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                        Amanda Sefton #6
                                by Suzene Campos

                        "It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time..."

        'Pain...' The thought flowed weakly compared to the sensations ravaging
a sentient mind that was far gone enough to have brushed the very depths
of animal instinct. Blood flowed  unimpeded from countless scores
slashed and gouged out the body. 'Hide...' That was the most important
thing. To find a place to hold up so the body could be convinced to use
it's energies, both self-generated and drawn from the very nature of
this world to repair itself... should she last so long.
        'Idiot that I am... should have been more careful... caught off
guard... 'The bag of meat carrying the name Amanda Sefton continued to
drag her way back to the recently errected base of Excalibur, but
couldn't seem to make any headway. With a weak quivery snarl, Amanda
jerked the rest of her body forward, pulling herself along the forest
floor with her arms only. She couldn't give up the ghost of life without
a struggle. The team was too important. Kurt was too important. The wolf
-woman struggled onward. It couldn't be too far now...

         Nynaeve stepped outside of the dwelling that she shared with Jamie
Maddox, Excalibur's Levithian, and inhaled deeply. The brisk dawn air
chilled her lungs, but snapped the rest of her body awake. The chirps
and calls of the various wildlife as prone to early rising as she
filtered through her ears as she did her morning stretches (something
that Jamie would have started hauling his butt out of bed at the crack
of dawn to see). Then the sounds of life all cut off, as if someone had
pressed the stop button on a tape recorder. Nyn stopped in mid-stretch,
arms still arched over her head.
        'Now what in the world caused that?' she mused, lowering her arms and
picking up on the general feeling that staying silent might better he
chances for survival, though she did not know the threat. 'Darn empathy!
' she fumed, still internalizing her thoughts. Like most of the team,
her powers had been altered by this world. Her empathy, even when she
was not healing one who was injured, was now so strong as to border on a
type of recieving telepathy and her healing ability had increased
tenfold. It was an annoyance at times. She had to actively remind
herself that she wasn't being necessarily threatened. Still, umpteen
creatures used to wild living couldn't all be idiots. From a stand of
nearby stand of trees, there came a moan and a great deal of heavy,
raspy breathing.
        'That's Amanda.' thought Nyn. Ordinarily, panting and moaning on
Amanda's part was not something that anyone would bat an eyelash at,
particularly if Nightcrawler was in the vicinity. But Nynaeve was a
healer, and a damn good one at that. She knew the difference between a
moan of pleasure and one of pain. Amanda's was of the latter, or
Nynaeve's grandmother had been a trollop. Concern for her friend over-
rode her caution. Nynaeve took off for the trees at a fast clip.

        Amanda dropped. It was no good trying to get to safety and protection.
She couldn't hold out. If anything was going to be done, it would have
to be now or never. If she didn't have enough energy to heal herself,
she'd never get a chance to see Kurt, Kitrina, or the rest of the team
again. Never get to say goodbye. If she used the last of her strength to
get to the camp, she'd die for sure, even if she did make it. Amanda
knew that much, even if she could no longer tell where she was. She
began to weave the healing spell even as conscious thought faded.

        "Mandy?" Nynaeve called out loudly. People in pain sometimes struck out
blindly, so she felt that a little advance warning might be a good idea,
especially when dealing with a wounded magic-user. She found that she
needn't have bothered. Amanda's life's blood was being soaked up by
ground.
        With a little gasp, Nyn dropped to the older woman's side. Only at that
close range could she see weak, sputtering aura that usually marked
Amanda's healing spells which surrounded the werewolf and indicated the
state of her magic. A strong aura meant strong magic and ease in casting
. This meant exactly the opposite. Forgetting that Amanda could
seriously injure her in her current form, Nyn rolled her over to get a
better view of her wounds... and wished that she hadn't.
        That Amanda's viscera hadn't tumbled out of the rips in her belly and
chest was nothing short of a miracle. The thin mud clinging to the edges
, the dirt ground into the wounds themselves, and the packed earth
underneath her talons pointed silent blame to how Amanda had managed to
get back to the campsite with barely functioning legs. Thankfully, the
wounds were closing and cleansing themselves, but nowhere near fast
enough. Amanda's mucous membranes were a sickly pale color, indicating
that the woman was almost bled out.
