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WHO:

in_likeflynn
WHERE: Some Establishment in the City
WHEN: Friday evening, Jan. 14
WARNINGS: none most likely THEY'RE UPSTANDING GENTS.
SUMMARY: Hank's had a lousy time of things this day, and the default solution to any problem is to go for a drink or two. Talking it out and ending the evening in drunken singing are both completely optional.
FORMAT: dem paragraphs?

A couple of blocks from the school there was established a small bar, one of undoubtedly many like it in the City. The place was all warm-looking wooden booths, but the lighting was dim and the air cool. This was a blessing, considering the weather. Suddenly warm weather didn't suit Kurt Wagner one bit, and he had confirmation that it was simply horrific for Henry.

So, yes. Opening the door of the place to feel that little rush of cooler air. He even uttered out a little, "Thank God." Further blessing, the hostess only look horrifically surprised for a moment before stuttering out a greeting and showing them a suitable table. Lovely.

Kurt was, probably obviously, determined to be as cheerful as possible about this whole thing! He slid into his respective seat and smiled at his old friend. "Much better, ja?"

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Hank raised an eyebrow at the waitress. On good day that might've passed unnoticed, but he was just tired today, but too tired to say anything either. He just hung his head a little as he slid into the booth.

"Yes, the temperature is much nicer," he said, then folded his arms on top of the table and rested his chin on them. He was a little uncomfortable to find that he was brooding.

Perfectly alright, really. An amount of brooding was something that simply came with the territory of living, much less living in a situation in which one was often faced with moral and professional conundrums.

Unfortunately, Kurt was having a hard time finding anything to say that might alleviate Hank's frustration with the situation. He understood it to a degree, and... It's difficult to find opposition to something that you could easily agree with.

After a pause, he tried smiling again. "Try not to worry about it for a moment, Hank. A moment's rest might do in easing your mind about this whole mess."

He slowly slid his elbows outward until his head met the table, chin still resting on them. "And if I don't worry about it, what though shall I replace that gap with?"

"What'll I use to prop me up if I let it go?"

To that, Kurt can only shrug, taking a moment to mull over the question. "It... I suppose that's a matter of personal preference. I was only speaking in the short-term, thus this obvious attempt at distracting you for an evening."

"Ah," Hank started, propping his head back up with one hand while the other held an inquisitive finger toward the ceiling, "but the question still applies in the short term. What, if not this, shall I occupy my brain with? 'Nothing' isn't an answer I can accept, I don't believe my brain actually works that way."

"I'm not sure that anybody's does." He imagined that he couldn't operate on the same level that Hank did, not being an insanely brilliant academic sort, but he was somebody who had to have a track of thought. He didn't know if anybody could function otherwise, with nothing on their mind. The problem might simply be finding something that could suitably distract Hank and allow for concentration elsewhere.

It would be difficult, to say the least. The problem at hand was so consuming.

Kurt gave up his thoughtful moment and tried a different approach. "I'm not sure if you'd want to try to talk about it any more than you already have, but... Perhaps if you were allowed to reach some final conclusion on the matter it would vex you less."

He met Kurt's eyes with a raised eyebrow and a thoughtful frown. "Well, I suppose that's why we're here, isn't it. If I'm not in the mood to be distracted, we may as well take the current train of thought to the end of the line."

Kurt nodded in response, his expression taking on a more somber tone. Hopefully, a chance to openly discuss everything would do some good. Even better if that could apply to the both of them. Regardless, he'd console to the best of his ability, which was something that he seemed often useful for.

The waitress came back as he opened his mouth to speak, and so there was something of an awkward lull in the tense atmosphere while he tried to order and convince the poor girl that he was a perfectly friendly person. Anyway... Yes.

"Anywhere in particular you'd like to begin? ... Is there a particular beginning, to all of this? After all of the chaos involving the child?"

"Which chaos with which child would that be?" It had been an eventful and nebulous amount of time since Hope had been sent to the future with Cable, and frankly, Hank couldn't concern himself with it enough to give it much thought anymore. He did his best not to look in the waitress' general direction when she returned with their drinks, and let out a resigned sigh at the knowledge that she'd be eyeing him in horror.

