1. Prelude

**Prelude: Decisions**

"In the past week I tried to assassinate the president, got shot, got hit by lightening, was tossed around in a plane for two days, and according to your Professor Xavier, was 'instrumental in the effort to save humanity'. I'm a little worn out. Not really up to any big decisions."

Dear Wolfgang –

I must begin by apologizing for the lack of information in this letter. If I told you everything that has happened I would go on and on for pages and I think long stories to old friends are best told over a few beers. I'm sure you agree. I am writing to you because I know that you will be able to pass on the news to Margali and Amanda and all the others. Please tell them that I am in America, that I am all right, and that I miss them.

I'm sure by now the news of the mutant attack on the President of the United States has traveled to Rome. And I'm sure you have noticed that despite the poor artwork, the only suspect they can identify looks very much like me. I can imagine that upon seeing this you were both relieved and shocked. Without going into specifics I will tell you that it was me, but it wasn't me. Like I said, it is a story best told in person. Needless to say, I'm pleased that I did not succeed in my attempt.

I think that I can say without fear of ever contradicting myself that this has been the strangest week in my entire life. It started with waking up in an abandoned church and ends in a beautiful mansion in New York where I am sitting now, writing to you. In between is the most amazing and horrible … "adventure" is the best word I can think of, but it is not quite right. The mansion where this story ends is owned by a mutant named Charles Xavier who teaches other mutants, mostly children, how to use their abilities and to be proud of them. It feels like a good place.

I now come to the most difficult, but most important part of this letter. I have been asked to stay. Professor Xavier, as he is called here, wishes to gather a team of people, all with "gifts" as he calls them to serve and protect humanity. It is a strange wish because mutants are persecuted here more than any other place I have been. But I understand him and have often felt the same way myself. Why is it that people clap when I am on stage and run when I approach on the street? It does not have to be that way and I think that this Professor Xavier has the right idea. It is only our actions that matter in the end. I know you hate it when I "get all religious on you", but it is not unlike what the Lord Jesus Christ tried to do so long ago; to show people that everyone had the capacity to be good inside?

I have not said yes or no yet. Like I said, it's been a very very odd week and I feel like I'm waiting for the room to stop spinning. But I am leaning towards staying, maybe not forever, but at least for a while. I trust these people and I like them (even though they don't appear to be very enthusiastic about the circus). I have always wondered what plan God had for me. I understand the value of entertainment, but I have so often wanted to do more. Perhaps this is my chance so I cannot look away so easily.

I trust you to explain all this to Margali as sometimes I think you know my heart better than I. Oh, and if you remember, please tell Lars I was hit by lightening in a church. I think he'll find it funny. I'll explain later.

As always, you and your family are in my prayers.

Your friend and favorite son,

Kurt

Kurt put down the pen and flexed his cramped fingers. The pens here were all too small for his grip, but he had wanted to write Wolfgang as soon as possible. No one could tell him how long he had been gone. Who knew what his friends and family thought had happened to him? It seemed worth the discomfort to let his family know that he was safe.

There were no lights on, but the moonlight shining through the window was enough for him to see by. Kurt turned away from the small desk and looked over at his bed, the blankets still rumpled from his earlier attempts at sleep. The room was just too big. He had spent his life sleeping in trailers and tents, places where the ceilings were low and the walls close. He had never stayed in a room like this and certainly had never had such a huge bed. It made him feel exposed and vulnerable. At the same time, he hated to refuse the professor's hospitality. So Kurt had politely thanked him and for the last three nights had tossed and turned in the bed before finally resorting to curling up on the floor under it.

The students were returning and by day the house was a lively mix of children and adults. It reminded Kurt a little of his extended circus family though much more organized. Kurt spent most of his time alone, keeping trips outside his own room to a minimum so not to scare anyone. Though he had to admit, no one really seemed afraid of him here. He'd been caught walking through the hall by a group on their way to a class in the professor's office. He had expected the worst and readied himself for a quick exit, but to his surprise he had been greeted with a few hellos before they passed right by him. The only other place that had ever happened was amongst the other circus performers, but of course many of them had known him since he was an infant. They were more likely to fear his jokes than his appearance.

He'd had a few visits, Rogue and Bobby mostly. He imagined that most of the others were too upset by the loss of their colleague to worry about what he was up to. The pair had brought him milk and cookies once and another time he had helped Rogue, who was reading the English translation of Goethe's Faust, with some of the pronunciation. But these visits hardly cut into the hours of free time. Kurt was used to schedules; life had to be lived between performances and rehearsals and there had hardly seemed enough time in each day. Now he had nothing but time. He glanced at the rosary beads sitting on his bedside table, but decided against it. God was probably tired of hearing his voice at this point.

Instead Kurt decided to take advantage of the late hour and explore. He was shirtless so he pulled on his shirt and vest. He didn't need his coat, but he usually didn't like wearing clothes where he couldn't hide his tail unless he was very comfortable with the place. He didn't quite feel ready and so he pulled it on as well. He swiped his rosary off the table and put it in his pocket.

The upper floors of the house were quiet and Kurt gently padded down the stairs to where the common spaces were. He could hear voices in one room, but he realized it was a television. Curious, he peeked through the door. He couldn't see anyone so he walked in. The only television Kurt had ever seen up close belonged to Wolfgang. No one else in the circus had one and Wolfgang's television had been much much smaller. It had terrible reception, but that didn't matter since they never watched anything but tapes on it.

"Going somewhere?" A voice asked out of nowhere.

Kurt jumped in surprise. A bespectacled boy was staring at him over the back of the couch. Kurt looked down at himself. He could see how one would think that. "Uh, no." he said. "I'm just looking around. I thought everyone was sleeping."

"They are. Everyone, but me. And you." The boy stared at him, but said nothing more. Kurt looked around, not sure whether he was expected to comment or not. "There's a kitchen through that door. And some other rooms over there." The boy pointed in various directions.

"Which room has the nicest view?"

The boy considered and finally gestured towards a half open door through which Kurt could see moonlight. "That one."

"Danke." Kurt made a motion like tipping an imaginary hat and went through the door.

It was a room with a set of large windows, each with a rather high window bench. Kurt climbed up and settled himself against the wall, his knees up near his chin. It was a good view. He could see the whole yard with its sports courts and a large expanse of lawn cut here and there by a few well-tended gardens. Off in the distance, just over the trees that lined the property, Kurt could see the ridges of the Catskill Mountains. He'd have to remember this room. It was a nice place to sit and think.

It was the damned dreams again. Logan sat up in bed and ran his hands through his hair. He thought maybe now, with Striker gone they too would go away. It seemed that it wasn't that easy. He heaved himself off the bed and out the door in a single motion.

Downstairs he made his usual small talk with Jones. Logan couldn't decide who had it worse sometimes.

"The new guy's in there." Jones said, gesturing to a long room off the kitchen that Logan was sure had once been a dining room.

"New guy?"

"You know: Blue, with a tail, hardly talks. I guess he doesn't sleep either."

Logan scratched his chin, wondering if he wasn't the only one who in this house who dreamt about Alkali Lake. "Thanks." He said and spun on his heel toward the kitchen.

Logan's bare feet hardly made a sound on the wood floor. Sitting in one of the recessed windows was the new mutant. He was looking out the window with his chin in his hands and his knees drawn up, his tail twitching back and forth like a cat's. He turned as Logan walked up.

"Beer?" Logan held out a bottle and pulled off the cap. Kurt hesitated, seeming surprised by the gesture and it occurred to Logan that perhaps he wasn't the beer type. But after a moment, he gave a small smile and took it. For a few minutes no one said anything. Logan leaned against the wall and stared out the window. He hated starting conversations. At least Charles knew what he was thinking and could cut right to the chase.

Kurt took a sip and then stared at the bottle, frowning. "I can't believe Americans call this beer." He said.

"Believe it." Said Logan. "But, that's what happens when you ask a Scott to pick up a case of beer."

Kurt laughed. Those two really didn't like each other, but at the same time they definitely seemed to enjoy goading each other. And Scott seemed like such a straight arrow, he must have been out of sorts indeed if Logan had convinced him to buy him a case of beer. "It's better than nothing." Kurt said.

Logan didn't think he could make much more small talk about beer. He took a breath. "Look, I wanted to thank you, you know, for what you did for Rogue. I don't think I could have lost the two of them…"

Kurt shook his head. "It was nothing. I only wish I could have done the same for Miss Grey."

"Well, you tried. It was her choice even if I don't understand it." Logan trailed off.

Kurt opened his mouth to explain the nature of sacrifice, but thought better of it. Logan didn't look like the kind of guy who wanted a sermon. "Is that why you're awake?" He asked instead. "Thinking of her?"

Logan shook his head. "Dreams. I get them every night. That damn lab, things I can't quite remember, things I want to forget. What about you? Do you dream about…" Logan looked down at his hands, unconsciously rubbing his knuckles. When he looked up he saw that Kurt had shifted so he was no longer looking out the window, but facing him.

"I dream about the White House." He said simply, but it wasn't entirely true. The images Jean Grey had brought to the surface of his consciousness also haunted him. But, he didn't want to mention her, not to Logan especially. Kurt gazed out the window for a moment and then looked back at Logan. "I can't remember anything that happened to me. I don't know if I want to."

"Believe me, you don't." Logan held up an empty bottle. "You want another?" Kurt glanced down at the half full beer in his hand and shook his head. Logan left the room and returned a short while later, popping the top off another bottle and putting a few more on the windowsill.

"But you have memories from before right?" He said. "You said you were the whosiwhatsit in the whatsit circus?"

Kurt sighed. "The incredible Nightcrawler. The Munich Circus."

Logan looked slightly sheepish. "Look I'm sorry about that. I'd just been shot in the head and I was pissed off and when I get pissed I get a little… intense." He said gruffly.

Kurt laughed. "Yeah. A little." He said.

"That obvious, huh?"

"Do I have a tail?"

Logan didn't usually laugh, but he found himself chuckling. "Why did they call you Nightcrawler, uh…" he said, groping for a name.

"Kurt."

"Right. Kurt, sorry."

"It's a little embarrassing." Kurt said.

"C'mon. How embarrassing can it be if you keep introducing yourself that way?"

Kurt closed his eyes. "It was my…" Kurt suddenly realized he didn't know if there was a word for it in English. "My mother called me that when I was a baby."

Logan spat out a mouthful of beer. "Really? So you always looked kind of…"

"Demonic?" Kurt finished.

Logan shook his head. "That's not what I was thinking."

Kurt raised his eyebrows in surprise. "It's not?"

"No. Demons are scary, but you're more like a big…" Logan ran his hand through his hair, searching for an apt description. "Like a big blue elf or something." He finished. Logan was about to make a lame apology for busting the guy's ego, but was surprised to hear Kurt laughing.

"Thank you." Kurt said.

Logan shook his head. You never knew what someone was going to take as a compliment nowadays. If someone had called him an elf he would have cut him in half. He cracked open another beer and to be polite offered another to Kurt. Kurt shrugged and took it.

"I can't remember anything." Logan said. "Not even my name. I don't even know if Logan is my first name or my last name."

Kurt was silent.

"I thought I'd find answers." Logan continued. "Instead I have more questions. Don't you want to know what happened? What they did to you?"

"Why? So I can have revenge?" Kurt asked.

Logan nodded. "Maybe. That's what I wanted."

Kurt shook his head. "It would not change what happened. It won't make me forget what I nearly did. Instead I would like to thank the man who shot me."

Logan took a sip of beer and knitted his brow. "You are really strange." He said.

"You mean in ways beside the obvious?" Kurt asked. "I suppose so. But if I avenged all who have treated me unfairly, I would be killing nearly everyone. I don't believe in revenge."

Logan grunted. Kurt wasn't sure if it was in agreement or not. "I think about the people who treated me kindly instead." He continued. "They're much more important." Kurt stared out the window again. How long had he been away from his family, his friends? Even if he only counted the days he could recollect, it was still longer than he'd ever been apart from them. Thinking about them, out there somewhere in the world, and him here, maybe for a long time made his eyes start to water. Logan didn't seem like the kind of guy who dealt well with crying blue skinned mutants so Kurt blinked them back. "I miss them so so much." He said.

Logan set his beer down on the windowsill. "Charles wants you to stay doesn't he?"

Kurt nodded.

"And?"

"I need to think about it." Kurt said, "In the past week I tried to assassinate the president, got shot, got hit by lightening, was tossed around in a plane for two days, and according to your Professor Xavier, was 'instrumental in the effort to save humanity'. I'm a little worn out. Not really up to any big decisions."

Logan gave a nod of understanding. "Well, you seem like you know how to keep your head in a fight."

Kurt thought about the only two real fights he'd ever been in. The first he'd been outnumbered three to one and had been thoroughly trounced and the second he'd taken out several dozen armed secret service agents by himself. It was a rather uneven track record.

"You should fire your tailor though." Logan said, gesturing at Kurt with his beer. Kurt looked at his clothes appraisingly. What was wrong with them? They looked fine to him even if they were a little threadbare.

"Yes," he said, glancing up with a mischievous smile, "And afterwards I will fire your barber."

Maybe it was the beer or perhaps lack of sleep, but Logan found himself laughing again. It wasn't a smirk or chuckle; he was actually struggling to keep the beer he had just drunk from spraying out of his nose.

"Are you always like this?" Logan asked when he had composed himself.

Kurt shook his head. "I'm usually much much worse. You have no idea the kinds of practical jokes you can play when you can teleport."

"Well, just don't try any on me." Logan said.

"Why, are you afraid you might start laughing again?" Logan looked murderous and Kurt held up his hands. "Don't worry, your secret's safe with me." He hopped off the windowsill. "I should go to bed. I'll never decide if I want to save the world or not if I don't get some rest. Goodnight Logan."

Logan gave a nod and turned back towards the window. "Wait a second. Elf."

Kurt paused at the door, not realizing at first that Logan was addressing him. "Ja?"

"I hope you decide to stay."

Kurt smiled and stepped out of the room, leaving the door slightly ajar behind him. He walked past the television and the boy who watched him go but said nothing. Back in his room he hung his coat back up. As he pulled off his vest his rosary fell out of his pocket. Kurt scooped it off the floor with his tail and dropped it into his hand. He stared at it, feeling its comforting weight at the same time.

What would he do? Could he really go back to the circus after all that he had seen? He realized how safe and predictable his world had been and now knew it was artificial, created for him by Margali and later by Wolfgang. If it hadn't been for him she would have never convinced Wolfgang to buy the circus. It made him realize how protected he had been.

Kurt opened the bible he kept on the bedside table and looked inside the cover, hardly needing to look at the words he had committed to memory so long ago.

"Never forget that your uniqueness is God's gift to you. However you chose to use it is how you will love and serve him best. – Your friend, Hans Dietrich"

What had that other mutant said? The one who he couldn't help noticing looked so much like him. "Because we shouldn't have to." What if there could be a world where people weren't afraid of him? Where he wasn't limited by his appearance? Where he could be anything he wanted. What if he could help make it that way? The safety net had been in place long enough; it was time to take it away and see if he could still perform without it. Kurt knew things wouldn't be easy, but his choice was made. Whatever happened next was in God's hands. He sat down at the desk again and pulled out his letter to scribble a tiny postscript at the bottom.

When he crawled back into bed it suddenly didn't seem so foreign to him. He was safe here. This was his room and he was home.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: Baptism by Fire**

"That child is a demon. And you are cursed for saving it. It will drag you down to hell with it."

Margali shifted into a lower gear as she slowly lead the procession of lorries and assorted trailers that was the Circus Gehlhaar down the last turns of the winding mountain pass. They had spent too long in up in Barvaria, trying to get a few last performances in before they moved the circus south for the winter, and they had woken up to snow on the ground. It had been a difficult morning, all the ropes were stiff and frozen and Kurt and his team of roustabouts had had a rough time pulling down the tents. Everybody was in a bad mood.

Behind her, Margali could hear her two children, Stephani and Amanda, shifting restlessly in their seats. As the road began to level she moved up a gear, listening the clunking sound it made. She'd have to look at it when they reached Nice, but France wasn't for many miles yet so she hoped it would hold out.

Margali's lorry had once been a delivery truck, a "step van" they had called it, with the cab and cargo space all in one with the roof nearly 12 feet high. At some point it had probably been in the service of some delivery company but now it was painted in bright colors emblazoned with the name "Madame Szardos – Gypsy Fortune Teller" and surrounded by images of tarot cards and palmistry diagrams. Inside, she had turned the space into a cozy, but somewhat primitive living space. What it lacked in conveniences such as running water and electricity it made up in comfort. There were bunks for the children and a sturdy wooden table beside a propane stove that provided both heat and a place to cook. At night, the whole interior was lit with the warm glow of oil lamps and a few candles. It reminded Margali of her heritage; when her people had traveled throughout Europe in horse drawn caravans.

As they came out of the foothills of the Alps, they started to see signs of civilization, clusters of houses in the traditional Bavarian style, looking like gingerbread houses under the fresh coat of snow.

Bored of driving already, Margali found herself contemplating her dream of the night before. All night she had dreamt of fire – she had been walking through it – even engulfed by it. It was a strange dream, but she had grown up with gypsies and knew enough not to dismiss an omen when it came. It made her wary. Fire was the force of change, both destruction and of new beginnings.

There were half a dozen new religions that were gaining popularity under the guise of witchcraft and sorcery; all of them were watered down versions of the true magic, the magic of her mother and her grandmother. Her magic. But sorcery wasn't a viable career occupation in today's world and so she had found the best place to hide her practice – telling fortunes with tarot cards and crystal balls. They were all props of course, but they were what made people believe.

The circus pulled into the outskirts of a small village. It was isolated and old, the sort of town where people didn't like change. The road hadn't been cleared of the snow and there was a look of stagnation, like the town had been preserved in a near pre-industrial state. Only the occasional television antenna broke the illusion that the place had been left back in time. Margali hated towns like these. These people were just a scant generation or two removed from those who had persecuted her family, calling them witches and heretics, throwing stones at them and setting fire to their wagons. There was a church bell clanging incessantly, which only added to her general desire to pass through and be gone.

Her dream flashed into her mind again and she sat up straighter. Was that burning she smelled or was she just being silly, imagining it? She sniffed the air and looked upward for signs of smoke. When she turned her attention back to the road she had to slam on the brakes with both feet. She heard the rest of the lorries and vans doing the same behind her. She hardly noticed when her lorry stalled and then engine died.

There was a woman kneeling in the middle of the snow-covered street, her hands bright with blood. She had on a white apron and that too was splashed with gore. She was nearly hysterical; her face was streaked with tears mingling with smears of blood from her hands.

Margali jumped out of the truck, Amanda and Stephani leaping from their seats and following her.

"Look after Amanda." She told Stephani, "Stay back." Amanda was barely two and Stephani only a few years older. Stephani pulled the toddler protectively toward his chest and pressed his back against the front grill, not taking his eyes off of the scene in front of him.

Margali knelt beside the woman. She was saying words as she wailed and at first they were incomprehensible. Finally the woman calmed enough to point a shaking hand one of the typical gingerbread houses that was hardly more than a cabin. "That house is cursed." She said.

Margali turned to look at it and for the first time noticed that the woman wasn't alone. The tiny yard around the house was crowded with people. She could tell even through the snow that it had once been a well-kept garden. Now it was in a trampled state as nearly a dozen people bustled around the house, some nailing boards across the doors and windows and others splashing liquid from metal cans around the foundation walls. A man wearing what looked like a priest's cassock under his coat was standing next to a barren tree holding a large cross and muttering under his breath. Margali narrowed her eyes. The scene stunk of the kind of religious discrimination that set her teeth on edge.

"Why?" She asked, already inwardly seething, but careful to keep a controlled exterior. By now the rest of the members of the circus were out of their vehicles and watching the scene. She could hear them asking what the hold up was in various languages, wondering what she was up to.

"There was a birth. It killed the mother. And the father, he…" This started up the woman's wailing anew and Margali began to understand that she was a midwife.

Now the people who had been boarding up the house were standing back watching as one of them painted a giant black "X" on the door. It occurred to Margali how strange it was that no one had come to comfort the midwife; that they were concentrating only on the house. Surely anyone could understand her distress, to see a woman die in childbirth… Margali shuddered.

She saw Lysette, a heavily tattooed woman who was also a superb acrobat try to place a blanket over the woman's shoulders. "You must be cold." Lysette said, her French accent making her German almost impenetrable.

The midwife was indeed shivering and so Margali was surprised when she flung the blanket away and stood up. "Don't you understand? That house is cursed, and I… I touched it. And now I'm cursed."

Margali dropped her comforting demeanor. Magic she respected but superstition was totally different. "What do mean cursed? Touched what? What happened in that house?" She demanded. She stood her full height with her hands on her hips. The rest of the circus was watching now, their eyes darting from one woman to the other.

"It was a monster. An abomination. It killed the mother and the father died the same instant." The women looked wildly at the house and then back at Margali. "I called the priest. There was nothing else I could do." She said, suddenly calm.

Margali sighed and looked back at the house. Flames were now beginning to lick at the outer walls. For a moment everybody appeared mesmerized, staring at the house and the flames, trying not to imagine the scene this poor woman had witnessed. There was nothing anyone could do. The house would burn and its ashes would become the family's grave. She was sorry she'd even got involved.

"Let's go." She said and taking Stephani's shoulder, guided him gently towards the van. Let these people keep their superstitions and their prejudice, she thought. The roustabouts, eager to get going, followed suit. And then Margali stopped. One of the trucks was already running again and she waved her hand at it, signaling the driver to cut the engine. She heard it again. And slowly turned towards the midwife, now standing mute, staring at the flames.

"The baby is alive?" Margali asked in horror. She could hear it clearly now, the high-pitched cries of a newborn.

"It's not a baby." The midwife said dully.

Margali pushed past her and marched towards the house. It was starting to burn with bright orange flames, a thin column of dark smoke curling up into the sky. She could her the wood popping and cracking with the heat. Suddenly frantic, she went to the front door, which was still free of flames and started pulling at the boards. To her surprise no one tried to stop her, but the boards wouldn't come free. She pulled and pulled, driven by the cries of the baby inside, but they held fast.

"Help me!" she cried and it was then she realized that the reason no one had tried to intervene was because the members of the circus had made a protective circle around her and the house. For a moment nobody moved. Finally, Kurt, the circus strong man and chief roustabout strode forward. He began pulling boards from the door with his giant hands like they were toothpicks and was quickly joined by others, prying at the boards and even trying to shovel snow against the house to quell the flames.

Finally she reached the door and with a mighty push from Kurt, it fell upon the cottage floor. Without hesitation, Margali stepped inside. She now knew why she had dreamed of fire that night and it made her know that her action was right and true.

Inside, the house was simple; kitchen, bed, and living space all in a single room that was quickly filling with smoke. The boarded windows shut out all light other than the flames beginning to peek through the cracks in the walls. Holding her sleeve to her mouth, Margali bent over double and made her way towards the bed at the far wall. A window breaking from the heat made her jump and glance over her shoulder. The entire wall and every thing near it burst explosively into flame. Margali shielded her face from the heat and turned her attention back to the bed. There was a woman on it. She had died in agony, the sheets drenched in her blood and her body twisted.

Margali placed a hand on the woman's forehead and said the words that would keep her safe on the paths of the dead. But she saw no sign of an infant. The smoke was getting thicker and Margali had to crawl to stay below it. Then she heard the cries again, issuing from under the bed. She could barely see the child in the shadows. Grabbing the cleanest of the bedding she reached under and pulled the blankets around it. Holding the bundle protectively against her chest Margali made to crawl towards the front door.

Even in the short space of time she had been in the house, the fire had spread. The front door was still open, fire beginning to creep along the frame. Margali crawled faster, trying not to breathe as each inhalation made her lungs sting from the smoke. There was a loud crack and suddenly a beam from the roof slammed down in front of the door, spreading flames with it.

"No!" She screamed as she watched her only exit disappear into a burst of flame fueled with the air from the open roof. Fighting panic, Margali jumped to her feet. Only one of the walls was free of flames now and she made her way toward it. She was going to die here with this infant and its family leaving her own children orphans. Her dream had been a warning, not a message. Even the strongest magic was like that – ambiguous even at its most powerful. And then she heard it, the sound of something large being hammered against the wall. She knelt down, trying to keep herself as far away from the burning interior as possible; hardly aware of how tightly she was clutching the bundle of blankets to her chest.

The hammering continued, a rhythmic banging on the wall, each blow so hard that it shook the cabin. She let out a small scream of surprise when the wall broke open, letting in much needed light and air. Then she realized it was one of the center poles from their biggest tent. She could her Kurt's powerful voice as he directed the team to use the pole like a battering ram, knocking down the side of the house to free her. When the hole was big enough she reached out a hand and felt herself pulled to safety.

Kurt gathered Margali up into his arms as he pulled her from the burning house, carried her to safety and then flung her down into the snow to stamp out the flames on her clothes with one of his sturdy boots. Margali lay there with her eyes shut enjoying the coolness of the snow and breathing great gulps of air. She could smell singed hair and cloth. It had been a stupid stunt she knew, but both she and the child where safe. Her dream hadn't been a warning after all. She heard laughing and opened her eyes. Kurt was standing over her chucking, his great arms folded over his chest.

"You're insane." He said.

Margali smiled, brushing her hair aside and feeling the soot covering her face. "I know." She said, "but we did a good deed." She turned and saw Stephani and Amanda a few feet a way and was relived that they too were safe. Her smile faded when she realized that the child was silent and had been for some time. Fearing she had accidentally smothered the infant in her attempt to save it, she slowly released her grip on the blankets. Margali unwrapped the bundle and felt her breath catch in her throat.

The baby was blue, but not the dusky hue of oxygen depravation; it was a deeper shade, like the color of midnight. The infant stared up at her, blinking yellow eyes. Margali was mesmerized. She had never seen anything like it. The baby was … beautiful. She hardly noticed the crunch of snow as Kurt knelt down next to her.

"What is it?" Kurt asked slowly, she could hear the same disbelief she felt in his voice.

Snapped back to reality, Margali took a quick peek deeper into the blankets. "What is he?" She corrected. And before he could say more she answered, "A baby" and stood up. She and Kurt walked slowly back to where the rest of the circus was assembled with Stephani and Amanda trailing hand in hand behind them.

"We should go." She said, eyeing the priest and his small congregation, standing slightly apart from the midwife. Holding her head high and cradling the infant in her arms, she walked slowly back to her van. She helped Amanda in with one hand and was about to climb in herself when she felt something wet hit the back of her head. Margali turned around. The priest had spit on her.

"That child is a demon. And you are cursed for saving it. It will drag you down to hell with it." The priest said.

Margali was suddenly livid, she could feel rage bubbling up and rising to the surface. How dare he judge her when he had consigned a living being to flames? She spit back at him. "I'll save you a seat next to us." She said.

