fandomtownies | Fandom High 20 Year Reunion Brunch, The Park, Sunday

Libby nodded, albeit a little numbly, almost automatic, while her mind was busy trying to work through other things.

"Sitting sounds good," she agreed, and, just as automatically, started to move toward the table Kurt had indicated, and another furrow of her brow indicated that she'd landed on something a little firmer in her brain as she moved, which she brought out as she was lowering herself down into her seat.

"So how old are you now?" she asked. "Is this some kind of time warp thing?"

She hadn't dipped into too much sci-fi, since she simply preferred fantasy so much more, but there was enough there that she could maybe skirt around the concept.

"I'm almost 37," Kurt said with a grin as he sat down beside Libby. "And yeah it seems like the island has decided to grab some of us- no reason why me and not you also really- from older future versions of out time limes."

He paused for a moment, not wanting to overwhelm her more than she already was.

"I know some people have talked about turning into kids. And of course, you know the animal transformations are a thing. I guess this is something the island does now and then."

"That's so old!" Libby remarked, eyes going wide, and then her hand immediately flit to her mouth.

"I'm so sorry!" she gushed out, cheeks practically burning from mortification. "That was rude! I didn't mean...but that's practically as old as my parents."

Which now made this whole thing feel even more awkward than it had already, especially once she started considering why some of her friends would have turned into their future selves like this, but she hadn't. And here she was thinking she could probably gain a lot of insight from it! She'd always felt that it was more difficult to imagine what things might be like in the future; for all her imagination, the one thing she couldn't ever really get a good idea of how things might be like when she was older...

"I wonder," she ventured, "if it's kind of like that one time, when some people had kids from their futures show up.

"...Nothing changed for me that weekend, either," she said quietly.

Almost made a girl wonder if she even had a future....

Kurt gave a smile and laugh as he smiled at Libby. "Don't worry about it. I am practically an old man" Kurt said, his grin widening imagining the reaction on Logan to hearing him say something like that.

"And you know, it probably is like the kids thing come to think about it..." Kurt said with a slow and thoughtful nod. "Probably possible alternate versions of what we might be like or doing twenty years from now. Another peek at where things might lead us, no promise or guarantee, just a hint at what possibilities there are."

He glanced at Libby a moment and could hazard a guess at one thing she was probably wondering. "Maybe some of us just needed a more concrete glimpse than others. Ya know, a kick in the pants, I believe is the phrase, to get us going."

Kurt definitely knew he was thrilled to know he had managed to make that dream of joining the X-Men a reality at least.

Libby lifted a doubtful look toward Kurt and breathed out a faint laugh.

"So," she wondered, "which one of us is getting the kick then?"

The person with a whole future already laid out for them, or the person that apparently had none?

Although she realized, as she said it, that if she wanted an answer to that question, she'd definitely have to ask someone a little higher up...

"I think we both could be." Kurt considered Libby for a moment and smiled softly. "You have to remember, these thing, these games the island likes to play at times, are only what if. It's not set in stone- the good or the bad- so there's always something that we can do to change or impact our future."

Libby thought about that for a moment, the whole concepts of free will and destiny just there on the very edges of her mind, as well as a small little whisper that suggested she might be thinking about all of this a little too hard, actually.

So she gave Kurt a small smile. "I don't think anything's really ever set in stone," she mused. "I'll bet even the Ten Commandments started to wear down on those tablets after a while."

The thought of Moses having to go and re-etch the lettering on the Ten Commandments was definitely a thought that made her grin a little bit more.

"If anyone had told me more than a year ago where I'd be at today, in fact," she added, "I wouldn't have believed them for a minute! So maybe what I've got ahead of me is just so wild and out there that that it was figured to be just too much for my poor brain to handle."

She lifted a hand in a gesture toward Kurt.

"This is almost too much for my poor brain to handle!"

And then there was definitely going to be some more awe-struck variety of gawking.

"What are you even doing now?" she asked. "Probably a part of that superhero team you're always talking about, right? The X-Men?"

"Been with them for a number of years now actually" Kurt said with a broad grin and nod. "Just got done with a mission not too long ago so I was actually free to make it here for the reunion."

He gave a soft sigh and shook his head a little.

"I still find it hard to believe myself at times. I managed to join the X-Men and made that dream a reality. Lucas keeps saying I don't give myself enough credit but I think he is just a little biased on that" Kurt added with a laugh.

"I don't think that's hard to believe at all," Libby informed him, emphatically, "and I don't know who Lucas is, but I agree with him. You're practically a shoe-in for something like that, Kurt! They'd've been very foolish not to have you join them!"

And, boy, if she thought the blushes she'd been feeling around Kurt lately were complicated before, the one she had now felt particularly so now that he was sitting there, twenty years her senior!

