to collect his gear.
They left him just outside the Bozeman Airport, staying long enough to rent him a car under Professor X's name and wish him luck in finding the balance he was seeking. Since it rather late at night, he sought out a cheap motel just outside the airport after seeing them off.
The next day, during which he rose very late for him, he traveled down into Bozeman, intending on looking around. He saw a sign for the Museum of the Rockies, and some impulse prompted him to go. He gave the man at the front desk the eight dollars for admission and walked into the first display.
When he saw the animatronic Maiasaura with her hatchlings, what exactly he took this break to search for came a little more clearly into focus; the dinosaurs had triggered his memory. She had been gone for nearly seven years now, leaving just after she finished high school with the claim that she needed to see the world before she started college. He got the feeling she hadn't meant her own. None of them had seen or heard from her since.
He thought he had loved her. He figured he still did, somewhere deep inside. They had been close, and he had never thought she would leave as abruptly as she had, but she did, and sometimes at night it was all he could do not to think about her, to wonder where she was, if she was all right, and if she missed him the way he missed her.
He sighed, leaning against the handrail and staring broodily at the Orodromeus robots behind the Maiasaur. He didn't know how coming here would help him find her or even get over her, but he did truly hope the simplicity of Western life, even in so large a city as Bozeman, would help him sort out some of the other issues in his life.
He wandered through the rest of the exhibits, killing a good hour and a half and getting his eight dollars worth as he read about dinosaur parental habits, ecology, and the history of transportation in the state of Montana. He spent a lot of time at the fossil bank, where an elderly man was spending time preparing fossils brought in by Museum curator Jack Horner's crew as the public watched. The man was carefully scraping pale rock off of black bits Kurt assumed were bones.
"Now these," he said when he realized when Kurt was there, "are fossils found at Wild Blue Yonder Microsite, discovered and named by one of our younger permanent paleontologists. She's a little eccentric, but she's very dedicated, and really good at what she does, and our curator, Doctor Horner likes her, so she remains with us. A microsite is a small deposit of little fossils, most teeth and phalanges, or toe and finger bones. You see…" He continued on, pointing out and describing the various teeth and small bones in the collection, but Kurt only half-listened. He thanked the man for the information when he stopped to draw breath, and walked off, chuckling to himself. It seemed like the kind of thing he could imagine her doing. He bought a postcard with some of the dinosaurs from the museum on it, and returned to downtown Bozeman.
It was getting late, and Kurt wanted somewhere to sit and think. He didn't feel like returning to his motel, so a little inquiry among the Bozeman natives led him to a bar called The Bone Digger. He wasn't a drinking man by nature, and bars were usually so crowded he felt vulnerable and exposed in them, but he was told that this place was cozy and usually not very full, so he decided to check it out. When he found it, hidden away on the outskirts of a residential neighborhood, he stopped to look at the sign above the door. It looked kind of old, and had a head-on view of a skull he now recognized as a Maiasaura emblazoned over a crossed pickaxe and brush, with the bar name underneath. He lingered outside for a moment, before pushing his way in and taking a seat at the end of the bar, in a shadowy corner. He ordered a drink and looked around.
The bar was pretty nice, from what he knew of them anyway. There was a scattering of small tables between the center of the bar and the door. Down at his end, there was a clear space and a dartboard, though no one was playing at the moment. At the far end of the bar, a trio of pool tables stood, with ample space between and around them to play a good game, and full sets of all the associated paraphernalia. No one was playing there at the moment either. In fact, there were maybe half-a-dozen people in the bar altogether, including the bartender. There were TVs scattered liberally across the bar, tuned surprisingly to the Discovery Channel.
The bartender, having nothing else to do, came over and introduced himself to Kurt.
"You're a new face around here, aren't you stranger?" he said genially. "My name's Zeke."
"Kurt," the disguised mutant said with a nod. "Kurt Wagner."
"You don't sound like you're from around here," Zeke commented with a hint of question.
"Ah. Vell, I'm not. German."
"Thought so. How long you been here?"
"In Bozeman only a day, but in ze United States maybe ten, eleven years now."
"Really? Montanan, born and bred."
