bamfing | Zweiundzwanzig - [Action/Voice]

[When Kurt steps out of the tunnel today, he's relieved. It's kind of like being back home, if home was a place where you were at the mercy of scientists and bureaucrats and the subject of weird experiments. But it's got friends and family, so he's still relieved to be here. Not to mention having a sky over him again. It's kind of refreshing to actually be chilly! Although a little sore from two weeks of teleporting, he's content to make his way back home.

... where he'll find out Jubilee is gone. Not to mention that Melanie is still away. It's kind of a bummer on both count. But he keeps his chin high and remembers that he still has friends. Jubilee went back to the X-Men she belongs with, he's with the X-Men he belongs with, and he'll be ready the moment Melanie comes back.

After spending some time getting settled back into the X-House again, he goes out for the evening, looking for some fun to stimulate a Kurt who spent two weeks of fighting and boredom (and people staring at him like a freak). Good Spirits, Cloud Nine, and the Rec Center are all stops this evening for him. A successful mission completed deserves a little celebration, after all.

At some point, he pops open his journal to ask something he's been thinking about. From what he knows of Kotetsu and Pao-Lin's world, it almost seems to have 'mutants' like him. But unlike his world, they seem to have a better lot than mutants in his world do. After two weeks of being stared at like a freak, his own mutation is pretty heavy on his mind. Maybe other worlds are like this too?]

So a lot of us have powers, yeah? How many people were born with them... but only by accident? I don't mean like some kind of magical powers, but something totally random.

And... what do the people of your world think of that?

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... my real parents didn't seem that interested in me either.

[So that he can kind of identify with.]

And so you're left with nowhere to go. [He can't sustain the hard detached tone anymore; it sinks beneath a quiet sadness.]

No. A miller and his wife found me and raised me. They never once cared what I looked like or what I was. I was their son.

... [Not that long ago, he would have scoffed at the idea and thrown it under intense scrutiny. But now...it's frightening, how quickly his mind can conjure the image of a certain gentle smile. He isn't ready to dwell on that for too long, so he shifts the topic just slightly.]

...But most did care, right? They saw differences, and they feared it.

... yeah, they did. They didn't know who or what I am. All they saw was a monster... a demon. [They were lonely years for him.]

I don't understand how you can have any faith left in humans, after everything they must have put you through.

[The endurance of hope, the strength to pick himself up and try again...those were the first pieces to go when he fell apart.]

It's not easy. But I've seen what happens if you lose that faith. My own mother lost everything because she was blinded by her hate. How can I hate humans when mutants can be just as bad?

How can you not hate humans? I'd imagine that the mutants who do wrong act out of anger toward the injustice enacted on them. Can you honestly blame them? They might act out of hatred, but who hated whom first?

It doesn't matter who hated who first and where it started. It's where it stops that matters.

And what if it never stops? Do you earnestly believe you can change people's attitudes with a handful of good deeds? Your efforts will only go unappreciated.

Maybe I won't change the world, but I know I've helped people. And maybe one day they'll help others too. I do it because it's right, not because I want something back from it.

You say you want nothing back from it, but what is it that you wish for most deeply?

... honestly? To be able to do what I hear. To be able to walk into a city and not have to hide the way I look.

In other words, to be accepted despite your differences.

It isn't just about helping others.

Yeah. But what of it? [No one's perfect.]

Don't you ever get tired of putting all your energy into helping people who hate you, only to have them still think you're a monster every single time? Don't you get frustrated by how change occurs so slowly that nothing changes at all? Don't you ever wish you could have some tangible evidence that what you're doing isn't completely meaningless?

Of course I do. But nothing worth having is easy to get.

...Everyone has their breaking point. [at least, he can't be the only one.....]

... yeah. I guess they do. [He wonders what his mother's was. What Magneto's was. What so many other mutants who went down that path, at what point they reached that breaking point.]

I hope I never get there.

You won't have a choice.

... I think my faith is strong enough. Besides, there's no point worrying about something that may never happen.

.....No one expects it to happen.

I know. [And thus. Maybe it never will.] But I'm sorry for whatever it was that happened to you.

Apologizing fixes nothing, I already told you. [he isn't so desperate that he wants mindless pity from a complete stranger. It feels cheap. A sham.]

...I don't know why I'm bothering to speak to you anymore. [which means he's shutting his journal before Kurt can get another word in. Oops, sorry. Except not.]

[Well. That. That just happened. But he knows the telltale signs of a journal being shut on him.

So that's that.]

Zweiundzwanzig - [Action/Voice]

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[voice - filtered] this is like an infomercial for becoming a hopeless emo loser

[voice - filtered] gawd mithos, just give up!!

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