Amanda 2015
Note from Rossi: So, finally got this finished after a re-write to incoporate other people's stuff. Apologies to Kate for the rampant stealing of the character. ;) Skates some spoilers for the end of the year, but successfully clears them, I hope.
[https://x-project.dreamwidth.org/37692.html x_project Posted here]
"...indicate that it will be critically acclaimed, if not a box office smash. Jamie Madrox, who himself a mutant and an alumnus of the internationally renowned Xavier's Institute..."
"Oi, love, Another pot of the Coopers when you're ready?"
"For you, Eddie? Anything."
The barmaid reached for the man's empty glass whilst ET continued to inform them of the latest Madrox project in the carefully enthusiastic tones the program was so known for. Dumping the dirty glass in the rack with its fellows, she expertly drew him a fresh beer, setting the foaming glass down on the bar mat in front of him. "Two dollars fifty, Eddie," she said with a smile, her British accent marked by the slightest hint of an American twang on the 'R'.
"Cheers, love. Those Xavier's kids, they've really done well for themselves, haven't they?" Eddie was obviously in a chatty mood as he nodded up at the small television playing in the corner of the pub. It was a weekday lunchtime, the Beaconsfield relatively quiet, only Eddie and one or two other regulars parked along the bar. "TV writers, artists, singers, dancers, computer game designers, politicians... It's good to see, mutants making their way. Take that Forge character, he's really contributed to medical science. Saved thousands of lives, if not millions."
"That's Forge for you, always thinking big," the barmaid replied softly, almost wistfully under her breath.
"What was that, Amanda?" Eddie asked.
Amanda Sefton shook her head a little before she tucked a wayward strand of blonde hair behind her ear. The piercings had mostly gone, just the eyebrow bell and the tongue stud surviving the years, but she still dressed in t-shirts and jeans, her hair caught up into a short ponytail for the sake of work - she looked far younger than the twenty-eight years proclaimed on her passport.
"Nothing, Eddie," she replied. "Just talking to myself. It's good to see, yeah. Things've come a long way since I was a kid, that's for sure." Beginning to wipe down the bar even though it didn't really need it, she artfully changed the subject. "So, how's that young lad of yours? Still getting into trouble at school?"
~*~
The late summer air was warm on Amanda's face as she left the hotel, waving to Micha and Jasmine as they headed off in the opposite direction. It was late, but the day had been a hot one, and she could feel warmth radiating up through her shoes as she headed for the sea front route as was her habit after work. It added to the walk home after a long night of pulling beers, but it was soothing watching the lights on the water and hearing the waves on the beach. As always, she was struck by the similarity of St. Kilda to Brighton - even down to the carefree atmosphere, a group of students playing hackey sack in the park. Some of them were obvious mutants, but there was none of the self-consciousness she'd seen in the States as a girl - as she watched, the feral type balanced easily on one hand, juggling the sack from foot to foot almost cockily and she found herself remembering Kyle. A night for nostalgia apparently; she always got this way when she was tired, and it had been a long day. The reminder the ET special on Jamie's latest project had only set the tenor for the day, memories crowding in whenever she let herself think of anything but the job at hand.
In Acland Street she found herself lingering outside the discount travel agents, eying flight prices, and smiled ruefully. Apparently her subconscious had decided it was time to move on. As much as she loved Melbourne, loved Australia, two and a half years in the one country was her limit, and she'd squirrelled away enough money to start thinking about where to next. Europe maybe, possibly even North America, she thought on impulse. Pete had been making noises about hiring someone to drag her arse back home the last time she'd spoken to him. Of course, she'd told him the school wasn't home and wouldn't be again, not with what had happened, and they'd rowed, as they usually did when the past came up. She looked at the flights to New York speculatively, calculating prices. If she got lucky, maybe Dom was in town, making Pete's life a misery, and wasn't Meg's ballet troupe supposed to be touring the States soon...?
Amanda shook her head. The trip would end the same way it always did. Nate would come home to find her there, and there'd be that same awkwardness, hurts never fully healed or forgiven. Meg would ask and cajole her to stay, not understanding why she wouldn't and taking it personally and Angelo would step in to defend the younger girl, calling Amanda a coward for not sticking around...
Hmm. Maybe Africa. It was cheap, after all.
