Searching for Solace. [kurt]

Jean Grey sat in a secluded corner of the school's cafeteria, trickling with a fair amount of traffic even at this time between breakfast and lunching hours. To some, she supposed, her identity would take a moment to register. Those who hadn't seen her in a number of days, or years, given the level of estrangement. Death had a habit of distancing your loved ones, after all. Jean's defining feature, her lush, long auburn hair, had been cropped just above her shoulder. Eyes that were at one time a dazzling green were now an amber-golden hue.

What was most different about her, what would make passersby second-guess her true identity, was the air that she carried with her. Introverted and thoughtful, not dazzling and attention-grabbing as it once had been. Not that those attributes were gone. Just muted as she tried to put together the pieces of her life. To cope with what had transpired since she'd last went to the White Hot Room. Jean didn't even know how to go about discovering what had brought her, and other back from the grave.

She especially was leery of facing the repercussions that her premature departure from the White Hot Room would create. Nothing made sense in the world as she'd awoken to find it. Every constant that Jean had arranged as the foundation of her beliefs, as her very being were razed or forever changed. The Institute was no more. The thought that this current school was named after her was humbling and embarrassing at the same time. The added fact that Logan and Kitty had founded it was nearly too much.

Then, there was the issue of the Force and what terrible chaos it had wrought on earth recently. And... Scott...

Jean shook the thought aside. She... she couldn't... So, for the moment, she continued to stir her tea, steeping in thought. She may have had a lot of resolution since coming back, but there was still a long way to go.

It felt strange, being alive again. Death was such an ethereal experience; everything was abstract, muted. There had been a constant, pervading sense of peace in the air, and there was nothing but soft edges and bright colors. In fact, the more Kurt Wagner thought about his life after death, the less he remembered.

Now everything was concrete. His peace was shattered, and he was tossed into a world that was foreign to him now. He had to recall the feel of his own skin again--or fur, in his case--and what it felt like to walk on solid earth. Yes, there was nothing quite like clawing your way out of a grave to bring you back to reality.

A lot had changed after Nightcrawler's death. The most prominent was that Kitty and Logan, of all people, were headmasters of the Xavier Institute now. No wait, the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. Wow, that was a bit of a kicker too. To learn that the Professor himself had passed...

Grief tore at Kurt's heart like claws as he thought about the people who had come and gone during his absence. And above all else, a single question clung to the corners of his mind, refusing to release. Why was he alive now? Was it divine intervention? Some sort of cosmic luck? Part of a dastardly plot or mission to revive the earth's fallen heroes? Nightcrawler was inclined to believe the first, but being Catholic made him biased. Being an X-Men meant he had to keep his mind open to the more bombastic theories.

However, sitting on a bench and allowing the sprinklers to soak his fur wasn't going to do anything but make him smell like wet elf. Shaking what moisture he could from his body, Kurt stood up and walked back inside the Jean Grey School. He had been crouched outside since the crack of dawn and had allowed his turmoiled thoughts to stew inside of him; it was high time he got off his fuzzy butt and at least got something to eat.

The cafeteria was surprisingly busy at this hour. Kurt largely ignored the few stares that were sent his way. He was used to people doing a double take upon first setting eyes on him, and there were many at the school he didn't know now. And those who did were probably looking at him for reasons other than his strange appearance; for them he assumed it was like seeing a furry blue ghost.

Amongst the crowd of new faces he sighted an old and familiar one, albeit it being somewhat different than the face he had known. Jean Grey certainly looked different with her short crop of red hair, though she managed to pull the look off. Grabbing a bowl of oatmeal for himself, Kurt made his way over to her isolated little table, greeting his old friend with a flick of his devil's tail as he sat opposite of her.

"Guten tag, mein Freund. How is life treating you?" The question was meant to be a little ironic, considering both Kurt and Jean had recently gone through the arduous process of coming back from the dead. The mutant's voice was lightly tinged with a German accent, having lost its thickness through years of being in America. His yellow eyes gazed into Jean Grey's own for a moment, as if they were searching for something, before suddenly darting over to the container of honey sitting in the middle of the table. A large, three-fingered hand reached out and clasped the plastic container, and Kurt preoccupied himself with stirring honey into his oatmeal while he waited for Jean's response.

Jean might have been lost in her thoughts, but even with such inner turmoil at the forefront of her mind, she wasn't blind. And she was less out of practice than most would suspect. Enough so that, when a psyche that she had known for years came within such close proximity, she didn't fail to notice. The psychic continued occupying herself with her tea. Knowing more than you wanted to was part of being a telepath, but acting on that unintentionally learned facts was what put others ill at ease. Few paused to think that Jean was more unsettled by the dynamic than others were.

Still focusing mostly on her own thoughts and the scent of the vapor that swirled up off of her tea, Jean was more surprised than she should have been when Kurt appeared beside her. Her eyes met his, and there was a comfort that ran between them. The hint of a genuine smile graced Marvel Girl's lips, and she derived more instantaneous solace from Nightcrawler's presence than she had expected. It was nice, in all of this mystery, to have someone who could genuinely relate to your ridiculous plight. One that Jean was more familiar with than most, true, but even so.

"Today?" she teased in turn, "I shouldn't complain." Jean didn't say that she wouldn't, mind you. Kurt sat down without invitation, which was as it should have been. Had the elf asked to join her, it would have been more out of place. Marvel Girl glanced briefly at his bowl of oatmeal and her smile grew fractionally larger. "How are you, Kurt?" When others said that phrase, it was just entertaining a conversational dynamic.

The way that Jean said it meant more, however. That she was genuinely concerned about Kurt's answer and well-being, rather than just saying something standard to fill a space that would have otherwise been silence.