She felt a strong arm guide her up the step into the lorry and obediently climbed in, still staring daggers at the priest and his followers while the house continued to burn behind them. She sank down into one of the cushions they used for seats and was vaguely aware of the lorry starting and driving off. She looked up and was relieved to see that Kurt had asked one of his charges to drive. She looked out the side window and watched the tiny town disappear behind them.

Suddenly content Margali leaned back in her seat. Stephani and Amanda, both sat silent across the room from her as though they didn't know what to do. Margali smiled and beckoned them closer so they could meet their new brother.


	3. Chapter 2

_**Chapter 2: Little Kurt**_

"_It's the circus, nobody will know it's not a costume."_

Margali hadn't expected much to change with her newly enlarged family; after all she had raised both Stephani and Amanda on her own. When the circus stopped to camp for the night after the fire, she named her new charge Kurt. It seemed only fitting since the strongman had rescued them both. Kurt, the quintessential gentle giant had blushed when she told him, but took it as an honor. The child was passed around from performer to performer and all agreed that once they got used to him, he was pretty cute.

The new Kurt quickly became quite a sensation amongst the troupe. Since they had all played some part in pulling him from the burning house there was the general consensus that he was not Margali's child, but theirs. He was mentioned so often in conversation that he was designated "Little Kurt" while the Strongman became "Big Kurt" so not to confuse anyone.

But at the end of each day Little Kurt slept in Margali's trailer and she loved him like one of her own. That didn't stop her wondering exactly what she had gotten herself into. She was worried when he didn't seem able to sit up like other babies his age, but this fear was quelled the day she found him "perched" with his knees bent double and his hands on the floor. His unique hands and feet made him adept at climbing and it seemed that he learned to crawl and climb on the same day. Of course there was his tail, which he used as kind of a counter balance making him the fastest crawler that Margali had ever seen. And he was nocturnal.

Much to Margali's relief Kurt slept most of the day, allowing her to work as a fortuneteller while he napped in a covered bassinette beside her. The downside of this was that he was up most of the night. This was fine at first; during the night she would find him awake in his crib, sucking the tip of his tail, looking at her with wide yellow eyes that glowed like a cat's when the light hit them. When he saw her he would stop, grin toothlessly, and reach out with his little hands. Margali would occasionally oblige by picking him up and carrying him to her bed so he could curl up next to her.

Once he learned to climb and crawl however, those peaceful nights ended. Margali and her children often woke in the morning to find that things had moved during the night, usually toys and books scattered about the floor but sometimes things like silverware and plates. Margali thought it was Stephani or maybe Amanda at first but they insisted that they slept through the night. The only other reasonable culprit was Kurt, but that was impossible. He couldn't possibly climb out of his crib at night, at least not without being heard. And so the family blamed each evening's mischief on "the mysterious nightcrawler".

The mystery lasted until Margali, during a bout of insomnia watched in amazement as Kurt slowly pulled himself up, climbed up the bars of his crib, and then climbed _down_ the bars head first, using his tail like a rappelling device. He dropped gently to the floor and crawled over to the children's' toy box. He turned around and when he saw her sitting up in bed, smiled, crawled over and leapt into the bed like a cat.

Margali stifled a laugh. Kurt really was the nightcrawler. The name stuck even when he graduated to "night walker" status.

When the show was over and the public had gone home a common sight was that of Big Kurt strolling through their campground with Little Kurt perched up on his shoulders. He was small for his age but far more agile than he should have been. He knew all the performers by name and would greet them in their own languages. When he saw Margali he would leap down into her arms wrapping himself around her in a giant hug. Everyone thought it was cute, but Margali was wondering how much longer it would be before he became too heavy to catch.

He had been raised collectively by the circus and so he was welcome in every tent and trailer. His unique abilities made him popular with the roustabouts when it came time to raise or lower the tents. Kurt would scale the poles and thread the ropes for them. Margali would shut her eyes, he looked so tiny way up high, but he always made it back to the ground safely.

Kurt was so precocious that Margali worried about her other children feeling left out. She tried to make sure that each one of them knew that they were just as special. Amanda didn't seem to care and often followed Kurt around the grounds, sharing in the attention. Stephani, Kurt's elder by nearly four years, didn't admit to jealousy but she had seen him glaring at Kurt's antics more than once. Kurt never seemed to notice however and Margali was pleased to see that whenever the two brothers were together, the animosity melted away. In fact, the three of them played so raucously that she was forever kicking them out the trailer so they could raise hell outside.

And so life went on like that for several years. They traveled around Europe doing shows during the summer and spent the winters in the south training and doing an occasional performance. The circus was like a large nomadic family, working and living together and within that family Margali had her own. As they got older, she delighted in the way each one of her children found their own identity. Stephani showed little interest in performing or circus work but read everything he could get his hands on and even talked about going away to school. Amanda, Margali noticed was beginning to show an aptitude for magic. She'd expected this; women were naturally magical particularly those in ther family. Kurt was fascinated by the acrobats.

Circus Gehlhaar's acrobatic and aerialist troupe was another family within the circus family. They were from Sweden and they called themselves "Lycka på Himmelen" which meant "bliss in the sky" in Swedish. There were 9 members in all: a husband and wife with a son and two daughters, plus various cousins. They were all blonde with pale skin and fine features. Kurt watched every practice perched in the top row of the stands. Their youngest son, Lars was his age and he was beginning to learn the trapeze. Kurt was wild with envy. He had been up on the platforms, had even helped hang the trapeze rigging, but he was forbidden to climb or swing on them.

Everyday, when it was Lars' turn to practice Kurt watched him swing out and back and out and back while his father controlled the safety harness he wore. Then Sven, Lars' cousin would swing out and catch Lars by the wrists so that Lars could release the trapeze with his feet and swing to the other platform. Kurt was sure he could do it too.

He devised an elaborate plan. If he was to learn the trapeze with Lars, he would have to get the troupe's attention first. While the family practiced, he quietly left his usual seat and snuck along the side of the tent until he was at one of the diagonal ropes that was anchored to the ground to support the high wire platform. After testing its strength Kurt slowly inched his way up, gripping the scratchy rope with both his hands and his toes. Kurt hated shoes and only wore them when it was too cold to go without.

At the top of the platform he looked down. The trapeze rig was just below him, he had planned to walk out on the high wire, leap off of it, turn a forward somersault and catch the trapeze below him. He would then use his momentum to gracefully swing to the platform to everyone's amazement. He'd seen it in his head so many times, but now he was having second thoughts.

The high wire, which always appeared so thick coiled on the ground, looked suddenly very very narrow. Kurt took a tentative step on to it and then another. In order to keep his balance he had to take another step and then one after the other until he was out in the middle between the two platforms. He stopped and tried to balance himself using his arms and his tail but it was impossible. He had intended to time his jump carefully to insure that there was actually a trapeze to catch, but his body pitched forward and when he swung his tail around as a counterbalance he went over backwards.

Kurt hardly had time to get his bearings and when he looked down, Sven was swinging forward, ready to be caught by Papa on the opposite trapeze. He yelled a warning before colliding with Sven in midair and wrapping his arms around him. At the same time Kurt caught the trapeze that Sven had just left with his tail and the two of them were pulled backwards. For a split second Kurt thought everything was going to be fine, but Sven was too heavy. His tail loosened and the two of them fell into the net in a tangled heap.

"You could have just asked." Sven said.

The acrobats, now accompanied by Margali were standing in a semi circle around Kurt who sat rather than perched on the lowest row of seats with his tail hanging down limply behind him. Kurt glanced at Margali who had her hands folded across her chest and he nodded miserably.

"You or Sven could have been injured." Papa said. "That would have been very bad for the circus." Kurt stared that the ground, wishing he could disappear.

"Well?" Margali said.

"I'm sorry." Kurt said for what seemed like the fortieth time.

"No, ask your question." Margali said.

"Oh." Kurt said quietly. He looked up at Papa and cleared his throat, suddenly nervous. This wasn't how he had imagined it at all. "I was thinking that, um if you're teaching Lars, that um, I could learn too." He returned his gaze to the ground.

Papa shrugged and looked at Sven. "Do you want to teach two boys instead of one?" he asked.

"I don't see why not." Sven said.

"It's hard work." Papa said. "And only if your mother agrees."

Kurt looked expectantly at Margali.

"You have to promise you'll listen to them and do what they say." She said.

"I promise."

"And you'll have to practice, even when you'd rather be doing something else."

"I know." Said Kurt, but the truth was that he couldn't imagine wanting to do anything else.

"And no more climbing to places where you don't belong." Margali finished.

Kurt sighed. "Okay."

"Then you can do it." Margali said.

Kurt grinned and hopped up on the balls of his feet before leaping into Margali's arms and nearly knocking her over. He thought he'd never stop thanking her, but he finally pulled himself together and put his feet back on the ground before Margali dropped him.

"Ow."

"Hey!"

"Well, you shouldn't have hit me."

"It was an accident. Don't pull my tail."

"Watch out Amanda."

"Lars, stop it."

"I said leave my tail alone!"

Margali put her hands to her temples and massaged them, then she took a deep breath. "Enough!" She shouted.

The sound of four children playing in too small a space stopped abruptly and they looked at her expectantly.

"Go outside." She said.

"But it's raining." Amanda said quietly.

"I don't care. Play in the big tent then. But don't get in anybody's way."

Margali watched the children put on their coats and hats. Stephan slid the lorry's side door open. "Oh and Kurt…"

"Yes?"

"No more than six feet off the ground."

Kurt sighed. "Okay," he said in mock exasperation and followed the children out the door.

"Finally." Margali said. She got up to slide the open door closed to keep the heat in. "Sorry Annika, they were driving me crazy."

Annika Olsson laughed. She was Lars' mother and one of the four women in the Swedish aerialist troupe. She waved her hand at Margali as if to brush her worries aside. "I get it worse than you" she said. "There are usually nine people in our trailer whether they live there or not."

Margali laughed and picked up her cup of coffee. Annika followed suit and the two women enjoyed a moment of silence, sipping coffee and watching the rain.

"So?" Margali asked after few minutes.

"Oh, of course." Annika put her cup down. "I came to talk about Kurt."

"He's not causing you any trouble is he?" As he had promised, Kurt arrived on time to every practice and would come home exhausted. Margali could tell he was working hard, but his carefree attitude about nearly everything could be trying.

"Hardly. Just the opposite, in fact. He's doing very well. We'd like him to perform with us."

Margali had been about to take a sip of her drink. She put the cup down. "But it's hardly been two months. And he's not even seven years old yet. And there's well," Margali paused, "the way he looks."

"He's got all the basics down and even some more advanced things that the kids don't usually do until they're a little older. He'll have turned seven by the time we play. My first show was when I was eight."

"That's all fine, I mean, I'm pleased. But in front of all those people…" Margali let her voice trail off. She had carefully kept Kurt from view of outsiders. Within the circus community he was safe, but she had seen what fear could do. She didn't want to risk it.

"You can't hide him forever. And he's a wonderful aerialist, a natural. He could be a great performer. And his appearance could be an asset if it was presented the right way. It's the circus, nobody will know it's not a costume." Annika was leaning across the table. She had watched Kurt during practice and she had seen it in his eyes. He wanted this. He had grown up with performers and had picked from them ability and desire to direct attention his way.

"When?" Margali asked.

"At the end of the winter we play the carnival in France. It's a few weeks from now. He'll be more than ready."

"And his appearance?"

"We thought maybe a story instead of a straight aerial and acrobatic routine; something to explain his appearance. You know, why he looks like," Annika paused.

"A little blue demon." Margali finished.

Annika shrugged and nodded at the same time. "Maybe a sorceress conjures him. That's what we were thinking anyway."

Margali sat back. Maybe Annika was right. Kurt had somehow managed to grow up blissfully unaware that his appearance was anything but an asset. He had no idea that most of the world would find him frightening rather than cute. But someday he would learn the truth about how the world really was and it would only get worse. A child with pointed teeth and ears that had a tail was far less threatening than an adult with the same features. Perhaps it was time to introduce the world to Kurt on Kurt's terms instead of theirs.

"If he wants to, he has my permission."

Annika smiled. "I know he will." She said. She got up. "I'll let him know at practice tomorrow." She said. Annika paused at the door. "Should I send them back in?" she asked.

Margali shook her head. "I'm enjoying the quiet." She said. She watched Annika leave and leaned back in her seat. She had never meant to become a mother, and yet she loved her three children deeply. But the only one she ever worried about was Kurt. She had been so careful to keep him out of sight for so long. She hoped she had made the right decision.


	4. Chapter 3

_**Chapter 3: The Incredible Nightcrawler**_

_"I want to do it again. I want to do it every night."_

It was a tight squeeze. The paper mache cauldron was small to begin with, but he had to be packed in there with a spot light that was to shine upward after it was rolled out. Kurt was glad he wasn't claustrophobic. He thought that starting the act by hiding in the cauldron was a good idea at first. He was nervous enough without having to look at a tent full of people. But he could still hear them and that was almost worse.

He lay curled around the light listening to the amplified voices of Sven and Papa telling a story about three witches who wanted to make a child. It was almost time. There was rustling around him and he knew it was Annika and her sisters, their costumes hidden under long witches robes, surrounding the cauldron. In a moment they would raise their arms, the light would come on, and he would have jump out before it got too hot. He could hear the music getting louder. It was very close now. He'd rehearsed this so many times, but now it was different. People were watching. He was supposed to entertain them.

Suddenly the light came to life. Kurt jumped up onto the wooden edges of the cauldron, staying as low as possible so he wouldn't be seen and at the same time keeping his tail away from the hot light below him. He knew that the light was casting his shadow up on the canvas ceiling of the tent. Margali had said she thought that they were asking too much of him. That the act was too complicated for a first performance, but Kurt had insisted he could do it. He stole a quick glance up to the trapeze rig. It was so high up, was he really going to be able to jump up there? You've done it before, he reminded himself, and you don't have to go all the way up, Sven will catch you.

Annika smiled. "Ready." She whispered.

Kurt nodded. His throat was too dry to speak. He climbed off the cauldron onto the platform the three women made with their hands, preparing to jump. Annika counted to three and Kurt launched himself into the air, boosted by the three women. He looked up to the point where Sven was going to be and felt Sven's hands close on his wrists when he got there. It was happening. His first performance, the moment he had been both anticipating and dreading for the last month was happening now. Kurt didn't have time to think about it. He closed his hands about Sven's wrists as they swung forward.

At the top of the arc, they let go. Kurt used his forward momentum to turn a somersault before the next catch. He spotted his landing, reaching out, knowing that Papa's hands would be there to catch him. He felt the catch and locked his hands around Papa's thick wrists, feeling Papa's lock around his own. As Papa swung forward he flipped Kurt up onto the trapeze. Kurt landed lightly, his knees bent, his toes gripping the bar. He stayed on the bar while it swung to the platform and Papa swung himself up and hopped off. Kurt's trapeze was on its way back to the center. He gripped the bar with his hands and let go with his feet so his body swung around with the momentum of his arc. This is the hardest trick, he thought, and then it will be over. Having finished his forward flip around the bar, Kurt let go with his hands so he was flung feet first towards where Sven was supposed to catch his ankles.

It was the hardest one because he couldn't see if Sven had actually swung out to catch him. They had missed more than once in practice and each time he'd hung in midair for a moment before falling into the net. Kurt felt Sven's hands around his ankles and he used the momentum to pop himself up onto the bar so that he was standing on it. Sven switched positions and pumped his legs to swing the trapeze back to the platform. Once he was there Kurt did a backflip off the bar and landed lightly on the platform. Annika's sister Freya, now out of her witch costume held out a hand to steady him so he didn't fall off, but Kurt didn't need it, his landing was solid.

He stood, catching his breath and realizing that his part in the show was over. For the first time he looked around and saw that people were cheering. Had they been cheering for him? He had hardly noticed. For the last few minutes the entire world had been erased except for Papa, Sven, and himself.

"Good job" Freya whispered in his ear. Then she caught a trapeze that was thrown to her and was gone.

Kurt watched the show from the platform for a few moments and then climbed down the ladder. His usual way of getting down during practices was to jump off the platform into the net, but Papa had forbidden him from doing it during the show. Too distracting, he had said. Once on the ground Kurt ran around the side of the net to the outside of the tent where Margali was waiting.

"Did you see me?" He asked the moment she came into view.

"Of course. You were wonderful." She knelt down and gathered him into her arms.

"I want to do it again." Kurt said. "I want to do it every night."

"And you will." Margali said. "As long as you want to. Oops. Let's get out of the way." She stood up and ushered Kurt to the side so two of the roustabouts could push several colorful wooden stands on a cart past them.

Annika was the first of the Olsson's to arrive in the area outside the tent that served as their backstage. She grabbed Kurt in a big hug, lifting him off the ground. "You did so well." She said, mussing up his hair. The rest of the Olsson's began to filter through the tent flaps, each one congratulating Kurt on a fine first performance. Margali stood slightly away from the group. Kurt looked so happy. Annika had been right, the best place for her son to hide was in front of an audience. I took her a moment to realize she that the more than happiness, she felt relief. There would be no angry mobs for Kurt, but applause instead.

"We want to introduce you when we go out and bow at the end." Papa said. "What should we call you?"

Kurt looked at Margali for assistance. "I don't know." He said, "Kurt?"

Papa waved his hand and shook his head. "No, no, no. You need a stage name. Something that fits the way you look."

"The 'Blue Demon'?" Lars' eldest sister asked. Kurt cocked his head in confusion and Margali glared daggers at her.

They threw names back and forth, very careful not to tread in demon or devil territory. They all sounded ridiculous to Margali. She wished she had thought of this before, but she wasn't even sure Kurt would like performing. And she had harbored a secret fear that perhaps the crowd would see through his 'disguise'. How silly it all seemed now. She smiled to herself, thinking about the night she'd watched Kurt climb out of his crib so he could crawl around the room. He was practically born for this. Then it hit her.

"The Mysterious Nightcrawler." Margali shouted and everybody stopped talking. Kurt blushed a deep shade of purple.

"Mom. No. That's embarrassing." Kurt stamped his foot at her and glared. Margali stuck out her tongue.

Papa scratched his head. "I like it." He said.

"You do?" Kurt asked.

"But not 'mysterious', Kurt doesn't seem that mysterious to me." Sven pitched in.

Various adjectives were suggested until they settled on "incredible". Papa peeked around the side of the curtain and motioned Kurt to his side.

"When we go out to bow, stay back by that pillar there." He said. Kurt saw the pillar he was pointing to. "Remember that double forward salto you were doing the other day, from a run?" Kurt nodded. He had only just started learning their floor routines, but when they saw how high he could jump, Sven had started teaching him how to do simple aerial maneuvers. It was fun and when Kurt had seen the amazing flips and twists Sven could do, he was eager to learn them.

"When they introduce you, do your aerial towards me and I'll catch you." Papa said. Kurt knitted his brow and then smiled when he understood. He agreed and after a few more hugs and congratulations from the Olssons, was left alone with Lars. They stood, peeking around the open tent flap so they could watch the show.

"I wish I had gotten to perform." Lars said.

"I do too." Said Kurt. "It was kind of scary all alone. When your dad says you're ready, we should do something together."

Lars grinned.

"But make up a stage name first." Kurt advised. "Otherwise you'll end up with your nickname."


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: Traumatic Incident Number One**

"We can't choose what we look like, only how we act. You act like an angel so to me you look like one."

The game was hide-and-go-seek. It was a lovely summer afternoon and since it was a weekday, there would be no performances until the evening. That meant that all of the circus children, the "brats" as they were known, had the whole afternoon to play. Stephani was "it". As he started counting with his hands covering his eyes, the children scattered. They knew not to go too far from the camp, but there were still plenty of trees and wild grass to hide behind in addition to the ample spots on the circus grounds.

Amanda and Lars took off in towards the trees and Kurt followed them, bounding through the grass on all fours. The threesome ran through the tall grass until they came to a low stone wall. Lars crouched down next to it. Kurt and Amanda slid into place next to him.

"This is my hiding place. You have to get your own." Lars said.

The two of them looked around for possibilities. There were a few trees, but no really good places to hide unless they wanted to return to the camp.

"There's nowhere to go." Amanda said.

Kurt peeked over the wall and pointed up the hill towards a large stone building with colorful windows.

"Let's hide in there." He said. Lars turned so he could peek over the wall.

"Ooo. I bet there's a lot of good places in there." Amanda said. She pulled herself up onto the wall and dropped down on the other side. Kurt climbed up the wall after her but Lars grabbed his shirt to hold him back. Kurt stopped mid-climb and looked back at his friend.

"What are you doing? Stephani's going to find us."

"You can't go in there." Lars said.

Kurt looked perplexed. "Why not? Are we not allowed?" He asked. They heard Stephani finish his count. "Ready or not here I come." He shouted.

"We've got to hide." Said Amanda urgently. "Let's go."

"I think it's just you're not allowed." Said Lars. Now Kurt was really perplexed.

"Who said that? Why just me and not everybody?" Kurt asked, ignoring Amanda who finally gave up and started up the hill in the opposite direction. He slid back down the wall and crouched down next Lars.

"It's a church. You'll get hit by lighting if you go in there." Lars's explanation was even more confusing.

"What are you talking about? It's not even raining." Kurt said, lowering his voice now that Stephani was out looking for them.

"Mary told me. She said you were unholy and that if you ever went into a church you would be struck down by God's lightening." Lars whispered earnestly.

"By lightening?" Kurt whispered skeptically, "I don't think that's true." Mary was the cook who made all their meals when they traveled. She had been with the circus every summer for years and she had always seemed a little batty to Kurt. "I'm going." He said and stood up. Lars grabbed his hand and pulled him back down.

"I'm serious. She showed me pictures." Lars said emphatically, completely forgetting they were supposed to be quiet.

"What kind of pictures?" Kurt was getting irritated. He could hear Stephani swishing through the grass. Lars was ruining his chances at hiding. Stephani was going to tag him first and he was going to be it and he hated that.

"Shhh. He's coming." Lars said. He and Kurt held their breaths. The listened as Stephani waded through the grass towards them stopped and then turned around, swishing his way back the way he had come. 

"That was close." Kurt said. Then they heard Stephani calling for everyone to come out. He had tagged Gretchen, the daughter of a pair of contortionists. She was learning to be one too and though she could squeeze herself into the most incredible hiding spots, it took time to extract herself. She always got tagged. Lars' warning seemingly forgotten, they got up and ran back to camp to start the game again.

But Kurt hadn't forgotten and the next day he recruited Lars to help him find the pictures that apparently showed him being hit by lighting in the church. Mary was working in the outdoor kitchen so the trailer she shared with Lars' aunt Freya was empty. They didn't have much time, the Olsson's were rehearsing that afternoon which meant both Kurt and Lars would need to be there. They peeked around the side.

"Go stand over there and keep a look out." Lars said. Kurt nodded and walked away from the trailer as casually as he could. He had a good spot where he could see both Mary and the door. As Mary didn't seem to have any inclination towards leaving the kitchen Kurt quickly grew bored. A few minutes later he saw Lars emerge with a large thin leather bound book. He motioned for Kurt to follow and the pair dashed over to Margali's empty Van. Inside they slid the door shut and started laughing.

"I got it." Said Lars. "Did she see?"

Kurt shook his head. "She was cooking the whole time."

"What's for dinner then?" Lars asked and laid the book down on Margali's sturdy wooden table, the only real furniture they had. Lars sat down and started paging through the book while Kurt hopped up on the table and perched opposite him. It was a picture book, but it wasn't like any one he'd ever seen. Most of the pictures were black and white line drawings that looked very old but a few were in color. Even upside down they gave Kurt the creeps. Lars' question about dinner was forgotten as the pages flipped.

"Mary said this is a book about demons that God cast out of heaven because they were unclean." He said stopping every few pages. "Here." Lars said. He turned the book around so Kurt could see. It was a line drawing of a woman on the ground struggling with some kind of winged creature. The creature was like a man but with wings and a tail. He gripped the woman with clawed hands as she cried out in the image.

"I don't have wings." Kurt said.

"But you have a tail." Said Lars. Kurt picked up the end of his tail in his hand and looked at it as though seeing it for the first time. He wasn't quite sure what Lars was talking about. Heaven? God? Demons? Margali had never told him about any of this. And what did Mary mean he was "unholy"? He wondered if the cook was making up stories to scare them. Then again, he really did have a tail.

Lars took the book back, flipped through the pages again and pushed it back at Kurt. "Look at this one." He said.

This one was an elaborate painting in full color. There was a lot going on in it. A man with bird's wings took flight while beneath him another man in black robes held a golden cross high in the air. People were writhing on the uneven ground that was littered with skulls and bones. In the middle of it all, shielding his face from the cross was a darkened figure. He didn't have wings but he had pointed ears and a tail.

"She said this is a demon being vanquished by an angel." Lars said pointing to each figure as he described it.

This picture worried Kurt more than the other. It really did look like a grown-up version of him. "What's vanquished mean?" He asked in a hushed voice.

"I don't know." Lars admitted. Looking at the picture, Kurt didn't think it looked like a good thing. He turned a few of the pages himself, suddenly aware how different his hands looked from Lars'. He usually didn't think about the fact that he had a tail, but now he was conscious of every movement it made. He curled it around his ankle to stop it from twitching and that made him realize that even the way he was sitting was odd. Normal people sat in chairs; they didn't perch on tables. Kurt stretched one foot out behind him until he found a chair. He slowly sank down into it.

All the pictures told the same story: angels were good and demons were bad. Between the pictures were pages of text but it was in English and he couldn't read English. It made Kurt uncomfortable, he thought of all the times he had made Margali angry and he wondered if one day an angel wouldn't swoop down and vanquish him. But there was an upside to it as well.

"Do you think this means that there are other people who look like I do?" Kurt asked. He'd always assumed that he was the only one and since no one seemed to care, he'd never given his appearance much thought. He found he liked the idea; it wasn't always easy being so different than everyone else.

Lars shrugged. Kurt turned back to the vanquishing page and looked at it. Lars leaned over and pointed to the man in black. "That guy's a priest and he's using the cross to keep you from taking the…"

"That's not me!" Kurt interrupted. He hadn't meant to shout. Lars looked surprised.

"Actually, it is." Said a voice behind them. The two turned in their seats and saw Stephani standing behind them. Neither had heard him come in.

Kurt tried to think of something to say, but nothing came out. Lars shut the book guiltily and stared at Stephani.

"That's Mary's book." Stephani said. "She showed it to me too."

"We didn't steal it." Lars said defensively. "I was going to put it back."

Stephani circled around them and sat upon the table with his legs dangling. Kurt swiveled in his seat to face him. He finally found his voice, but it came out all quiet, like he couldn't get enough air into his lungs. "Did she say I was unholy to you too?" He asked.

"She said lots of things." Stephani said.

"Do you believe her?"

"I don't have to. I know the truth." Stephani crossed his arms over his chest.

"What truth?" Kurt asked.

"That you're not really my brother. That mom is not really your mom."

Kurt glanced at Lars who was sitting open mouthed and staring at Stephani. "I don't think any of this is real." Kurt said. "You're both making it all up."