He started sipping his bourbon as he began. "If we really needed a starting point, just prior to M-Day would be a likely candidate." He glanced out the window. "They wanted to kill Wanda Maximoff, if you'll remember. They wanted to present a consensus, a 'unified front'."

"The funny thing about a unified front," he paused to finish his glass in a single gulp, "is they require the silence of any dissenting parties. I think you ought to know me well enough to guess where I came down on that decision. And we all know what the consequences of that attempted 'execution' were."

Of course, most everything would inevitably lead back to M-Day. And every event happened so quickly, everything so jammed together, he could hardly remember where he'd been at which moment throughout it all. Either way, he must have been on the fringes. He had been for ages, perhaps even since he'd returned from England. It didn't matter now.

He didn't finish off his drink quite so fast, but it may have been because his hands were folding on the table in front of him. Not lightly, he answered, "Yes. Of course."

From up-and-coming to a populous of less than two-hundred, the effectively-snuffed mutant race. More of less.

He shifts in his seat a little and plays with the ice in his glass a bit. "And then there was the aftermath. A school full of students, but the majority of them depowered overnight, and what do we do with them? We send them home! No kind of aid, not a word of counseling, just a 'Sorry for the inconvenience, but you're not one of us anymore.' These were still our people, they were still victims in this 'war', but the Xavier Institute didn't want them because they weren't the right kind of mutant!"

He scoffs bitterly before continuing. "It was for them that I tried to find a solution to M-Day. Certainly, there was a biological imperative, being a member of a suddenly endangered species, but on some level there was also the idea of those disenfranchised and depowered that we'd turned away. I wanted to restore their place in our community."

He sighed heavily, and warily motioned for the waitress. "But that was a dead-end endeavor for a dead-end species, and the paltry results weren't worth the toll they took on me. You may remember how distraught I was when I returned to the Mansion."

Mention of the children made Kurt automatically bow his head, looking hard at the edge of the table. Turning them away was sorry enough in itself... The fact that the endeavor had gotten so many of them killed, children, was something he still couldn't make himself understand. That had been Stryker, however... But perhaps the what-ifs were useless to think on.

He looked back up to merely nod, showing that he did indeed remember Hank's state of mind, then. To hear him use the words 'dead-end'... Well, he found Hank to be a most usually a very practical and truthful man. It was disheartening, and this was second-hand feeling.

He finished his drink in time to quietly order another, once the young lady responded to Hank's gesture, and he thanked her quietly, too, before she left.

"I thought... Of course, if anybody could find a solution, it would be you. That conclusion drawn, however, I can more understand your state of mind regarding what's happened since."

When the waitress brought their drinks, Hank tried to make eye contact this time and gave a polite nod. He wasn't yet buzzed, that would take at least two more, but he decided he'd nurse this one for now. "When I was younger, I truly believed that I could solve any problem I set my mind to. I learned years ago that simply wasn't true, but every failure still seems to devastate me. The involvement of...the other Beast certainly disn't make the situation any better."

"Couldn't imagine it helping very much. He's... Rather evil, to my understanding." Though brilliant, which was a frustrating combination. He wondered, briefly, how many people had been made to deal with less than ideal counterparts and considered himself lucky he'd only made his own acquaintance very briefly.

The important thing to address for the moment, however, might be Henry's feelings of failure where he could not find solutions. He took a moment to gather up what to say. "I suppose I've held similar beliefs. I didn't know what I was for so long that, when I knew there were people like me and that I would be working towards making myself and them, all of us, more welcome in the world... I thought that we could truly do it. But more and more... I have seen friends die and seen terrible crimes and felt increasingly helpless against it, and now..."

And he couldn't very well finish that thought! Couldn't voice while attempting to console that he wasn't sure what he'd dedicated his life to, at this moment.

Instead, he opted for gesturing vaguely to the air in front of him. "Things happen, Henry. And every time you decided whether or not it is worth it to press on. I very much want it all to be worth it. I'm sure we all do."

