Disclaimer: I do not own the X-men even after all these years. I weep.

Note: For all the readers who I've left hanging, I apologize. I'm going to try to get this fic done for you all.

Chance & Circumstance

Kurt felt the jolt of landing in his bones. He was a man in peak physical condition (if one discounted the broken arm he had in a sling), but he was simply tired. Worn out. Exhausted. He'd been an X-man for years and never been so tired, but the last several years simply hadn't been kind ones. He often thought, looking back, that the last happy moment in the New York school had been the double wedding. Yes, despite the personal heartbreak then it had been the last time he'd seen so many smiles.

Things after that had simply gone...bad. He sighed and leaned back in the pilot's seat, feeling the tension that he'd carried in his shoulders for years knot and writhe as he remembered those years. Logan and Jubilee opening a new, healthy school for mutants. A school that didn't field a strike team. Remy and Rogue disappearing into the New Orleans family business, leaving their communicators behind. Kitty...God Kitty he hadn't heard from since he chased her off. Scott's wasting away. And Jean...

...Jean...

For all he was a gentlemen and a gentle man, he believed he truly hated Jean by this point. She'd crawled into their minds. All of the X-team still at the mansion. Slowly, carefully, she'd twisted all of them around in nightmares and needs until no one knew what was right and what was real anymore. Even him. The days he woke up with Jean in his bed after her husband's death were nightmarish ones. He couldn't remember, even now, what those nights had been like but the idea of them made his skin crawl and his fur stand on end. Now, with it all over he suspected that those nights...someone else had been in his body.

They knew now that Jean had been carrying the Shadow King around. Being possessed would certainly account for the revulsion. And the memory loss. "Gott." Now...now that it was over, now that he was in a place far away from New York, some place safe...now he could shake. He could shake and gasp and not stop. The world was dark outside the jet window and rain smacked down with a sound that almost hid his gasping breaths...

...almost. "Are ye coumin' out any time soon?" The woman standing out on the small landing pad didn't seem to mind the lashing rain that was soaking through her lab coat. The years that had been so harsh in America had been far kinder in Scotland, and even though Muir had disassociated itself from the X-men, it was still open as a safe haven to friends. Rahne was perfectly content to let him sit in the jet if he needed to, but the guest quarters were a lot warmer.

Kurt opened his eyes, not quite sure when he closed them, and tried to find some tiny reserve of energy left in his body. He needed to unstrap and get out of the jet. Unstrap. Get out...

...and all over again his bones ached. At least he was moving though. Inelegant and stumbling, off balance due to the arm strapped to his chest, but moving. His arm had been snapped in the final fight against Jean and her Shadow King right before Logan had managed to get claws into the red-head's brain. Jubilee had read them all the riot act for endangering her husband when he was retired from the X-men but...they'd needed the edge that Logan provided against the sheer evil they'd gone up against. "I'm coming Rahne. Thank you," he sighed as he stumbled down the ramp and onto the ground of Muir island.

"Doun thank me Kurt. Ye'll earn yer keep once yer able te." Rahne threw an arm arund Kurt's waist, half-carrying him to the brightly lit door.

"Yes." He agreed wearily. "I will." After all, he had no intention of ever returning to America, or the X-men. The dream was well and truly dead for him. He might go back to England eventually, see if Excalibur was still possible, but t hat was a thought for later. Later when he remembered how to dream without nightmares.

"I'm sure ye'll get terrible tales about me from the others that live here. A drivin, demandin woman I am." Rahne chuckled. "O'course, the folk that'll be tellin ye these things are away for now, but they'll catch up with ye no doubt."

Kitty stared blankly at the man in front of her while Lockheed chortled rather evilly on her shoulder. "You want me to do what now?" She sounded like the soul of patience as she asked, arms crossed over her chest and a screwdriver tucked behind her ear.

"Move back to England." Pete Wisdom echoed her pose, leaning against the wall across from the stubborn woman. "We need you here a lot and the commute's a real bitch."

Kitty found herself rolling her eyes at such a weak excuse. Really, he could do better than that. If the snort was anything to go by, Lockheed thought the same. "You wouldn't need me near as much if you'd stop letting your team trash all the computers Wisdom."

"It was an accident this time, I swear."

"Sure it was. A more secure man would admit he missed me." Kitty snorted and pushed away from the wall. "That's long over Wisdom."

"Jesus Christ girl!" Pete snarled, "I'm just saying living on that misty little island isn't good for you, not that I want back in your pants!" Not that he didn't in truth, she'd grown up in the years since he'd left her, but she really was an asset to his little team. He had yet to find another gear head that he got along with.

"I like Muir." And unlike everywhere else on earth, her friends there never let her down. Of course, she didn't have a steady lover or much of a life, but she did have friends and peace of mind. After years rebuilding control of her phasing abilities again, well, that counted for a lot. "You're lucky I give you a discount on my consulting fees Wisdom. I've got a soft spot for super-teams."

"Discount my ass. Hell of a paycheck you're earning Pryde."

"Yeah, well, it funds all the pretty toys I have at Muir." She grinned, knowing exactly what he was thinking when she mentioned 'toys'. One of the fun things about dealing with him now was that shared history that let her tease him. Mercilessly. "That gene sequencer I saved up for is really useful, and next I have my eye on a new atmosphere chamber. We've only got the one you see, and with mutants every day manifesting in strange and interesting ways well..."

"I get it, I get it." Pete grumbled and held up his hands, signaling his defeat. "At least let me treat you to dinner before you're hopping a boat back to that damn island."

Kitty glanced at Lockheed, judging his mood, then grinned. "Make it Indian and you're on. Throw in a a bar afterward and I'll even throw in a free firewall on your equipment. Should cut down on the viruses your team downloads with those ripped movies."

"You're a hard one Pryde." Pete grinned and held open the door, bowing her ahead of him. "Deal."

Author's note: Okay, yes, I did do an extreme time skip. I might write the story of what happened with Jean at some later date, but for now I'm focusing on Kitty and Kurt. Apologies again, I hope you enjoyed!