But that poor scrambled, addled brain of hers right now did sort of latch onto something else Kurt had said, and, partially out of relief for a nice solid thought, though mostly just out of plain, honest curiosity, she hesitated a moment before asking, "Can you tell me about the mission you just finished up? Or would that be some kind of classified, top-secret information?"

"Ah I'm afraid this one was a bit boring compared to some of the more action-packed ones we have gone on before. But it was still an interesting one" he said with a smile.

"Our team has been working recently to help find and relocate mutant refugees, mostly children. In fact, that is part of the reason I am here. I'll be speaking to the dean and principal before I leave about arranging for some of the older ones to come here to the island as students. Just as I did."

Kurt almost added a 'so long ago' on to that but didn't want to make things any more awkward in that regard.

"And give him another 10 years or so and my own T.J. might be following in my footsteps too."

Libby's soft smile grew more and more as Kurt explained, easily going into wistful territory. "Well," she said, once he was finished, as if making a decision, "I think that kind of mission is much better than an exciting one, anyway."

And the next thing to really catch her brain was going to send it right back into twisty topsy-turvy mode, but it was nice to have it straightened out for at least a little bit there, and her head tilted.

"T.J. is...your son?" she guessed.

Kurt nodded and smiled. "He's four now, and such a handful" he said with a slight playful whine to his voice. "He's got so much energy! Though, thankfully he doesn't seem to have my teleporting ability. At least, not yet."

"I was just going to ask!" Libby remarked with a laugh, a small one, but it was there, her own love of children and all their antics easily shining through the strangeness of this conversation and the situation as a whole...and that small thrum of worry that had been with her since the weekend where those potential kids had shown up and she hadn't had any. "If anything, it sounds like maybe you might be finally getting a taste of your own medicine! A good idea of how your parents must have felt."

"Yes, yes I am paying for my raising that is for sure" Kurt said with a smirk of his own. "Guess it is a cycle really that doesn't stop." And yes, Kurt had spent quite a few nights praying to seek penitence for whatever sin he had committed long ago that made it where he had an infant son who was colicky, or a toddler whose favorite word all of a sudden was "NO!" or some other parental challenge.

Which, really, didn't sound like any sort of retribution at all, if you asked Libby; that was just how babies and Littles were.

"Well," said Libby, confidently, "I'm sure you're as an amazing of a father as you are a superhero, Kurt. And at least we all know you don't have to worry too much about him running off too far without you being able to catch him."

There was another awkward hesitation before she asked, "Do you have pictures?"

And it wasn't so much as a question as to whether or not Kurt had taken pictures, Libby felt that was kind of a given, but more a matter of whether or not he'd have any with him, now, in this current state. She really didn't know how any of this time travel stuff was supposed to work, but it would make sense, in a way, to her, if he didn't have access to them, or something like that.

"Ah, sadly I do not" Kurt said with an obvious sigh of disappointment. "Seems my communicator didn't come through with me when I arrived here on the island. But T.J. is a cute kid, I might be a little biased on that though" he said with a wink. "He looks like a miniature version of me. But he has white hair like Lucas and he has light blue eyes like him as well."

Kurt paused for a moment and sighed softly. "He's a good kid. I just don't look forward to the day he starts noticing what people say and notices the looks we get. It's still not easy to be a mutant back home, and a human marrying a mutant is even more looked down on by many. But I know we can get through it."

"But it's getting better, though, isn't it?" asked Libby, hopefully, albeit with concern, any of the odd, strange, tangled thoughts that went along with hearing about Kurt's future family (she already knew now, didn't she, that it couldn't have worked out, anyway?) easily and swiftly swept away by his troubles. "Or, if anything....you guys already are helping, right? Just by being?" She gave a soft smile. "Proving them all wrong."

"Aye, thing are better. And they will get better. The good things in life are worth fighting for" Kurt said with a smile. "That is true for every version and every reality. it took me a long time to figure that out. But once you meet another version of yourself, that turned out completely different than yourself.... well, you start to realize anything is possible, and every option out there might well come to pass at some point and time."

(Ya know, like a version where you are married to a human and have a son, a version where you are a priest leading a congregation of followers, a version where you are a swashbuckling pirate.... the options truly were endless and that could be a comforting and at times scarry realization.)

"Your destiny is in your hands, to mold and make what you want, and ever decision can shape the future." Kurt gave a fond smile to Libby, remembering well what it was like to be young and confused and unsure. "It doesn't matter what direction you go in, so long as you go and give it your all."

"Well," Libby said, a little softly, but her grin going a little wry as she looked at Kurt, "not entirely in just my hands, and I'm sure there's some directions that are a whole lot worse than others, but that's why it's such a good thing we don't really have to walk it alone.

"It sounds like you've definitely gone the right way with this one, Kurt."

Fandom High 20 Year Reunion Brunch, The Park, Sunday

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]

Re: Arrive/Mingle [Reunion Brunch 07/31]