Very much NSFW fic continued from yesterday:
Fracture Twenty-Eight: Confessions
“Ach! This is turning into a soap opera…” said Papa.
“I can understand the confusion,” Kurt grinned a little. “The *how* I found out is even more confusing than the *what* I found out.” He gave Kitty a squeeze, and smiled when he didn’t instantly find a bone. She was starting to fill out at long last. Kurt surrendered to temptation and sampled her neck with a little purr.
Kitty squealed and giggled. “*Ku-u-urt*…”
Mama raised an eyebrow. “I trust you’re not working on any *more* grandchildren for us?”
“*Mama*…” Kurt blushed. “Katzchen’s still healing from Lance.”
“There goes the soap opera again,” said Papa.
“*Jo*hannes…” chided Mama. “Perhaps it would be better if you started from the beginning. Put it in chronological order for us, ja?”
Kurt sighed. “It started when I was four years old…”
*
His audience had gone pale. Mr Peeper had fallen asleep in its shoebox nest. Bluebelle and Kitty clung to him, both for different reasons. Katja and Anja bracketed Erika in a protective embrace. Rogue sat huddled into a little ball on the floor.
“I don’t always remember everything that she did,” he said. “The Archivist does that. He tries to protect me from the Bad Times. It was never your fault. I tried to make it that way. Besides, Hess promised me - if I told… she’d destroy everything I loved. I didn’t want her to hurt you as well.”
Mama and Papa held each other tight. Mama was crying again.
“Mein armer Junge… Mein armes Baby…” Mama murmured.
Kurt held Kitty and Bluebelle close. There was still more. “Also, I - I guess I didn’t want you to pity me. You were the only people in my entire life who didn’t pity me. I don’t need - I never wanted–” his voice stopped working, clogged up with emotion.
He hated pity.
He hated it when people felt sorry for him. Included him out of a sense of guilt. It was just as bad as despising him because of how he looked. He could deal with hate.
Pity burned.
“I never pitied you,” said Papa. “I’m not going to start now.”
“Me neither,” said Mama. She and Papa crossed the room to embrace him. "Wir lieben Sie.“
Kurt began to purr. Family group hugs were the best.
"Any other little surprises, liebe?” Mama asked.
Well… it *was* dark out. “Turn off the lights,” he grinned.
*
“Holy crap!”
Evan started running. That shriek had been Rogue’s. Aunty O and the Professor would go *nuts* if he let anything happen to her. He was her back-up.
“What’s up?” he asked as soon as he hit the scene. All of K-man's family was there, and Kitty, but the K-man was nowhere to be seen.
Rogue was pointing at a patch of empty air. “K-k-k-kurt…”
“Ja?” said the patch of empty air. “Was ist der Stoff?”
Evan’s jaw fell open. “K-man?”
“Right here,” said his disembodied voice.
Now that he could focus, he could pick out two glowing yellow lights without any visible means of support. They were around Kurt’s eye-line, and, yes, they blinked.
Kitty’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the amazing Nightcrawler. The only guy in the world who can like, show off when he’s like, invisible.”
“COOL!”
“That’s what *I* said,” said Kurt. “It only works in the dark. I can't help it.”
Jamie appeared from the other end of the corridor. “What’s cool?”
“Check it out,” said Evan. “K-man can go invisible.”
“Whoah!” Jamie was there in a second. “Where is he?”
Evan found the light switch. {click} “Now you see him,” {click} “Now you don’t.”
“*WOW*!”
Ray found his way down the hall, too. “What’s up with you, retard? Brain finally shrink to match the rest of ya?”
“Kurt’s *invisible*.”
“Yeah, right. *Sure*. You asking for a dunking or what?”
“Cool it, Ray,” said Evan. “Jamie’s telling the truth. See for yourself.”
Ray evidently decided to humour them. “If this is just some dumb trick,” he began, “don’t think I can’t whup *both* your asses into–” He looked in the library. “Awright, where is he?”