Stephani shook his head. "No. It's true. I saw it."

"What did you see?" Kurt was leaning forward in his chair, once again perched up on the balls of his feet. He was gripping the edge of the seat so hard with his toes that his knuckles had gone pale.

Stephani began telling a story about stopping in a small town, a woman covered with blood crying in the street, and a house being boarded up and set on fire.

"Why did they put boards on the door?" Asked Kurt.

"To keep you in." Stephani said. "But mom ran into the house while it was burning and pulled you out. She almost died because of you."

Kurt shook his head. "If mom's not my real mom, then where are my parents?" He asked. He tried to sound calm, but inside he wanted to clamp his hands over Stephani's mouth to make him stop saying these things. He wanted Lars to take his stupid book and go. He felt like if he heard any more crazy stories about demons and fires he was going to explode.

"Dead." Stephani said. It was a like a heavy stone falling to the ground – final and followed by silence.

Behind him Kurt heard Lars gasp. "How did they die?" Lars asked, his voice nearly a whisper.

"Kurt killed them. That's why they were burning him in the house."

This was too much. Kurt launched himself out of the chair and knocked Stephani off the table. The two of them fell to the floor with Kurt pinning his older brother down. "You're lying." He screamed. "I didn't kill anyone. None of this is true."

Stephani grabbed Kurt's wrists and flipped him over so that now he was holding Kurt on the floor. "It is true. That's why you don't look like us." He said. Both of their voices had risen in volume so that they were shouting at each other. Kurt struggled to break free of Stephani's grip, but Stephani was larger and stronger than he was. Neither of them noticed Lars get up and run from the room.

"Let me up!" Kurt shouted. "You're a liar." He tried to squirm out from under Stephani, but he was held fast. He slapped his tail on the ground trying to gain leverage but nothing worked. He was crying, tears running down the sides of his face, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Stephani's story couldn't be true, he thought, it just couldn't. But then there was the horrible realization that if there were paintings of people who looked like him, perhaps it had happened before. What if the reason he had never seen anyone else like him was because they too had killed their parents and were punished for it. Maybe it was just a matter of time before they found him and burned him too. For a moment Kurt stopped crying and lay there with his chest heaving. He tried to sit up and Stephani pushed him back down.

Kurt resumed his struggle to break free of the grasp Stephani had on his wrists and the two boys grappled on the ground, a tangle of arms, legs and Kurt's tail. "Why won't you let me go?" Kurt cried.

"I don't want you to hurt me."

Kurt couldn't believe what he was hearing. What this really his brother? Why was Stephani being so mean? "I'm not going to hurt you. I just want you to let go!" He shouted and tried to slide his arm out of the hold Stephani had on him. He just wanted to be alone and hide away from everybody forever where there weren't any horrible books or stories about him killing people. But Stephani's grip on him seemed unbreakable. He craned his neck and sunk his teeth into the flesh of Stephani's forearm. Stephani screamed and pulled his arm away. Kurt slithered out from under his brother and jumped to his feet. He could taste blood and when he looked up he saw that Stephani's arm was bleeding.

"I'm sorry." He said. He'd forgotten how sharp his teeth were. And now he had hurt Stephani just like his brother had said he would. Kurt backed away in horror.

"Look what you did." Stephani said holding up his arm so Kurt could see four punctures with blood seeping out of them. Kurt ran to their makeshift kitchen area and grabbed a clean towel. He splashed water on it from the gallon jug they kept full.

"Put this on it." He said desperately. "I didn't mean to. I'm so sorry." He tried to press the damp towel against Stephani's bleeding arm. He wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand but they filled up again immediately. Stephani snatched the towel from Kurt's hands.

"Stay away from me!" He shouted and pushed Kurt down onto the floor. Kurt didn't try to rise this time. Instead he curled himself into a tight ball with his hands over his head. This was the worst day ever, he thought, sobbing on the floor. He was vaguely aware that he was supposed to be in the big tent with the Olsson's now; practicing for the new tumbling routine they were hoping to put into the show, but none of it seemed to matter anymore. It was all too much. It was like the whole world had been turned inside out.

"I've heard enough!" A voice boomed through the room, louder than a human voice should have been. Both boys turned and saw Margali standing in the doorway. She strode into the room. Kurt had never seen her look so angry. She stopped in front of Stephan, who was crying now too. She took his arm and looked at it. The bleeding had stopped; the cuts weren't as deep as they had first looked.

"It is not a good idea for you and I to be in the same place right now." She said, her voice calm and cold. "If I were you I'd go, before I do something we'll both regret. Go have Big Kurt clean that up. We'll talk later."

Stephani drew himself up and with last glance back at Kurt, hopped out of the van and closed the door. Margali turned to Kurt in time to see him vault into his bunk, the uppermost of three. If she stood on her tiptoes the bed was just a little below her eye level. Kurt had pushed himself into the furthest shadow making him nearly invisible. He had stopped crying and she could hear him making great hiccupping sobs from somewhere in the corner. She pulled a handkerchief out of a pocket and held it out. A moment later a small blue hand came out of the shadows and took it.

"Are you going to come down?" She asked. After a few moments a small "no" issued from the darkness. "Kurt, please come down. I can't talk to you if I can't see you." She reached her hand out and felt around. The first piece of Kurt she found was his tail, but he quickly withdrew it out of her reach. "Suit yourself" said Margali and walked to the other side of the room. She picked the book that had started everything off the floor and flipped through the pages. Then she went over to the pallet she slept on opposite her children and sat down. She leaned back against the wall and waited.

The only evidence that Kurt was still up there was the occasional sniffle, but after a few minutes Margali saw a pair of eyes followed by her youngest son's silhouette at the edge of the bunk. "Do you want to talk?" She asked. There was a long pause.

"Is it all true?" Kurt asked at last, his voice hoarse from crying.

Margali sighed. "If you come down here, I'll tell you what's true and what's not." She patted the mattress beside her. Kurt sighed and crept out of his bunk. He slid in beside her and Margali put her arms around him. She pressed her cheek against the top of his head, squeezing him tight. They held that pose while she listened to Kurt's sniffles coming at longer and longer intervals. Finally Margali loosened her hold and with one hand tried to smooth his hair, which was now sticking up in different directions. It was no use. She picked up the book and held it so Kurt could see the cover.

"Can you read it?" she asked. She knew Kurt could read German and French and she had even heard him speaking Swedish with the Olssons. The whole family was multi-lingual but Kurt was particularly was good with languages. For all she knew he'd picked up English too. Kurt shook his head.

Margali read the title aloud pointing at each word. "Angels and Demons: Religious Imagery in the Middle Ages and Pre-Renaissance." She said it first in English and then translated it into German. "It's a book about art, things that religious people painted from their imaginations."

"It's not real?"

Margali shook her head. "No. It's only real for the people who believe in it."

"Do you believe in it?" Kurt asked.

"No."

"So I'm not really a demon?"

Margali pulled Kurt closer. "Of course you aren't. I don't know why you look like you do, but it's what's on the inside that matters."

"Then I wish I looked like the angels instead." Kurt said. He could feel fresh tears running down his cheeks.

"We can't choose what we look like, only how we act. You act like an angel so to me you look like one. The people who made those pictures have been dead for thousands of years, they never got to meet you." Margali saw a momentary smile cross Kurt's face but he frowned again.

"What about the other things? The things that Stephani said about me?" he asked. Kurt furrowed his brow, "Are you not really my mom? Did I really kill people?"

Margali sighed and shook her head. "Stephani shouldn't have told you those things. Some of them are true and some are not." She could feel Kurt shaking as he started to cry again, but this time he stayed silent. "I'll tell you the true things, but you have to stop crying first." She handed him a fresh handkerchief. Kurt sat up straighter, wiped off his face, and blew his nose. He changed positions so that he was facing her, his face a mask of determination.

"Okay." He said. "I'm ready."

Margali told him the whole story. She had always planned on telling him when he was older. She figured Kurt would have enough to deal as a child with without having to doubt her love as his mother. She loved all of her children equally; it didn't matter to her how they had entered her life. The truth was that having a family of her own raised the way she thought they should be and without the stifling traditions of the Rom culture, was more important to her than anything in the world. And for the most part she'd gotten her wish.

It wasn't an easy story to tell. Margali first had to navigate the treacherous waters of childbirth and its complications. That was followed by a careful explanation of people and their superstitions. She described how everyone in the circus had pitched in, ripping the boards off the house and trying to put out the fire so they could get him out and she saw Kurt smile briefly when he learned that he was named after Big Kurt as the two were quite close. Her son was silent through the whole thing, but Margali watched understanding slowly dawn upon his face. When she was done speaking, the two of them sat in silence for a long time, as though they had disturbed something that hadn't been touched for years and were now waiting for the dust to settle back down.

"Can we go there someday? To that town?" Kurt asked.

Margali nodded. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes now. "If you like."

Kurt frowned. "But I still don't understand why people are afraid of me when I haven't done anything to them."

"There will always be people like that. It's complicated. Do you know that when I was growing up, I saw men jump away in fear when my mother walked past? Do you know why?"

Kurt shook his head.

"Because she was 'marmé', unclean.If a man is touched by a woman, he is polluted by her."

Kurt gasped. That's what Mary had said about him. "Why?"

Margali shrugged. "Because that's what their father's believed, and what their father's fathers believed. And just because it wasn't true didn't mean that my mother and all the other women in my tribe were feared by the men."

"Did she ever wish she was a man?" Kurt asked.

"Never. Because she knew that women are powerful, they can grow a life inside of them and that made them magical too. And so that's what she taught me. But that was after we were banished and sent away." Margali said.

"Your family sent you away? Forever?" Kurt asked in amazement. "Why?"

"My mother didn't believe in the men's traditions. She felt that she should be an equal and not hiding behind a long skirt, always walking behind the men so not to foul their air. There were places she could not go and rights she could never have. So one day, she fought back."

"What did she do?"

"Well, she went to her husband's, my father's chest and she took some of his clothes. Then she put them on. She took off her headscarf and let her hair down. Then she walked outside."

"Is that bad?"

"Bad?" Margali said and laughed. "It is a crime for a woman to take the clothes of a man. And when she announced that she should have equal rights and privileges as her husband and her brothers, people were outraged. All the men were very upset. It was very bad."

"I bet the women were happy though." Kurt said with a small smile.

Margali shook her head. "They weren't. These were very old traditions and they had become comfortable with them. And so the Rom Baro, the chief, called big meeting of all the men and they decided the she, her sisters, and her daughters were marmé."

"Unclean?"

"That's right. My mother's actions had shamed all the women in her family. And so the tribe sent us away."

"Didn't you miss them?" Kurt asked. He was leaning forward, captivated. He'd never heard his mother talk about her childhood. And to hear that people were frightened of her, just because she was a girl. It was hard to imagine.

"At first, but I had my mother and my sisters. After a while it was all I knew. It was a lot like us, there were four of us and we traveled all over Europe together." She smiled and brushed Kurt's hair out of his eyes.

"But if everybody believed it, wasn't it true? Like for the people who made those paintings. Wasn't it true for the men who made you go?" Kurt asked, suddenly concerned.

Margali couldn't figure out exactly where he was going with the question. She thought for a moment and then said, "In a way yes. But that didn't mean it was true for my mother."

"But she was still punished." Kurt pointed to himself. "If people believe that I'm unclean, doesn't it mean that I'll still be punished even if I don't think it's true?"

"Well," Margali started to speak and then paused. The answer was yes, of course. No matter what Kurt did, there would always be a portion of society that would refuse to accept him. But how could she tell him that. This too was a conversation she wanted to have when Kurt was older, not when he was eight. But Kurt continued questioning her.

"If I went into a church, would I still be punished by God because people believed in it? Because for them it's real?"

Margali hadn't expected the conversation to get this metaphysical and at this point it was past explanation. Her thoughts turned to the church she could see up on the hill a short walk from their encampment. It was a Tuesday evening; it would more than likely be empty. She got up and went to the old chest where their warm clothes were kept and opened the lid. She rummaged around, pushing aside sweaters and socks until she found Kurt's hooded coat and pulled it out.

"Where are we going?" Kurt asked. Margali always made him wear that coat whenever they left the circus grounds. She tossed it at him.

"We're going to church." She said.


	6. Chapter 5

_**Chapter 5: Church**_

_"He doesn't really go with the décor."_

Margali marched through the camp walking with such speed and purpose that Kurt nearly had to run to keep up with her. She was looking straight ahead, her mouth set in a tight-lipped frown, but Kurt glanced around, noticing that they were being watched. He stopped a moment, but a tug on his arm pulled him forward.

They didn't jump over the wall like Amanda had, but took the long way around to the gate. Kurt stopped and looked up at the church. He realized that they had been looking at the back of the building during their game. There were no colored windows on the front, only a large wooden double door. He hesitated, but Margali pulled him forward. They stopped at the door so Margali could tug on the giant handle. She pulled the door open and Kurt looked in.

It was enormous inside. The ceiling was nearly as high as the roof of their biggest tent and there were rows and rows of seats but not very much room for performers. It was very much like the circus, but different. Kurt wondered what went on inside of churches, besides people like him getting hit by lightening of course.

"Go ahead." Margali said. Kurt shook his head and hid behind Margali. "Nothing is going to happen." Kurt stood his ground so Margali picked him up and walked inside. He squeezed his eyes shut expecting the worst, but when nothing happened he opened them and looked around.

The light of the setting sun was glinting off the beveled panes of the stained glass windows and projecting rainbows on the floor while filling the space with a soft glow. They were in the middle of the space and Kurt dropped to the floor and turned in a full circle. "Wow." He whispered. There was so much to look at; along with the colored windows there were statues and paintings and candles everywhere. "What do they do here?" He asked.

Margali felt a little out of her element. She'd never had much use for Christianity and she had even less use for it after she adopted Kurt. Then again, she didn't want to pass on her own bias to her son. "They worship God." She said.

"Why?"

" The people who built this church believe that God created the world and all of us on it. So they come here and thank Him." Or Her, she added silently with a smile. They took a few steps forward. Kurt's hood had fallen down but Margali didn't bother to fix it. They were alone.

"Is that God?" Kurt asked, pointing to the large wooden carving of Jesus on the cross that hung above the main altar.

"No. That's supposed to be God's son." Margali said.

"What happened to him?" Kurt asked, still walking towards the altar while looking in all directions.

"Um." Margali was really in over her head. "He said a lot of things that people didn't like. So they killed him."

Kurt scratched his head. "But he looks like one of the angels only without wings. I thought the angels were good."

"He was good. But there were some people who disagreed with him so what he looked like didn't matter to them. See? It can go both ways."

Kurt knitted his brow and looked around. "Is there a picture of God here then?" he asked.

"No." Margali said, "just His son."

"Why."

Margali sighed. "Because they don't know what God looks like I guess." She said.

"So how do they know He's really there?" Kurt asked.

Margali was trying to formulate an answer when a voice from above her said, "Now that, young man, is a very good question." Margali felt like her insides had melted. They were not alone, and now there was nowhere to go, nothing she could do. She jerked Kurt's hood up, ignoring his "ow!" and looked around for the origin of the voice. She couldn't believe this was happening. How much worse could this day get? All that time she had spent telling Kurt he had nothing to fear was going to be ruined forever by some religious nut who more than likely was going to take one look at him and run them off the property. Holding Kurt against her, Margali looked up at the crucifix. Well, she thought, if not here, where else. Please, she intoned silently, if you're really there, God please make this work out.

"Over here." The voice said. Margali turned and saw a priest walking down the aisle towards them. She pushed Kurt behind her long skirts and stood facing him. "You were doing pretty well," he said with a smile, "but definitely cutting in on my territory." He stopped before them, his smile slowly melting into a look of confusion. "I didn't mean to scare you." He said.

Margali realized she must have looked like a deer in the headlights. She quickly closed her open mouth and straightened herself. "It's okay." She said. "We didn't mean to bother you. We'll just go." She turned carefully, sliding sideways past him, and trying to maneuver Kurt in such a way that he stayed out of sight.

"Miss?"

Margali looked back over her shoulder.

"You and your son may stay if you like. Everyone is welcome." He was smiling again, but a look of concern crossed face. "Is something the matter?" He asked.

"I want to stay." Kurt whispered.

"No. " Margali said, a little more sharply than she wanted to. She looked back at the priest. "It's probably best that we go." Giving Kurt a small shove forward she started towards the door.

"You should never be ashamed of those you love."

"What?" Margali spun around, nearly knocking Kurt over.

"Your child. What is it about him that frightens you?" Margali bristled at the question, but she could see compassion in the man's eyes. He wasn't at all like any of the other priest's she'd ever encountered. He was younger than most, with only a few grey hairs at his temples. And he was smiling, friendly. Margali's few encounters with men of the cloth had involved the persecution and distain, not smiling and telling them to stay. She'd made a point to steer clear.

"He doesn't frighten me. It's just that, he looks a little…unconventional." Margali finished after a pause that felt too long. The priest looked puzzled. "He doesn't really go with the décor." She said, gesturing around the church.

The priest shrugged. "I wasn't aware of any rules about matching the architecture." He said and then smiled again. "I'll have to call the archdiocese and ask them about it."

Margali sighed and looked down at Kurt, who was now hanging back on his own. It seemed that there was nothing she could say to convince this priest to let them go and simply grabbing Kurt and running out would have conveyed the wrong message. She would just have to trust the man. "It's okay." She said. Kurt peeked his head around and looked up at the priest, his hood falling back as he did so. Margali didn't bother to fix it.

"Nightcrawler." The priest said. There was a long silent pause. "I saw your performance two nights ago. Priests do go out sometimes." He added as though in answer to their expressions of shock. He looked down at Kurt and smiled. "You're a very talented young man."

Kurt looked away. He was never shy when performing, but he had never spoken to anyone outside of the circus' fold. "Thank you." He said in barely audible voice.

The priest knelt down and with a finger on his chin gently turned Kurt's face to face his. "It's okay to be different you know." He gestured at the Crucifix, "That man lived thousands of years ago. He was different and that's why we remember him."

"How was he different?" Kurt asked, his curiosity getting the better of him. He stepped out from behind Margali's skirts.

The priest looked up at Margali. "May I? I'm not sure where your beliefs lie."

Margali shrugged. Why not?

The sun was no longer casting colored beams on the floor as Margali wandered up the aisle for what seemed like the thousandth time. She glanced over her shoulder at the pew on which Kurt and Father Dietrich, as he had introduced himself, were sitting. Kurt had shed his coat and was perched on the balls of his feet the way he always did when he was interested in something.

She caught snippets of the conversation; how Jesus was born, the miracles he performed, and finally how he died. Father Dietrich was a good storyteller and very patient, answering each of Kurt's questions in turn. It was strange, she thought, that the first real contact her son had had with anyone outside the circus was taking place in a church, but she shrugged. It seemed fitting somehow. Kurt never did anything in a straight line.

It gave her time to think about what she was going to do about Stephani. Her eldest had never seemed satisfied with their wandering existence. He always talked about homes that couldn't be picked up and moved in an hour and school. He was like his father that way, he had wanted her to stay with him in Italy rather than join her travels. In the end, they broke it off and the only ember of their love that remained was her son's Italianized version her own father's name.

But his treatment of Kurt had shocked her. Was it jealousy of Kurt's natural adaptation to performing that made him want to hurt his brother so? She couldn't find an answer, not without talking to Stephani first. It was not a conversation she looked forward to.

Father Dietrich stood up and straightened his collar. "I'm sure your mother has been waiting long enough. If you have any more questions, you can always come back." He said. Margali stopped her aimless wandering and started toward them.

"Mom!" Kurt shouted and leapt over the back of the pew. Father Dietrich caught him by the shoulder.

"Never do that." He admonished. "This is a church. You must move with reverence and respect when you visit."

Margali almost laughed when she saw how dark his ears and cheeks got. The fact that her youngest blushed purple never failed to amuse her. He looked down at the floor.

"I'm sorry." He said.

"It's okay. You didn't know. Now you do." Father Dietrich said. "You have a fine son. You must be a good mother." He said to Margali.

"I try." She said, feeling herself start to blush. She picked Kurt's discarded coat off the pew and held it out to him. Was this priest _flirting_ with her? Or was it just the way he talked to everyone. She found herself rather scandalously wishing he wasn't a priest.

She took Kurt's hand and they said their goodbyes. Father Dietrich invited them back whenever they wanted to visit and Kurt promised he would. They walked back in the dark; Kurt easily picking out the path with eyes that didn't seem to need as much light as everyone else's.

Back in the familiar confines of their camp Kurt took his coat off and stopped briefly to watch Mary pulling a large suitcase from her trailer.

"Is she leaving because of me?" Kurt asked.

Margali shook her head. "She's leaving because of herself. She's fired, she's not the cook anymore."

Kurt made a silent "oh" with his mouth and they made their way to their trailer. It was empty inside and still dark; none of their lanterns had been lit. She struck a match and the space was quickly filled with the warm orange glow of oil lamps. Kurt sat down at the table and started to nod off so Margali hauled him to his feet and helped him get ready for bed. She was just pulling the blankets over him when Kurt sat bolt upright.

"I'm supposed to be performing!" he said, suddenly panicked.

"It's okay. You're having a night off. Every performer has to have one from time to time, even you." Margali said. She wasn't sure where Kurt's work ethic came from, but he never missed a performance or a practice session.

"But Father Dietrich said that performing was God's plan for me and that if I want to make God happy I should keep doing it. I have to go." Kurt insisted.

"I don't think Father Dietrich meant that you have to do it every minute of the day. He was telling you to keep being who you are. But that doesn't mean that if you've had a hard day you can't take a break. Trust me."

"But…"

Margali put a hand up to silence him. "The show is almost over anyways. You can go on tomorrow if you're so worried about it." She said.

Kurt yawned despite himself. He really was tired. He laid back down and let Margali tuck him in, something she hadn't done in years. "What are you going to do to Stephani?" he asked, his eyes starting to close.

"I'm going to talk to him." Said Margali. She opened her mouth to say more, but was interrupted by the sound of Kurt's snores before she could say anything.

The show was just ending when Margali got to the big tent. She peaked around the canvas flaps from backstage and watched. She caught Stephani's eye as he walked past her with a piece of equipment and he looked away quickly. The audience didn't seem to notice that anything was missing from the show. When the Olsson's took their bow she saw that Lars was wearing Kurt's costume, apparently playing his part that night.

Stephani feigned involvement in the after show clean-up effort, but Margali fixed him with a stare and beckoned him over. He put down the broom he was using to sweep wrappers and debris off the bleachers into the bag Amanda was holding. He glanced at his sister and she shrugged and looked away. Apparently either Lars or Stephani had clued her in to the afternoon's events.

They sat down on the edge of the bleachers.

"I know you're mad. And I know what I did was wrong." Stephani began what sounded like a speech rehearsed over and over in his head.

"I just want to know why." Margali said.

"It's not fair. I want to go away to school. I don't belong here. Kurt does." Stephani said.

"And so out of jealousy you decided to tell your brother things you had no right to say?"

Stephani shook his head. "I was trying to get your attention."

Margali took a deep breath. "Well, now you have it."

"All summer I've asked to go to a real school and you don't listen. Kurt performs, you're teaching Amanda how to tell fortunes, but I don't want to stay with the circus. I want to go to school like a regular kid."

"But, I've told you, we move around too much."

"There are other ways though. But since it's not what you want, you just say 'no' like it doesn't matter."

"What other ways?"

"I could go to a boarding school. I could live at school and then come with you on the holidays." Stephan said.

Margali shook her head. "You're too young."

"I'm not. I'm twelve. That's not too young. I've talked to kids in the audience sometimes. There are lots of schools where I could go. Kurt's only eight and he performs. Why can't I go to school?"

Margali sighed. Maybe Stephani had a point. She had brushed off Stephani's regular requests because they didn't fit in with her plan for him. She'd hoped he'd find his niche in the circus if she just gave him more time. Maybe he would never fit it, perhaps it just wasn't in his nature. "I don't want to reward your actions by saying yes." She said slowly. "But, I don't want to keep you from going if it's that important to you."

Stephani nodded and Margali continued. "So, you will travel with us the rest of the summer. Meanwhile I will find out about schools in Europe that might enroll you. If…" She paused while Stephani made a triumphant gesture. "And only if", she repeated, "If you can pass their entrance exams and they agree to accept you. But you have to earn it. You dug a really big hole for yourself today. It's going to take you awhile to fill it back up." Margali sat back, thinking of Father Dietrich calling her a good mother. Would he have said that if he knew the chaos that had brought them to his church in the first place?

"I know."

"And you have to apologize to your brother, but not now. I don't want it to be because I made you. You'll have to do it when you decide because I want it to come from you."

Stephani nodded. "Is Kurt okay?" He asked.

"He's fine. How's your arm?"

Stephani held his arm up. "It doesn't even hurt anymore." He said, "Where did you guys go?"

"To a church." Margali said.

Stephani looked confused. "Why?" he asked.

"Ask Kurt when you apologize to him." She said.

Stephani nodded and after a moment of hesitation slid on the bench and put his arms around his mother. She pulled him the rest of the way over and squeezed him the same way she had squeezed Kurt so many hours ago. Margali smiled to herself, maybe she wasn't such a bad mother after all.


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: Baptism by Water**

"The bible tells us of miracles and are not miracles the manifestation of strange and unusual powers?"

Kurt didn't perform the next night or the night after that. Instead he went into hiding. He stayed in his bunk, only climbing down out of the shadows when everyone had left the van for the day. Then he scavenged in their food box for breakfast, put on his hooded overcoat and walked back to the church to talk to Father Dietrich.

He liked Father Dietrich. He liked his stories and the way he talked. It made him wonder if he spent all day in a church if he wouldn't talk the same way. Father Dietrich told him all the stories that the colored windows showed and even let him bang on the keys of the organ once. It was fantastic and when Father Dietrich showed him how the noise came from a giant room full of pipes it was even more so.

Since no one bothered him about not performing, he didn't tell anyone that as interesting as his days were, he was starting to miss it. It was strange watching Lars playing his part. He was very good, but Lars didn't look like him or move like he did. Lars didn't have a tail.

Kurt finally understood why whenever he performed he had to play some kind of magical character. He _looked_ like those demon pictures, but he wasn't one. But while performing, he could act like one. Kurt was starting to realize that looking bad and being bad were two different things. And that meant that while Lars could act like him acting like a demon, Kurt could actually be one, even if it was only for an hour or two each night.

The next day Sven found Kurt sitting on the bottom row of the bleachers dressed and ready for practice. He sat down next to him.

"I heard what happened." Sven said.

Kurt put his chin on his knees and stared straight ahead, saying nothing.

"We could change the show." Sven said. "Make your part different."

Kurt shook his head. "No. I can play it better now." He said.

Sven laughed and mussed up Kurt's hair. "Spoken like a true performer." He stood up. "So, are you going to practice or just sit there?"

Kurt jumped to attention. "Practice!" He shouted before racing up the rope to join Lars and the others on the platform.