~*~
Amanda lived in a terrace house perhaps fifteen minutes' walk from the beach, with an ever-changing roster of other travelling types - at the moment the residents consisted firstly of Claus and Hans, the gay German couple on their honeymoon. They'd go out in identical outfits in varying pastel shades. Claus was a chef, which meant the food was always very good, however, and they paid their rent on time. There was Kara, from Canada, who was taking a year off from college to 'find herself', apparently either at the bottom of a beer glass or in the bed of whichever Irishman she picked up at the St. Kilda Inn this week. And there was Simon, who was their token Australian, a softly-spoken young man still in his teens who came from Tasmania. He was a mutant, a beta-level telepath, who had fled the backwater hill town he'd grown up in as soon as he legally could to get away from the thoughts of the locals. The others, all under twenty-five, often joked about Amanda being the old lady of the house, and anyone else in her position might have found themselves acting as a mother figure to these alarmingly young people. But she'd learned the hard way long ago that parenting was best left to the actual parents, and contented herself with making sure the bills were paid on time, that there was a glass of water by Kara's beside when she got home from the pub and that the coffee maker was switched on before she left of a morning. As well as sending Meggan regular postcards and emails to salve her conscience of the mess she'd made with the girl. It wouldn't change things, but Meg was a forgiving sort - it wasn't in her nature to hate her 'Manda.
She never spoke of herself during long summer evenings spent sitting around the tiny backyard, sharing Thai take out and beer and stories. Instead she focussed on the places she'd been and the people she'd met: Istanbul and Vietnam, India and Marrakech and Johannesburg. Berlin, Paris, Rome and Amsterdam. Sometimes Simon would give her strange looks and remark vaguely that her mind was well-shielded for a norm. Once, when she'd had one of the old nightmares, he'd appeared at the door with a glass of water and a concerned look. He hadn't asked, and she hadn't told, but he'd sat beside her bed and told her stories about his university lecturer's telepathically loud sexual fantasies during tutorials until she'd laughed and the shakes had gone away.
There was a battered old couch on the front porch, dusty and covered with cat hair from the strays Amanda knew she shouldn't feed but still did. As she opened the gate there was a stirring of the shadows gathered in the corner of it, a gleam of yellow eyes, and then a voice she hadn't heard for years but immediately recognised any way, soft and marked with a German accent still even after all this time. "~Good evening, sister,~" the shape said in Romany.
"Kurt," Amanda replied, smiling a little despite the confusion of seeing him here, now. Confused but not really surprised - coincidence still tended to dog her heels like a particularly neurotic puppy. "Bit out of your range to just drop in, isn't it? Why didn't you say you were coming?"
"I was in the area," the teleporter replied with one of his fleeting smiles. There was a muffled click and his shape shimmered, the familiar midnight blue skin and yellow eyes replaced by Kurt's public 'face'. "Your housemates were kind enough to let me in, although I think perhaps I caused some tension between the two German boys? One did not seem to like the attention the other was paying to me."
Amanda sighed. "Claus gets jealous. Not your fault. And lose the inducer, yeah? You won't need it here - my housemates aren't the bigoted type and you know I hate talking to a stranger."
Kurt hesitated, but acquiesced, not wanting to get off on the wrong foot. Amanda's temper wasn't half as mercurial as it had been when she was younger, but she was still stubborn. And he had to admit, it pleased him that she preferred his natural shape. "Better, liebchen?"
"Much. Flesh tone really isn't your colour," she teased, coming up the steps to give him a brief hug. "Come on in - I'm all in and there's a beer in the fridge with my name on it. What brings you here any way? You didn't say. Nothing wrong, I hope? Margali and the clan all right?"
"They are fine and well. Margali has all but retired from her position as head of the caravan, but Stefan and Jimaine work well together and see she wants for nothing. Stefan's wife is pregnant, by the way," Kurt replied, choosing which questions to answer carefully. He followed Amanda in as she opened the front door with the usual struggle and shove with her shoulder - it tended to stick.
"Again? Fuck, what does that make it now? Six?" Claus and Hans' door was closed, with certain muffled noises coming from behind it; it looked like the spat had been a brief one, at least. Kara wouldn't be home for hours yet and Simon was... wherever he had got to. She wasn't sure. Kurt's single bag was already on the floor in her room as they passed. "Looks like a flying visit for you, yeah?" she commented as she dumped her own bag on the bed and kicked off her shoes.
"Seven. Stefan still hopes for a daughter," Kurt replied with a small chuckle, followed by an apologetic cough. "Ja, only a day or two. I have business to attend to, a new student to escort to the school. But I wished to see you first."
Odd way of putting it, but then again Kurt's speech patterns were always a little stilted. They came off as too formal sometimes, but Amanda was used to it. "Well, I hope you have time to have dinner with me tomorrow night, at least. If I can get off work. You should've told me you were coming, I would've cleared my schedule." Yanking off her beer and smoke-smelling t-shirt without even thinking, she dug around in the battered pack in the corner for another. "Work's been kicking my arse, but the manager likes me, says I'm a good worker, so it should be all right." The shirt she chose extolled the virtues of somebody called The Screaming Jets as she tugged it down over her chest.
