Chapter 13: Missed Opportunities
Ororo's first thought upon being woken up at 3:30 am by the sound the XSE emergency alarm was the sickening realization that Kurt had not returned. At first she was worried that some disaster had befallen him, that maybe the alarm explained his absence. But when the team assembled at the Blackbird ten minutes later, Kurt was there along with everyone else, seemingly unharmed. There was no time to talk, not even any feasible way for them to get close to each other in the bustling action of planning and departure. Only for an instant did Ororo manage to catch a glimpse of pleading apology in Kurt's liquid golden eyes. But a confluence of unforeseeable crises meant that she never heard the substance of his apology, that day or any other.
Because two weeks later, Ororo married King T'Challa of Wakanda, the Black Panther. And three months after that, Kurt was dead.