"I wonder if it isn't a question of methods. We've had it drilled in our heads for too long that we only have the two extremes to choose from, either playing as 'good' mutants and apologize for our oppressors, or to be 'bad' and desire the death of the whole lot. Magneto's dream is ethically unsound, but Xavier's is ineffective, it only perpetuates the oppression we hope to fight.

"We need to find some kind of balance including peaceful dissent but with an an unapologetic impatience for the system as it presently exists. We're already aware that we'll need to be strong defensively, but operating ourselves like an army is still the wrong route, I feel. It's a war, no doubt there, but we, under the leadership of Scott and Emma, have been far more ruthless with our own than with our enemies, and that is simply not how it should be."

Kurt couldn't do much more than agree. It was a matter of balance, surely, but that balance must be something incredibly difficult to find. After all, they hadn't yet stumbled upon it. He shrugged, searching for proper return of conversation. "No, I agree. Upon... Again, all I know is what I have been told out of regret, I suppose, but..."

He was struggling with it, for some reason. He let out a little laugh under his breath that wasn't in the least bit humorous. "I've wondered on it, you know? This killing of people to achieve our ends and who all might have been participating in that... Is it simply that I am the wrong sort of person for this step? Only I? Because I believe in forgiveness, and I feel we should carry ourselves better than they who have struck against us, and... It is simply no man's place to decide the fate of another, no matter the intention." But he was rambling, eyes wandering back to stare at the table-top again. He's personal beliefs had no bearing on what happened in the world, he just didn't think they were that outside.

"No matter what, our thoughts on the matter clash with that of the Law of the Land. I suppose that is what makes me ache. I can do nothing."

[i feel kinda like i'm not being descriptive or introspective enough, but maybe it's just that hank is kinda saying everything on his mind instead of just thinking it?]

"Well, the law isn't really on our side to begin with. We lived in a system that would've liked nothing more than seeing us dead, and the law didn't do enough to discourage that."

He sipped his bourbon again. "And while a capacity for forgiveness is an honorable trait, I think we've had it pushed on us too often that it was our obligation to forgive rather than those who oppress us to cease the action that warrants such forgiveness. The "being the better man" rhetoric, it becomes suffocating, treats us as though what we're going through is all our fault. That's the problem with Xavier's way."

He leaned his head back into a propped arm and stroked his temple. "Which isn't, of course, to say that we should kill all or any of them, I think we just need to start focusing the fault on where it deserves to be. The fear is a problem, but our response to that shouldn't be some self-loathing attempt to make ourselves less scary," and here he glared a bit out of the corner of his eye, "but to make society face the truth that it is only their bigotry that makes them afraid."

[ No worries~ I am often made of needless tl;dr, really. :3 ]

Kurt's shoulders curled up a little. Henry was right, of course, but he was exactly the sort of problematic person being referred to. He had a habit of wanting to appease people, illustrate plainly that he wasn't what he looked like... To be fair, it wasn't always effective, but old habits die hard.

"Perhaps we should have been in politics, as opposed to super-heroics."

Hank was no stranger to it, either, and so he couldn't really blame Kurt for the way he felt. He may not have been born this way like Kurt, not quite at least, but it took him a long time to grow accustomed to his appearance after either of his changes because he spent so much time apologizing for it and quietly hating himself.

It was still a struggle, of course, this was how their culture wanted them, but he had to do better than that. For himself and those around him.

"I tried that once, actually. Not politics persay, but public activism. It's...a little lonely, honestly. Having the expectation on me to speak for a community as large and varied as ours was at the time. The problem with it was that I couldn't be the public face of mutantdom because we don't have one single face. If we are to have an army, that is the sort we may need, one of mutants living their daily lives. Not showing them that we're 'normal' just like them, but challenging that very definition of 'normal'."

He took another sip of his bourbon and sighed. "I'm sorry, I have the distinct impression that I may be babbling, talking in circles. Repeating myself. My thoughts are a little scattered right now, so I apologize if I'm not making any sense."

"No, it is fine." Kurt shrugged and tried to smile in a reassuring way. "The way I see it, the subject is one that cannot be spoken of in a straight line. There may not be a definite conclusion to reach, and so, yes, circles."