Margali was surprised to find their trailer empty since Kurt had been hiding in there on and off for the last few days. Actually, she had no idea what Kurt was doing, only what he wasn't. She knew he was not rehearsing or performing. She also knew he wasn't spending the whole day inside the van since she occasionally noticed that both he and his coat were missing at the same time. She assumed he was sleeping and eating though she had to admit she hadn't seen it happening. Margali shrugged and sat down. Appearances aside, there was nothing "normal" about Kurt. He did things his own way.

There was a knock on the door. It was rare anyone actually knocked in the circus. If the door was closed, it meant you didn't want to be disturbed; if it was open, then it was as good as an invitation. She had left the sliding lorry door open.

"Yes." Margali said, trying to crane around and see who was at the door.

"Can I come in?" It was a man's voice. Margali stood up. Father Dietrich was at the door.

"Oh," she said, slightly surprised, "Yes." She pulled the door the rest of the way open. Father Dietrich stepped in and looked around, smiling. Margali was starting to wonder if he ever frowned.

"Truly amazing." He said, taking in their bunks, the tapestries she'd hung to cover the ugly metal walls, the table she'd bolted to the floor. "It's like something from a storybook."

"Except that it's real." Margali said, not sure how to take his comment.

"I mean it's wonderful. To live like this, where the family is important rather than television or the latest gadget. I can see where Kurt gets his…"

"Kurt?" Margali interrupted.

"Well, he's been coming to visit me. Everyday. I assumed you knew."

Margali put her hand to her forehead and then sat down at the table. "I'm sorry." She said. "I'll tell him to stop." Where did Kurt get his tenaciousness she wondered, had she been this intense at eight?

Father Dietrich sat down across from her and took her hand. "You misunderstand me. I don't mind. Actually, I come with a request, on Kurt's behalf. Tea?"

The father's last question broke Margali from her reverie. What was going on? Three days ago she'd found her eldest son calling her youngest a demon. Then they went to church and instead of being chased out, were welcomed. Suddenly Kurt was asking priests to do favors for him? And now she was being asked to make tea? She stood up, slightly unsettled. "What kind do you want?" She asked.

Father Dietrich laughed. "Actually, I was offering to make tea for you. You have quite a collection." He said, gesturing at the small pile of tins sitting on their makeshift cupboard. He stood up and gently put a hand on Margali's shoulder, lowering her back to her seat. He spent a moment looking for matches, and then, upon finding them lit the small kerosene stove and placed the kettle on top.

"The cups are below." Margali said, pointing. Father Dietrich made a small "ah" as he found them and selected two. He looked at the rows of tins for a moment.

"I'm afraid I'm at a loss." He said, "I'm more of a coffee drinker."

Margali leaned over and pulled a yellow tin of fine Indian tea from the middle of the stack. "This is my favorite for drinking." She said.

"Drinking?"

Margali shrugged. "I work as a fortune teller. Most of them are for the leaves." She said.

The priest gave a look of instant understanding. The kettle was whistling so he pulled it off the stove and poured water into the cups that Margali had spooned tea into and sat down. Margali stared into her swirling tealeaves as she watched the water darken. Strange that she had spent so many hours telling others the direction their lives would take by looking into those waters and yet her own family's remained a mystery.

"Kurt wants to be baptized."

Margali looked up, "He…" But she didn't finish the sentence.

Father Dietrich continued, "If I was a better Catholic I suppose I would have granted his request without question; another opportunity to save a soul from eternal damnation." He laughed. "However, since he is your child I felt I should come to you first."

Margali wasn't sure how to answer. She could have asked why or perhaps even how. Instead, for the second time that week Margali found herself recounting the day when, a little over eight years ago she had saved Kurt from that burning house. This time, she included the one detail she had left out of Kurt's version, the final encounter with the priest who had been orchestrating the murder.

Father Dietrich's eyes were downcast when she finished and for the first time Margali was aware that, no, he did not always smile. He shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry that happened." He said with a deep sigh, "There are those who say that these people being born with mutations are abominations, that they go against God. I don't understand it. The bible tells us of miracles and are not miracles the manifestation of strange and unusual powers? I don't understand how Kurt's abilities can be seen as anything but God's work. And his appearance, is it not the most important message of all? Not to judge with your eyes, but with your heart and your faith." Father Dietrich paused, staring into the swirling remains of his tea. "But I understand why you would say no."

"I'm not saying no." Margali said. "I don't know why I told you that story. Maybe I just wanted you to understand."

Father Dietrich slid his cup across the table. "What do you see?" he asked.

Margali smiled. "As every good fortune teller knows, our destinies can't be determined by a cup of tea. Kurt was having a very bad day, he met you and you were kind to him. It doesn't surprise me that he would want to do what you ask."

"But I didn't ask. I never even mentioned the possibility. He came to me." Father Dietrich said.

The tealeaves in Father Dietrich's cup were settling to the bottom. Margali watched them in silence. "How would you do it?" She asked.

"Normally baptisms are performed during mass, but for obvious reasons I think for Kurt's sake, it should be more private." Father Dietrich said. "I thought perhaps after mass on Sunday."

"If it doesn't interfere with the performance schedule." Margali said. Planning Kurt's baptism was the last thing in the world she ever thought she would be doing. In fact if a day earlier her tealeaves had foretold such an event, she would have given up fortunetelling as a true and utter scam. And yet, her she was.

It was to be their last performance before moving on. Normally, on weekends when they played twice a day, the hours between shows were spent resting. Circus performance was in many ways more grueling than any other form of theater. For the audience to be properly amazed, they tested the limits of their strength and abilities anew every time.

However, after their Sunday afternoon show, everybody changed from their costumes into their nicest clothes and followed the path out of their camp to the church that had overlooked their home for the last week and a half.

Father Dietrich had arranged everything. He wanted to the church empty so he made sure to clear the place out after mass that morning. He could still smell the incense in the air. He decided to perform a second, shorter mass so that any Catholics in the circus could take communion and confess if they wanted. It was a lot of work, but he liked Kurt and during their long talks he imagined that the boy was exactly what a Christian should be. He was generous and kind, and because of his upbringing, completely naïve to so many of society's worse aspects. He would learn about them someday no doubt, but in the meantime Father Dietrich would show him how to show his love to God in the hopes that when that day came, God would stand watch over Kurt. It seemed farfetched, but it was what Father Dietrich believed.

The service was short and afterwards they gathered on the rectory lawn for a light lunch prepared by the church's woman's guild. Out in the bright sunshine it was hard to imagine that in less than an hour they would have to change back into their costumes and perform again. Kurt, who normally liked to be in the middle of the action sat slightly apart, perched on the lowest branch of a tree. It didn't seem right to go jumping around making jokes when you'd just been baptized.

He looked down and saw Stephani standing below. Kurt slid over on the branch and put a hand down to help Stephani climb up. Stephani sat on the branch with his back against the tree trunk. The two of them said nothing for several minutes.

"Father Dietrich is nice." Stephani said at last, more to fill up the silence than anything else. He and Kurt hadn't spoken since that day in the trailer.

"He is." Kurt agreed.

There was more silence. Stephani pulled at a few leaves, shredding them in his hands. "Did you do this because of me? Getting Baptized I mean." Stephani asked.

Kurt shook his head. "I did it because I wanted to." He said. "It just seemed like the right thing to do."

"I thought maybe it was because…" Stephani paused while he brushed the leaf bits out of his hands. "I thought it was maybe because of what I told you."

"In a way it was. Mom told me all the stuff that happened when she found me and it made me think about how lucky I was."

"Lucky?" Stephani asked. "How is that lucky?"

"Well, if the circus hadn't driven by my house, I wouldn't be alive. So maybe God wanted me here. And maybe, it was a circus and not something else because then I could be an acrobat. That means that God wanted me to look like this, because it makes me a really good acrobat." Kurt shrugged. "I just thought I should thank Him, that's all."

Stephani laughed. "I hadn't thought of it that way."

"Neither had I. But it kind of makes sense doesn't it." Kurt said, gesturing at himself.

"That's what you've been doing all week, thinking about why God made you look like you do?"

"Pretty much." Kurt said. "So I guess I should thank you too."

"Why? I was horrible to you." Stephani felt his face flush remembering the things he said to his brother.

"Yeah, but I did wonder sometimes why I looked different. Why I was the only one with a tail. Now I know and it's because of you that I found out."

"I used to wish I looked like you." Stephani said suddenly.

Kurt looked surprised. "Really? Why?"

"Because everyone liked you and you could do all these things that no one else could do. I felt like I didn't fit in and you did so perfectly. It must seem silly to you, especially now."

Kurt shook his head. "No. I always liked the way I looked too."

Stephani wasn't sure whether to laugh or start crying. The whole week he'd dreaded this moment. He'd expected Kurt to be angry with him, to scream at him. But instead they were having this quiet conversation on a tree branch. It wasn't what he expected at all. "I'm really sorry Kurt." He said at last.

"It's okay, I've already forgiven you." Kurt said.

"You have?" Stephani asked.

"Well, you've always been a really good brother. So, when I thought about that, it didn't seem right that I should be angry with you over just one thing. Do you really think you don't fit in?"

Stephani sighed. "Yeah. There doesn't seem to be anything I'm really good at, anything I really want to do."

Kurt nodded in empathy.

"That's why I was so mean to you." Stephani admitted. "I thought maybe I could make you run away so mom would notice me and do what I wanted."

Kurt furrowed his brow. "What do you think you would be good at?" He asked.

Stephani shrugged. "I want to go to a real school." He said. "I just want to learn stuff that's all. Things I can't learn here."

"But that would mean you'd have to leave wouldn't it?"

"Yeah. But I would come back during the summer." Stephani said.

"I'd miss you. But I don't think you should stay here if you don't think it's right for you. Maybe you could tell me all the things you learned at school when you come back." Kurt said, brightening at the idea.

"If mom lets me go. She's mad at me because of what happened."

It looked like everybody was getting up to leave. It was time to get ready for their evening performance. Kurt stood up, balancing on the branch without a waver. "We should go." He said. "I'll make sure mom lets you go to school."

Kurt let Stephani hold onto his tail for balance while he climbed down and then swung down from the branch himself. Together they started down the hill to where the tent and that night's performance waited. They had been the last to leave so they jogged most of the way until they caught up.

Father Dietrich watched them go, amazed by the conversation he'd just overheard. He hadn't meant to eavesdrop; his intention had been to give Kurt a gift. It didn't matter though. He had planned to see them off in the morning anyway. It had certainly been an interesting week. There was one thing he was sure of though and that was that baptizing the boy who looked like a demon was the right thing to do; it secured Kurt's place in heaven with the angels where he truly belonged.

Kurt didn't want to leave the next morning. The roustabouts had struck most of the main tent overnight and now were packing the loose odds and ends into the last truck. He sat in the doorway of their van, listlessly watching them. It was the first time Kurt ever wished they weren't always moving around. He'd never had a friend who didn't already travel with them. He'd never known the pain of leaving someone behind until today.

He was considering running back to the church one last time just to say goodbye and to thank Father Dietrich for yesterday when he saw a familiar figure walking towards him. Kurt jumped up and waved.

"Father Dietrich!" They met on the path and walked back to Margali's trailer. "I was going to come up and say goodbye." Kurt said returning to his seat in the truck's door.

Father Dietrich smiled and sat down next to him. "Well, I came down instead. I wanted to give you something." He handed Kurt a small plain box. "These are for you." He said.

Kurt slowly opened the box and gasped. He lifted out the bible and rosary that were inside.

"Your mother said you could read German." Father Dietrich said. Kurt nodded affirmatively. "And this rosary belonged to my grandmother. It was my gift to her when her hands became too weak to hold her old one. Now she's gone so I wanted you to have it. The beads are large, I thought it would be easier for you because of your…" Father Dietrich paused, slightly shocked that after the events of this week it made him uncomfortable to talk about Kurt's hands.

"Because of my fingers." Kurt finished. "It's perfect. I'll carry it always." He said. He slipped it into his pocket as though he couldn't wait to begin.

"Inside the bible is my address." Father Dietrich said. "You can write me whenever you like."

Kurt opened it and looked at the inside cover. Written in neat script it read, "Never forget that your uniqueness is God's gift to you. However you chose to use it is how you will love and serve Him best. – Your friend, Hans Dietrich" Below it was the church's address.

"Saying 'thank you' doesn't seem like enough." Kurt said.

"It's plenty." Father Dietrich said. "Use them well." He stood up. "It looks like it's time for you to go."

Kurt looked around the bare earth where their tent had equipment had stood and nodded. He was still watching Father Dietrich's retreating silhouette when Margali got in the truck and started it. Stephani and Amanda joined them and took up their usual positions on the floor cushions, preparing for the drive ahead. Kurt sat down next to them and thumbed through the pages on his new bible, already looking forward to next summer when they would come back again.


	8. Chapter 7

_**Chapter 7: Amanda**_

"_You know what this is? It's a perfect moment."_

The tents had been cleared hours ago, all the lights extinguished, and except for two people, everyone was asleep.

Kurt and Amanda lay on their backs atop the roof of their van facing opposite directions so they could lay their heads on each other's shoulders. It was just something they did sometimes; so they could look at the sky as they talked. When you were on display in some way or another most of the day, moments of private reflection were even more important.

"There's another one." Amanda pointed towards a streak of light. Then there were two more in quick succession in another part of the sky.

"We're really lucky." Kurt said. "It's such a clear night."

"Mmmmm."

They lay in silence, watching the streaks of light peppering the sky.

"You know what this is?" Amanda said after nearly ten minutes.

"What?"

"It's a perfect moment."

Kurt didn't say anything. It was perfect. The air was the temperature of his skin and there was hardly even a breeze. He could smell the clean scent of Amanda's hair and feel the shift of her body with each breath. With all the shooting stars in the sky that night, if he could have combined all his wishes in to one, he would have wished that the night would never end; and that he and Amanda could stay like this forever.


	9. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8: Sigils**

"Father Dietrich always tells me that God made me like this as a message. Sometimes I get tired of being a messenger."

Margali ripped the paper off the door and crumpled it in her hands. "Not another one." She said.

"What are they" Kurt asked, gently taking the paper from her and unfolding it. There was a picture on it, just a simple line drawing, like a scribble but more orderly.

"They're just pictures Kurt." Margali said. "Throw it away."

But Kurt didn't throw it away. When Margali wasn't looking he smoothed the paper out and put it under his pillow with the rest of the drawings they had found tacked to their door since Margali's relatives arrived. He still didn't know what they were and they seemed to make Margali angry, but he thought they were beautiful. He climbed into his bed and, laying on his stomach with his tail curled above him like a giant question mark, pulled a few of the others out and looked at them in the dim light. Margali turned around and he quickly shoved them back under his pillow.

"How long are your sister and her family staying" Kurt asked.

"Not for very much longer I hope." Margali said, glaring at them through the front windshield.

Kurt said nothing since it didn't seem polite to tell her that he didn't like her relatives either. Martuska Szardos and her family were true gypsies, traveling around Europe, settling in one place for as little as a week or as long as a year. Martuska had married a Spaniard, another Rom named Franco. They had several children and with the addition of Franco's two brothers, their wives, and children, they were nearly a traveling village.

When they had first arrived Kurt had been excited. He'd never met any of Margali's family before. Unfortunately, whereas Margali had found her mother's expulsion from the tribe liberating, her sister did not. She clearly was bitter over her mother's transgression and appeared to blame Margali as well. Kurt, it seemed was the last straw. Neither Martuska, nor her family would look at him; instead they called him "beng", hissed at him, and made shooing motions with their hands whenever he walked past.

"They're the one's putting the pictures on the door." Kurt said.

Margali sighed and leaned against the bed, her chin on folded arms. Then she slid one hand under the pillow and pulled out the slightly crumpled papers.

"I like them." Kurt said sheepishly and was surprised when Margali started laughing.

"Oh, the irony." Margali said in response to his questioning look. "They're sigils, Kurt. Magical symbols that are supposed to call down angels from heaven."

Kurt took one of the pages out of her hand and stared at it. "Do they really work" he asked.

Margali shrugged. Her magic didn't involve angels or rituals. She glanced at the crucifix hung above Kurt's bed. His did though.

"Why are they on our door then" he asked.

"Because of you." Margali said after a long pause.

"They're afraid of me." Kurt said quietly.

Margali opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. There was so much she could have said, but even she couldn't untangle the thoughts in her head. It galled her that members of her family, who had been persecuted for generations, could be so closed minded, so superstitious. She had managed to keep Kurt within the protective circle of the circus and a few trusted friends for 13 years. He'd hardly known prejudice; the other performers treated him as an equal and every night he performed in front of hundreds of people. His uniqueness had been celebrated instead of scorned. But she couldn't protect him forever.

Margali reached out and smoothed his hair. "I think they're afraid of both of us. The sigils on the door are supposed to scare you away and stop me from conjuring any more demons."

Kurt took the rest of papers back. "But you didn't conjure me."

Margali laughed. "It has to do with the magic of my mother that she passed down to me. My sister has come to believe it is demon magic destined to cover the lands in evil." She rolled her eyes. "Apparently she found Christianity and so now anybody who believes anything else is evil. Stupid." Margali practically spit the last word out.

Kurt frowned and moved away from her. Margali looked stricken. "Kurt, I'm sorry. That was unkind of me." She said.

"Do you think I believe that?" He asked.

"Of course not. You wouldn't want to stay here if you did. If my sister believed in your God, I don't think she'd be so eager to drive you away."

"Maybe if you told her about my…" Kurt began.

"I tried," Margali said with a deep sigh, "She's just an angry woman. She can't see past your appearance because she doesn't want to. One of the unfortunate side effects of being different is that some people will refuse to understand." She looked at her son, sitting on a blanket that was almost as brightly colored as he was. His clothes, most of which were made for him by the Lysette, who had since retired as a performer and now made all of their costumes, were cut from the leftover fabric. Even in the dimness of his bunk, it was hard to imagine anyone so colorful appearing the least bit threatening.

"I wish I could show people." Kurt said.

Margali smiled. "You do. Every night."

"That's true." Kurt said, turning over onto his back. He played Nightcrawler as a sort of naughty, but ultimately harmless demon imp. Audiences had never been anything but appreciative, particularly when he did something to try to trip up the other performers. Then again when the show was over it was as though their appreciation faded. It was not unusual for folks to hang around after the show to chat with the performers. Kurt always enjoyed it, but he couldn't help noticing that they always seemed a little shyer around him than anyone else. It made him wish that just once he could spend an hour looking like everyone else to see how they would really react to him.

Kurt stretched, putting his hands over his head and lengthening his spine to the tip of his tail. "Father Dietrich always tells me that God made me like this as a message." He said. Finishing his stretch he sat up and dangled his legs off the edge of the bed. "Sometimes I get tired of being a messenger."

Margali took another glance out the window at the tiny enclave of cars and tents that defined her sister's area of the camp. "I know you are Kurt." She said. But it's only going to get worse, she added silently.


	10. Chapter 9

_**Chapter 9: Traumatic Incident Number Two**_

_"But how? How can a person go from one place to another in the blink of an eye"_

Kurt was beginning to see why they called lust one of the seven deadly sins. If it hadn't been for lust, his lust unfortunately, he wouldn't be in this situation. He climbed a few branches higher and looked down. Surely they couldn't see him up here. A moment later he heard voices and the barking of a large dog, which stopped under his tree. Kurt held his breath but the dog looked up and started barking anyway.

"Shhh." He put his finger to his lips, but the dog kept up its baying. Kurt shut his eyes, leaning against the tree trunk, trying to blend in as much as possible.

The girl's name had been Lola, at least that's what she said her name was. Now that Kurt thought about it, he couldn't imagine anyone really being named Lola, especially not in rural France. She was about 15 with auburn hair that fell around her shoulders in soft ringlets. She had come to see the circus; he'd spotted her in the audience the first night. She was dressed provocatively, not to the point where she looked sleazy, but in a way that gave Kurt _ideas_.

He couldn't help but notice her again in the audience the night after that. On the third night she stayed after the performance was over and gave him a rose. At the time he'd been both surprised and pleased, but Lars had teased him about it so mercilessly that he pretended he didn't care. He'd left the dressing area, still carrying the rose when Lola stepped out of the shadows.

"Don't you ever take your costume off?" She'd asked.

For the first time in his life Kurt was speechless. "Um. Yeah. Most of it." He'd managed after a moment of stammering.

Lola gave a coy smile, showing straight white teeth offset by pink lipstick. "That's okay. I like that."

It hadn't taken very long for her to convince Kurt that they should find a private spot where he could take the rest of his costume off. Thinking back on it, he supposed that something about her made him ignore the part of his brain that was telling him he couldn't take the rest of his costume off no matter who was asking.

They'd kissed under a large poplar tree and it had been wonderful. Unfortunately it was interrupted by the discovery that his ears didn't come off. This was immediately followed by the realization that his tail was permanently attached. It wasn't long before Kurt was sitting alone under the tree wondering how he would ever get a girlfriend even if it was for only one evening. He certainly hadn't expected her father to show up the next day.

He hadn't shown up alone either; he had friends with him and a large dog straining against its leash. The three men, each with a shotgun under their arm had marched into their camp. It was one of the rare moments when nobody was there but Kurt. It was threatening rain so everyone was sitting under the tent. Kurt was only there because he'd wanted to grab something to eat from their van.

Kurt had been chased before. He sometimes even made a game of it though if Margali had caught him she would have skinned him. Usually people who caught a glimpse of him simply wanted to chase him away, not catch him. And on the occasion that someone did get it into their head to capture him, he kept the game up until he was tired of it and then hid in the shadows until his pursuers got bored and went away. No one had ever chased him with a gun.

"We've got him. He's up there."

Kurt looked down in dismay. The three men milled around beneath the tree. The dog was still barking but they couldn't see him. Lola's father brought the shotgun to his shoulder and aimed up into the branches.

"This will show the little creep was happens to freaks who take advantage of my daughter." He fired the gun into the tree, much too close for Kurt's comfort. He shielded his face against a shower of shattered branches. This was getting to be too much. He inched out on to the branch as far as he could and leapt into the closest tree.

He caught the tip of a branch, which bent crazily for a moment until he scrambled up to where it was thick enough to support his weight. He crossed around the tree trunk and ran out onto another branch until he was close enough to leap to the next tree. The noise alerted the dog and the three men followed, firing their shotguns up into the trees as he went. None of their shots came close; Kurt realized they could hear him, but they couldn't see him. They continued this way until Kurt ran out of trees.

"I didn't mean to scare her." Kurt called down in French. The result was a spray of twigs and needles as a shotgun blast was fired in his direction. He climbed a little higher. "Please, I'll come down and we can talk about it. I'm sorry. Just stop shooting at me."

"No point Demon boy, I don't forgive rapists." This pronouncement was followed by several more blasts from various shotguns. The tree was getting awfully thin. Kurt was shocked. Rape? He'd kissed her and then she'd tried to rip his ears off. How was that rape? Maybe he'd heard him wrong.

"I don't understand. My French isn't that great. Do you know German or…" But his attempt at diplomacy was interrupted when he had to duck another spray of foliage. A large portion of the trunk uncomfortably close to his head had been blown out.

"I said you were a rapist. Die Vergewaltigung," was the reply. Kurt's heart sank: he'd heard the man right the first time. But he hadn't forced her to do anything. It had been her idea.

"No. That's not true. I would never do such a thing." Kurt called down as he climbed a bit higher. He was running out of tree.

"Are you calling my daughter a liar?"

Kurt swallowed. "No, I just…" The branch under him cracked and gave way. He tried to leap back to the trunk, but there wasn't enough leverage. He fell, branches holding him for a moment and then snapping under his weight as he dropped. Kurt shut his eyes. "Please God, please let me be anywhere but here," he prayed silently. There was a deafening crack, followed by a sensation that wasn't quite pain and for a moment Kurt wondered if he'd been shot. He hit the ground so hard it knocked the wind out of him and the world went black.

It was the feeling of being cold that made Kurt open his eyes. He'd never suffered from vertigo before and for the first time he realized how terrible it was as the world spun and tilted around him. The strange thing was that he was staring at the grey sky. The tree was gone, and he was alone. He sat up, trying to clear his head, and realized with a start that he was naked. With a cry of surprise Kurt staggered to his feet. Had those men done something to him? Had they taken his clothes? But when he looked down he was fine, just naked. Where had his clothes gone?

Kurt looked around. He was standing near a clump of bushes about twenty feet from their main tent. How had he gotten here, he wondered. He'd run away from the camp away from the tents, not toward them. Had God heard his prayer and somehow moved him? Put him here to keep him safe? Kurt was contemplating this when there was a flash of light accompanied by a loud "bamf" sound. There was a man standing there with his hands clasped behind his back. He was very well dressed in a fine suit and tie. Kurt dove into the bushes.

"Modest are we?" The man said. He was German or at least he was speaking German.

Kurt peeked out from behind the branches. "Hello?" He said tentatively.

The man smiled. "Ah. There you are. Well, come out. Let me see you."

Kurt blanched. "Who are you?" He asked, shifting to hide himself better.

"You don't know?" The stranger scratched his chin. "That _is_ interesting. I'm surprised you're alive actually. Until just a few hours ago, I'd completely lost track of you."

"You know me?"

"Of course I know you. You were born just outside of Oberammergau, in some Godforsaken little Barvarian village without a name. A well meaning priest set fire to the house where you and your apparently dead mother lay, but an even more well meaning gypsy woman ran in and saved you. She named you Kurt, after the circus strong man. You started putting yourself on display for the entertainment of others when you were six. Have I left anything out?"

"A priest?" Kurt said in surprise. Margali never told him that part of the story. "What kind of priest?"

"I don't know." The man said, irritation apparent in his voice. "The kind with crosses and those little white collar things. Now are you going to come out or not?"

Kurt shook his head.

The man sighed. "Fine." He pulled one hand from behind his back to reveal Kurt's clothes, neatly folded. He tossed them over the bush. Not bothering to wonder why this man had his clothes, Kurt dressed hurriedly and started searching his pockets.

"Looking for this?"

Kurt looked up and saw that the man had taken the other hand from behind his back to reveal Kurt's rosary dangling casually from an outstretched finger. Kurt stepped forward out of the bushes.

"Yes." He said firmly. "Give it to me."

The stranger laughed. "Suit yourself." He said and tossed it over. Kurt quickly looped it around one of the belt loops of his pants so he didn't lose it again. The man was now circling around him as though looking for flaws in a piece of sculpture.

"You know you have your mother's eyes, but the rest of you is the spitting image of me." He said.

"I've got what? Who are you?" Kurt said in disbelief. Other than the dark curls, the man looked nothing like him. He was …normal.

"Ah. Does this help." The change was so gradual that Kurt didn't notice it was happening first, but a transformation was taking place, the man's skin reddening and his posture shifting until Kurt could see that the man had been right. Other than the color of his skin, Kurt looked just like him. He swallowed hard.

"Would I be repeating myself if I asked you who you were?" Kurt said in a small voice.