Kurt, in the meantime, had politely turned his back, blushing purple under his dark skin. He hadn't missed the bareness of the room, the lack of anything resembling settling in - Amanda's personal space had as much personality as a hotel room and gave the impression she could pick up and leave at any time. "I am sorry. It was a last minute decision - you know how it is." He paused, and then said casually to the wall he was facing: "Actually, there was another reason I am here. I have a proposition for you."
"Kurt, I didn't know you felt that way. I'm flattered and all, but adoptive brother and sister? 'S sort of creepy," she teased, clapping his shoulder as she passed him on the way to the door. He blushed again and began to explain that wasn't what he had meant, and she laughed. "I'm only teasing. Come on, let's go out into the back yard - 's a nice night, and we can talk without listening to the make-up sex."
~*~
"James Squire's a good beer," Amanda said, leaning back in her deck chair with a contented sigh, beer bottle resting comfortably on her stomach. "Better than the fizzy lagers they tend to drink here."
"It is good, ja," Kurt replied absently, mind on how he was going to suggest what he had to suggest without antagonising her. "This is a nice place. You could do much here."
"If I stayed that long," Amanda said with a small shrug and another mouthful of beer. "You know me - I like to keep on the move." She snorted a little. "'S in the blood, after all."
"We were beginning to think you had decided to settle down here," Kurt said, tactfully not rising to the bait - Amanda and Margali hadn't spoken in years, and whilst Kurt kept her appraised of the clan's fortunes and she called him her brother, Amanda considered it a bridge well and truly burned. She kept the false birth certificate that declared her nationality as British and even her grasp of Romany was slipping through lack of use. "How many passports have you filled by now?"
"I'm on number three. Next couple of trips should do it," Amanda replied carelessly, giving him an apologetic little smile for the family dig. "Funny you should bring it up - I was just looking at flights on the way home. Africa this time, I think."
"Some people might say that so much travelling looks remarkably like running away," Kurt said innocently, sipping at his beer and looking away over the small scrubby garden. Mostly herbs, he noted, and he didn't doubt that was Amanda's handiwork - old habits apparently still lingered.
"And some people might say you sound remarkably like a nagging old woman," Amanda replied mildly, but there was a certain edge to her voice. It was a topic that had been raised before, and not only by Kurt. He held up a placating hand.
"I'm not here to fight with you, liebchen," he said, in that calming tone he was so good at and which had done more to smooth relations between the two of them than anything else - when everything had fallen apart on Amanda, Kurt had been there, offering unconditional support for the taking, not making any demands. "I'm here to offer you a job."
"Job?" Amanda asked, raising an eyebrow. "What job?"
"The pay is good, and you would receive full benefits, room and board. And you would be putting your degree to use."
She sat up a little straighter in the deck chair, looking at him carefully. "You wot?" she said, slipping into the South London accent she'd abandoned years ago in favour of the generic British. "That's impossible, Kurt. They don't recognise my degree here, not without me doing a bunch more qualifying courses and exams, and since I'm a foreigner I'd have to pay the fees up front. I just don't have that kind of cash, not with the work I do." And borrowing was out of the question - that stubborn streak refused to let her accept any further 'charity' from anyone.
"Not here," Kurt said, watching her carefully. "Not in Europe or in Asia either. This job is within the United States."
"The States?" Amanda frowned. "I can't do the social worker thing there, Kurt, you know I can't. Without accreditation no-one'll touch me for insurance reasons, and I can't get accredited. Manuel and his boss saw to that."
It had been a heartbreaking time. Newly graduated from college in New Orleans (funded by the Istanbul trust fund), full of hopes for a future where she could make a difference without using her powers, only to have those dreams shattered as the tenuous nature of her immigration status was revealed and used as a flimsy excuse to exclude her. Nathan had tried, perhaps glad for such an impersonal way of doing something for her given the awkwardness between them, but in the end it had come to nothing. And as she'd been leaving the court after her unsuccessful final appeal, she'd seen Manuel de la Rocha himself standing by an expensive-looking car in an equally expensive-looking suit. They locked eyes and he'd nodded, just the once, and she'd known then exactly what had happened. Manuel had used his influence and that of Gideon to keep her from her dream, and she knew in her heart that he'd block every attempt she'd make.
She'd tried anyway. Five months later she'd used the last of the Istanbul money left over from college to buy a plane ticket, walking up to a desk at random and telling the startled clerk: "Anywhere. Surprise me." Manuel had beaten her, and she didn't have the strength to fight him any more.
"So that is that, is it?" Kurt's quiet voice jolted her back to the present. "You'll continue to let Manuel run your life, just as he did when you were teenagers?"