        Nynaeve breathed a quick request to the One and began to use her own
powers to supplement Amanda's. The her surprise, Amanda's powers didn't
work against hers. Amanda was struggling and striving to survive and her
weak magic was helping and guiding Nyn's own powers to the most heavily
damaged areas of her battered body as she slowly morphed back to
human-form. It was a shock to her, for Amanda usually avoided Nynaeve's
healing at all cost. She'd rather have walked around for weeks with a
painful wound. As soon as the last gash closed, Nynaeve started to haul
the unconscious Amanda towards the shelter that the sorceress was
sharing with her lover. Part of her mind marveled at how little the
woman seemed to weigh. Other parts started to plan ways to coax Amanda
into a conversation that could be steered towards talk of the knowledge
that the healing had imparted to her.

        Kurt Wagner AKA Fuzzy Elf found himself rudely awakened by Nynaeve's
entrance into his home.
        "Was ist...?" he yawned blearily before having his share of the
blankets yanked off of him and bundled around the limp form of whoever
it was that had just been lain down on Amanda's side of the bed.
        'Now that's just great.' his sleep-muddled mind ground out, as he
propped himself up on his arms and used the point of his tail to rub the
sleep boogers out of his eyes. 'Amanda's going to have a fit.' Then his
head cleared and he got a good look at the woman now sharing his bed.
"What happened?" he asked, struggling between letting Nynaeve do her job
and at the same time wanting to gather up his lover in his arms.
        Nyn gave a quick shrug as she held Amanda's wrist, checking her
heartbeat. She did notice, however that Fuzzy, while not unconcerned,
was not reacting with his usual protectiveness towards his mate.
        Kurt was not much in fear for Amanda. In his mind, buried underneath a
few layers of common sense in a cranny that he would not even admit
existed, but still was making itself felt, was this vision that Amanda
was impervious to everything. She'd even come back from the dead with
scarcely a waver. It seemed impossible that physical or
mental hardship of any type could phase her, to the point where he had
just begun to think that he could not possibly mean as much to Amanda as
she did to him.
        If Amanda could have seen that image of herself in her lover's mind, a
part of her being would have crumbled into despairing, lifeless
fragments. The times when she'd wavered on the verge of becoming undone
had always been when he'd been in trouble, so of course he didn't know
how much that affected her. As for most of the other things that they
had been through together, she'd always tried to put on an indifferent
mask, but thought that Fuzzy knew her well enough to see it for what it
was: a facade.
        Finally, Nynaeve was satisfied with Amanda's resting pulse and
respiration and turned to Fuzzy. "I think she'll be OK." she said softly
, mindful of Kitrina, who was nestled peacefully in her mini-hammock.
The child yawned but continued to sleep. "Her temperature is a little
low, but that's to be expected. If she runs a fever tonight, call me.
She's going to stay asleep for a good while. Going from near-death to
imperfect health is a strain on the system like you would not believe."
        Kurt's head snapped up, just before he could brush a kiss across
Amanda's forehead. "'Near death?'" He looked down at Amanda. He'd
thought that maybe she'd over-taxed he body while working on a spell or
something of that nature. She was breathing normally and, while a little
pale, seemed healthy. "How?"
        "You'll probably know before I do. All I know is that she literally
dragged herself a few meters from camp not twenty minutes ago, looking
as if she'd been run through. Repeatedly."
        Kurt peered under the blankets at Amanda's naked body. Aside from small
smears of blood on her stomach and legs, there was no sign of her ever
having been injured. "You did a good job of healing her. I cannot thank
you enough."
        Fuzzy's words were true and he meant them with all his heart, but there
was something behind than that mad Nyn a little edgy. She fully
suspected that Kurt didn't even hear the slight bitterness in his own
voice. She could guess the reason. Nynaeve smiled sympathetically in the
furry, blue mutant's direction.
        "No need. I'm a healer. Snatching people from the maw of death is what
I live for. Just keep her quiet and for the sake of the Three, don't let
her go hunting or even walk about too much, just because she says she
feels fine! I've watched that woman's skin turn into five different
shades of bruise-flesh and she still won't sit still! Let me know when
she feels up to visitors. I'll have to talk to her then." Kurt nodded,
but his mind was obviously elsewhere.