"So where'd you come up with the name of this bar?" Kurt asked, pausing to take a drink and changing the subject. Zeke looked around.
"Well, a friend of mine's a rock hound, a bone hunter who works under our local celebrity, Jack Horner. I don't know if you know him…" He waited for Kurt's nod of confirmation, before continuing. "Well anyway, Dr. Horner's crew likes to celebrate when they return from digs, and I had been thinking of opening a bar, so I named it in honor of them, and it's mostly those paleontologists who come here."
"I see. Zat's cool," Kurt said, swirling the beer around in his bottle.
"Actually, my buddy called in earlier," Zeke continued. "They're coming in tonight, what with the season finishing and all. Stick around a while and you may get a bit of a show." As if his words had been a cue, the door to the bar opened and people began to pour in, at least fifty of them. They were all fairly fit, and showed varying degrees of tans and sunburns. They were laughing and talking, and moved around as if they owned the place, coming up to the bar and calling out orders, or taking seats at the tables and looking at menus.
A trio of men and a woman sat down in the seats nearest him, and after ordering drinks among them, started up a game of darts. Kurt turned around to watch, and was surprised when the quickly and willing included him in their conversation. He spent the next hour happily, feeling truly relaxed for the first time in years. Their talk turned often to dinosaurs and the summer's dig, to which he didn't have much to add, but he could and willingly did fill them in on the big things that had been happening during the summer, a lot of which they had no knowledge of. He even got up and played a round of darts, though he lost horribly. Suddenly, the woman, Dawn, looked up.
"Ooh, hey look guys," she said. "It's starting!"
"Vhat is?" Kurt asked.
"We play an annual pool tournament here," Dawn explained with a smile. "It's fun to watch, even if not many of us play."
"I don't know why any of us even try anymore," Zeke added, leaning over and cleaning out a glass. "Ever since Gandalf started playing, no one else has had a chance."
"Gandalf?" Kurt asked. "Who's zat?"
"She's one of our full-time paleontologists," Dawn explained. "We gave her that nickname because it seems she can work magic when excavating difficult bone deposits. So come on!" Dawn grabbed his wrist, luckily above the sleeve, and wrist of one of her companions, and pulled them up and towards the other end of the bar. "Let's watch!" Under her quick direction, they all claimed seats atop the bar, where they could see over the heads of the milling observers and participants to the tables themselves. Dawn pointed out Gandalf to him, a short woman in a black cowboy hat, but a combination of her height, her hat, and the lighting made it impossible for him to see her face. He couldn't be sure, but he had a feeling that this mysterious Gandalf was the same young paleontologist who had named the Wild Blue Yonder Site.
Dawn had been right. Gandalf was a pool shark—she was good. She had a knowledge of the physics of the game that became apparent as he watched the way she lined up her shots. She was an efficient player, but she was not arrogant about it. In fact, the whole tournament had an air of being one big joke. Bets were being placed, not on who would win, but who would lose first, who Gandalf would beat the fastest, and who would lose last to her.
Mainly she stayed in the center of the mass of people, making small chatter with the other players and the nearest spectators. What he could see of her face was always smiling, always laughing at some joke or comment. One time, though, when one of the guys watching pushed through the crowd to hand her a beer and she tilted back her head to swig it down, he thought she caught his eye, even if hers were so deeply shadowed it was hard to tell. But she turned back to her game, and a few moments later, he wasn't so sure.
It was all over soon. To the unsurprise of everyone there, Gandalf had won, but when everyone pressed forward to congratulate her and offer to buy her drinks, she turned shy and modest, staring at the floor as she shook hands with everyone around her. Eventually the crowd broke, drifting back to the bar, the tables, or, in the case of his companions, the dartboard. However, someone else had claimed it, and during the tournament an intensive discussion about results of this summer's research had started, so, excusing himself, he remained at the bar, watching as a bunch of younger kids, college students probably, messed around on the pool table. (And yes, they were shooting pool…sickos.) He looked around for the mysterious Gandalf, but she appeared to have disappeared.