"I tried, Kurt! He had money and influence and knew the right people - he didn't even have to use his powers!" she protested, but it was a feeble attempt. She'd let Manuel drive her out, using her guilt as a lever. Looking down at the bottle in her hand, she picked at the label, shredding it into confetti. "And he was the wronged party in all that mess. I fucked him over pretty good. You were there, you should remember."
"So you're going to let a mistake you made ten years ago when you were a confused girl ruin your whole life?" Kurt asked her pointedly. "If you heard someone tell you this, what would your professional training say?"
Kurt was occasionally a crafty bastard. Perhaps moreso because his meek demeanour made you underestimate him. "Bastard," she muttered at last, pushing her hair out of her eyes and she raised her head to look at him. Kurt had the grace not to look smug, at least. "Let's hear it then. What's this job?"
"Guidance counsellor," Kurt said, and Amanda nodded, having a mouthful of beer as he continued. It made sense for a raw trainee, after all. "At Xavier's."
Beer sprayed across the space between them. Kurt politely ignored Amanda's splutterings as beer went up her nose.
"You've lost your fucking marbles, Kurt!" she choked out through the coughing fit. "You know I didn't leave that place on good terms - I only keep in touch 'cause of Pete and you. Why on earth there? And why me?"
"It's the one place guaranteed to be beyond Manuel and Gideon's influence," Kurt pointed out patiently. "Pete will not let either of them set foot on the property, let alone influence his staffing decisions. As for why you..." He smiled at her. "They need a counsellor, one who is good with troubled children, who understands their difficulties, the ways their minds work, but who also can still connect with those with more normal backgrounds. Even when you were at your most difficult, Amanda, you had a way with people. Why else do you think people took things so badly?"
"Well, sucking the life energy out of people isn't exactly considered appropriate behaviour," Amanda replied dryly. "And there's dozens of people out there with the right qualifications who can do all that. So why me?"
"You understand the school, what it entails, what happens there. How easy it is for the staff to miss the warning signs, because they're hidden deliberately and most of the staff are attempting to fulfil roles as both X-Men and teachers." Kurt paused, and then added tactfully. "Your lack of powers is actually a benefit there - you wouldn't be recruited for the team, and could concentrate primarily on the job you were hired for."
"Nice to see you lot finally seeing that from my view," Amanda said sourly. "You're forgetting one thing, Kurt - I've never used my degree. I've spent the last ten years working behind bars and in shops and on farms. My grades were good and all, but what if I'm all theory and no practice?"
"I was speaking to your friend, the young man... Simon? Whilst waiting for you to come home," Kurt began. "He told me many things, about how you had helped him when he first arrived. A place to live, university, a part time job... Even finding him a place to assist him with his powers. He said he would not have been able to remain here without your help."
"That? That was just..." Amanda squirmed, embarrassed at the praise unlooked-for. "That was just being a mate, Kurt. Nothing to do with the job. Anyone could have done the same."
"Some would say that is what these children need. A friend, but a friend who knows how to help, or how to obtain help. One who will halt the self-destructive cycle of keeping secrets." Kurt smiled, teeth very white in the darkness. "Such as Pete was to you, I recall."
"Okay, I see your point," Amanda reluctantly admitted. "Was it Pete how put you up to this? I told him last time I talked to him on the phone I wouldn't set foot in the place again, so if he's using this as a sneaky way to get me back..."
"Not Pete, no." Another of those tactful pauses. "Nathan suggested you."
It was a good thing Amanda had finished her beer whilst Kurt had been giving her the reasons for choosing her, or there would have been a repeat performance of the snorting. "Nate?"
"Ja," Kurt replied simply, refusing to be drawn into that particular issue. "Will you consider it, leibchen? We need you, and perhaps it is time you faced these particular demons."
"I can see why they sent you and all. They know I can't tell you to fuck off when you're being all reasonable at me," she said, but with far less bitterness than Kurt might have expected. She was obviously considering the proposal, he noted, his spirits rising. "After everything that happened... are you sure they'll want me? What I did, it's a fucking lot to forgive." Another fond, wry smile at him. "Not everyone's as forgiving as you, Kurt, and I'm not sure I want them to be. I hurt a lot of people."
"And this could be your chance to address those hurts. Time is a great healer, leibchen." He reached over and lay his hand over hers. "Perhaps it is time to forgive yourself, ja?"
There was a long silence, broken at last by a single word, softly spoken. "Ja," she replied, squeezing his fingers back. Then she took a deep breath, and her tone turned businesslike. "So, this kid of yours you're collecting. Problem?"
Kurt squeezed her hand once more, and then let go, nodding. "Indeed. I have her file in my luggage. Do you wish to see it?"
"Tell me in your own words," Amanda replied, shaking her head. "It'll give me a better picture of her." She grinned, impishly, a flash of the girl she'd been. "Never did like paperwork that much, remember?"