        Nynaeve rose, her grace belaying her peasant upbringing in Camelot, and
exited the tent as Fuzzy held the flap open for
her. As soon as she left, Kurt sat back down, allowing his feelings to
finally show on his face, letting them twist it into a study in wounded
trust. His usually cheerful eyes clouded as he watched Amanda's
peacefully sleeping form.
        "Oh, Amanda." Fuzzy whispered. "You promised..."

        Nynaeve's prediction about how long Amanda would be off in dream land
turned out to be correct. Nearly a day and a half later, she awoke to
the sound of an argument going on just outside of the room.
        "Why can't I see her?" asked Lucas.
        "For the dozenth time, she's sleeping. She needs to rest." That was
Kurt.
        "I'll just look in for a minute and see how she is. I won't make a
sound."
        Amanda could envision Kurt's protective stance as he responded to
Lucas' question.
        "Nein. Not now."
        Lucas tried a different tack. "I have a right to go in there! She's my
mother!"
        "Yes." responded Kurt, his tone dry. "You've such a close relationship
with her."
        'Uh-oh. Danger zone.' Amanda sat up quickly and tried to stay up as a
dizzy spell distorted the world.
        Lucas' response was calculated to cut deep.  "Oh, I don't know. It's
probably just a little more healthy than yours is with your mother.
Nothing like being pitched off of a waterfall to improve that mother/son
bond."
        'Oh, SHIT!' Amanda nearly yelled out loud, ignoring her vertigo and
managing to force herself into a wobbly crouch. Kurt's relationship with
Mystique was to him what Amanda's relationship with Lucas was to her:
painful and sensitive. Mystique's brief stay with Excalibur and stint
with the X-Men had done very little to patch up the relationship between
Nightcrawler and his mother. And here Lucas had done the equivilent of
grinding the ends of a broken bone together. Before Amanda could get to
her feet and plant herself between the two of them, Emma Frost, the
White Queen, waltzed right by the two of them and into the room. Amanda
heaved a sigh of relief, for she wasn't at all sure that her legs would
have supported her.
        "Hey!" yelped Lucas!
        "You can't..." put in Fuzzy.
        "Oh, both of you just come off it!" Amanda tried to sound alert and
alive, but her voice was just a little louder than a whisper. "I'm up
already."
        She found herself surrounded in another second. After answering the
standard variations on "How are you feeling?" with the usual "Fine."
about ten times, the conversation lagged and became strained. Kurt was
trying not to yell at Lucas. Lucas was feeling guilty for that remark
that he had made, but feeling at the same feeling that Fuzzy had started
it. Queen was trying to make Amanda comfortable and had so little
patience with Lucas and Fuzzy's behavior that she was on the verge of
giving both of them knuckle sandwiches.
        Nightcrawler finally shooed the other two out of the tent, after they'd
been repeatedly assured by Sefton that nothing was wrong. As soon as the
door closed, Amanda flopped backwards on the bedding. She felt tired and
weak, but otherwise pretty good. Her own brand of healing left her
physically healthy but drained and not a little sore. Her attention was
taken off of her own condition when Kitrina crawled over. Having been
left out of the commotion of a few minutes before, the baby was feeling
both curious and neglected.
        "Aaaah!" Kit voiced indignantly. Amanda sat up again, scooped up her
daughter, and started cooing.
        "Hi, Kit-tina! Did I worry you? Mama's here, it's OK..." Kit was
smiling again in a second. Fuzzy sat down and stroked Amanda's hair.
        "You worried me also."
        Amanda leaned against his chest and looked up. "I'm so sorry. I didn't
think."
        Kurt waited for her to say more, thinking that she had just stopped to
collect her thoughts, but Amanda was silent. For a minute he thought
about pushing her slightly, but she still looked as if she was not quite
up to snuff. He let the matter drop.
        "Don't worry about it." he said finally, then changed the subject. "Are
you hungry? Nynaeve said you might be when you woke up."
        "Ravenous!" Another difference between Amanda and Nynaeve's healing.
Amanda's use of magic left a person feeling physically sated for a while
. Nynaeve's healing caused the body to draw on it's own resources. The
eager look on her face faded. "Whose turn was it to cook and what was it
?"
        Nightcrawler chuckled a little.  "You're safe, liebchen. It was
Sioned's turn today, so I saved you some. It's a meat stew with some
type of roots thrown in."