The man smiled. "Yes, but I'll answer it anyway. I'm your father."

Kurt didn't quite know how to take this news. It was hard to believe that a few minutes ago a man accusing him of being a rapist was chasing him. Now, in a totally different place _another_ man, with a _tail_, was telling him that he was his son. Kurt narrowed his eyes, "How can you be my father? My father died."

"You did see my little trick a moment ago didn't you?"

"Yes."

"So, I can appear as whomever I like. A talent you apparently don't have."

Kurt looked down at his hands. "Apparently not." He said. "But Margali never mentioned you. How did you get out of the house?"

To Kurt's surprise the man burst into hysterical laughter. "Not too bright are you?" He said, "I'd say you yourself discovered the answer to that question a little while ago."

"I did?"

The man gestured around them. "How do you think you got here?" He pointed off into the distance. "You were over there before."

Kurt scratched his head. "Yeah, I was."

"Well then, how do you think you ended up here?" He gave Kurt an indulgent smile, like he was humoring a little child.

Kurt said the only possible explanation he could think of. "God?"

The man widened his eyes in disbelief and his fit of laughter lasted for several minutes. He wiped the tears from his eyes. "God? Don't be ridiculous. I'll give you another guess."

"You?"

"Closer. Three guesses then."

Kurt shrugged. "That leaves me. Or something I don't know about."

"Let's go with you for now." The man said.

"Okay. But how? How can a person go from one place to another in the blink of an eye?" Kurt asked. He didn't like this man claiming to be his father, but his curiosity was certainly piqued. There had to be some explanation to how he'd ended up here.

The man looked at his watch. "I can see this is going to take a while. Too long, actually. I'll let you figure that one out for yourself. Goodbye then."

"Wait!" Kurt shouted before the man could disappear.

"Yes?"

"Who was my mother?"

The man smiled. "Your mother was…complicated. Another conversation perhaps."

"Another question then." Kurt said. It was odd that even though this man had appeared before him in the strangest of ways, Kurt believed him. "What is your name?"

"Ah. I believe your foster mother has some very informative books on that subject. I can't give anything away at once can I?" The man bent down and with his finger drew a series of marks in the dirt. They glowed from behind as though lit by fire. "Do you recognize this?" He asked.

Kurt bent down and examined the shapes. He let out a gasp. "I do." He said. They were the markings that Margali's sister had put on their door to scare him away when she had visited last year. He had transferred them neatly onto a smaller piece of paper that was now folded and tucked into the pages of his bible. He looked up. "But this is angel writing. You don't look like an angel." Kurt paused. "Neither do I."

The indulgent smile that Kurt was already learning to hate was back. At least the man wasn't laughing this time. "You know," he said, "You might not be as stupid as I first thought but you are definitely somewhat…quaint." Kurt glowered at him.

"Demons and angels are one in the same. They just have different agendas if you get my meaning." He clapped Kurt on the back. "You'll get it all figured out one day I'm sure." He pointed at the mark, which was fading into the dirt. "Draw it in the ground." He said. "Add a drop of your blood. I'll know it's you and I'll come."

"Now," he said, standing up. "Though you did travel here in the 'blink of an eye' as you said, you might be interested to know that you've been lying in this field unconscious for hours not minutes. I believe it's almost time to put yourself on display again."

"But I…" Kurt's response was cut short by a burst of dark smoke as the man left in the same manner in which he had arrived. Kurt looked around feeling vaguely disoriented. He still wasn't sure what had happened to him. Even leaving out the man who had just appeared and disappeared in front of his eyes, exactly what had he done to get himself out of that tree and into this field? And how had he gotten out of his clothes? He scratched his head, wondering if perhaps he had dreamed the whole thing.

A break in the clouds showed him that it was indeed getting to be towards evening. Everyone was probably already getting ready and wondering where he was. Kurt started to jog back towards their camp when an idea occurred to him. Could he really just zap himself from one place to another? It would certainly be quicker than running. Kurt shut his eyes and asked God to take him to his trailer. He opened them. He was still standing in the field behind the tent. Feeling a little silly he started to jog towards the camp. It was definitely the strangest day he'd ever had.

Author's note:

I originally was going to leave Nightcrawler's canon parents out of the story. Mystique has way too many offspring and the whole thing with Azazel was just too odd. While I was looking for a good image of the enochian symbols on Nightcrawler's face I ran across this page and changed my mind.

http: whole thing is interesting, but here is the key paragraph:

"Enoch is the fabled author of a number of mystical and magical texts that deal largely with the fallen angels of God, known collectively as the Watchers, whose task it was to watch over humanity from the four Watchtowers at the corners of creation. These Watchers observed that human women were beautiful and lusted after them. A group of Watchers, led by an angel known by a variety of names, among them Azazel, descended to the earth and adopted material forms so that they could dwell with mortal women. Their consorts bore them sons and daughters who were half-human and half-angelic."

So, Kurt's father remains the same. I don't really deal with the whole Mystique thing at all. In fact it's really up to the reader. If you like Mystique as his mother, then the midwife is Mystique giving an Oscar worthy performance in order to escape and the woman on the bed is the midwife after Mystique killed her. (And arranging for a priest to burn down your house is apparently equally ineffective as throwing your child over a waterfall.) If you don't like Mystique as his mother then that really was a midwife, his real mother was really on the bed, and Mystique has nothing to do with any of it. Other than comment about Kurt's eyes, which could mean anything really, I give no clues about who it is. Therefore, the choice is yours…

(As you may notice, the page is on Elijah Wood's site. I surfed around for a few minutes and have since decided that Elijah Wood is completely insane. Check out his site and you'll see what I mean. It's scary. And he's so earnest about it that it's even scarier. My only hope is that this is some kind of hoax.)


	11. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10: Wolfgang Wagner**

"I spent four years living in New York City. I've seen folks a whole lot scarier than you."

Kurt was fourteen years old when Wolfgang Wagner was hired for the winter to repaint all of Circus Gehlhaar's props and lorries. Kurt was already a veteran performer and one of the star attractions of the circus. He never tired of learning new things and over the years had branched out from trapeze work with Lycka På Himmelen. His tight wire work had improved since his clumsy first attempt and he was now skilled in several forms of acrobatics and balancing. Along with Sven, Sven's brother Nils, and Lars he was exploring a new type of act called the Russian Bar where a single acrobat performed on a springy 10 foot bar held by porters at either end. Kurt could already jump nearly three feet above his own height and when his leap was timed with Sven and Nils using the leverage of the bar to toss him, he could nearly touch the tent's roof. The only difficulty was landing back on the bar.

Despite his age, he didn't seem to suffer from the usual adolescent awkwardness. Margali couldn't help but notice though, that as he got older the features that had made him so endearing as a child, were no longer as cute. At the same time Margali could tell that Kurt yearned to see the world up close, not looking down at it from 20 feet above. It was as though his appearance was constantly at odds with his desires. He remained as fascinated by Christianity as ever and Margali had gotten used to it. Even so, she had to admit that the sight of her demon son kneeling on the floor each night to say his prayers was one of the most amusing and ironic things she had ever seen.

Wolfgang Wagner was from Salzburg, the son of a wealthy Austrian businessman whose family holdings extended all over Europe. He was 22 years old and had gone to school in America to study art. He was fluent in six languages and was as eloquent in any of them as he was in his native German. When he spoke English it was with an American accent. He was a brilliant, charismatic, and possibly the most handsome man Margali had ever seen. Given the number and variety of women he entertained in his tent, Margali was sure that she wasn't the only one who found him attractive. He was Amanda's first crush and was everything that Kurt wasn't and yet longed to be.

Margali had been suspicious of him at first on general principal. She didn't like rich kids who thought it would be fun to run away with the circus for a few months before they went out and got real jobs. But after he had been there several weeks even she wasn't immune to his charm. While Wolfgang's parents may have thought he was running away for the winter, Wolfgang himself did not. Instead of a spoiled brat, she was surprised to find that in addition to all his other qualities he was a sensitive artist who wanted nothing to do with his family's money or business.

Kurt carefully avoided him. Past experience had made him wary of strangers, particularly any new person who came to work for Circus Gehlhaar. He didn't want to frighten them and so he didn't force his presence on anyone until they made the first move. It made him appear to be much shier than he was. This put him at odds with Amanda though. He was closest to his sister and after Wolfgang arrived she seemed determined to be where ever he was.

They were spending the winter near Barcelona. After two winters in Albania it made a nice change. The circus made an extended stop for several months each winter in order to refresh their tents and equipment as well as work on new acts for the coming year. They had rented a large plot of land a few miles outside of the seaside town of Canet de Mar where they could pitch their tents and enjoy a bit of nature as well. Winter meant work as well as play. Even so, they usually played a few small engagements around the area to try out their new routines on an audience.

There was a large carnival being held in Barcelona and so they packed up their half painted props and tents for a two day journey to play there. They planned on staying a week before returning to Canet de Mar.

Wolfgang, who had never seen the circus perform outside of their practice sessions tagged a long. Free from the job of painting sets and equipment he had stretched a few canvases and brought his oil paints. Wolfgang was hoping to put together a series of paintings chronicling the activities of the circus in addition to his obligation to Circus Gehlhaar. He was sitting "backstage" at an angle where he could see the crowd starting to fill the stands.

He wasn't sure if he wanted to go for realism or a more impressionistic approach. He loved the shapes and lean definition of the performers, but there was a certain beauty to their performances caught as streaks of movement against the multicolored blur of the audience. He wasn't actually painting, just thinking. Last night had been the opening of the carnival and so Wolfgang had sat in the stands like a tourist. Tonight he wanted a look from the performer's view. Paintings of circus performers from an audience eye view were certainly interesting, but he thought paintings from the vantage points of the artists would be even more so.

Across from him two of the members of the trapeze troupe ran up and poked their heads around the tent flaps, looking at the audience. Wolfgang could never seem to pronounce the name of the troupe properly. No matter how many times Sven pronounced for him, the acrobat always shook his head sadly when Wolfgang repeated it back. At least they had German and Russian in common. He recognized them as the two teenage members of the troupe, Kurt and Lars.

He'd been told about Kurt when he accepted the job. Apparently their had been some problems in the past with him and the staff. Wolfgang had only met one other mutant, a girl at NYU. She could push things. She didn't touch them, just gestured at them, pantomiming the action and they jumped forward. They lived in the same dormitory and Nina would entertain her fellow dorm-mates by occasionally pushing books and pencils around. It made for an amusing study break. He had no idea how powerful she was until once a few of them went out to a scrap yard and she showed them how she could move trucks and buses around with the same ease that she sent pens and pencils skittering across the desks.

Nina had looked like everyone else; Kurt didn't. What was really amazing to Wolfgang though was that Kurt didn't seem to notice or care. Around the other performers he was completely at ease and they were with him. Unfortunately despite several attempts, Wolfgang had never been able to introduce himself. It seemed that he was the only member of the circus Kurt wasn't comfortable with.

They hadn't noticed him, which was fine with Wolfgang. He ducked away out of sight so Kurt wouldn't suddenly find a need to vacate the premises. It would have made a great painting actually. The two of them were halfway in costume, the top halves of their leotards tied around their waists so they could wear t-shirts. Kurt was pointing into the stands, but Wolfgang couldn't make out the conversation since it was entirely in Swedish. It didn't matter though; it was just a wonderful simple image of two performers having a friendly moment before they stepped into the light. He opened his sketchbook, throwing down as many quick posture sketches as he could before Kurt popped around the other side of the curtain and dashed out of sight.

At first Wolfgang thought he'd been spotted, but Lars was still looking out into the stands. Wolfgang folded up his sketchpad and walked over to see what it was that was so interesting.

"Hello." Lars addressed him in German. Wolfgang smiled and returned the greeting. He was about to ask when Lars started laughing. He responded to Wolfgang's look of confusion by pointing into the stands again. "He's so insane." Lars said.

Wolfgang looked out across the ring and saw the Kurt had climbed up the back of the bleachers to the highest row and was now strolling down the aisle as though looking for a seat. "What's he doing" Wolfgang asked.

"He just loves messing with everybody. His mom gets so pissed." Lars said.

Kurt was pretty funny actually. He walked down to where a family was sitting and pointed at an empty spot five people in. After a moment of conversation with the man on the end, Kurt leapt over their heads and nimbly landed in the empty spot. The site of nearly everyone around him jumping in surprise started both Wolfgang and Lars laughing.

"He tells them he's tired of performing and just wants to watch the show." Lars told him. "Then after a little while, I go fetch him. It's pretty funny what people do. A couple times they've argued with me to let him stay. I have no idea why."

Wolfgang was about to ask for an explanation but he could see for himself. Kurt appeared to be pretending that his tail, to them a piece of his costume, had a piece of wire in it so that he could bend it into a shape and it would stay that way. He was a pretty convincing mime except he always bent it into positions where it was sticking in front of his neighbor's face or poking the people behind him. The whole time he looked terribly apologetic about it.

"I see what you mean." Wolfgang said. "No one figures it out"

"Nope. But Margali's always afraid someone will. Once she went and got him instead of me. It was hysterical." Lars said. He did an exaggerated, but very convincing impression of Kurt leaping in surprise and then dropping down into his characteristic crouch with his hands over his head as though to ward off a blow. Wolfgang laughed as Lars stood up.

Wolfgang was still trying to keep all the relationships straight. "Margali, the fortune teller? She's his mother" He asked. Lars nodded.

"So Amanda is his sister."

"Yeah. And his older brother is away at school. Kurt's the youngest." Lars watched for another minute of so and then said"I better go get him."

Wolfgang was suddenly struck with an idea. "Let me go." He said. "Pretend that Margali sent me."

Lars grinned. "That's so mean. But, pretty funny. Yeah, go, but I get to watch." He said.

Wolfgang jogged around the edge of the ring and climbed the steps to where Kurt was sitting. He'd apparently gotten his tail problems sorted out and was being offered popcorn by a little girl in the row in front of him. Her father must have asked him a question about the trapeze, because at the same time he was explaining the basics of catching and flying in careful but broken Spanish.

Wolfgang hated to break it up actually. Everyone had been nothing short of alarmed when Kurt had first jumped into their midst, but it had melted into a friendly exchange. At first it seemed odd to Wolfgang that Kurt would so willingly expose himself to so many strangers when he was so obviously shy around him. Then he realized that the only difference between him and these people was that he knew Kurt's costume didn't come off when the show was over. Kurt used his own appearance as camouflage and as long as he had an audience who believed he was Nightcrawler, he was safe. He couldn't hide from Wolfgang.

But now it was his turn to act. "Hey Kurt." He stage whispered. Nothing. "Nightcrawler." Kurt didn't notice at first until someone tapped him on the shoulder and pointed in Wolfgang's direction.

Kurt was obviously surprised to see him since he was expecting Lars. "Vas"

"Margali heard you were up here. She sent me to look" Wolfgang told him in German.

Kurt jumped up and looked around. "She did? Where is she" He was starting to look a little panicked.

"Hurry, she's coming." Wolfgang said. Kurt glanced hopelessly across the tent at Lars, who, in a brilliant display of improvisation, pointed urgently toward one of the tent's many entrances.

Kurt looked sheepishly at his new companions. "Sorry" he said, switching back to Spanish"I guess I'll go on tonight after all." He smiled, patted the little girl on the head, and leapt back into the aisle. He looked around again, scanning the crowd.

"This way. Quick." Wolfgang said. He had suddenly realized that his prank was really an opportunity in disguise. He led Kurt down the steps and they ducked under the stands.

"It has to look like I was backstage the whole time." Kurt said as they jogged towards where Lars was waiting. "You'll tell her you didn't see me, right"

Wolfgang slowed down. "I don't have to." He said.

Kurt stopped. "Why not" He asked.

Wolfgang shrugged. "She didn't really send me."

"She didn't? Who did" Kurt asked looking puzzled.

"No one. It was my idea. You don't have to keep running away from me. I'm not going to hurt you or anything." Wolfgang said. He had never stood this close to Kurt and now he found it difficult to keep from staring. Kurt's deep blue skin didn't seem to reflect light at all and close up he saw it had a texture like velvet. He should have been monstrous, but he wasn't. Perhaps it was that there was a gentleness and intelligence in his eyes didn't match his pointed teeth and spaded tail, or maybe it was that he stood with the natural poise and grace of a star performer, but Wolfgang had never seen someone so inhuman look so… human.

"What are you talking about" Kurt asked.

"Every time you see me, you run the other way. I just didn't want you to spend your entire winter off worrying about me." Wolfgang explained.

"You nearly gave me a heart attack to tell me that? Couldn't you have sent a letter or something" Kurt said in disbelief.

Wolfgang shrugged. "And Lars thought it would be funny."

Kurt sighed. "I'm not afraid of you." He said.

"But why do you…"

"I'm sorry. I was afraid I would scare you." Kurt said. "I scare people, even when I don't mean to. So I leave them alone."

Wolfgang started laughing. "I spent four years living in New York City" he said"I've seen folks a whole lot scarier than you. As long as you're not trying to steal my wallet at gun point, you're harmless in my book.

"No matter what you look like." Wolfgang added.

Kurt shrugged and smiled. "I forgot my gun today" He said. "Perhaps another time."

They chatted as they walked back to where Lars was waiting for them. As he had been with his tiny audience, Kurt was quite charming and always quick to make jokes. By the time they reached the tent flaps, they had discovered that they had three languages in common and liked some of the same books.

"Very funny Lars." Said Kurt when they reached him. Lars grinned.

"I was just getting you back for yesterday." He said.

Kurt folded his arms across his chest for a moment, staring at Lars. "Fine" he said. "Then if you don't mind. I'm going to go get ready." He turned sharply on one heel, whacking Lars in the back of the head with his tail as he did so, and stalked off in the other direction.

"Ow" Lars rubbed the back of his head.

"I think he did that on purpose." Said Wolfgang.

"I know he did." Lars was still rubbing the back of his head. He turned to follow Kurt so he could finish changing as well. "You'd better watch out" he said"when Kurt retaliates you're not going to know what hit you. His pranks are murder."

Wolfgang laughed and waved as Lars walked off. He turned back toward the audience and smiled realizing he wasn't so much worried about what Kurt was going to do, but looking forward to it.


	12. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11: Kurt Wagner**

"It was just a question of making some phone calls, talking to the right people, and having a wealthy family with connections in various branches of the government."

Wolfgang did not part ways with Circus Gehlhaar when it packed up its newly refurbished tents and props to begin its summer tour of Europe. He liked it too much to leave. Instead he made himself useful in a dozen ways from driving one of the lorries to making meals, and serving as a sort of "tour manager", taking care of the day to day business of the traveling circus.

He had moved into the van that served as their "office", with a makeshift desk separated by a brightly patterned curtain from the living and sleeping area. Margali was sure it was many steps below the kind of luxury Wolfgang was used to, but he never complained. In fact, he seemed to thrive on it. Even though his quarters were stacked nearly wall to ceiling with his collection of movies, music, books, and drawing supplies, she had never seen anyone so happy about living in such a tiny space.

What was more interesting to Margali however was that Kurt and Wolfgang had become the best of friends. It was the most unlikely pairing she had ever seen, but it seemed that Wolfgang had finally found someone to talk to who not only liked the crazy ideas he came up with, but improved upon them. He introduced Kurt to classic films and American rock music. Whenever they traveled, he took Kurt as his driving partner and the two of them spent the time thinking of pranks to play on everybody else.

They had already spent several weeks playing in France and Germany when they stopped outside of Berlin. Wolfgang had heard that East Germany was getting more relaxed about its borders and since Circus Gehlhaar had never played there, it seemed like an amazing opportunity. When he had first set about preparing the necessary paperwork, it had seemed fairly straightforward but after three days parked uselessly outside Berlin, it was starting to look like a stupid idea.

He was stuffing yet another set of forms into an envelope when Kurt opened the door and peeked his head in.

"Are you still doing that East Germany thing" he asked.

Wolfgang looked up from his desk. "Yes" he said through gritted teeth and returned to his work. Kurt shut the door behind him and watched for a moment.

"Maybe it's not worth it." He said.

Wolfgang pounded the envelope closed and looked up. "Not worth it? Have you ever been there"

"No."

"Neither have I. Neither have any of us. It's an adventure. I'm determined." Wolfgang stood up. "I'm going into Berlin, need anything"

Kurt held out two letters. "Can you mail these? They're for Stephani and Father Dietrich."

Wolfgang looked at the addresses. Father Dietrich was of course legendary. Kurt rarely talked about Stephani. "Your brother is in Paris" Wolfgang asked.

"He just started at the Sorbonne. He's studying history." Kurt said. "He's the only one of us who went to school."

"Well, I'll be back in hour." Wolfgang said pocketing the envelopes. As he opened the door, they heard the wheels of a car crunching on the gravel. "Oh shit, hide." Wolfgang said and quickly shut the door.

"What is it" Kurt tried to peek out the window but Wolfgang pulled him back.

"I said 'hide', not 'look out the window'. It's the Commandant from Immigration who's been giving me all this grief the whole time. Quick, hide." Wolfgang said. There was a knock on the door and Kurt dove behind the curtain.

Wolfgang opened the door. "I was just about to bring you these forms." He said apologetically.

"But these are still incomplete." A man's voice said.

Kurt peeked through the side of the partition and he could see a man in a stiff military uniform. He was holding a pile of papers out to Wolfgang who had sat down at the desk.

"All the names are here except one." The man continued. He put the papers down and pointed. "All this says is 'Nightcrawler'. We need a real name and identification papers."

Kurt felt his heart sink and he backed away from the curtain. He had no form of identification. He had been born in Germany, but there was no proof of his citizenship, no record he even existed. He could hear Wolfgang stammering an excuse. Any other time it would have been funny to hear Wolfgang who was normally so collected go to pieces in the presence of a uniform.

"Oh, yeah. I think his papers are around here. Somewhere." There was the sound of Wolfgang opening drawers and shuffling papers around. "Um. What kind of identification do you need"

"Papers. A Passport or another form of official documentation of his country of origin."

"Oh, he's German. How about a birth certificate"

"That would be acceptable."

There was a long silence and Kurt returned to spying through the curtain. "I'll have to ask him." Wolfgang said brushing his hair out of his eyes. "In the meantime, is there anything else you need"

"How about just a name."

"A name"

The man pointed back to the paper. "Yes. Nightcrawler is not his real name is it?'

"Oh" Wolfgang laughed. "Heh. No, his name is Kurt."

The man took out a pen and crossed out something on the paper and started writing. "Kurt what"

"Kurt…uh…Kurt…" Wolfgang looked at a complete loss for a moment. The uniformed man eyed him suspiciously.

"Yes" he asked.

"Kurt Wagner" Wolfgang blurted out at last. There was a crash behind him and Kurt cringed, realizing he'd knocked over a stack of tapes with his tail. Kurt Wagner? What was Wolfgang thinking?

The man finished writing and stood up, taking a long look at the curtain. Kurt backed away from it slowly, holding his tail in his hand so it didn't knock over anything else. "Get me Kurt Wagner's identification papers. Then your circus can come in." The man said. He turned sharply on his heel and slammed the door shut behind him.

Kurt threw open the curtain. "Kurt Wagner" He shouted. "Who is that"

Wolfgang looked sheepish. "You, I guess. I'm sorry; I've just never heard anyone use your last name. My mind went blank."

Kurt realized that was because no one ever did. But still, Wagner"Why didn't you use Margali's name? Szardos" Kurt asked.

Wolfgang threw up his hands. "I don't know. I panicked. But I didn't want to look like I didn't know your name, so I used the first one that came to mind."

"Yours"

"Well, yeah. I said I was sorry."

"I could get in trouble" Kurt said. "They're very strict in East Germany."

Wolfgang shook his head. "Look it's not like it's going to be any easier to find papers for Kurt Szardos than Kurt Wagner. And if anyone's going to get in trouble it will be me."

Kurt sighed. "What if you just take me off the list? Then everyone can go in and I can stay here."

"No. Look, just give me an hour or two. My mother knows people in the government, I'm sure she knows some official or another in the ministry. I'll straighten this whole thing out."

Wolfgang started bustling around the desk, gathering papers into a battered briefcase. He pulled on his jacket and opened the door. He turned back to look at Kurt who was still staring at him like he was insane. "Don't worry." Wolfgang said"I'll work it out. You'll see."

Kurt shrugged and followed Wolfgang out.

Within a few hours, Kurt had completely forgotten about the incident in Wolfgang's trailer. There wasn't the room or time to set up the tent or rig up any of the larger equipment, but no one wanted to just sit around doing nothing. Sven and Nils had pulled out the springy Russian bar and Kurt and Lars were taking turns bouncing on it. Landing was still a problem; more often than not, the second their feet touched the bar, they were thrown back off of it. Kurt had had a lot of fun getting launched 20 feet in the air when they had first started, but unless he could land, it wasn't going to be much use in a show.

Kurt sat under a tree, watching Lars jump. Every so often, Lars would land gracefully, particularly if he didn't jump very high, but any time he leapt more than about 5 feet, he was flung off in a different direction.

"Want to try it again" Lars asked when he was tired of hitting the ground. Kurt nodded and switched places with his friend, standing on the springy bar with his arms out.

Kurt was starting to get the hang of it and after watching Lars, he was pretty sure he understood what was going wrong and how to fix it. First, the acrobat on the bar had to signal he was ready then, all in unison and with increasing pressure, the acrobat and the porters would start the bar bouncing. Around the third bounce there was enough momentum built up in the bar that the acrobat's weight leaving it wouldn't change its trajectory, which was when Kurt could begin to prepare to jump. The jump had to be timed with the bouncing of the bar so that Kurt's knees were bent when the bar was at its lowest point and he was leaving the bar when it was at its apex. The height of the jump was based on the speed of the bar's bounce because in order to land with out being flung off, he needed to return to the bar when it was once again at its apex. This was so he could in a sense"fall with the bar" and not actually put any real weight on it until it was coming back up. At the same time the porters bent their knees in time with Kurt's landing so that they rose when he did. Then it was just a question of absorbing the remaining energy in the bar with his knees. It was a lot to keep track of, but he knew that in time, it would become natural.

Within an hour or two both he and Lars could turn backward saltos and still land smoothly on the bar. Doing a forward flip was too dangerous as there was no way for the acrobat to spot their landing. Kurt tried to be clever and do two jumps in a row, but they weren't quite ready for that and his second landing nearly pitched him into a tree. He was watching Lars again when Wolfgang walked up to him, beaming. He handed Kurt a large manila envelope with a "Ta Da" and a flourish.

"What is this" Kurt asked. "Have you been in Berlin this whole time"

"Congratulations. You are official." Wolfgang said.

"You got me into East Germany"

Incredibly, Wolfgang's grin widened. "Better." He said"open it."

Kurt slid one of his nails under the fold and pulled it open. Inside was an official German birth certificate. On the top line, in ink that was crisp and fresh as though it had just been printed was the name "Kurt Wagner".

"It's real." Wolfgang said.

