The X-Project

Arriving from Berlin, Amanda goes straight to the school and talks to Ororo about Kurt's apparent disappearance.



Amanda resisted the urge to take the front steps two at a time, reminding herself that a) she wasn't entirely sure there was a problem yet and b) it wouldn't be a good idea to raise a panic by bowling over students in an obvious State. So she clamped down on the worry that had chased her all the way to New York from Berlin and kept a calm, relaxed expression on her face as she made her way to Ororo's office. Nothing to see, just any other day...

Ororo had gotten Amanda's call in the middle of a particularly intense workout - nothing like heavy reps to take one's mind off the insanity all around. She had hurried up to her office as soon as she could, and was still blotting the sweat from her face as Amanda entered. The normally-composed headmistress looked a little bedraggled, but no less serene, a bottle of water sitting uncapped in front of her. "Amanda, hello. Please, come, sit down."

"Oh, I interrupted you, didn't I?" Amanda bit her lip as she took a seat on the other side of the desk, trying not to feel too much like a misbehaving student as she did. "I'm sorry to bother you, only..." Taking a breath, she plunged in. "Kurt isn't on some top secret spying thing for the lea... um, for the team, is he? Or anything else that'd mean he'd say he was somewhere when he wasn't?"

Ororo paused, mid-sip, her eyebrows coming together in an expression of concern. "...no," she said, setting down the bottle slowly and shaking her head. "Not that I know of, at least."

Well, Ororo would know. Amanda's face crumpled, despite her best efforts to be the professional she was supposed to be. "I met Stefan in Berlin," she blurted out. "And he said they hadn't seen Kurt at all, not since his last visit months ago. They haven't heard from him either. Which means those notes he sent us, saying he was with his mother? Was a... wasn't true." Somehow she couldn't out and say Kurt had lied. It would be like saying the sky was pink. Completely ridiculous.

Dear goddess. Not again. Ororo couldn't help but be struck by the immediate parallel between this and Jennie's message claiming that everything was fine, she was staying with her father. Taking a deep breath, Ororo concentrated on keeping calm and collected. "We all received the same note; up until now, we have not had cause to doubt it. Though he hadn't contacted us since, we assumed it was because he wished for time and distance from the team. If he is not where he claimed to be... I do not know where else he could have gone. Or why he would have lied."

"And here I was hoping you knew something I didn't." Amanda drooped visibly, looking very young - sometimes it was difficult to remember she was still in her teens, but not right now. "He wasn't saying much, before he left, I thought he was all right, he just needed a break..." Her voice cracked a little. "This is Kurt we're talking about here. He's always so... stable. I never thought he'd just up and disappear..."

"He was under a great deal of stress," Ororo murmured, knowing that probably wasn't the most reassuring thing to hear, but saying it anyway. "I have learned that it is nigh-impossible to predict what a person might do under stress... even one as dependable as Kurt normally is. Perhaps he did not want to worry you with the details... however foolish a decision that may be."

"I swear, I'll never keep another secret, ever, as long as the fucking object lessons stop," Amanda murmured to herself vehemently, dropping her face into her hands for a moment. Now was not the time to fall apart, no matter how little this made sense. Taking a deep breath, she lifted her face and fixed Ororo with as steady a look as she could manage. "Right. Kurt's missing and we don't know why, right?" At the older woman's slight nod, she set her jaw. "So, we go looking for him and find out." It wasn't a question.

Ororo admired the way Amanda was facing this - she knew partially how difficult it was, and was secretly glad that she didn't need to spend time reassuring the younger girl. At least not right now. "Yes. We will need to try and discern where else he might have gone, to narrow down our search... I will need to speak with the Professor, to ask him if he could attempt to locate him with Cerebro." He had done it once before, at least.

"I can help." Again, it was a statement of fact. "I've got a spell, a location spell. It has some kinks in it still, but I should be able to narrow it down to a city - Kurt said something about his powers making it hard for the Prof to get a lock on him with Cerebro, yeah?"