        "Sounds safe... did Kit get to eat?" asked Amanda, thinking that Kurt
might have held her up so Kit could have a chance to nurse.
        "Actually, yes. She ate with the rest of us."
        Amanda dismissed the thought of the team lining up to drink breast milk
. "What?!" she exclaimed.
        Kurt sighed.  "I cut up everything myself, just to be sure she wouldn't
choke. She's six months old now, Love. That's far longer than we should
have waited and we've been talking about..."
        "No, no, no! Not that! I just can't believe I missed it!" Amanda wailed
..
        This time Fuzzy had to bite the insides of his cheeks to keep himself
from laughing again. He sensed that Amanda wouldn't have appreciated it.
"Well, I wasn't about to wake you up for it." He turned, picked up the
bowl behind him, and passed it over to his lover. Amanda took the bowl
of tepid liquid gratefully, settling Kit on her other arm. "What
happened?"
        "Hmmmm?" Amanda asked, though she had a pretty good idea what he was
referring to, and Kurt knew it.
        "I don't know much until the point that Nynaeve brought you in. So what
happened?"
        Amanda stared at a small pinkish chunk of root floating in the
bowl as though it were the focal point of her universe. There was a long
uncomfortable silence. "I'd really rather not talk about it." she
finally stated. Kit reached up and grabbed a handful of her mother's
hair. Amanda automatically set down the bowl and detangled her
daughter's fingers from the strawberry blonde tresses, but still didn't
meet Fuzzy's eyes.
        That bothered him. An outright lie would have hurt more, but her
refusal to talk about it at all worried him, which was worse in a way.
The Amanda that he'd fallen in love with wasn't extremely direct by
nature, but lately Kurt hadn't even felt that he knew her. Almost every
question that he'd asked her since the team had been forced to leave
Amalgam... hell, since their run in with Margali... had been met with
evasions or obvious half-truths. He'd been trying to respect her wishes,
but what could she have to hide from him?
        Despite how he felt, all Kurt said was: "All right, when you're ready
then." He saw the tension go out of Amanda's posture as she picked up
the bowl and turned her attention back to eating. He doubted that she'd
even noticed that she'd tensed up.
        Amanda swallowed a mouthful of broth. "So," she inquired, looking up.
"What else happened while I was out?"
        Telling himself that Amanda would reveal what was wrong when she was
ready, Fuzzy filled her in on the routine activities of the team. He
barely noticed that his own self-assurances rang hollow in his mind.

      "What did you want to talk about?" queried Amanda, sipping from an
wooden mug of hot tea. The brew was a result of countless trial-and-
error tests by Sioned and Amanda, who'd hoped to find something in this
world to boil a palatable tea from. What the sorceress and the healer
were drinking had barely passed muster but it was better than just
sitting there staring at each other.
        Amanda's eyes were wary. It had been nearly a week since her
injury, so she was fairly certain that Nynaeve's request for a private
conference was not related to that. Also, Nynaeve had closed the door to
her home as soon as the water for tea had begun to boil. Though she
could leave at any time she wished, the seeming confinement made the
sorceress edgy.
        "You, actually." said Nynaeve. "And what's bothering you."
        "Oh?" Amanda refused to volunteer any information.
        "Amanda, why do we have to this pointless dance around your problem?
Why don't you just tell me?"
        "Because," snapped Amanda, "I choose to keep certain things about my
past secret. Because it's none of your business why I act the way I do.
And because..." Amanda caught herself before her flapping tongue could
betray her.
        "Because?" prompted Nyn, feeling the confused swirling inside of Amanda
..
        For the briefest of moments Nynaeve saw on Amanda's face how much she
hated bottling all of it inside, thought that Amanda might actually tell
her, just to get it off of her chest. Then any vulnerability on Amanda's
face dropped and the woman was back to being fully guarded.
        "Because." she said flatly, tone indicating that the subject was closed
. "Keep your nose out of my business." she growled in addition, setting
down the mug and getting ready to leave the room.
        "Why did you go back to Amalgam?" Nynaeve blurted out. She didn't want
to do it this way, but she knew that she would to get through to her
friend. Amanda froze, her wild-eyed gaze fixed on the healer. Nyn almost
shuddered. When had Amanda gotten so mistrustful? "You didn't even make
it past the Helee's first guards. You know it's a lost cause. So why'd
you do it?"