Kurt furrowed his brow as he read it over. "What do you mean it's real"

"It's a real birth certificate. You can get a passport, travel the world, open a bank account, go to East Germany. Whatever you want." Said Wolfgang.

Lars, Sven, and Nils walked over, curious as to what they were looking at. Lars looked over Kurt's shoulder.

"I didn't know your last name was Wagner too." Lars said.

"It's not. Or it wasn't until now. How did you do this Wolfgang" Kurt asked.

"It was just a question of making some phone calls, talking to the right people, and having a wealthy family with connections in various branches of the government. I told them your records were destroyed in a fire so you needed a new copy. Papers do get lost that way sometimes. So they had to type up a new one with the information I provided." Wolfgang explained. "I had to go to the department of records to pick it up."

Lars had taken it and was reading the form. He started laughing. "It says Wolfgang is your father." He said.

Kurt turned around and snatched the paper from Lars' hand. He stared at it wide eyed. "It does? Who's my mother then? Margali"

"I couldn't do that." Wolfgang said.

"Why not? I mean if you can just make a person up…"

Wolfgang sighed. "Margali is a registered Romani national. She doesn't have a country of origin and therefore her records were inaccessible. To put her as your mother would have taken weeks. And since we don't have weeks, I left that field blank."

Kurt slid the paper back in the envelope. He wasn't sure what to say. He'd lived his whole life without a birth certificate or even a last name and now he had both, but neither was really his. He didn't know whether to thank Wolfgang or be angry with him. He felt Wolfgang take him by the shoulder and he allowed himself to be guided away from where Lars and Sven were standing.

"Look, if you don't like it, we'll use it to get into East Germany and then you can throw it out and forget about it." Wolfgang said.

"I guess." Said Kurt.

"Then again, is it so bad? You're part of my family."

Kurt slid the paper back out of the envelope and looked at it again. "I hadn't thought of that." He said. "But why did you make yourself my father? That's kind of strange."

Wolfgang shrugged. "It was easiest. And it made sense. If I made you a cousin or something, eventually some relative would find out they had a son named Kurt they didn't know about."

Kurt laughed. "Yeah, that would come as a bit of a shock."

"It's just a formality anyways. It doesn't change your relationship to Margali or me or anyone else. I was trying to do you a favor." Wolfgang said.

Kurt looked up at Wolfgang and smiled. "I guess I could get used to being Kurt Wagner." He said. "Will you write me into your will"

Wolfgang started laughing. "Nah, you'd give it all to some church."

"Is that so bad"

Wolfgang shrugged. "I guess not. Hey look, Lars has got you beat."

Kurt looked over at Lars and his cousins playing around on the bar again. Lars was expertly performing backward saltos with a lateral twist, landing on the bar nearly every time. "For now." Kurt said, starting back toward where they were practicing.

Wolfgang found a tree to lean against and watched Kurt, who was now Kurt Wagner take his turn on the bar. He wondered what the rest of his family would think of their new addition and cringed inwardly. Most of his family thought his fascination with the circus to be a phase at worst, so he could only imagine what they would think of his unexpected "adoption" of a circus acrobat. But he didn't care, he'd found more of a family in Circus Gehlhaar in the last year than he had in a lifetime with his own.


	13. Chapter 12

_**Chapter 12: Hells Bells**_

"_Okay, as we pass them, steer the truck with your tail."_

"You want to drive like it's the autobahn, fine, let's go!"

Kurt cringed in his seat as Wolfgang crunched into the next gear and the truck sped up. "Wolfgang, it's a lorry not a sports car." On an open road it was one thing, but they were on a mountain pass.

Wolfgang gestured out the window. "Everybody's passing us like we're standing still. And there's this idiot behind me who keeps flashing his brights."

"It's not worth dying over is it?" Kurt swore he could feel the back of the truck swaying, ready to fishtail around and tumble them over the side.

Wolfgang eased off the accelerator. "I guess. Plus we're way ahead of everyone. We'd get to Munich and have nothing to do for a day and a half at the rate they're going."

"Well, Margali's van is kind of old." Kurt said. He'd been living in it his whole life and he had no idea how long Margali had had it before him.

"Yeah, but it's the coolest one, especially with my new paint job." Wolfgang said. Kurt had to admit he was right, Wolfgang had redone the exterior of their home in beautiful bright colors. On one side was an advertisement for their fortune telling, with portraits of both Margali and Amanda now that she was starting to share in those duties. The other side had a painting of Kurt as Nightcrawler scowling down from a platform like a church gargoyle. The coolest part was that Wolfgang had filled in his eyes entirely in glowing yellow; Kurt thought it was a nice touch.

Wolfgang dug through his tapes and popped one into the cassette deck. He turned up the volume so that AC/DC's Back in Black made the speakers distort with every beat. After a moment he turned it down so it was listenable. "It's old, but it's good." He said.

Kurt liked it too. He liked most of the American music Wolfgang had played for him. It sometimes seemed to him that Wolfgang had gone to America not so much to study art, but collect its pop culture and bring it back to Europe with him. Kurt stuck his feet on the dashboard and listened to Wolfgang growl along to the lyrics for a while. When the title song came on, they both sang along to the chorus. Wolfgang suddenly lowered the volume.

"You should use this song in the show." He said in the fevered way Kurt was accustomed to hearing whenever Wolfgang had a creative epiphany. About half the time it was a good thing, the other half Wolfgang's ideas were so nutty that even Kurt couldn't imagine going along with them.

"You mean for the trapeze act?" Kurt asked. He couldn't really picture it. For as long as he could remember, a small gypsy orchestra, one of the few remaining in Europe, had provided the music.

"Well, I just meant for Nightcrawler in general." Wolfgang said. It had been confusing at first, but he had finally gotten used to the way Kurt seemed to refer to the character he played in public as a different person and had started to do it as well. And after watching Kurt perform for nearly a season, he realized that they sort of were two different people. Most of the time Kurt was studious and hard working with the kind of sweet, shy demeanor that girls loved. Wolfgang was sure that if it hadn't been for Kurt's appearance, he would have had a dozen girlfriends by now.

Nightcrawler on the other hand was mischievous and unpredictable and sometimes it seemed that he operated beyond Kurt's control. More than once Wolfgang had witnessed either Papa or Sven scolding him for messing with the cues or suddenly pulling stunts that weren't written into the show. It rarely resulted in anything more than a moment of confusion for the other performers and the audience inevitably loved it. It was the impish playful streak Wolfgang had seen that winter in Barcelona when Kurt had jumped into the stands, only made larger by the fact that he had the whole audience to play with rather than just a few people.

Wolfgang thought image of Kurt running around with Back in Black playing in the background was perfect. It totally turned the idea of the traditional circus on its ear. Europe wouldn't know what hit them. He pulled the truck off the road.

"What are you doing?" Kurt asked.

Wolfgang shut the engine off and leaned casually against the door. "Waiting for everyone to catch up." He said.

They spent half an hour entertaining themselves with one of Wolfgang's favorite pastimes, writing odd little rhymes and turning them into songs that were two parts Mother Goose and one part Lewis Carroll. Wolfgang came up with one about having five fingers on your hand so Kurt retaliated by coming up with a song about things you could do with your tail. They were having so much fun that neither of them noticed everybody else drive by.

A few minutes later, their 2-way radio crackled to life. "Hey Wolfgang, was that you parked off to the side there?"

Wolfgang and Kurt stopped taunting each other with their rhymes and stared at it. "Oops" Wolfgang mouthed. He picked up the radio and pressed the talk button. "Yeah, we had some problems with the brakes." He said and put his finger to his mouth so Kurt wouldn't say anything.

"What's wrong with the brakes?" It was Margali's voice this time.

"They felt a little squishy. I think they're okay though." Wolfgang said. "We'll catch up."

"Be careful. It gets really steep up ahead."

"Okay." Wolfgang said. He started the truck and they pulled back on the road.

"What are you talking about?" Kurt said, "There's nothing wrong with the brakes."

Wolfgang gave him a sly grin, "You'll see." He said.

When Wolfgang could see the lights of Margali's van off in the distance he picked up the radio. "Hey, we're going to pull over again. The brakes are acting up. Hey, they're not working at all now. And the steering's stuck too. Oh No! Look out!" Wolfgang clicked off the talk button and put the radio down. He sped up as various voices on the radio shouted about their truck as it came barreling up behind them, apparently unstoppable and unsteerable.

Kurt slapped his palm to his forehead. "You're insane."

"Okay, as we pass them, steer the truck with your tail." Wolfgang said. They had started down the steepest grade yet. It was perfect.

Kurt started laughing because he knew exactly what it was that Wolfgang wanted to do. The trucks were all in a row to the right now, and as they passed on the left, Kurt and Wolfgang waved their hands frantically and pretended to be terrified. They kept it up until the truck rounded a corner and went out of sight. The whole time the radio was buzzing with voices.

Wolfgang put his hands back on the wheel, slowed down and came to a stop on a wide spot where the road evened out. The two of them collapsed into hysterical laughter, now listening to the speculations of what had become of them.

"Margali's going to kill me." Kurt said.

"It was worth it though. Did you see their faces when we passed?" Wolfgang asked, wiping tears from his eyes.

"I was trying to drive." Kurt said with a strong emphasis on the last word.

"True." Said Wolfgang.

The two of them were leaning casually against the side of the truck when everybody else caught up. It was immediately obvious that there was nothing wrong with the steering or the brakes. Everybody who had stopped and gotten out returned to their vehicles grumbling and shaking their heads except for Margali. She walked up to Kurt, glared at him for a long moment and then slapped him hard on the cheek. She turned around without a word and walked back to her van were Amanda was waiting, her hand over her mouth to hide her laughter.

"Ow." Kurt rubbed the side of his face and glanced at Wolfgang who was looking away and trying to keep a straight face. He couldn't and burst out laughing anew. Kurt elbowed him in the ribs hard enough to make him double over and walked back to their truck muttering, "steer with your tail." Still laughing, Wolfgang followed him. He honestly couldn't imagine why anyone _wouldn't_ want to run away with the circus.


	14. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13: Zirkus Redefinierte**

"You're supposed to be a Hell's Angel Beelzebub, but you look like a blue elf in a leather jacket."

Once Wolfgang became attached to an idea, he didn't easily let go. Instead he clung to it tenaciously slowly picking away at each obstacle until it became a reality. Whether it was his own or another's, once he committed, it was as good as done. During these times he showed an unbelievable amount of resourcefulness, sometimes appearing to conjure the things the circus needed out of thin air.

He hadn't forgotten his idea to have Kurt perform to AC/DC's Back in Black. Circus Gehlhaar looked like something out of the previous century to Wolfgang. Their music, which was provided by a live band, was the sort of corny organ music that you would expect to accompany a silent film. Their acts, while skillfully executed didn't break any rules or surprise anyone. To the circus' credit, the audiences didn't seem to mind. But Wolfgang minded, once he had gotten over the initial thrill of watching the circus, _his_ circus perform, he realized it was actually quite boring.

Wolfgang started to daydream about changing the entire creative direction of the circus, to reinvent it, making it something that no one had ever seen nor heard before. It compelled him so much sometimes that he found it hard to sleep as played with ideas for them over and over in his head. But that wasn't enough. Wolfgang had ideas, but did he have trust? The answer was, unfortunately, "no". The performers trusted him to take care of their business and drive their equipment around, but to them he was strictly a painter when it came to creative influence. In other words, he had none.

Kurt, on the other hand, probably exercised the most creative control over the show. Though it was Papa who was responsible for choreographing the trapeze work and Sven did all the tumbling routines, Kurt always wrote his own part. Wolfgang guessed that the arrangement was born out of necessity since know one was exactly sure of what Kurt could do other than Kurt. (In fact it often appeared to Wolfgang that sometimes even Kurt didn't know what he could do until after he did it.)

It made Wolfgang wonder. If Sven and Papa pushed the circus's acrobats to their limits, then who would push Kurt to his? Perhaps it wasn't so much that Kurt needed a coach, since he was plenty skilled as it was, but that Nightcrawler needed a muse.

It seemed like the perfect plan. If Wolfgang wanted to truly influence the creative direction of Circus Gehlhaar he would start with Kurt and through Kurt gain the trust of everyone else. All he needed was to start with a good idea.

Papa was the most skeptical about performing to pre-recorded rock music. The younger Olssons were fairly enthusiastic. Kurt had already voiced his opinion that Wolfgang was insane, but also seemed interested in going along with it. He handed out tapes to the whole troupe and left it at that.

In the meantime Wolfgang worked to scrounge up an old PA system that could play the music loud enough. This of course led to electrical problems since it drew more power from their aging circuit board than all of their lights put together. Wolfgang replaced the board with a larger one and finally the big tent was wired for sound. It was exactly as he had imagined it, the seats practically rattled with the bass.

In the meantime, Papa and Sven thought if they were going to push the envelope with the music, they might as well do it with the routine too. Wolfgang had hoped this would happen and so one afternoon he sat in on a rehearsal to see what they had come up with.

Sven had the idea to combine floor tumbling with the trapeze via a very large trampoline. He'd come to Wolfgang with the plans a few weeks ago with a drawing of a very long narrow trampoline that would run under the trapeze rig. In addition, the trapeze rig would be lowered and the nets removed. So Wolfgang had gone out and contracted with a carpenter to make a frame for a large trampoline that could be installed and then taken apart again when they left each venue. A two weeks later, it was done.

Now, he was sitting watching the group playing around with their new contraption. With the lowered trapeze the trampoline enabled an acrobat to jump up high enough to grab onto either the arms of a catcher or the bar itself. The result was a frenzy of coordinated movement so fluid that it appeared to take place in water. With the music playing it was even more nuts. It was perfect, exactly what Wolfgang had hoped for.

"We haven't actually choreographed anything yet." Sven said sitting on the stands next to Wolfgang and watching the action, "We're still trying to figure it all out. But it's really fun."

It did look like they were having fun. Going from the trampoline to the trapeze seemed to hold unlimited possibilities. The favorite trick was making a long diagonal jump to catch an empty trapeze. The momentum from the jump enabled the acrobat to go right to a flying trick since there was no need to pump the trapeze for momentum. No one seemed too eager to go the other way though; once they were on the trapeze they didn't jump off. "The surface is too hard." Sven explained. "Even with the bounce they could break their ankles."

It was only a week until Wolfgang was invited back to see the preliminary choreography. They had a single prop, which Kurt was wearing. It had been Wolfgang's idea to have part of Kurt's costume include a leather biker jacket with "Hells Angel" on the back. It was too cumbersome to wear the entire time but it made for an excellent entrance.

They started the music and Wolfgang watched. It was really cool. There was a basic flow to it with the flyers coming from both directions to be caught by either Papa or Nils who were up on trapezes. From there, the flyer would either do another trick or be deposited on the platform to slide down a pole like a fireman and start again on the ground. It looked great. The only thing that Wolfgang really didn't like was Kurt's entrance.

"Is that all you're going to do?" Wolfgang asked him before they ran through it a second time.

Kurt looked puzzled. He wasn't used to people questioning his performance. "What do you mean?" he asked.

Wolfgang tried to explain. The routine began with Kurt running out on to the trampoline alone and then calling out his "gang" which was everybody else. They wanted to surprise the audience so in the beginning they acted like the trampoline was just a raised' floor. After a few introductory moves, Kurt suddenly bounced up to catch one of the hanging trapezes and that started the whole thing off. It wasn't really very dramatic though, plus Kurt didn't look very tough.

"It's just that there's no menace." Wolfgang told Kurt. "You're supposed to be a Hell's Angel Beelzebub, but you look like a blue elf in a leather jacket." Wolfgang put his arms at his side and imitated the smooth toe to heel run that all acrobats did on stage. Everyone laughed.

"I don't run like that." Kurt said.

"Yeah, you do." Lars whispered out of the side of his mouth. Kurt rolled his eyes.

"You've got to be more evil, more scary." Wolfgang prompted.

"More evil." Kurt repeated.

"Yeah, much more evil."

Kurt looked around the tent for a moment, thinking. He spotted the high wire platform, which stood above the trapeze rig and climbed up to it. "Okay." He yelled down so they could restart the music.

This time, instead of running out on the floor, he stalked out onto the high wire on all fours like a cat. From there he coiled up and leapt down to catch one of the support beams for the trapeze rig. He let go with his hands and allowed himself to swing forward so that he was hanging upside down by his feet and anchored by his tail. He let himself drop onto the trapeze below him where a second before Nils had been sitting. Nils had seen Kurt coming and swung down into a catching position so that Kurt could land on the bar and start it swinging. At Kurt's prompting Nils reached up and grabbed him by the wrists so that Kurt could dive off and Nils could use the swinging momentum of the trapeze to throw him into a tight forward somersault. Kurt let go of Nils and landed on the trampoline, bending his knees deeply to absorb the shock, but was popped up about eight feet in the air anyway. He did a twisted flip that Wolfgang vaguely remembered Sven calling a "full-in full out" and landed crouched low, glaring at Wolfgang and baring his teeth.

"Is that better?" He asked, straightening up and making what looked like a conscious effort not to look like a blue elf as he walked to the edge of the trampoline.

Wolfgang grinned and clapped. "Much better. Just be like that the whole time. You'll scare the children. It will be fantastic." He turned to Sven; "I thought you said they would break their ankles if they jumped off?"

Sven shrugged. "What do I know?" He said. After that no one worried about jumping down form the trapezes and the fireman's poles were removed.

Back in Black was a huge success with audiences. As Wolfgang predicted, Europeans loved American pop culture so they were clapping with the music within the first few bars. They had to make it the finale since the rest of the show seemed so tame in comparison.

Unfortunately for Kurt, Wolfgang's initial critique was not forgotten and despite his attempts to be as scary as possible, the number was known inside the circus as "the blue elf routine". Kurt took it rather well.


	15. Chapter 14

_**Chapter 14: Family Traditions**_

_"You have to ask? Of course I do. This is amazing. Can we start right now"_

A sleek black Mercedes limousine pulled up at the edge Circus Gehlhaar's campground drawing curious stares from everyone nearby. It was impossible to see who was behind the dark tinted windows. Wolfgang slid across the leather seat and went to open the door. He had barely pulled the lever up before the driver jumped out and opened the door for him.

"Thanks, but honestly, I can get out of the car on my own." Wolfgang said.

"Yes Sir." The driver said.

"I told you you could call me Wolfgang." He wished his father had let him take the bus. They had argued about it for nearly an hour until Wolfgang finally conceded to being driven in the family's limousine.

The driver popped open the Mercedes' voluminous trunk and pulled out Wolfgang's suitcase, then a long streamer trunk, which he heaved to the ground with a grunt.

"Where shall I take them Sir"

"Just leave them here." Wolfgang said. "I can take care of it."

"I don't mind carrying them, Sir." The driver said, picking up the suitcase in one hand and grasping the handle of the trunk in the other.

Wolfgang sighed. "Oh, all right. And please call me Wolfgang." He picked up the handle on the other end of the trunk. "We're going to that trailer over there." He said and pointed to his rather shabby looking office/quarters. The driver made a face.

They left the trunk outside the trailer, but the driver insisted on carrying the suitcase in and began unpacking it for him. Wolfgang held up his hands.

"Okay, that really is enough now." Wolfgang said. He shut the suitcase and gently steered the driver towards the door. He walked with him back to the car. "Tell my father thank you for the ride."

"Of course, Sir."

"Thanks. And next time, please remember to call me Wolfgang."

"I will Sir. Farewell."

Wolfgang watched the Mercedes retreating in a cloud of dust along the dirt and gravel road that lead away from their campground. He tried not to laugh. At least being called "Sir" was better than the "Young Master" they used to use. Kurt popped out from behind a small stand of trees.

"Good Afternoon Sir." He said.

"Shut up blue elf."

Kurt laughed. "Who was that? Is that your car"

"Both of them belong to my father." Wolfgang said with a frown. "I was just hitching a ride for the day. I guess it's bad enough that I work for a circus so he had to make up for it by sending me back here in that thing. The neighbors might start talking otherwise. I really shouldn't complain though."

"We missed you." Kurt said. "Did you have a nice visit home"

Wolfgang shrugged. "It was okay I guess. I didn't do very much; my father was too busy with some hotel deal in Prague. I did have lunch with mother several times though. And I got to see my brother Siegfried for the first time in years. "

"Siegfried"

"Yeah" Wolfgang said, shaking his head "Isn't that terrible. Our surname is Wagner and my parents go and name their kid Siegfried. I think I almost got named Fafner. Ridiculous."

Kurt burst out laughing. "It could have been worse. What about Wotan"

Wolfgang cringed. "Oh my God, you're right. Wotan would have been the end of me. Come with me, I've got something to show you." Wolfgang led Kurt back to his trailer and snapped open the locks on his trunk. He lifted the lid and they looked inside.

"Wow. Are all those swords yours" Kurt asked.

"Yes. But they're more like rapiers actually. Nothing in there really qualifies as a sword." He removed the topmost weapon from the box. "This is the fancy one." He said as he grasped the backswept clamshell design hilt and slid the blade from its scabbard. "It's just for show really. The rest of them are more utilitarian."

Kurt crouched beside the box. He reached in and pulled out a very thin bladed weapon with a very oddly shaped handle. "What's with this" He asked, pointing to it.

"You have good taste." Wolfgang said. "That is my absolute favorite fencing foil. I owe quite a few trophies to that baby."

Kurt squinted at the odd grip and tried to grasp it in one hand.

"That's called a pistol grip. Unfortunately, you need four fingers and a thumb for that particular handle." Wolfgang said. He took the weapon from Kurt and demonstrated, the curves fitting within his hand exactly. "It's like an extension of your arm this way." He pulled a similar weapon from the box that had a more traditional looking French grip. "Try this one instead." He said.

Kurt took it and wrapped his hand around the hilt. "It's very nice." He said.

Wolfgang knelt down and started pulling more things from the box, naming them as he went. "This is called an epee. You can see its blade is a bit thicker than the foil. The targets on the body are different too. This is a sabre, in competition you can do a slash attack as well as a thrust. And here's another foil like the one you have there; it's lightest of the three weapons."

Kurt noticed that there was several of each weapon. Some of them had the funny looking pistol grip, but there were others with more traditional looking handles. He put the foil he had been holding down to inspect them. "What is all this for" Kurt asked.

Gesturing grandly at the box and its contents, Wolfgang said"This is our family sport."

"Sword fighting is a sport"

"No, but fencing is. The Wagner's have been fencers for generations. There are even a few Olympic medalists in the family. " Wolfgang laughed. "It's the only reason to go to any of our family affairs in my opinion. After we eat, during the time when everyone would normally be lounging gossiping about the people who couldn't come, we fight each other. There are grudge matches that go back decades."

Kurt laughed. "I can't even imagine that" he said.

Wolfgang nodded in agreement. "Yeah, it's pretty funny looking, but it sure beats the usual crap people do at their family gatherings." Wolfgang pulled a few more things from the box including several white jackets and a pair of strange mesh covered masks.

"That's cool, but why did you bring all this here"

"You're a Wagner now. It seems only fitting that you be schooled in our most noble and worthwhile family tradition." Wolfgang said.

"You want to teach me to sword fight" Kurt asked.

"If you want to learn." Wolfgang said.

"You have to ask" Kurt cried. "Of course I do. This is amazing. Can we start right now"

Wolfgang laughed. "Maybe I could unpack first, and then look for a place to store all this stuff while we're not using it. After that, sure." He and Kurt started putting everything back into the box.

Wolfgang started teaching Kurt to fence the next day. They used the smooth floor that was laid down inside the main tent and Wolfgang used white gaffer's tape to mark out a strip.

"The rules are simple." Wolfgang said. "All combat is done within this narrow box here. If you step outside it's a foul and the fencers have to go back to their starting points. There are three weapon types: foil, epee, and sabre, though sabre is kind of going out of fashion. Besides the differences in the types of blades, they have different target areas.

"In sabre the target area is everything from the waist up. For epee, anything goes. The target is the whole body. That's why the bell guard is so huge. The wrist is a really common target. Foil has the smallest target area, just the torso, no arms or head.

"A match is 5 points, or touches on your opponent. Who ever reaches five first wins.

We'll start with foil I think. It has the most discipline and I happen to like it best." Wolfgang grinned.

"I hope you're right handed." Wolfgang said as he handed Kurt the French grip hilt foil from the other day. Wolfgang picked up his pistol grip foil and demonstrated the basic en garde position, his right foot in front of the left, his knees slightly bent, the foil held at waist level and tilted slightly upwards, and his left up with the elbow crooked.

Kurt was starting to get the whole step forward, step back, and lunge thing when he noticed Lars watching from the stands. He stopped and waved. Lars walked down the aisle.

"What are you doing" He asked.

"Wolfgang is teaching me to fence. En garde" He jumped into position with his foil at the ready. Lars pushed it away.

"How come you get to learn to fence" He asked.

"You can learn too if you want." Wolfgang said, already reaching into his box to pull out another weapon.

"Yeah, but you have to do something really embarrassing first to prove you're worthy." Kurt added grinning.

"Oh, you mean like fall off the tight wire and knock Sven out of the air"

"Exactly."

Wolfgang glanced at Kurt and laughed. Obviously there was some history there that he didn't know about, but he could imagine Kurt doing something like that. Lars looked around. "I can't think of anything just now." He said.

"Okay" said Kurt"But you owe us."

The three of them quickly got into a routine, pulling out the fencing gear an hour or so before show time. Wolfgang was an incredible fencer. Kurt didn't know much but he had learned enough to see that he would most likely never achieve the same level of skill. Wolfgang adjusted his fencing to be fair to his opponents, but every so often he played to win and Kurt wouldn't even see it coming.

It became clear that having an uneven number wasn't nearly as fun and to their surprise it was Amanda who asked to be their fourth. Wolfgang never thought of Amanda as the physical type, but she quickly proved him wrong. She was equal with Lars and the two of them were slightly behind Kurt, but that was because he had the benefit his tail as a counter balance.

They would spend the most of their practice time drilling each other and putting on masks and jackets to pair up and spar each other. Once they were proficient in the basics Wolfgang started ending practice by showing them the traditional rapier techniques. Kurt actually liked this better. The narrow grip on the foil always felt wrong in his hand and the confinement to a thin strip of floor was, well, confining.

The rapier on the other hand was a much longer weapon with a much heavier blade. The handles of Wolfgang's practice rapiers were much sturdier and easier to hold. The best part was that it was much more open; instead of a strip they were free to go anywhere they wanted. The footwork was less confining as well. And most importantly, it looked much more like the sword fighting in Wolfgang's pirate movies than foil fencing did. Kurt could see how learning the basics of sport fencing were important, but he always looked forward to the second half of their practice sessions.

Though he had been skeptical at first, Kurt was beginning to see that being Kurt Wagner had more fringe benefits than he had first realized.

Author's note: Siegfried, Fafner, and Wotan are all characters from Wagner's Ring Cycle.


	16. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15: Project Bamf**

"It's like blinking your eyes, you can see the back of your eyelids but it's so quick that you don't know what they look like."

