Tell Me About Your Childhood

[Domino]

Maybe it wasn't the best idea to leave her door open, but at this point, Domino really didn't care. She'd had her shower, she'd changed her clothes, and now she had an appointment with the school counselor, and no little door was getting in her way.

It just so happened that the school counselor was a bottle of top-shelf single-malt scotch she kept in her desk drawer. This made her counseling sessoins more profitable and more immediate than "real" sessions, she found. Plus, she didn't like shrinks. Freaked her out.

Domino sat on her desk in her fresh clean bloodless clothes, a crisp white shirt and blue skirt - lighter than she usually wore, but she didn't want to wear black. Black was what you wore to hide stains. Like blood. She'd got it all off her and didn't want it hiding anywhere.

She reached into the desk drawer and pulled out one of the four glasses she kept there (a lady is always prepared; this was proved by her purse, in which she kept a small box with a flint, emergency rations, AA batteries, penicillin, a switchblade, and four hundred dollars, in addition to a tiny tin of honeyed ham, on account of you just never know), pouring herself a few fingers of the Maker's Mark, no ice (there was none to be had, anyway) and downing it slowly, letting it burn her throat raw before the smoothness set in.

Mm. She wasn't an alcoholic by any means, but she did have a fine appreciation for the better things in life. Plus, it made her feel a bit better about Forge's sister exploding. Only a little, but she'd take what she'd get.

She carefully replaced the bottle, pushed her drawer closed again, and pushed herself off the desk, feeling vaguely 1940s secretary as her skirt rode up.

Barely a week on the job and already people were nearly dying. She just seemed to attract it. Near deaths only, no real deaths.

Why hadn't she been able to stop it? Good luck only went so far, she knew that, but why hadn't it gone far enough to keep her from bursting? Obviously she was fine now (probably), they'd found a healer and kept her together, but why had she done it in the first place? Forge was smart enough not to build something that would blow her up... wasn't he?

She shook her head, pushing her still-warm-from-the-blow-drier hair out of her face and placing the cut-glass tumbler on the edge of her desk, the light gold remnants of the liquor still in the bottom. She sank into the wooden office chair, staring at it before she leaned back, sighing. She'd wash it out later. Right now she had important... brooding to do.

[Nightcrawler]

Kurt had lost track of where he was. It really didn't matter, of course... he was firmly planted inside his head, mulling everything over.

He did not want to be related to Mystique.

An angry-at-the-world mutant terrorist was not his idea of good familial relations. He had dreamed of finding out who his real family was for so long in so many ways, but he never dreamed that he would be horrified to discover the truth.

Granted, the first time he had seen Mystique, there had been a small spark of hope that there was a connection between them, but once he had found out more about her, that hope had died out. And once he had discarded the possibility - there was no was someone so steeped in violence and deception could come from the same family tree as him - it turned out that it was a very real possibility.

Taking a deep breath to calm his nerves, Kurt ordered his thoughts. The best way to solve it was to test Hannah's DNA against his own. If it turned out Mystique was lying, then nothing was different. If she was telling the truth...

Well, Kurt would cross that bridge when he came to it.

Looking around, Kurt found himself in the staff section of the dormitory. Most of the doors were closed except for one, one that Kurt hadn't been aware had been filled. Walking towards it, he caught the end of a sigh and peeked around the doorframe, golden eyes falling on Neena as she leaned back. I never did welcome her to the school, Kurt thought. Of course, he hadn't been paying much attention to anything that morning.

Stepping into view and knocking on the doorframe, Kurt gave a small smile. "Guten Tag, Frau Thurman."

[Domino]

Even distracted by brooding and her senses just barely touched around the edges by the scotch, Neena's sharp eyes were more than equal to catching a bright blue flash outside in the dark-paneled corridor, even in the split second before he made his presence known with a knock. (She couldn't really dislike people who remembered to knock, even on open doors. No one knocked any more. No one had breeding. Especially up North. It was strange, the little things she noticed...)

She stood, her posture straightening to Air Force-pilot perfect from slumpy slacker in a single smooth motion accompanied by a smile (and an equally smooth reach across the desk to pick up the glass, placing it on a small filing cabinet behind the desk itself).

"Guten Tag, Frau Thurman."

"Bonjour, Monsieur Wagner," she said. "How are you? Have you heard how Rayen's doing?"

Having never been taught patience in situations involving sickness or injury, Neena tended to adopt her father's technique of worried obsession, usually involving constant questioning, a little freaking out, and drinking, the lattermost of which Neena had already partaken.

[Nightcrawler]

Kurt stepped into the room, watching as her entire demeanor changed in a second. It was welcoming, but in a curious, rigid way. It seemed that she was much that way from what Kurt could tell in a few seconds: rigidly welcoming, brusquely polite. However, Kurt could appreciate candor, and he offered a regretful smile from his place just inside the doorway.