        "I don't abandon my friends." Amanda retorted. "I couldn't just give up
Domino and M and... the others."
        "There's more than that." insisted the younger woman.
        "Cyclops." said Amanda flatly, her voice filling with anger as she went
on. "I don't care what anyone else says, I don't care if the X-Men are
here. At one time that... Nemesis Enforcer was our Cyke, the one that
came with us. If I could have gotten through him... I could have made
him see what he was doing! Had him come back to us. Creator's Blood, Nyn
! We've lost so much more than we've gained from this world! Is it so
wrong to want to win something back?!"
        "Mandy, Storm said..." Not a good idea, Nyn decided, to bring up their
leader, who'd been declared MIA during the Heelie attack on Amalgam.
"You could have been killed."
        "I DON'T GIVE A GOOD GOD-DAMN!"
        "Well I do." said Nyn calmly, refusing to be carried along by the flood
of angry emotions Amanda was pounding her with. "And I'm going to make
sure that you do too." Suspicion didn't creep across Amanda's face. It
was there in a breath. Maybe... if she could be backed into a corner,
the sorceress might give in and talk. Nynaeve hoped that her strategy
worked. "I don't know any specifics about your past Amanda and it's
obvious that you won't give me any. But I was able to glean enough from
the healing to make some reasonable assumptions. Don't look so shocked.
I'm an empath, remember?
        "Whatever this is, it's eating you up inside. Either you tell
Nightcrawler about it, or I will."
        Amanda choked on her own anger before she sputtered out a reply.
 "You... you have no right!"
        "I don't." agreed Nynaeve, rapidly losing confidence in her bluff as
Amanda's feeling whipped themselves into a storm of conflict. It brought
her own anger at Amanda's callous behavior to the surface. "But you
don't have any right to put the people who love you through all of this
worry. I may not have been on this team all that long, but I've seen
enough of it. Running off whenever and where ever you please without a
thought to the people you're abandoning and coming back in worse
condition every time! You might not see or feel what you're putting Kurt
through and you might not even care, but I do! And if I'm the only one
on this team with the courage to tell you how cruel and selfish you can
be, then so be it, because I refuse to stand by and watch any longer!"
Nynaeve stopped, panting and surprised by her own venom.
        "Are you quite done?" spat Amanda, glaring at the flushed brunette
before her. Nyn nodded, her own self-righteous anger fading. "Good. Now
listen to me, you interfering little bleeding-heart! First off, you need
to learn to stop picking people's minds. I'm sick to death with
telepaths and do-gooders who think they know what's best for me!"
        "Empath." corrected Nynaeve. "I can't read whole thoughts or turn it on
and off like a light. Telepaths can." Amanda all but ignored her.
        "IF I choose to tell Kurt about what's happened in my life, it'll
because I'm ready to share it with him. If he decides that he's had it
with me before then, he's always free to leave. I haven't bound him to
me."
        Nynaeve was afraid of the situation slipping further beyond her control
. Amanda looked ready to rip her way out through the door. Nynaeve had
to reach her! Amanda couldn't possibly know what a danger she was to
herself. Desperately, the healer searched her mind for anything that
might keep the sorceress in place long enough to talk. Anger was the
only thing that sprang to mind. Nynaeve responded with the lowest insult
that she could think of.
        "Oh you haven't, have you? I thought that was why you'd birthed Kitrina
." According to Nynaeve's logic, Amanda should have paused in shock and
fury before seeing the slight gleam of truth to those words. That would
have given the healer enough time to apologize for it and coax Amanda
back into a safe conversation, not this near cat-fight.         Amanda was not
governed by Nynaeve's logic. She fetched the healer a blow to the side
of the head that sent her reeling against the far wall.
        As Nyn struggled and failed to get to her feet, she got a glimpse of
the murderous anger in Amanda's eyes. There was no regret for having
struck her friend, only a seething desire to do worse.
        "Keep far away from me." The words were level but they were laden with
menace. Amanda slammed open the door and was gone.

        Though she longed to run back to her own home and huddle there, Amanda
did not dare. She felt exposed, stripped, naked. Not in body, that
bothered her little enough, but in soul.