It was a strange noise that woke Wolfgang. He sat up and looked around. It was very dark out, probably 2 or 3 in the morning. Then he heard it again, a sort of muffled thump. He got out of bed and pulled on a pair of pants. He grabbed a t-shirt and a flashlight and headed out the door.

Wolfgang's trailer was the only one that was near the tents since it served as their office. He could see a dim light shining through the open tent door and heard two more thumps. Someone was in the big tent banging things. Pulling on his t-shirt as he walked, Wolfgang prepared for the worst.

He peeked slowly around the corner of the tent flaps. In the middle of the floor that had been laid down to provide a smooth flat surface for the performers, was a single gas lantern. It cast crazy shadows everywhere, leaving most of the tent in total darkness. There were two more thumps in the blackness only now that he was close to the tent they didn't sound like thumps at all, more like someone slamming a door. But there were no doors in the tent. Plus, each time it happened it was in a different part of the tent. How many people were in there? What was going on?

Wolfgang shined his flashlight into the tent and stepped in. "You're trespassing!" He shouted, "If you leave now, I won't call the police." There were two more door slams, one far away and another quite close though he still couldn't see anyone.

"No, Wolfgang it's me." It was Kurt's voice and his friend emerged from the shadows. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of warm up pants. He looked winded, like he'd been exercising.

"What are you doing?" Wolfgang asked.

Kurt looked around the tent, still catching his breath. "I'm… Uh, I'm…" he faltered. "I'm working on a project." He said at last.

Wolfgang looked incredulous. "What kind of project? It sounds like you're doing construction in here banging around like that."

"Banging? It sounds different to me." Kurt said.

"What are you talking about? What are you doing?"

Kurt was silent, the expressions on his face changing as he seemed to undergo some kind of internal debate. Finally, he sighed, suddenly looking very nervous. "Can you keep a secret?" he asked.

Wolfgang was confused. "Sure."

"Okay. I'll show you." Kurt said. He bounced nervously on the balls of his feet for a moment and then walked a few paces away. He turned back towards Wolfgang. "Ready?" he asked.

Wolfgang shrugged, not exactly what he was ready for.

"Okay." Said Kurt. He took a deep breath and drew himself up like Wolfgang had seen him do when preparing for any kind of acrobatic maneuver. Instead of tumbling however, Kurt disappeared in a puff of dark smoke and reappeared in another puff a few feet away. His disappearance and reappearance were each accompanied by the sound Wolfgang had been hearing.

"You're doing magic?" Wolfgang asked, even more confused.

"I don't know what it is." Kurt said.

"What do you mean you don't know what it is?" Wolfgang asked.

Kurt shrugged. "I don't know. I just…" He disappeared again, reappearing very close to Wolfgang's side. The smoke had an acrid odor and Wolfgang waved it away. Suddenly it dawned on him.

"You mean you're just _doing_ that? It's not a trick?" He asked.

"Yeah." Kurt said.

Wolfgang took a step away from Kurt. "How?" He asked, his voice sounding slightly hysterical.

"I'm not really sure." Kurt said sadly. "One day I could just do it."

Wolfgang didn't know what to say. He started to stammer a reply, stopped and then started again only to have to stop again since he still hadn't made any real words. Kurt could do a lot of amazing things, but this one took the cake. "Do it again." Wolfgang said.

Kurt did, several more times, trying to stay within the circle of light cast by the lantern.

By the time he was done, Wolfgang was grinning. "That's incredible!" He cried, "That's cooler than all the other stuff you can do put together."

"I haven't really perfected it yet." Kurt said, "But I'm getting better. I come in here and practice sometimes when everyone's asleep."

"Better? What used to happen before?" Wolfgang asked. He watched a deep purple color appear on Kurt's cheeks.

"I couldn't seem to bring my clothes with me." Kurt admitted.

Wolfgang cracked up. "Really?" He asked.

"It's not funny!' Kurt said emphatically, "I couldn't really control where I was going either. Sometimes I ended up really far away from where my clothes were. And then I couldn't get back to them."

Imagining this only made Wolfgang laugh harder. Kurt made an exasperated noise and disappeared. Wolfgang heard him reappear somewhere in the blackness across the tent from him.

From then on nearly every night, Wolfgang helped Kurt figure out his strange new ability. For an artist, Wolfgang sure seemed to think like a scientist and as far as Kurt could tell, he was determined to map out the exact limits of Kurt's new talent. Sometimes he was surprised Wolfgang wasn't standing around in a white lab coat with a clipboard checking things off.

Despite Wolfgang's adherence to the scientific method, Kurt actually found it rather helpful. Until their training sessions, Kurt wasn't sure what would happen each time he shifted. But with Wolfgang's help, he was starting to come up with some guidelines. For instance, Kurt could make lateral moves easier than vertical ones. Even so it seemed that on the vertical plane going down was easier than going up making it appear as though gravity was still at work.

Neither of them could agree on a name for it. Kurt called it "shifting" or "blinking" because that's what it felt like. Wolfgang didn't understand the "blinking" term until Kurt explained, "it's like blinking your eyes, you can see the back of your eyelids but it's so quick that you don't know what they look like." Wolfgang wanted Kurt to call it "Apparating", a term made up by J.K. Rowling in her Harry Potter books, but since Kurt had never read the books, it didn't make any sense to him. They finally settled on the rather dull, yet scientific sounding "teleporting".

The project stayed secret even as their experiments were becoming more elaborate. When Wolfgang wanted to see how far away Kurt could teleport they had to sneak away from the circus to a large field where Wolfgang could find targets with a pair of binoculars and see how close to them Kurt could get. A side benefit Wolfgang's relentless experimentation was that Kurt discovered that teleporting was just like any other athletic skill; at first it had been exhausting, but with practice he was gaining endurance.

Once height and distance were mastered, Kurt started trying to carry things with him. The closer things were to his body, the easier it was for him to carry them. Besides his own clothes, he could teleport with small objects. More often than not, anything that weighed more than a few pounds stayed behind. The biggest shock was when Kurt attempted to teleport with a heavy wooden block and took only half of it with him. Wolfgang had been wondering if it would be possible for Kurt to take another person with him, but staring at the cleanly cut halves of each block, it didn't seem like such a good idea anymore.

It was quite by accident that Kurt discovered that he carried momentum when he teleported. He had been swinging on the trapeze intending to see if he could teleport to the ground. He slid across the floor at the same speed and slammed into the bleachers headfirst. Kurt, sitting up but looking slightly dazed announced that it was time to quit for the night.

They retired to Wolfgang's crowded trailer, sitting around his desk like it was a table while Wolfgang enumerated his notes. "I think you can go about a mile or two, but you can't go that far up or down. The momentum thing is interesting, we need to try that some more…"

"I think I like standing still better." Kurt interrupted, rubbing the knot on his head.

"Plus there's that weird 'bamf' sound it makes and the stinky smoke. I wish I knew how it worked." Wolfgang continued as though Kurt hadn't said anything. "It's almost like you open a door, step through it, and end up leaving through a different door in another part of the room."

"That's actually kind of what it feels like." Kurt said.

Wolfgang rubbed his chin; there was a memory on the edges of his consciousness that had to do with smoke and doors. He concentrated a moment and then there it was: the cigar room. When Wolfgang had been maybe five or six, his mother had forbid cigar smoking in all but one room of the house. That room was the "cigar room". His father had furnished it with heavy leather chairs and dark wood tables; even with the windows open it had the lingering sweet smell of tobacco. When his father had business parties the men would congregate in the cigar room after dinner and quickly fill the room with pungent smoke. Whenever anyone left or entered the room, the smoke would start to drift through the open door only to be sucked back in again when the door shut. All that would be left was a tiny puff of evidence that the door had ever been opened.

Kurt had to be doing the same thing. But where was he going? And what kind of door was he opening?

He had hardly even begun to contemplate this when another idea struck him. What if Kurt was the door? What if instead of opening a door and stepping into a room, he was the one opening and shutting? Wolfgang suddenly wished he had paid better attention in physics.

The theory of relativity said that an object in motion is only in motion from the perspective of a stationary viewer. And from the perspective of the object, it is standing still and the world moves around it. His professor had used an airplane as an example. Someone on the ground sees an airplane take off in New York and land in Los Angeles. The people on the airplane, however are not moving, they see New York leave and Los Angeles arrive. So if Kurt was the object in motion, then he entered the "cigar room" at a certain point and left it at the same point, only the world had switched positions.

Since there was only one Kurt this implied that the spot where he had once stood was now vacant so he could fill in a new spot elsewhere. That was what the smoke was, it filled up the "hole" Kurt left and was displaced out of the way when Kurt arrived. Exactly what was making the smoke, he couldn't be sure, but he was positive about the displacement. Wolfgang only had a moment to enjoy his discovery. It meant there could be horrible repercussions. He frowned.

"What _are_ you thinking about?" Kurt asked.

Wolfgang came out of his reverie and realized that he must have been staring off into space the whole time he'd been thinking. "Have you ever tried to teleport to a place you can't see?" Wolfgang asked.

Kurt shrugged. "I don't think so…No, I haven't. Why? Do you think I should try it?"

Wolfgang held up his hands in warning. "No, no. Don't ever try it."

Kurt laughed. "Why, what's the big deal?"

Wolfgang jumped up and grabbed a clear glass, filled it to the very top with water from his jug and set it on his desk in front of Kurt. He then grabbed a stone he was using for a paperweight and held it up. "This is you." He said. "And this glass is a space where you aren't."

Kurt looked a little puzzled but nodded and Wolfgang dropped the stone in the water. Water sloshed out of the top of the glass onto the table and the stone sank to the bottom.

"The stone displaces the water."

"So."

Wolfgang gestured at the glass, "Look, some of the water came out of the glass, the water had to move out of the way so the stone could be there."

"Okay, but what does this have to do with me being able to see?" Kurt asked.

"You don't get it? Air moves out of the way, water moves out of the way, but…" Wolfgang grabbed a spoon, fished the rock out of the glass, and dropped it on the table for emphasis. "The table doesn't move out of the way to let the rock in."

"No," Kurt agreed, "the rock lands on the table."

"Yeah, but what if the rock tried to land _in_ the table?"

Kurt scratched his head. "So you're saying I could accidentally teleport into a solid object? That I could get stuck inside it?"

"Exactly – it can't move out of the way." Wolfgang said.

Kurt considered for a moment, drawing lines on the table with the spilled water. "So, if I can't see it, I can't know that it's safe to go there." He said at last.

Wolfgang nodded. "Never go where you can't see. I don't know what would happen if you tried." He said.

Still tracing tendrils of water from the puddle around the glass, Kurt nodded solemnly. It suddenly seemed like a lot of responsibility and not for the first time he found himself wondering exactly what God had in mind for him.

It was weeks before Wolfgang began to rethink the idea of Kurt transporting another person with him. Kurt was getting really good at it. His "re-materializations" for lack of a better word, always his weak point, were more and more precise and he had built enough stamina to move fairly heavy objects intact. It had been over a week since he'd arrived without a complete item. The limit seemed to be around 200 pounds, but that was more than enough leeway for someone Wolfgang's size.

Wolfgang wasn't even sure why he was so obsessed with the idea. For one thing, it was dangerous. Neither he nor Kurt knew exactly how Kurt was doing it. What if there was something about Kurt that shielded him from whatever force it was moving him through space? Would it apply to a passenger? There were so many unknowns and yet, since the very first night he'd seen Kurt teleport, he'd wanted to try it.

Maybe it was that he'd known Kurt for nearly a year now, but in so many ways his friend remained a mystery to him. There were so many things about Kurt that Wolfgang could never know, could never understand. So often he was struck by the impossible limitations Kurt's appearance placed on him only to be equally shocked by the ease with which Kurt accepted them. Maybe it was empathy Wolfgang was looking for, to just for one moment look at the world from behind yellow eyes and blue skin and understand why Kurt didn't hate everybody.

Then again Wolfgang wondered if it wasn't empathy but jealousy. Despite his outward appearance and charm Wolfgang was fairly unremarkable by his family's standards. He knew he was handsome, but so were his brothers and his cousins, just as their fathers were. He knew he was intelligent as well, but once again this was nothing unusual in a family whose scholarship went back for generations. He had money of course, but he had earned none of it.

All his life Wolfgang had fought against the stifling forces of his father and his family's business interests; forces that had been threatening to suck dry since he was a child. He had spent his life running away from it. When he compared himself to Kurt, who had every conceivable disadvantage and yet managed to shine anyway, Wolfgang felt wholly inadequate.

But Kurt had chosen to share his secret with him alone and Wolfgang wanted to be more than a facilitator, he wanted to be a part of it. But that meant he needed a test subject.

Kurt looked somewhat confused when Wolfgang handed him a small cage containing a hen he'd bought at a street market in town, but agreed to teleport with it. The chicken arrived, with Kurt, alive and intact if not somewhat dazed. They opened the cage and after a few minutes the hen hopped out and began pecking at the floor speculatively, apparently unaffected by the trip.

The next evening, after their chicken test pilot had been donated to the safety of a nearby farmer's coop, Wolfgang waited rather pensively for his turn. Kurt was standing a few feet away from him, head bowed and eyes closed mumbling under his breath.

"Are you _praying_?" Wolfgang asked.

Kurt opened his eyes and glanced up at him. "Yeah."

"You're not nervous are you?"

Kurt straightened up. "A little," he admitted. "You?"

"Not until you started praying. It will be fine. The chicken was okay." Wolfgang said, trying not to let his own nerves show.

"You're a lot bigger. And I wasn't friends with the chicken."

"I trust you. You can do it." Wolfgang said. "I'm ready when you are," he added encouragingly.

Kurt took a step forward and pulled Wolfgang into a tight embrace. Wolfgang put his arms around Kurt and shut his eyes, not sure what to expect. After a few moments nothing happened. He opened his eyes.

"Kurt?"

"Sorry. I'm still nervous," came the reply from somewhere near Wolfgang's right ear.

"People are going to get the wrong idea about us." Wolfgang said, trying to lighten the mood.

Kurt gave an anxious laugh. "Okay," he said, "ready?"

Wolfgang nodded his head and swallowed hard, concentrating on the far wall of the tent. There was a crack like a gunshot and suddenly he was falling backwards, the world around him spinning. He let go of Kurt and was vaguely aware of Kurt doing the same to him. Wolfgang lay on the ground feeling more nauseous than he had in his life willing the world to stop spinning. Did this happen every time? He wondered how Kurt could stand it.

Wolfgang didn't know how long he lay on the floor, his hands pressed to his temples with his fingers over his eyes. There was movement beside him and Wolfgang pulled his hands away to see Kurt crawling over to him from where he'd fallen, his face was a mask of concern.

"Are you okay?" He asked.

Wolfgang nodded; his head was starting to clear, the nausea fading. Kurt was half sitting half lying next to him, leaning on one elbow, his whole body shaking. As Wolfgang sat up Kurt slid the rest of the way to the floor and lay on his side with his eyes closed, still trembling.

"Are you okay?" Wolfgang asked him. He felt almost normal now, but Kurt obviously didn't.

"I've never been so tired." Kurt said without opening his eyes.

Wolfgang looked at Kurt and suddenly felt like a jackass. This whole time he'd been so worried about what would happen to him, that it hadn't even occurred to him to think about how Kurt might be affected. And now that he had the answer it made him feel selfish and stupid. The weight of guilt made him feel worse than Kurt looked.

He had to get Kurt off the floor and since Kurt didn't look like he was going to get up anytime soon, Wolfgang grabbed him by the armpits and pulled him into a sitting position.

"Can you stand?" He asked, still keeping a hold so Kurt didn't slide back down to the floor. Kurt nodded feebly and Wolfgang hauled him to his feet. He couldn't stand or walk on his own so Wolfgang half dragged half carried him out of the tent. He took Kurt to his own trailer. Margali's was twice the distance and Wolfgang wasn't sure how he would get him into his top bunk anyway.

Inside Wolfgang dropped Kurt onto his bed where sat swaying with his head down and his eyes still shut. Wolfgang wasn't sure what to do. There was obviously something wrong, but he had no idea what it was or how to fix it. He poured a glass of water, but Kurt couldn't even hold onto it. Wolfgang held it for him so Kurt could drink it.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Wolfgang asked. He knew Kurt found teleporting tiring, but he never got like this when he teleported alone.

Kurt nodded, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. "I already feel better. I just need to rest that's all." He said.

Wolfgang realized that Kurt was right. He still looked exhausted, but he had stopped shaking and was holding his head up higher.

"So much for our big experiment." Wolfgang said.

"It was a lot harder than I thought it would be." Kurt admitted.

"You can stay here tonight."

"Mmm," Kurt was already stretching out on Wolfgang's bed. He was asleep before Wolfgang could pull the covers over him.

Wolfgang watched him sleeping for a moment, reassuring himself that yes, Kurt was breathing and everything was going to be all right. Once assured, he opened a cupboard below the bed to retrieve the sleeping bag he used on cold nights. Wolfgang spread it out on the floor and curled up on top of it. Something poked him in the head and he realized that Kurt twitched his tail in his sleep and it was hanging off the edge of the bed. He laughed and pushed it away realizing he was probably the only guy in the world to ever have this problem.

He lay awake staring at the ceiling for a long time, thinking about the evening's events. Remembering Kurt lying unable to move on the tent floor, Wolfgang vowed never to ask him to teleport with another person again.


	17. Chapter 16

_**Chapter 16: Power and Responsibility**_

_"Why don't you concentrate on being an acrobat before you add 'hero' to your résumé."_

Wolfgang was surprised when the next day Kurt insisted that they continue their teleportation experiments.

"No way." Wolfgang said. "That was way too scary. You didn't see yourself. And I didn't like it very much either."

They were sitting at a picnic table as far away from the camp as they could get so not to be over heard. Wolfgang sat with his back against the table, leaning his elbows on it. Kurt was above him, crouched at the table's edge. They often talked like this, watching the various goings on around the circus as they discussed anything from art to literature to philosophy.

"I know, but when I first started I used to knock myself out all the time. And that was just me." Kurt said. "Teleporting with you was just a lot to keep track of all at once, but know if I practice I could do it."

"But why, Kurt? It's totally unnecessary. Why put yourself through that just for a neat party trick?"

Kurt's tail drew a few circles in the dirt below him. "Because it's not just a trick." He said. "It could be useful."

"Useful? For what?" Wolfgang asked.

"Promise not to laugh?"

Wolfgang shrugged.

"I was thinking that if someone was in trouble, I could help them. You know, take them to safety." Kurt said.

Wolfgang started laughing. "What? Like save damsels in distress from burning buildings and stuff? I'm going to have to stop showing you all those old movies. That kind of stuff doesn't really happen Kurt."

"It has to happen sometimes. Where do the ideas for the movies come from? It seems like an important thing to be able to do."

"I don't get it." Wolfgang said, "I mean, where did you even get this idea in the first place?"

Kurt sighed. "I just want to do something good for someone some day." He said. "Is that so bad?"

"No, it's not. But why is it so important to you that you'd want to put yourself though what is obviously really hard on you. Not to mention on me." Wolfgang said.

"It's because of who I am."

"Who you are?" Wolfgang asked.

"You know." Kurt gestured at himself and Wolfgang shook his head.

He stood up and clapped Kurt on the back. "Elf," he said using the nickname Kurt still hadn't been able to shake since the Back in Black rehearsals, "I can't say it's not admirable, but it's not realistic either. Why don't you concentrate on being an acrobat before you add 'hero' to your résumé."

But Kurt was undeterred and Wolfgang found himself the unwilling victim of Kurt's "drive-by teleportings" more than once. Usually anytime Wolfgang found himself alone he knew it wouldn't be long until Kurt popped out of thin air and grabbed him to whisk him off to some new location.

The first few times the results where pretty much the same as the first experiment, and were usually followed by a lecture as Wolfgang hauled Kurt to his feet and carried him back to his trailer. However as time went on Kurt's technique improved. Kurt stayed on his feet and Wolfgang noticed that he didn't get quite as dizzy so either he was getting used to it, or Kurt was somehow getting better at controlling their transit.

But the end of the summer Kurt could teleport them both and then quickly teleport away a second time to avoid hearing Wolfgang's admonishments. Wolfgang figured that if Kurt had enough energy to do that, then it probably wasn't hurting either of them. And just maybe some day Kurt would actually rescue a woman from a burning building.


	18. Chapter 17

_**Chapter 17: Wolfgang Redefinierte**_

"_He can't help it. He was raised by gypsies in a traveling Bavarian circus."_

The unexpected success of Back in Black had taken the whole circus by surprise, igniting the imaginations of younger members like Kurt and Lars and silencing the older skeptics. It seemed that audiences really did want to listen to rock music and their time-honored routines needed revision. Wolfgang had lit a fire under their collective ass and suddenly Circus Gehlhaar wanted to remind people why they came to the circus in the first place.

The equipment for sound and lighting was already in place and so some of the other acts started working on ways to redefining their part in the show. The unexpected backlash however, was that the musicians were becoming increasingly worried about the desire to use pre-recorded music in the show.

"What if you filled out the band and instead of playing background music and actually had a performance of your own?" Wolfgang asked. He wasn't entirely sure what the band would think of his idea, but a few weeks later it seemed that hidden European network of talented performers that only gypsies like Margali and their band could tap into yielded a solution. With the addition of a second violin, more brass, and another percussionist rounded out the band's sound quite well. When they added a singer and a pair of flamenco dancers, they had an act worthy of center stage.

Wolfgang realized that if Circus Gehlhaar was going to make a major change in their show, he'd better be prepared. He needed to come up with a plan beyond just changing a few acts; Wolfgang wanted to create more than just entertainment, he wanted an experience, something that would transport the audience completely.

Wolfgang's first idea was fairly simple. He wanted to tell a story, but he didn't want to stray too far into the realm of theater. It was still a circus after all. His story would be told through movement and music instead. His first treatment was a love story. Kurt was the obvious choice for the lead and he'd been watching Lars' older sister Petra as a potential leading female. She was probably the most versatile of the Olsson women and only a year or two older than Kurt. She was not only an excellent trapeze artist, but was also becoming very skilled with silks and had been practicing hand-to-hand balancing with her father since she was 4 or 5.

The beginning of the story cast Kurt as a demon, but through love was transformed into an angel. The rest of the circus were people in a small village who were trying to cast the demon out, until the end of course when he sprouts wings and gets the girl. It wasn't anything that hadn't been done before, but it was a story that was easy to tell and that people could understand. Wolfgang felt that as a first draft it was fairly solid and once he had Kurt's review they would start fleshing it out as a framework for the various acts.

Kurt usually dropped in after the show was over, most of the time he came by alone or with Lars or Amanda, but occasionally Kurt, Lars, Amanda, Petra, Gretchen, and half a dozen other circus kids would show up at his door wanting to watch a movie. Wolfgang didn't mind it really; he did have the circus' only television and VCR after all. Plus it was fun playing host for an evening. He had never met a more mature and confident group of kids. Amanda at seventeen was the oldest and still nearly six years younger than Wolfgang was, yet he hardly noticed the age difference. Kurt wasn't the only seasoned performer in the group; nearly all of them had been working in circuses equally as long. The American college students Wolfgang had gone to school with had been less on the ball.

On this particular evening however, Kurt was alone when he peeked his head through the door. (It had taken Wolfgang forever to figure out that the only way to get visitors was to leave his door hanging ajar.)

"Did you watch the show?" Kurt asked, stepping in.

Wolfgang shook his head. "I was in here taking care of some things." He said.

Kurt grinned. "Well then you missed it. Lars was doing a double, but he over rotated and did a triple. He scared the crap out of himself, but he made the catch okay. No one knew the difference." He said and flipped a chair around so he could sit on it backward.

"Anything else exciting?"

Kurt shrugged. "The rest was just the show." He said.

Wolfgang rummaged around in his cooler and pulled out the last remaining beer. "Split it?" he asked holding it up.

"Sure."

Wolfgang grabbed two glasses, poured some of it in one for Kurt and carefully emptied the remains into the second so not to disturb the sediment. "It's the last of the stuff from Bruge." Wolfgang said sadly.

"I'll have to drink it slowly then. We won't be back in Belgium until next year." Kurt said sadly. He set the glass on the desk and stared at its cloudy contents.

"I've been trying to come up with something new for the circus to do." Wolfgang said.

"Really?" Kurt yawned and stretched elaborately, raising his arms over his head and uncurling his tail at the same time. "Maybe you could figure out a way so I don't have to play the devil every night. I've been vanquished so many times that I've lost count."

Wolfgang cringed inwardly. "What kind of part would you want to play?" He asked.

Kurt shrugged and then looked slightly mischievous, "maybe I could be a blue elf." He said.

Wolfgang laughed. "Sorry about that. I never thought it would stick." He admitted.

"I think it's funny actually." Kurt said. He spun around so he could sit with his legs stretched out in front of him and then arched his back so that he was looking at Wolfgang upside down. "Anything for a change."

Wolfgang held up his glass. "I'll drink to that." He said, mentally tearing up his script.

"To what?" Kurt asked, turning around to sit on the chair backwards again.

"To being a blue elf." Wolfgang said.

Kurt laughed, but picked up his beer anyway. "To being a blue elf." He repeated and they clanked glasses.

The next day Wolfgang started fresh on Circus Gehlhaar's new direction. Reading his story over again, he realized that there was one very fundamental flaw. When he had written it, he had hardly been aware of how insensitive he was being. It was the idea that Kurt had to be transformed into an angel in order for everyone to accept him. That was the wrong message. Wolfgang decided that instead, Kurt would look exactly the same at the end as he had in the beginning. The only ones transformed would be the audience.

He churned out the new version in a matter of days. Instead of a demon, Nightcrawler was recast as a sort of forest spirit. The show would introduce him in the forest happy, but a little lonely. Shortly afterwards a band of gypsies arrives and sets up camp. (Wolfgang had already made a mental note to himself to check with Margali so that he didn't write anything insulting or wrong about her culture.) They have a big party, which gets the entire cast including the band out in the ring. The party would set up the major characters, Petra as the lead female, Lars as her suitor, and Gretchen as a second girl in love with Lars. It was a little odd, casting siblings as lovers, but that was what he had to work with. The party ends abruptly when Nightcrawler, thinking it looks like fun tries to crash it.

From there each of the Gypsy characters and their relationships would be introduced through the various acts. In the meantime, Nightcrawler would occasionally show up in some non-threatening way but get chased off. He meets Petra's character in the woods after she runs away from Lars, whom she doesn't really like. She gets in some kind of trouble out in the woods but Kurt brings her back. The gypsies use this as an excuse to capture him. Wolfgang wasn't sure exactly how it would go after that but he knew that it would end with a double wedding, as the various love interests were reconciled.

He showed the first version to Kurt, who liked it, and then brought it to Papa, Sven, and the rest of the older performers who served as the circus' coaches and choreographers. The meeting represented one of the things that Wolfgang loved most about the circus: A roomful of people from half a dozen or so countries speaking in 3 or 4 different languages. It was like a microcosm of Europe in a tent.