Ororo nodded. "Yes, that is true. Any way that we can narrow down the search will be much appreciated. This spell seems like our best chance..." She sighed, knowing that even with all the spells in the world it would be difficult to find Kurt if he didn't want to be.

"I'll need something of his, to focus on." Even with all the changes in the magic, some things held true, resonated too deeply. "Would that be all right? If I went to his room and got something?"

"I will go with you." Ororo seemed to be following Amanda's example of making statements, not asking questions, rising from her chair and waiting for the English girl to do the same.

"Thanks," Amanda said, shoulders untensing somewhat. She had come a long way from last year, but the preconceptions she'd had about the team had been hard to break. She'd almost been expecting to be told to shuffle off and wait for the team to go do their thing. I can see why Remy deals with her now, she reflected, underneath the worry.

Standing, she met Ororo's eyes and gave her a wan smile. "Let's go burgling then."



***

At Kurt's suite, Amanda asks his suitemate, Sam, for burgling permission. They discover something deeply unsettling.



It was strange. Even before she'd moved out of the mansion, Amanda could count the number of times she'd visited Kurt's suite on one hand. And yet here she was, about to go rummaging through his stuff looking for something she could use to find him. The whole thing was weird, not the usual order of things. Then again, Kurt vanishing and leaving misleading notes wasn't exactly normal. All the more reason to get this done and get down the the business of finding him.

Not sure if his suite-mate would be in or not, Amanda knocked on the door, trying not to sound too impatient. Better to be polite, she reasoned. Polite got you your way far more often than being rude - it was something she'd learned with the Snow Valley work. Ororo had been summoned into Charles' office as they'd headed upstairs - alerted by their states of mind, no doubt, and the team leader had indicated Amanda should go on.

Sam looked up from where he sat on the couch at the knock. It was funny, Sam and Kurt were both private people, and as a result they didn't talk overly much. But at the same time, they had shared a comfortable companionship as suitemates. Their shared faith was an especial factor in their comfort level with each other. And just like that, Kurt had disappeared, and the suite felt astonishingly empty without him.

Getting up from the couch, he crossed to the door and opened it. He looked down at Amanda with a somewhat perplexed look that mirrored hers. "Hello, Amanda, is there somethin' Ah can do for ya?"

"Um." She hadn't really expected anyone to be there, and now she was a bit thrown. Taking a breath, she blurted out, all at once: "I need something of Kurt's. For a location spell. He's not with the clan like he said he was and Ms. Munroe said it was all right and can I please come in and look for something I can use?"

"He's not with...?" Sam asked, his eyes even wider with stunned confusion. "But the notes he left for everyone..." He shook his head, the rest of Amanda's request registering finally. "No, please, come in," he said, his manners reasserting themselves.

She came into the suite as he stepped aside, trying hard not to start wringing her hands in her shirt like she used to. "I'm sorry to spring it on you like that. I'm just... well, scared to death, actually. Kurt isn't the disappearing one in the family - that's my job." She gave him a wan smile. "I met up with Stefan in Berlin and found out Kurt had never been with them. So I checked with Ms. Munroe, and she said you lot hadn't heard from him either. So basically he's gone missing."

"Ya ain't the only one who's scared," Sam admitted. "It don't make sense," he continued with a shake of his head. This was extremely out of character for the quiet, polite Kurt Wagner. "So ya need somethin' of his ta try and see if ya can locate him?"

Amanda nodded. "I'm still working on the location spell, but I think I've got a way to make it work. Only I need something of his, something he was attached to, or used a lot." Hopefully he hadn't taken everything with him.

It went against everything he believed about personal privacy, and the invasion of it, but Sam was extremely worried by what Amanda had told him. It wasn't at all like Kurt to disappear, much less lie to people about what he was doing. After a long minute of struggling with himself, Sam nodded. "Ah don't like it, but Ah also don't like this situation any, either. Ah'll let ya in," he said, crossing to the door to Kurt's bedroom.