        For years, she had kept herself tightly reined, emotionally. The
passing flings that she'd played at had meant little or nothing to her.
She'd known little about her own life, and what she recalled had not
been very pleasant. So she'd kept her feelings and secrets locked away
inside, where they'd cause her little trouble. Then Kurt had shown up,
like a dream from her childhood. And she'd joined Excalibur, just
to be with him, though now, if forced to chose between her lover and the
team, it would not have been an easy decision.
        She had begun to open up to Kurt. But like a tightly clenched fist,
Amanda had been locked up inside for so long that it was painful to let
go. The smallest confidences, things that Fuzzy would have thought
nothing of telling her, were like pulling her own teeth. Being able to
tell him in her own time had been one of the things that had made those
small divulgences possible, for Kurt had very rarely pushed her to tell
what she didn't want to and never demanded more than she was willing to
give. Even in the darkest corners of her mind, Amanda had nursed and
cherished the hope that one day she could break through the last of the
walls that kept her from being honest with herself and her lover.
Despite what she now knew, there had been that little dream.
        And now that was gone. Someone else knew. Someone she hadn't chosen to
tell. All those years of holding back until she could trust someone
completely enough to let them know what was inside of her heart and what
had shaped her into what she was were wasted. She might as well have
whispered them into the ear of every passing creature that she'd ever
encountered and bared her soul for the world to contaminate as it would.
        Nynaeve, nursing a grudge against that blow, would surely tell Kurt. It
didn't matter that it wasn't the entire story. That was worse. He could
speculate, imagine the worst. Who knew, maybe Nynaeve knew more than she
had told.
        'And the worst part is.' Amanda thought, as the first of the tears
leaked from the corner of her eye. 'I deserve it. If I could have just
trusted him. Creator... they were only words. Sounds. I could have told
him! Moment of truth, Sefton. Run away or stay and tell Nightcrawler
before Nynaeve can. Pour out your life. Risk having him turn away...'
Her eyes found the inviting shadows of the woodlands in near dusk. '...
or just let it go.'
        Could she stand being rejected? Listening to her own self-doubt and the
whispering in her mind asking what man would want a stupid, tainted
woman, Amanda took one hesitant step towards the woods. And another. And
another, until a large, blonde-furred, oddly marked wolf was tearing
along at full speed.

        Stretched out in the last of the rapidly vanishing sunlight, Tessa
grinned to herself and rolled into a new position. The half-dozen or so
Excalians that had been using her back as an impromptu sun-deck yelled
in surprise and scrambled for hand-holds. All except Shadowcat, that is.
She'd been resting on Teesa's head, and was hardly jogged by the
movement.
        Cyclops locked his fingers around one of the spikes on Teesa's back.
Lucas and Sioned dangled from Teesa's neck while Dazzler hung on to the
tip of the dragon's tail. Deadpool hit the ground just in time to break
Maniac's fall. Deadpool's bones started to creak as Ash landed on top of
Maniac. The mercenary kicked his fellow trainees off, drew his swords,
and waved them in Teesa's smug face.
        "TIME TO MAKE DRAGON JERKY!" he shouted, leaping forward, his blades
poised to strike.
        <Oh, please.> Teesa swatted lazily at DP with one hand. The blow sent
the merc careening off of trees several meters away. Maniac got to his
feet and embraced Teesa's little toe.
        "Thanks!" he exclaimed with a grin. The dragon snorted. It was one
thing to let someone lie on your back, another to let them hug you.
Annoyed by the familiarity, she sent Maniac the same way as Deadpool
before settling down in a comfortable snooze once more.
        "Ah, well." Cyke slid down Teesa's side, turning to help Sioned and
Lucas down after him. "It's almost dark anyway."
        "So?" asked Dazz, who had not stopped glowing since the team had landed
in the new world. Of course, considering how long she had spent in a
time-nullifying cavern with Koo-Koo Katchoo, the magical walrus* (*Don't
ask. Just read the Lifeline and Ruins TPB, but please don't ask.). It
seemed to her that they had been there only a very short time.
        "So, the rest of us don't have glow-in-the-dark derrieres." grinned
Shadowcat, leaning over to pick up a stray Pepsi tab that some careless
person had left on the ground. Maniac and Deadpool, still bouncing off
of trees and structurs, flew over the space that Kitty's
head had just vacated. Sioned giggled as the two trainees went down in a
tangle of twisted and fractured limbs.