"Unfortunately, I have not been informed of Rayen's condition. I am sure, however, that she will be fine." He gave a small chuckle. "People survive quite a bit here, and I am sure she will prove to be no different."

Pulling one side of his coat back and putting a hand in his pocket, he fixed his golden eyes on her. "I did not have the chance before to welcome you here to Xavier's. I am glad you were able to join us. It was getting a little stressful being the only foreign language teacher here."

[Domino]

"Is there so much to survive?" Neena asked, not overworried, moving around to the side of her desk and leaning on it, beginning to rifle through a stack of worksheets without picking them up. Death was an odd, foreign concept to her. She knew she wouldn't have any problem killing with the proper instigation and reasoning, but did that stem from a real instinct or simply from an unfamiliarity with death? The only person that had ever died in Neena's immediate circle was her mother, whom she'd never known to feel the loss. Neena's friends had an odd capacity for surviving, too, even without the mutant gene for extra sturdiness, and most of them were in professions where their longevity was rarer than hers was. They collected the scars, sure, and came close hundreds of times every year - but none died. Their little college reunions on Sixth Street never diminished.

Curious indeed, unless you were Domino as well as Neena. Then nothing was ever curious, except in a cursory sort of way.

"I did not have the chance before to welcome you here to Xavier's. I am glad you were able to join us. It was getting a little stressful being the only foreign language teacher here."

"Thank you," she said, sincerity lifting her stiffness for a moment. She couldn't help it; she knew that she was at a school for mutants, but it was so easy to forget - or to ignore the unhappy truths of things - when you weren't faced with people who were so obviously... different. Even she had nothing on Mr. Wagner.

"Were no other languages offered?" she asked in mild surprise. "That can't have gone over well with the state. Are foreign language credits required here as well? I couldn't imagine teaching an entire school. My classes are heavy enough as is."

She smiled, leaving the worksheets alone for a moment. "I never did properly learn German," she said. "Always worked better with romance languages - would you mind if I sat in on a few classes, just to see how hard it would be to get back in practice? I'm afraid when I was younger I tended to abandon things that got too difficult rather than finish them properly, and German didn't come as easily as it could've."

[Nightcrawler]

Kurt shrugged with a small smile, thinking over everything that had happened recently. Battles with other mutants, near-invasion forces showing up at the school, espionage in the school itself... and then anything else that happened with all the mutants in a small space.

"Well... more than anywhere else, I suppose."

Smiling as a bit of the rigidity in her spine seemed to slip, he stepped a bit farther into the room. "Students' required courses here are a bit... different than a normal schooling experience." He drew a hand through his hair. "Fortunately, only a select few wished to take German.

"My classes are always open to those who wish to attend. I would be more than happy to have you sit in." He grinned. "Perhaps then my students would behave better."

[Domino]

That was comforting. Not that it wouldn't make things more interesting, but Neena wasn't used to having to survive anything more than a lot of testosterone-pumped guys with easy access to heavy weaponry... well, okay, maybe she was better-prepared for it than most. But the supernatural element still weirded her out. You knew where you stood with a thermobaric explosive, but you couldn't say with - well, with some guy who was bright blue and teleported in bangs of smoke that smelled like her family barbecues. (Daddy always used too much lighter fluid. Way, way too much lighter fluid. And somehow still managed to not to get the insides of the burgers past extra-rare...)

She frowned slightly. She wondered what the requirements even were. Undoubtedly mutant kids needed somewhere to go, but they still needed to learn trig and biology and two credits of foreign language... well, sort of. But they had to be adequately prepared for colleges, was the thing. Powers-training was all well and good, but not every mutant could grow up to be an X-man.

"What is required?" she asked. "Is there a credit system, or is it choice-based?"

"My classes are always open to those who wish to attend. I would be more than happy to have you sit in. Perhaps then my students would behave better."

"You never know," she said, "they might be worse." Of course, these students didn't know her, but the few times she'd ever tried to help Mr. Kinney with demonstrations involving small blasts in chemistry, the students also in her class had spent the entire time goofing off, generally setting small things on fire and then laughing in terrible French accents. Evidently she encouraged mayhem, at least according to the principal.

[Domino]

"Well," Neena said, "it was lovely to meet you properly, Kurt. I think I will turn up in one of your classes eventually, but I'll try not to encourage too much destruction."

She gathered up the papers, stacked them neatly, and laid them in a perfectly rectangular pile on her desk. She was good at precision when she wanted to be.

"I think I'm going to see if Rayen's up and about," she said. "I know that young man, what's his name... Josh? Healed her, but that's still got to take a toll on someone. I'm sure I'll see you around."

[exit Domino]