Kurt shrugged and turned around, ordering another beer and beginning to nurse it. Though people greeted him kindly when they came up to the bar to get drinks for the tables and Zeke made sure to exchange a word or two with him whenever he passed, he didn't get into any more conversations, and he began to do the thinking he came for.
"Why so blue, Blue?" asked a feminine voice by his side. He started and looked up, wondering how this person knew—but no. As he saw his reflection in the mirror above the bar, he remembered that even with his image inducer his hair was blue, and he realized that he was looking quite melancholy. The person was Gandalf, sitting lightly on the stool next to him. Her hat was pulled low over her face; he still couldn't see her eyes. She made no indication that she had spoken; in fact, she was just staring straight down at the bar's surface, idly twirling the neck of her beer bottle.
"Just thinking," he said slowly, regarding her.
"About what?" Something about her seemed very familiar…
"My choices in life," he replied frankly. "I vonder sometimes if I chose ze right path."
She nodded, still looking forward. "Yeah, I feel that way sometimes. I left a lot of good friends on the East Coast when I came out here for college, and sometimes I wonder if I should have stayed." Her voice sounded so familiar to him, but he was having trouble placing it. "What do you do?"
"Oh. Um. Well, I'm a teacher," he said, thinking quickly. It wasn't really that far from the truth; he was one of the instructors of the young mutants at Xavier's. "At an exclusive private school in northern New York," he clarified for her, watching to see her reaction. It surprised him.
She threw her arms about his neck, hat falling back as she pressed her face into the hollow of his shoulder. "Oh Kurt, I knew it was you!" she cried, laughing. "As soon as I saw that hair, I knew it had to be you! And if it's not, I'm going to feel really stupid…" He laughed as well, hugging her back.
"Ja, Janella," he said. "It's me!"
"Oh, I knew it was, I knew it was!" she said happily. "I had just wanted to, you know, make sure!" He knew now why he had trouble recognizing her voice; it was accented differently that when he had last seen her. She still had her New Jersey accent, but it was overlaid with a Western drawl, and there was a definite hint of something else he could not recognize in there.
He held her closer. He never could have imagined it would feel this good to have her in his arms again, and if he was any judge of the way she snuggled against his chest; she liked being in his arms as well. Of course, it could only be excitement at seeing him again, but he hoped it was more than that. The laughter of the bartender made the both of them look up, and draw apart, blushing, as they realized that the majority of the bar was staring at them.
"Get out the record book, boys!" Zeke called out mockingly. "It's official! Gandalf has actually had too much to drink!" He leant against the bar and looked Janella in the eye. "You do know that's a person you're hugging and not a sauropod femur, right?"
She feigned shock. "It's not? And here I thought I was having the best of luck tonight!" A wave of laughter passed around the bar, and everyone turned back to what they had been doing.
"So, Gandalf, how do you know Kurt here?" Zeke asked as he used a rag to wipe out another glass.
"He was one of my, er, close friends back east," she said with a nod. Zeke chuckled.
"So can I get you two anything?" Kurt shook his head, but Janella nodded.
"Yeah, give me my usual, but make it magic!" Zeke nodded.
"Magic?" Kurt asked as he walked off.
"Irken liquor. Strong stuff. No one knows it though," she added. "They think it's moonshine!" He sat back and just looked her over, while she pulled down the last of her beer. She hadn't really changed much physically in seven years. She had grown maybe two inches more, but barely that. She was leaner now, more muscular. He knew that she had always been able to hold her own in a fight, but now she looked it. Her hair was still in the thrice-braided style she had worn in high school, though now it was streaked reddish by exposure to the sun, which had also tanned her skin to a deep bronze.
"You haven't changed a bit," he told her. She grinned.
"You have," she said, reaching up to ruffle his close-cropped indigo hair, "but I like it." And he had. He had actually grown another three or four inches after high school, and he too had muscled out a bit more. "I think you've gotten handsomer since I last saw you."
"And you've gotten more beautiful," he said with grin. "But zen again, zat's to be expected, isn't it?" She blushed, and picked up her drink, which Zeke had slid down the bar a moment ago. It was in a shot glass, and bubbling faintly green. He wouldn't have touched it, but Janella picked it up and knocked it back with one gulp, before slugging down a bottle of water pressed into her hand by the bartender.