        "Ouch." winced Ash, brushing himself off, glad that he hadn't annoyed
the dragon.
        "Medic!" whimpered Maniac over Deadpool's muffled curses.
        "Get your ass outta my ear!" growled the merc. Levithian and Cyke
sauntered off to find Nynaeve while Sioned and the others untangled the
two trainees. Dazzler's voice floated after them.
        "You guys should all be ashamed of yourselves! Taking pleasure in other
people's suffering." Lucas made a soft remark about trainees and
street-cars and sent Sioned and Dazzler into hysterics. Ash, Deadpool,
and Maniac plotted revenge and whined. Sioned changed moods abruptly and
began the sermon where Dazzler had left off.
        "Women." snorted Cyclops, rolling his eyes.
        "Yeah." grinned Jamie. "Aren't they great?" Multy glanced away before
Cyke could fix him with a disgusted glare.

        Nynaeve's world fell back into it's normal planes and angles as her
eyes focused and uncrossed. Amanda hadn't been warning her with that
slap. She'd meant business. Nyn found herself feeling grateful that it
had only been a slap and not a blow dealt with a closed fist. Worse than
the throbbing in the healer's head was knowing that instead of helping
Amanda's mental state, she'd probably worsened it.
        'I've got to tell someone what's wrong so we can find her.' Nyn thought
. 'Mandy probably thinks that I'm really going to tell Fuzzy.'  Nynaeve
pulled herself up on a nearby chair. She swayed for a minute and managed
to keep her feet. 'Somehow, I don't think that 'back her into a corner'
idea was the best I've ever had. I forgot that he other option was to
fight her way out through me.'
        Nyn staggered outside, just in time to stumble into Jamie's arms.
Cyclops and Storm were standing next to him, but in an instant, he had
forgotten his leader.
        Even in the dim light cast by the setting sun and the multi-hued stars,
Nynaeve's bruised face was noticeable. Forgetting that they were
supposed to be getting help for Maniac (to hell with Deadpool. He
had his own healing factor), Levithian caressed her injured face.
        "What did you run into, Nyn?" he asked.
        Nynaeve would have like to put the question off, but Jamie demanded an
answer and Nyn knew it would have to be told eventually. "Amanda's palm.
" she admitted, looking at the ground. "But it wasn't all
her fault... I kind of pushed her..." Nyn let her voice trail off,
knowing that whatever she said could only make Amanda look more out of
control than she was.
        Levithian put one arm around Nynaeve's slumped shoulders and
glared at Storm.
 "What?!" asked the X-Men's leader. "I didn't belt her!"
 "I know that!" snapped Jamie. "But you're the woman in charge. I don't
care how long Amanda's been with this team! That doesn't mean that she
can slap people around whenever she wants."
        Nynaeve shrugged his arm off.  "Weren't you listening? I pushed her!"
        "That still doesn't make what she did acceptable." insisted Levi. "She
could have really hurt you. What if she had been in were-wolf form? You
could have wound up with your eye in another zip-code!"
        Nyn stared of too the side for a minute before speaking. She'd hoped to
avoid having to tell the whole tale, especially in front of Jamie, but
there was nothing else to do. "Get the team together." she said softly.
"I need to tell you something."

        The collective teams of the X-Men and Excalibur gathered in a circle in
the center of their town which served as the community cooking area and
meeting place. Their faces were slightly distorted by the shadows of a
flickering fire. Teesa, by curling herself up as tightly as possible,
managed to neatly encircle the
team.
        As Nynaeve talked of Amanda's discordant state of mind, Kurt stood
behind Morphine Somers, his arms crossed and his face betraying nothing.
He heard what she said, but he wasn't really listening. His thoughts
were trained on Amanda and her behavior in the past week. She'd been
distant and unresponsive, even towards him. The only person that she'd
been reacting to at all had been Kitrina. Fuzzy had to admit that he
felt slighted, but that was not even a quarter of the reason that he was
so upset with Amanda.
        Her behavior towards Nynaeve went far beyond anything that was could be
tolerated. Everyone on the team was expected to give trainees a hard
time, stopping short of any serious physical harm. It was Excalibur's
way of weeding out the wimps in their midst. But to haul off and attack
another team-mate was as close to unofficial taboo as the team got. If
Amanda had gotten so out of control that she'd do such a
thing... Kurt cut off that train of thought.