"Thanks, Sam. I really appreciate it." And she did - her sincerity showed in her voice and face. "I'll try and be quick, if that helps? 'S not like I like going through his stuff either..."

"Ah wouldn't expect ya to," Sam replied, the disturbed expression on his face softening. He sighed, and turned the knob to Kurt's door. It opened smoothly, and Sam indicated that Amanda should precede him into the room. She'd know what she had in mind better than he would.

Kurt's room had never been overly cluttered - her older brother took 'Spartan' to new and scary heights - but it was obvious that he had taken at least some possessions with him. "Looks like he was planning to be away a good while when he left," she murmured, thinking out loud as much as speaking to Sam.

Starting with the chest of drawers by the bed, she sat on the bed and pulled open the first drawer and carefully sifted through the contents. A book or two, some papers, a box of tissues... then she sucked in her breath as she came across his rosary, carefully tucked away. "He left his rosary behind?" she said, tone incredulous. "But he always... I've never seen him go without it." She looked up at Sam, eyes large and almost frightened.

Sam's eyes were also frightened. He recognized the younger girl's need for reassurance, but he wasn't sure that he had any to give. For Kurt to so symbolically abandon his faith, and...his eyes widened. "His X-Men tags," he breathed, picking them up from where they lay on his desk. Kurt had seemingly left the two most central parts of his life completely behind him.

The Church and the X-Men. Two of the foundation stones in Kurt's life, along with his family... "This is bad," Amanda breathed, feeling herself growing pale. "Really bad."

There were some days when Sam felt a lot older than his years. Today was shaping up to be one of those days. It seemed like forever since the events of Alkali Lake, when Kurt had come to live at the mansion. "It sure looks like it," Sam said quietly, still at a lost for something reassuring to say. "Do ya..." He cleared his throat. "Do ya think either of those might suffice for what ya have in mind?" he asked.

Not the rosary. Amanda couldn't say why exactly, but it seemed... wrong somehow, to use that. But the tags... Amanda set the rosary carefully back in the drawer and held her hand out for them. As Sam placed them in her hand, she felt their weight, their meaning and knew they were right. "I'll be careful with them," she promised, closing her fingers over them.

Sam closed his hand around Amanda's for a moment and then patted it gently. "Ah know ya will, Amanda," he replied. "An' hopefully they'll help us figure out what's happenin'."

She nodded, expression growing determined. The spell would work, and if it didn't, she'd drag every available person at Snow Valley into the search. "I'll have to take them to New York with me," she said, slipping the tags into her jacket pocket. "'S what went wrong last time, I think. Wasn't in the place where the power's coming from. I'll bring them back, soon as I'm done, and let you lot know what I find." She bit her lip a little. "I just wish I knew what was going on. I knew he was having a hard time of it, but not so bad he'd just..." Run away? That was her gig, not Kurt's.

"Ya can't blame yourself," Sam told Amanda gently, raising his hand to clasp her shoulder and make sure she was looking at him, rather than down at the bedspread like she was trying to. "It ain't your fault. It's pretty obvious he put some thoughts into coverin' his tracks an' foolin' all of us as to where we thought he was goin'. Ah don't rightly know how it's all gonna turn out, seein' as Ah ain't a precog like your friend Marie-Ange, but Ah do know that we'll all do our best ta help and do what it takes ta find him an' bring him back where he belongs." That was making a rather large assumption that Kurt -wanted- to be found and brought back, but Sam left that unsaid. It would just complicate the pep talk he was trying to give.

"Oh, I'm not... Kurt's the king of bottling stuff up and if he was trying to keep things from us, well, there wasn't much to be done." She didn't sound entirely convinced, but there were more important things here. Like finding him. "'S just... he was there for me, no matter what and I just, well, I thought he understood it was the same the other way." She sighed a little. "He's family, him and Stefan both are, even when Margali decided otherwise. I just hope he's all right."

"Ah'm sure he is," Sam said, doing his best to make the little white lie convincing. He was damn worried, but as Amanda had said, there wasn't much to be done. At least until they figured out where exactly it was he had gotten himself off to.