"Woo. Okay, that's enough for tonight," she said after a moment. "Can I talk you into degrading yourself enough to mix me a Shirley Temple, Zeke?"
"For you, girl, anything," he said. "I do hope you intend on paying off your tab sometime soon though. It oughta be enough to finance my new car and put my son through college!"
"Ha ha, very funny," Janella said sarcastically. "I'm in stitches."
"Actually, make it two and zey're both on me," Kurt interjected quickly. Janella smiled, and Zeke shrugged.
"Alright then. Two Shirleys, comin' up!" He walked down to the other end of the bar, and Janella leaned towards Kurt.
"So," she said in a low voice. "What have you been doing lately?"
"Stuff vith ze X-Men," he replied, even lower than her. "Actually, ve just had a spat vith Magneto yesterday. Up in ze Rocky Mountains." Janella looked around.
"Are the rest of you here?" she asked. He shook his head.
"Nein. I needed some time off."
"Yeah, me too. Seven years of it," she said with a bitter laugh. He regarded her levelly as she stared broodily at the bar top.
"Regretting it?" he asked softly.
"I don't know," she said with a sigh. "Some days I think that I'd be happy even if I never returned to the East Coast again, and some days I'm nearly on the verge of throwing my clothes in a suitcase and booking the next flight."
"Is zat vhy you haven't contacted us?" he asked. She shrugged.
"The Professor's talked to me a few times since I got back to Earth," she said. "But I asked that he not tell anyone I was back. I just…I didn't want anyone to know." Zeke was approaching now, the two glasses in hand. Already he was opening his mouth to offer some comment, but Janella flashed an odd hand sign at him, and he only set the glasses down and walked off.
"Vhy not?" Kurt asked, puzzled.
"Because I knew that Scott would try to convince me to join the X-Men," she said slowly. "Because I wanted to get through college without having the added weight of worrying about all that on my shoulders. Because after I finished college, I already had a job, one that I loved. Because…because I knew if I saw you again I wouldn't be able to stop myself from going back. That was why I left so abruptly that one morning after graduation…" Kurt remained silent, waiting to see if she'd say more, and after swirling about the contents of her glass and taking a long pull on the straw, she continued. "My God, that was the hardest thing to do! But I had been offered a chance to go to Irk, even if it later turned out to be one big joke just to make fun of Earthlings…" She shook her head. "And when I came back, I was afraid to return to the Institute."
"Vhat? Janella, you should have no reason for zat!" Kurt said, drawing back and eyeing her alarmedly. She looked away.
"This is going to sound so corny…" she warned.
"You know you can tell me," Kurt said, resting one arm about her waist, almost hesitantly.
"I—I was just worried that—that you would have already found someone else to love," she whispered, so quietly he almost missed it. "I was afraid of being replaced, so I just didn't go back." He didn't know how to respond to that, he was so shocked. She took his silence to mean what she had feared had happened, though, and sharply stood. "I should go," she said shortly. "It's getting late." As she turned to leave, he thought he saw tears glistening in the corners of her eyes. Reaching out quickly, he grabbed her wrist and hauled her back down into her seat.
"Janella," he said firmly. "No vone could ever, ever replace you in my heart, even if I found somevone else who accepted me and loved me for who and vhat I was. You of all people should know zat!" She blushed under his gaze, pulling her hand free and dropping it into her lap.
"I—I—Oh, Kurt, I'm sorry," she said softly. "It's just…you know how I get…"
"Ja, I do," he said, tilting her head and kissing the corner of her mouth gently. "I do." She blushed brighter, and he took her hand again and helped her to her feet. "Come. I'd like to go back to my motel, so ve can talk a bit more freely." She nodded, and together, the pair of them pushed among the people and out through the door. They hadn't walked more than a few feet when one of the burlier members of the dig, a guy named Frank, pelted through the door. He was a very nice guy, and didn't really know his own strength, so when he tapped Kurt on the shoulder to get his attention, he sent the slimmer mutant, who had been caught off guard, stumbling forward. He tripped over a loose bottle, and went sprawling on the ground. Frank started forward, hand outstretched to help Kurt up and an apology on his lips, when Kurt's inducer shorted out and died.