        'You're talking about her as if she's a mad beast.' he told himself.
'Whatever is wrong, she needs my help. It's gone on long enough.' He
came back to the presant as Nyn finished her story.
        The healer was distrought. She felt as if she were to blame for
Amanda's disappearance, but no one else seemed to agree. In fact, nearly
half the team seemed to be angry with Amanda. Storm started talking,
turning Nyn's thoughts away from her blame.
        "At this point there isn't much we can do." she sighed. "We need to
find her, no doubt about it. But it's the starting point for all of the
night-life out there. We don't know half of what's out there and half of
what we do know has big, pointy teeth and isn't all that nice. I say we
wait until tomorrow to start looking for her."
        Sptifire, Lucas, and Nightcrawler all objected loudly... though the
warlock had different reasons than the other two.
        "You can't be serious!"
        "Storm, you're crazy!"
        "Why don't you just let her be?" The last one was Spitfire. Kurt stared
for a minute, decided that he had heard the canoid wrong, and continued.
        "If it would be dangerous for all of us to go out looking for her, how
bad do you think it is for her out there alone? We'll be lucky if
there's anything left to find by morning!" To his great surprise, Lucas
nodded sharply, agreeing with him. The only common ground that these two
men shared was thier concern for a certain sorceress and her daughter.
        "Mandy's a big girl, Fuzzy. She's better equiped to handle herself out
there than any of us." Storm pointed out. "If anything, I feel sorry for
what she meets up with out there. I know you're worried, but we can't
risk anyone else getting hurt stumbling around in the dark. I don't plan
to sit around either. We'll head out as soon as it's light and..."
        A loud snarl cut into Storm's words. Spitfire rose up on his hind legs
and glared about at Excalibur's members.
        "Maybe you bald-faced twits didn't hear me the first time," he rumbled,
"but you need to leave her alone! The only reason that we're discussing
this whole mess is because someone thought that forcing Amanda to do
something would work. It won't. Try to drag her back, and she'll fight
you every step of the way and probably take off again as soon as she can
. If she wants to come back, she will! It's HER choice. Not yours to
make, Kurt." Spitfire made Nightcrawler's name sound like a curse. "And
not for the rest of you either."
        "I don't believe that." said Fuzzy. "She belongs here."
        "This team is her family." agreed Storm.
        Spitfire snorted.  "What makes you think that you all know her so well?
She might love it with this team." he conceded. "Creator only knows why,
but she does. But so what? That doesn't mean that she'll come back.
She's given up things that she loved... or thought she loved... before."
He kept his gaze fixed pointedly on Kurt as he delivered the next line.
"Don't ever think that any bond is unbreakable. Put enough stress on
them and they all shatter. Just let her go. You'll drive her away
otherwise. The only ways you'll get her to stay here are to kill her,
physicaly restrain her, or let her choose." Spitfire went back down to
four legs.
        "So I should just let her go, is that what you're saying? And if I
never see her again, I should take comfort in knowing that I didn't make
the effort to let her know that I care?" snapped Fuzzy, bitterly. "Nein.
Not like that. If it weren't for the fact that Kit would orphaned if I
didn't return, I'd go out looking for her now. Maybe you are right,
Spitfire. But even if I cannot convince her to come back, I can at least
try." He turned to Storm. "First light, mein freund. Not a minute later.
" With that, he stood, turned from the clearing, and headed out of the
ring of firelight to his home and daughter.
        Sioned drew the team's attention next. "My telepathy could help in the
search, if Amanda's not too far away." Though her telekenetic powers had
increased to the point of being second nature, here telepathy was
filtered if she tried to do much at all. Emma Frost, the team's White
Queen, had complained of the same problem with her mental powers. It was
a bit worse for her, for she had no telikenisis, but it hardly mattered.
Their powers were still invaluable.
        "So," continued Sioned, "I'll rest up. Don't leave without me, OK?"
Assured that she wouldn't be left behind, Sioned took her leave for the
night. The rest of Excalibur, some having offered thier services in
searching for Amanda, began to drift off in ones and twos. Finally only
Storm and Teesa were left staring at the dying flames.

To Be Continued...