This time, Kurt flicked the switch. {click} “Boo.”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” Ray backpedalled so fast he knocked over some statuary before falling flat on his ass. Unfortunately, he also fired an energy bolt that knocked out the lights.
Kurt, now invisible again, sighed. “Ach. *Wunderbar*. I can just see us trying to explain this to Logan.”
“Explain *what* to Logan?” said Logan. “Where’s the Elf?”
“Itwasanaccident!” Chorused Jamie and Ray.
“I’m right here,” said Kurt. “See the eyes near the Aspidestra? Das ist me.”
“You’re being cute, ain’t ya?” said Logan. “Knock it off.”
“Sorry. Can’t. I’m stuck like this in the dark.”
“Joy,” Logan stalked off.
“Damn,” said Evan. “*Nothing* fazes him…”
“*I’ll* say,” said Ray.
*
The girl who looked like Risty Wilde quietly shut the door to her home, then slid down to the floor and wept. Feigning ignorance today had been the worst, with the news all over the school. A thousand and one versions of The Psycho Gym Teacher.
Risty Wilde never watched the news.
Mystique, on the other hand, soaked up every second of it.
It was torture listening to urban myth, rumour and truth turn into a fantastic hodgepodge of even more incredible lies. First, Kurt had a daughter. Then she’d died. No, she was alive, but disfigured by Hess herself. No, she was hideously deformed. That’s why nobody saw her. But someone *else* had said that she just wasn’t allowed out until her inoculations were done, and they’d even seen her on the Institute grounds.
What had they seen? A little figure in a pink dress running around after a pair of twins.
Mystique had taken up her guise, ostensibly to monitor Brotherhood activity, but in reality to watch over her children. She’d had to abandon them both. First Marie, known as Rogue; left in the arms of a friend because of the news of her mutation. Then her son. Her special son. Altered somehow by Magneto, she’d dropped him. Failed him. And when she secretly chased after him, she found him in the arms of norms.
She’d wanted to scream when that man picked him up; but he’d *smiled*. He called his wife over with a joyous voice and they’d both held him close.
Like one of their own.
The last she’d seen of her son, he was feeding greedily at the woman's breast. Something Raven hadn’t been able to do.
She left him there, assuming he’d be safe and loved. Knowing that she wasn’t much of a mother.
And now she found out that her son was one among many victims of this woman Hess. A woman who tried to *buy* him. She probably had a bill of sale somewhere.
She’d thought he was safe.
She was wrong.
Again.
Some mother.
How the bottle came to be in her hand, she didn’t know, but the kiss of her old friend Mr Liquor was a very soothing balm for her heart. He made all the pain go away.
*
Kurt sighed and feigned wounded dignity while Mama and Papa told Baby Kurt stories to the entire dinner table. He secretly loved it, because they were all stories about how much the worried about him. How much they cared.
How much he was accepted.
“…poor little dear,” Mama was saying. “Too tired to cry, and too hungry to sleep. We were all lucky that I’d just finished helping out with the Jarelmann twins. I used to work as a wetnurse.”
“We have an intense distrust of your American powders in Heirelgart," supplied Papa.
"Once he knew what I had for him, he wouldn’t let go,” said Mama. “Not even to swap sides. I had to fight him.”
“*Ma*ma…” blushed Kurt.
Kitty hugged him. “It’s okay, fuzzy. Just wait ‘till you like, hear my Mom go on about how long she was in labour with me.”
“So you’re going to introduce me to your parents?”
“I’m not like, promising it’ll like, go famously well…”
Kurt had to laugh. “Ja, I can see that, meine geliebt. 'Mom. Dad. This is Kurt. He looks like a demon but I like him. Ohyeah. And he’s got a seven-year-old daughter.’ Your Vater will go nuclear.”
“Relax. I’ll like, tell him about Lance first. He’ll be like *that* glad I dumped him he won’t like *care* about your like, personal history.”
“Be sure to tell him I’m Romani before you tell him I’m German, ja?" Kurt cautioned. "Your people don’t always like Germans, but my people and your people get along like *that*.” He crossed his fingers.
“Oh yeah,” said Kitty. “You got it.”