But maybe that was because he tended to be a little more wishy-washy than he himself would have liked. He only minded that he kept an open mind to most view-points, and so many ideas that even opposed one another made sense to him. "But, it is true. No one man could hope to represent all of mutantkind. Perhaps we are best off reasonably divided, in a sense, but... So separated, there is no way to get anything done."

He let out a long breath, almost a sigh. It was sort of ridiculously hopeless, wasn't it?

He smiled a bit at that. He wasn't really being clear, was h? "I don't think it's so much that we must be divided, only that we must be given the opportunity to be individuals. Mutantkind isn't a monolith, after all. Though it's perhaps true that some degree of separation is intrinsic to the concept of individuality, but it is a separation that I think would exist either way, from inhabiting separate bodies, entertaining separate thoughts, and living separate experiences.

"Unity is important, of course, but if we stand together under the same banner, we need to be sure that it's the right one. That, I think, is the problem. The banner we've gathered behind has been a bit...skewed."

Kurt took the moment to drink and relax in his seat again and Henry explained, and he found himself satisfied with the answer. His more academic companion gave the situation more light than Kurt had wanted to, for a moment. "You have a good way with words, my friend. Or... You make it sound better than I could."

It sort of brought them back to ideology again. Although! Hank had already outlined what the more realistic stance would be. Good God, who would be mad enough to let such a reasonable fellow slip away? Hypothetical, given that the answer was already out there.

"I very genuinely hope that you are able to return to us, back home, and that you are able to help return us to a good place. I have every confidence in your ability and reason. At this rate, I am not sure how many could be fit for such a thing."

"I've spent...a long time thinking about it."

Hank leaned back in his seat and took another sip of his bourbon. He found the ice had mostly melted, so he swirled it around a bit and downed it in a gulp. There was something freeing about being able to hash out the issue, and reaching a reasonable conclusion was certainly satisfactory, just letting it all out to someone who'd been through things similar to his own experiences lifted a huge weight.

"The X-Men were my family. I would like to return to them eventually, and I hope they'll be in a place where I can. But I'm not entirely certain how long that will take.

"I suppose a more pressing issue is how I'll associate with the X-Men I have here."

Edited 2011-01-20 06:57 (UTC)

"Yes. That's another matter entirely."

At least, that's the way he tended to think of it. The setting itself was different and everybody's time-lines were constantly sliding around. Even now, he was constantly having trouble grasping a foreseen future and trying to figure out how he ought to feel about all Logan had confessed to him.

He took a drink to catch up to Hank, and again shrugged. "I've been constantly wavering on how I'm meant to react to what I've learned. I think, however, it is best to leave fate to the world it belongs to. The people in the City find themselves in a similar situation and it is not of their own fault. We work to help one another out, ideally."

"On a larger scale, certainly," he said with a bit of a chuckle. "General imPort relations in many ways mirror ours back home, though it certainly isn't quite the same. Certain failures in intersection and entitled attitudes still abound toward various underclasses within the imPort community. The humans among them are certainly still that, and not having the history of such a situation we have, don't seem to understand it well, or the effects it may have on others."

Hank was one of the only people who could make Kurt feel like his grasp of English was less than excellent. There was a pause while he was catching up, nodding to himself, then finally nodding more affirmatively. Grasped!

"I suppose it's something of a learning experience. Our history here is a very short one." There's that attempt at optimism again. But then... He'd hardly stopped to analyze the situation very deeply. "I will only try to assist where I can, while I am here. This has manifested itself as... Less super-heroics, at the moment, and more attempting to teach German and Theater."

This said with a laugh behind it. Teaching was interesting.

And with that, all the wind went out of Hank's sails. "Yes, teaching. I rather enjoy it myself."

"Ach!" He hadn't meant to make Hank look so down all of a sudden. He attempted to recover via flattery, in a sense. Plus, he did want to assure Hank that he could work around grudges, or at least give the convincing a healthy attempt.