Frank screamed, and dropped to the ground in a dead faint. The noise brought the patrons of the bar investigating, including Zeke, who held a gun in his hands. Janella knew it only contained knockout darts, because Zeke was the kind of man who wouldn't want the death of another on his soul, but the sight still scared her. They all stopped stock still at the sight of Kurt, still sprawled on the pavement as she knelt and helped him up. Suddenly, Zeke cocked and aimed his gun.
"Get out of the way, Gandalf!" he said, voice dangerously low. "That's a mutant there!"
"I know," Janella replied in the same voice, leaving Kurt sitting on the ground and straightening up. "So am I. Is that a problem?" As she talked, she snapped open the magenta demon's wings characteristic of the form she fought in so many years ago, and the crowd drew back with a collective gasp as the rest of the changes appeared. Zeke, and all the others, were staring at her in shock, but already Kurt could see him bringing his gun to bear on her instead of him. Scowling, she dug into her pocket and tossed a surprisingly large roll of bills at him. "For my tab, Zeke," she said sadly. "Keep the change." She dropped back beside Kurt and laid her hand on his shoulder, squeezing it in a cue he remembered from the days they fought side-by-side together. Laying his hand on hers and rising into a half-crouch, he teleported the two of them away.
He knew he should have visualized where he was going before he actually 'ported them, so he wasn't exactly sure where they'd appear, and was glad when they found themselves in the back of his rented car. The abrupt re-entry into existence had tumbled them together, and it took them a few minutes to get themselves apart. Kurt climbed over into the front seat, and after a moment, Janella joined him, fully human again. They sat in silence for a few moments.
"So…can I take you anyvhere?" Kurt asked sheepishly. It seemed like the right thing to say, and Janella nodded.
"Please," she said. "My apartment. We should probably get there before the sure-to-be-formed posse decides to." It was Kurt's turn to nod, and starting up the car, he navigated it through Bozeman under her direction. When he pulled up in front of it, she hopped out. "I'll be right back," she said, and darted inside.
Several lights flicked on up above, and a silhouette passed in front of the windows hurriedly as Janella scurried around inside. When she remerged, she was overloaded with precariously balanced bags and boxes. He immediately hopped out of the car and took some of her burden from her.
"Ach, Janella, vhat's all zis?" he asked as he opened the back door with his tail and began pushing things inside. "It looks like you're moving!"
"Duh!" she replied with some asperity, her voice muffled by the stuff in her arms. "It's not like I can stay here, is it?"
"Er…"
"Exactly! I can't! So…" She trailed off, carefully rearranging the things in the car so the rest would fit.
"So…vhere vill you be going?" Kurt prompted, watching her closely.
"Well…I was hoping back to the Institute with you," she said, settling some things down so they didn't obstruct the view through the back windshield.
"Ve'd be glad to have you," he said, taking her by the shoulder and turning her to face him. "And zere are a lot of people there who vould be glad to see you again." She blushed slightly, but nodded. "Vhat vill you do zere, though?" She shrugged.
"I don't know," she admitted with a shrug, shutting the door. "Maybe I'll look around, see if there're any openings in the area for someone in my field. If not…" She shrugged again. "Who knows?"
""Who knows, indeed?" he asked, pulling her into a quick embrace before bamfing to the other side of the car and getting in. She got in on her side, pulling her hat back up onto her head and low over her eyes. She glanced over at him, smiling slightly, though it was hard to see him in the deep shadows until he switched his inducer back on. He looked at her questioningly and, at her nod, the pair of them pulled off into the streets of Bozeman, just another nondescript pair of people on their way home from a late night at the bar.
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Shout-outs!
The Little Prophet—Oh, I hope you're not the only one who got the title. -.-' That would be sad, you're right! Here's another for you!
H.C.G.—I'm glad ya liked it Sammy! I've been dying to post that one for a while! XD Hope you like this, too! I wrote it when I was in Montana! *Wink*
Boy, I hope more people review. I should have another up soon!