"You do make a fantastic instructor, I think. I'm sure I haven't met a more brilliant man who could also communicate his knowledge so well to those less academically-minded."

"I'm not always sure about that. I can really only teach those who are willing to learn." He shifted a little in his seat. This was the part of the conversation they'd come here to have, the part he'd been dreading. "But I know I'd like to continue to try, I'm just not sure how I'll be able to do that right now."

Kurt took a breath, trying to think of a good reason and finally shrugging at the attempt. The personal conflicts were likely too difficult to ignore, and shouldn't be ignored, aside.

"Accounts so far say that one returns home to the moment they departed. A few have left, returned, and remembered being here, but that has only been upon returning. While home, they knew nothing of the place. It is... Just a bubble. Borrowed time. Perhaps that is enough of a reason to try and treat it as a blank slate."

"Ah, but that's all dependent on how one defines what makes up their self. And experiences, memories, all of that, can you really begin a clean slate with all of those intact, with many of the same people in both the old and new life?

"I would imagine that with all of those factors in play, one must have a transitional period. You cannot leave your old life behind so simply, after all, you would need to ease out of it.

"I need a transitional period. A chance to sort through these memories and the people they relate to. But even given that, my issues with Scott wouldn't suddenly disappear, nor his need to answer for the wrongs he's committed."

"It's surely easier said than done." As for Scott, well. Kurt had already had the chance to question him, to make known his thoughts what he'd been told about. An answer that he could be content with wasn't going to happen any time soon. He paused.

"Scott... Everybody must answer to what they have done, when the time comes. No man is exempt from this. Nobody carries special circumstances that allow them a different set of rules under which to be judged." And that was what he believed, and that made him truly sad in this circumstance. It showed plainly in his tone and expression. If one does not admit to doing wrong, if one does not seek forgiveness for that wrongdoing... "Herr Cyclops said he would like to see me help others as a priest, though I am not one. That would be advise, yes? Answer to your fellow man or answer to Him. Even after the endorsement, I'm not sure he would be willing to follow this advice."

But enough of that. He swallowed the lump in his throat away and waved his hand in the air before him as if to physically banish the moment. "You are right, of course. I'll urge you to take all of the time that you might need and hope that it will treat you kindly. You deserve a good deal, Hank, including peace of mind."

"I think...I will need some time away." He leaned on his elbow, somewhat slumped against the wall. His head was feeling a little foggy, though it wasn't just that he'd finished his third glass as they'd been talking. It had been a complicated year, and the events of the day only brought that back to the forefront. It was time Hank acknowledged that some of his problems had gotten bigger than just Scott, and bigger than he could handle on his own. "I've started looking into psychological help, as I have suspicions that I may be suffering from a severe depression coupled with some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Both untreated, though self-diagnosis is always dangerous territory, even for someone of my qualifications. I will return to the school, I want to, but I think right now a leave of absence would be my best option. Time to clear my head, for the sake of my health."

He glanced to the side and let out a heavy sigh. "But my own issues won't let Scott off the hook, and when I return I fully intend to have it out with him, then we'll see how things go from there. But if you, in your capacity as a religious adviser, wanted to encourage him toward contrition...No, but I wouldn't ask that of you. You do as you feel is right, and don't let me sway you one way or the other." The last part felt like a cop-out as he said it, but he meant it either way.

Edited 2011-01-23 08:17 (UTC)

It was almost mind-boggling to hear somebody admit that they needed help. Briefly, he tried to think back to whether he'd even heard another X-man admit this, and... He couldn't think of a soul. It was the sort of thing they must have denied so frequently! He knew that he must have, a few times, and he had to admire the strength of the admittance.

At the suggestion and swift back-tracking, he smiled wryly. "I would prefer to see it done, mein Freund. I have a tendency to worry for the immortal souls of those who often cannot seem to be bothered. There is only so much I can do, however." And he nearly left it at that, but... To reassure: Regardless, it will not stop me from trying. Call it a stubborn streak."

"Stubborn streaks can be our most bothersome and most useful traits, depending on what side of an issue you fall," he replied with a smirk. "But I would, of course, appreciate it."

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