"I don't know." Said Sven. "It's a good idea, but may be beyond our reach."

Papa nodded. "But it's certainly something different. No circus I've ever worked for has tried anything like this."

Laurentiu Wolleck, the head trainer and patriarch of the circus' new tightrope troupe spoke up, "I like the idea." He said. Wolfgang hadn't had much experience with Laurentiu, but from what he'd seen he was a lot like Papa Olsson. In fact, Wolfgang was beginning to realize that more often than not, circus acts came in family units often going several generations back. The Wolleck family was even larger than the Olssons and had worked in circuses in Romania, their country of origin, for four generations.

Gretchen's father, Gerhard Reichart, who was apparently from the same part of Bavaria as Kurt agreed with Laurentiu.

Wolfgang listened to them deliberating for over an hour wondering how many times "this is going to be difficult" could be countered with "but it's entirely new". He tried to remain neutral through out the discussion. As much as he wanted to see his idea come to light, he didn't want to force it. Sven was right, it would be a lot of work, the entire circus needed to be behind it or it would never happen. In the end though it was Papa who clapped Wolfgang on the back with one of his large hands and gave him the circus' blessing to make his show a reality.

Each night after the show had ended, he, Kurt, Lars, Petra, Gretchen, Papa, Sven, Gerhard and Laurentiu met to figure out what acts would go into the show and how the story would be told. During the day Wolfgang worked on the lyrics and tried to write music. It wasn't long before Wolfgang realized he was totally out classed. His silly poetry and the 4 or 5 guitar chords he knew were hardly up to the task of creating a show of this magnitude. He was going to need help. It was time to call in The Godfather.

James Brown had been two years ahead of Wolfgang at NYU. His name was a constant source of jokes of course, especially since James was a skinny white kid who had grown up in Manhattan. But apparently there was some musical gift passed along by the name because James was by far the most versatile songwriter Wolfgang had ever met. He was a pianist by training but could play half a dozen other instruments. Even as a student, he was regularly called into several of the big name recording studios to lay down extra tracks. If there was ever a rock and roll prodigy, it was James. And thus Wolfgang felt it was his duty to pull his friend out of his gig writing and recording songs for a royalty free music distributor and bring him to Europe to write circus music.

It was the middle of the summer when James arrived. They were in Germany and so Wolfgang had arranged for him to fly into Munich International Airport, a few hours from where the circus was performing. The circus had the day off so Kurt joined him in the rented Mercedes as they sped past Munich on their way to Munchen. It was the first time Wolfgang had ever been anywhere with Kurt that wasn't connected with the circus.

It seemed that Kurt had a routine for these occasions. Instead of Kurt's usual hodge-podge of mismatched clothes he was wearing a somber pair of dark trousers and a long hooded coat. Most notable were his shoes; Wolfgang didn't even know Kurt owned shoes.

"Are you coming?" Wolfgang asked after he'd parked the car and pocketed the keys.

Kurt nodded grimly and pulled up his hood. He wrapped a scarf that would have looked more appropriate in the dead of winter around his neck so that it covered the lower half of his face. "Ready." He said and jammed his hands in his pockets.

Munich International Airport also served Salzburg, which meant Wolfgang was right at home. He'd traveled in and out of this airport since he was a baby. He led Kurt away from the parking lot by memory and into the bustling international terminal. Terminal 2, Wolfgang could have called it his second home.

"James is coming in on Lufthansa so we have to go… Kurt?" Kurt had been right beside him when they entered the building, but now he was nowhere to be seen. Wolfgang retraced his steps back through the crowd and found that Kurt hadn't gotten much farther than the door. He'd retreated to what appeared to be the darkest spot against the wall of the brightly lit terminal.

"What are you doing?" Wolfgang asked.

Kurt pulled his hands up into his sleeves and folded his arms across his chest. "It's really crowded." He said; his voice muffled by the scarf around his face. Still leaning against the wall he started to slowly sink down.

"Of course it is. It's an airport." Wolfgang said. It seemed ridiculous that as seasoned a performer as Kurt would be paralyzed by a crowded airport but he could already tell what was happening. Kurt was at ease performing in front of hundreds of people as long as he exerted control in the form of the ruse that his appearance was a costume. Here he had none of that control. In fact, dressed for a blizzard on a bright summer day, he stood out just as much as he would have without hiding. The only difference was that he wouldn't scare anyone this way. He just looked strange.

Wolfgang realized it was Margali's fault. She harbored the notion that an angry mob was hiding around every corner ready to jump out should Kurt ever show his true face in public. She had raised Kurt accordingly and so Wolfgang suspected that now Kurt was equally convinced. He was sure that in some places Margali was right, however Wolfgang was positive most people were more charitable than that. Despite this he really hadn't anticipated Kurt, who was now sitting on the floor with his arms wrapped around his knees and his head down, going to pieces like this. He knelt down beside him.

"Why did you come then? You knew there would be people here." Wolfgang said.

Kurt looked up; Wolfgang could barely make out his features under his hood. "I've never seen an airplane up close; a real one I mean." He said miserably, "but I didn't know there would be so many people. I don't really do well in big crowds unless I'm performing."

"As always, the king of understatement." Wolfgang said. On an impulse Wolfgang pulled Kurt's hood back.

Kurt was frantic. "Wolfgang, No! What are you doing?" He yanked the hood back in place.

"Nobody cares Kurt." Wolfgang gestured around them at the oblivious rush of people, "They're all trying to catch planes and carry baggage and stuff. I don't think anyone has even noticed you. C'mon Elf, let's go pick up James." He said.

Kurt shook his head.

Wolfgang looked at his watch. James' plane would be arriving any minute. "Can you find your way back to the car?" he asked. "You could wait for us there. I'll give you the keys."

Again Kurt shook his head. "Please don't leave me alone." He said, his voice small almost childlike. He was terrified.

Wolfgang sighed. There really wasn't time to go all the way to the car and back, but he certainly couldn't leave Kurt plastered to the wall like this. James would have to wait. "I'll take you." He said, "You can wait there and afterwards we'll go to where there are no crowds and you can see the airplanes."

"Really?" Kurt asked. Wolfgang could hear the relief in his voice.

"Absolutely. Let's go though. I don't want to keep James waiting too long."

"I'm really sorry." Kurt said. He rose up to his full height and Wolfgang did the same. He shrugged.

"It's okay. We'll work up it." He said. Wolfgang didn't give Kurt the chance to ask with this meant. Instead he took him by the elbow and maneuvered him back out the doors to the parking lot.

Wolfgang jogged through terminal 2 glancing around for James' gate number. James was waiting for him, looking slightly bleary from the long trip and craning his neck to look through the crowd.

Wolfgang snuck up behind James when he took off his glasses to rub his eyes. "Willkommen zu Deutschland Herrn Brown." James turned around, a huge smile on his face.

"Wolfgang!" The two of them hugged and Wolfgang grabbed one of James' bags for him.

"Late as usual?" James asked as they pushed through the throng towards the baggage claim area.

Wolfgang shook his head. "I'm reformed. The circus runs on a tight schedule. I can't do things on 'Wagner time' anymore." He said. "I was here on time, but there were some complications. I had to do a friend the first half of a favor."

James laughed. "Not completely reformed then." He said.

They returned to the car laboring under the weight of James' 2 suitcases and his keyboard in its traveling case. Kurt was waiting for them, stretched out in the back seat paging through the book Wolfgang had brought in case there was a delay. He had shed his bulky concealing coat in an effort to prove to Wolfgang that he wasn't a complete coward. He got out of the car as they approached. James stopped in his tracks, continuing only when Wolfgang poked him in the back with his elbow.

The whole episode in the airport terminal had been deeply embarrassing and Kurt was determined not to continue the trend by hiding from Wolfgang's friend. He would not be shy. He would introduce himself like a normal person. His resolve was somewhat shaken by James' reaction to him but he stayed put.

"Hallo. Ich bin Kurt. Wolfgang's Bekannter. Ich bin wie gehts es Ihnen." Kurt said when they reached the car.

"Sorry, I don't speak German. You must be Kurt." James said. He held out his right hand, but pulled it away when Kurt went to shake it.

"Don't worry. It is not sticking." Kurt said switching to English and trying not to look wounded.

James wasn't quite sure what Kurt meant by that, but he had clearly done the wrong thing. "Oh, no, that's not it." James said. He quickly took Kurt's hand in his own and shook it. "Wolfgang draws you wrong. You have five fingered hands in all the posters."

Kurt looked at Wolfgang. "I do?"

"Umm." Wolfgang stalled. Did he draw Kurt's hands wrong? He had no idea. "I never really thought about it." He admitted and then turned to Kurt. "I'd like you to meet James Brown, musical genius."

James rolled his eyes. "Please, call me Jim. Only Wolfgang calls me James and that's because I can't get him to call me anything else."

"What's wrong with to being called James?" Kurt asked, helping Wolfgang load James' keyboard into the trunk.

James looked incredulous. "James Brown." He said as if in explanation. "I don't want people to get confused."

Wolfgang glanced at James' red hair and freckled face and laughed. "Don't worry," he said, "They won't."

"Who's James Brown?" Kurt asked.

James' opened his eyes wide and turned to Wolfgang. "He's kidding right?" Kurt shook his head.

"He can't help it," Wolfgang said, "He was raised by gypsies in a traveling Bavarian circus."

After a brief tour of the airplane maintenance area, the "other half" of the favor as Wolfgang called it; they left the airport to return to the circus. Kurt had given the front seat to James. He leaned forward so he could talk to them between the driver and passenger seats.

"I can't believe I'm in Europe." James said, looking out his window at the blur of landscape.

"You've never been to visiting Germany before?" Kurt asked. He was still trying to get over the novelty of speaking only English for such an extended period. Normally when he and Wolfgang spoke they stuck to German with a tendency for drift into other languages, including English, for only a sentence or two before returning to their native tongue.

"James is a tried and true New Yorker." Wolfgang said. "He thinks the entire planet ends in Westchester."

"Doesn't it?" James asked in mock seriousness.

Wolfgang laughed.

"Where is Westchester?" Kurt asked. James spun around to face the back seat.

"It's across the Hudson river, just west of the Bronx." He said. "All the snobby rich people live there. People like Wolfgang." Kurt nodded like he understood even though he had no idea what James was talking about.

"Don't worry James," Wolfgang said, "Germany is now the sixth borough. From now on New York City is Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, and Deutschland. So you're okay." He laughed at his own joke.

"Did you have your family arrange that then?" James asked.

"No." Kurt chimed in before Wolfgang could answer, "Because then he would to have changed the name to Wagner."

James looked confused, but Wolfgang burst out laughing. "Touche, Kurt. Very Funny."

James leaned his head back and watched out the window, only half listening to Wolfgang and Kurt banter back and forth. Part of him wondered what he'd gotten himself into. Wolfgang had been legendary at school for the crazy plots he cooked up. Most often Wolfgang's late night musings never saw the light of day, but on occasion they had and the results had been so stunning and so sublime that James couldn't not take the risk. The worst that would happen was that he would return home without having accomplished anything.

Wolfgang had promised an adventure and so far, it didn't sound like a lie. After all, here his was speeding down the motorway in kilometers per hour rather than miles and listening to an old school friend trade jokes with a guy who looked like the devil. He already felt like he was in the circus. James smiled, this was going to be an adventure all right, and if Wolfgang could pull it off, a chance to create art in it's highest and purest form. He could hardly wait to begin.


	19. Chapter 18

_**Chapter 18: The Godfather of Circus**_

"_So, what are you going to do about Maria?"_

"I guess there are a lot of mutants in the circus." Said James as he and Wolfgang climbed up to the top of the empty bleachers.

"Not as many as you would think." Wolfgang said, sitting down next to James. "It's too high profile, most mutants don't want the exposure. In fact, the Elf is the only one I know of for sure. But, he's high profile all the time so I suppose it doesn't matter."

"You call Kurt an elf" James asked.

"It's the ears." Wolfgang said, pointing to his own ear and miming an imaginary point at the end of it with his fingers.

James laughed. "I guess you're right. Did he always look like that?"

"Yeah. Margali, his foster mother, has an album of photos. Whenever they took publicity photos of the performers, she paid the photographer a little extra to do a family portrait. There are a few pictures of Kurt as a baby. He looks exactly the same." Wolfgang pictured the portraits in his mind; they contained such warmth, the family in close contact, relaxed and smiling. They were so different from the stiff painted portraits in his parents' home.

Laurentiu Wolleck entered the tent and waved to them.

"Ist es alle Rechte üben, wenn wir Ihnen zuschauen?" Wolfgang called down.

"Ja, geht voraus." Laurtentiu yelled back.

"What are you guys talking about?" James asked almost as a reflex. He'd only been with the circus for a day and he already felt isolated by the language barrier. Nearly everyone knew English, but they rarely spoke it. Conversations were mostly in German but James noticed that phrases in other tongues were mixed in, occasionally in the same sentence. It was like being at a very colorful United Nations meeting. Even though no one ever complained, James was growing tired of asking everyone to repeat themselves in the one language he could understand.

"He said we can watch them practice." Wolfgang said.

Actually, considering the intensity of the culture shock, James thought he was doing quite well. Thirty-six hours ago James had had an apartment with plumbing, a girlfriend, and a regular job. Now he was sharing a small mobile home with Wolfgang, plumbing was a quickly fading memory, and he wasn't exactly sure what writing circus music entailed. And considering that though it was ten in the morning while his body was telling him it was 3 am, he thought he was doing quite well indeed.

As Laurentiu and his family began climbing the ladders to the tight rope platform James sat up a little straighter. Now the work was beginning, he pushed his problems to the back of his mind and watched.

Right off James could see that this wasn't going to be a matter of writing songs or even a soundtrack. Normally movement was choreographed to the music, but in the circus it was backwards; the movements were too unpredictable and the harder the act the more time was needed for the performer to prepare. Instead of choreographing the performance to the music, the music would have to be choreographed to the performance.

About halfway through the Wolleck's practice they were joined by Kurt who seemed to arrive out of nowhere, climbing up to them from the back of the stands.

"What are do you to think of it?" He asked James.

"I had no idea you could do that many things on a tight rope." James answered. He noticed that Kurt was one of the only ones besides Wolfgang who made a conscious effort to speak English when he was around. He was thankful for it though Kurt's English was as paradoxical as his appearance. Kurt may have looked like an extra from a monster movie, but he was one of the nicest guys James had ever met. James had heard him speaking in at least five different languages, but his English was unpredictable. Most of the time he was perfectly intelligible even with his occasional mistakes, but he had a rare tendency to come up with English that was so wrong, even Wolfgang couldn't figure out what he was trying to say.

"This troupe is new." Kurt said. "They are really surprise look at of our old tight wire walkers." He pointed to a teenaged boy navigating his way across the rope on a unicycle. "You met Ivan last night."

James nodded his head, fairly certain that Kurt was saying that these performers were better than the previous ones.

In addition to the usual adjustments one makes when moving to a new country, James had the addition task of adjusting to the circus' schedule and lifestyle. Meals, for instance, were communal with the cooking and cleaning tasks divided amongst the members. Since the circus was primarily divided into family groups, a different family prepared dinner each night while another cleaned up. All the other meals were eaten at different times based on everyone's schedules, but dinner was always a large gathering.

It was surprising that the performers took on the extra work given all the other demands on their time. Wolfgang told him that there had once a hired cook, but they hadn't used one in years; that they preferred to keep the inner circle of the circus fairly tight. It wasn't too bad Wolfgang had told him; it was like having a dinner party every night.

He and Wolfgang had sat with a few of the older performers, the ones he'd be working with while he wrote the music for the show. Several feet away from them was the circus' adolescent crowd, easily the loudest group. Kurt was there; along with someone Wolfgang had introduced as Lars, as well as Kurt's sister Amanda and several other of the circus' teenaged performers. He recognized the boy Kurt pointed out as having been there too. As a musician James was no stranger to the bonds made on stage and from watching them, he could tell who performed with whom. Kurt and Lars easily had the monopoly on the comedy; watching their timing it was obvious that they worked together and had for sometime.

A few minutes later, watching the assembled members of Lycka på Himmelen, James' suspicion was confirmed. Kurt and Lars were the trapeze troupe's youngest male flyers and as such, did the flashiest tricks. They reminded him a little of two jazz musicians, trading riffs in constant friendly competition though it was obvious that Lars was somewhat outclassed against Kurt's unique physical attributes.

"The plan is to write the show all summer to give us all winter to put the show together. What do you think?" Wolfgang asked.

"It's a lot of work, but possible. And then what?" James said.

Wolfgang shrugged. "We tour the show until they're sick of us."

"Actually I was talking about you." James said.

"Me?"

"Yeah. You. And Maria. I thought you told her you were taking a year."

Wolfgang's smile dropped from his face, leaving a look like a scolded child. He sighed rubbed his eyes with his hands. "I know James." He said.

"And it's been what, a year and a half?"

"Yes."

"So, what are you going to do about Maria?"

Wolfgang frowned. He'd managed to keep Maria out of his mind since their parting in New York's John F Kennedy Airport, when he'd gone to his plane bound for Munich and she the plane bound for Rome. He hadn't considered that James was going to come here and start playing the part of his conscience.

"Have you even called her?" James asked, sounding more and more irritated.

"I wrote." Wolfgang said.

"Christ!" James shouted, slapping his palm against his forehead, "You tell a girl you'll marry her in one year and then you just write her once?"

"Twice." Wolfgang said indignantly.

"That's hardly an improvement. She's not going to wait forever you know. I can't believe you Wolfgang." James turned away in disgust. He'd only been apart from Brin for less than two days and he felt her absence like a physical pain. How could Wolfgang promise to marry a girl and then disappear for over a year with only a few letters?

Wolfgang sighed. "I still love her." He said. "I just didn't want to inflict upon her…"

"Inflict what upon her?" James asked.

"Me." Wolfgang said, gesturing at himself for emphasis. "I thought that maybe if I got all my silly ideas out of my system I could go back to her as, I don't know… a better man." He looked away from James, pretending he was listening to what Sven and Papa were saying to Lars even though he couldn't understand a word of Swedish. "It's just that they're not going away." He finished at last.

James shook his head. "Maybe she likes your silly ideas." He said.

"Maybe." Wolfgang shrugged. "But it just doesn't seem fair to her. I love Maria, but I want to support her, take care of her, and I'm just not ready to do that."

James snorted. "Your friend Kurt has more heart than you and he looks like Satan."

"Don't be rude. Kurt can't change the way he looks." Wolfgang shot back.

"Yeah, but you can change the way you act." James stood up. "I swear, I won't write a note until you clear this up. It's not fair to Maria. You're being an asshole." He started down the stairs.

"James!"

"I'm serious Wolfgang." James said, and kept walking.

Dear Brin,

Well, I made it – my first transcontinental flight. It wasn't as bad as I expected it to be, just a little boring. But, my luggage and I made it to Munich intact.

Wolfgang picked me up at the airport and it's been typical non-stop Wolfgang craziness ever since. He brought his friend Kurt with him to pick me up. Do you remember those circus posters that Wolfgang sent us, the ones he painted with that blue devil guy on them? (You should, it's in our living room.) Well, that's Kurt and that's what he's like. All of the time. But he's pretty nice.

I'm sharing a trailer with Wolfgang and his movie collection. As you can imagine it's a tight squeeze, especially since the circus is supposed to have their business office in there too. (Oh yeah, Wolfgang is the business manager for a circus now. Isn't that hilarious and yet somehow fitting?) I'm still trying to adjust to life here and I think I will be for a long time. Remember plumbing? Electricity? Privacy? English?

I'm trying not to sound negative because I'm really not. Once you get used to it (which I'm sure I will eventually) this is probably the most amazing thing I've ever done. The band is incredible and so are the performers. Plus, Wolfgang's idea is actually really good and I think they can pull this off. So you can stop your countdown – I'm going to stay, at least until we finish the show.

I miss you like crazy. We're going to be traveling all over Europe for the next few months so I won't have an address. And there are no phones. I'll send you a postcard from every place we visit and I'll call you the next time I'm near a payphone. Maybe by then I'll know how to say, "Hello, I'm a sheltered city kid from America" in German.

Did I mention I miss you?

Love

-Jim

PS – I lied about the electricity. They have generators. How else would Wolfgang get his movie fix?


	20. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19: Heroics**

"Nice try. You're just trying to get back at me for that time with Wolfgang. Would you like me to steer with my tail?"

"How do I know you're not cheating?" Amanda asked as Kurt swept a small pile of candies into the much larger one at his feet.

Kurt held up his hands so she could look down his sleeves. "I swear I'm not." He said.

Amanda looked skeptical. "What about your tail?" She said.

Kurt added his tail to the display of innocent limbs. "Maybe I'm just lucky." He said.

Amanda snorted. "You're not this lucky when we play with everyone else." She said.

Kurt grinned. "Then perhaps it's because the only one worse than me at bluffing, is you," he suggested, as innocently as possible. Amanda made a face and swatted him with a pillow from the floor. Kurt was about to retaliate when the van lurched and most of Kurt's winnings slid across the table into Amanda's lap.

"Never mind." Amanda said coyly. She let the pillow go and started tallying her newfound wealth.

"Hey!"

"I'm playing by your rules." Amanda said. "What do you think started your winning streak? It's not my fault the truck didn't lean in your direction this time."

Kurt picked up the deck of cards and shuffled them. "I'll have it all back in a few hands anyway," he said. "Then next time we play with the group, I'll actually be able to bet on more than one hand before going broke."

The van jumped again and Kurt had to wrap his tail around one of the table legs to keep from falling off.

"Sorry." Margali called into the back.

"That was close." Kurt said.

"Maybe you should sit in a chair instead of on top of the table." Amanda suggested.

Kurt shrugged in mock exasperation. "Yes, Amanda." He said. He was about to climb down when another lurch sent him tumbling off the table and against the opposite wall.

"Mom!" they shouted in unison.

"Sorry." Margali said again, "This road is really bad, and it's getting steeper. Why don't you both sit on the floor?"

Amanda got down on the floor, sitting with her knees up on one of the many cushions. Kurt untangled himself from where he'd fallen and dragged a cushion over to join her. They sat in silence, bracing themselves every few seconds as they were rocked from side to side by the bumpy road. It was a routine they were used to, something they'd done since they were children, whenever the road got dangerous Margali would have them sit on the floor so they didn't get hurt.

Kurt had missed driving with Wolfgang at first, but now that he was back in his old van, sitting on the floor with Amanda like they'd done through his entire childhood, he was glad to be back. He'd missed the long rides talking to Amanda, taking turns reading to each other from the revolving stock of books that were passed from performer to performer, and playing games. Since Stephani left for school it was just the two of them and he had relished those times spent with his sister and best friend. It was comfortable slipping back into the old routine. Even though he spent a lot of time hanging out with Lars and Wolfgang, he'd always felt closer to Amanda than anyone else in the circus.

They sat in silence listening to the familiar grinding of the van's gears, the throb of it's ancient motor. Kurt's hand strayed to the rosary in his pocket while he watched Margali steer the truck down the winding road.

Margali glanced at her children behind her before returning her gaze to the road. This van is getting too old, she thought. She pushed in the break as she rounded another turn and nothing happened. Surprised she pumped her foot up and down. The van didn't slow, in fact as she steered it seemed to be picking up speed. The van tilted sideways as it rounded the turn, throwing its passengers hard to the left.

"What's going on Mom?" Amanda said.

"Hold on to something." Margali said, forcing her voice to be calm.

"Why? What's wrong?" Kurt asked.

"We don't have brakes."

Kurt laughed. "Nice try. You're just trying to get back at me for that time with Wolfgang." He stood up. "Would you like me to steer with my tail?"

"No, Kurt. Sit…" But Margali was interrupted as she forced the rapidly accelerating van around another sharp turn. Kurt was knocked off his feet and slid up against the dashboard. He sat up and shook his head to clear it. He tasted blood and realized he'd bit his lip.

"You're serious?" He asked, turning around to look through the windshield. He caught a quick glimpse of a sign: "Dangerous Curves Ahead" in French.

Margali wrenched the steering wheel the opposite way. "Yes." She said through gritted teeth. She could hear Amanda on the radio, promising it wasn't a joke.

"Wolfgang said he can see smoke coming from under the truck." Amanda said.

"Kurt, get in the back." Margali said. "I'm going to stop this van before we go over the edge." The only seatbelt in the van was hers. "Hold on to something."

Kurt slid himself back to where Amanda was sitting and was surprised when she wrapped her arms around him. All the other trucks had moved away to let them pass.

"Get ready." Margali said.

Not sure of exactly what Margali was planning to do, Kurt held onto Amanda and wrapped his tail around the leg of their table, the only thing near that was anchored to the floor. Margali steered hard to the right and they hit the rock wall on their right with a crunch, the front of the van folding in against the wheels. Kurt and Amanda were thrown forward so hard that Kurt barely had time to release the table leg before it snapped his spine. Margali tried to brace herself against the wheel but the force was too much and she slammed against it chest first with a gasp.

The impact didn't even slow the truck; instead it skipped off the rocky outcropping Margali had tried to use to stop them and spun out of control away from the wall. Amanda screamed. Margali was still trying to catch her breath when she looked up. The van was skidding towards the edge where the roadside abruptly ended in a cliff. She felt the front wheels leave the pavement and was vaguely aware of Kurt grabbing onto her, still holding on to Amanda with his other arm. There was a deafening crack and then she was tumbling head over heels in a tangle of bodies, every limb battered and scraped by the concrete. They landed in a heap and the world went dark.

Wolfgang slammed on the breaks, his truck screeching to a halt, the trailer threatening to fishtail. He and James were thrown hard against their shoulder belts.

"What the…" James let his sentence trail off. There were people in the road but Margali's old delivery van, the most distinctive in the circus, was nowhere to be seen. Wolfgang pulled the parking brake and jumped out with James close behind.

"Oh my God." Wolfgang said, looking around. Pieces of the van were strewn across the road, a set of tire skids led to the road's edge.

"They were thrown out." James said in relief. He ran to the edge of the road and looked over. About fifty feet below them he could see the battered upturned form of Margali's van, flames licking upward from the engine compartment. The other trucks were stopping now, pulling as far off the road as they could. He walked back toward Wolfgang how was kneeling each in turn over the still forms of Margali, Amanda, and Kurt.

Amanda was the first to wake up, blinking her eyes and looking very pale. "Dizzy." She gasped.

"It's okay Amanda. It will go away." Wolfgang said. He turned to Kurt who was lying half buried beneath his foster mother and sister, his whole body shaking. James knelt down next to Margali who was coughing, her hand to her chest. Kurt slowly opened his eyes.

"Are they safe?" he asked weakly.

"They're fine. Did you take them both together?" Wolfgang said.

James helped Margali sit up. She stared at Wolfgang with a curious expression on her face. James wished he knew what they were talking about. Kurt nodded, closing his eyes and Wolfgang smiled, smoothing Kurt's hair back in a surprisingly tender gesture. "Sie machten gut. Nur Rest ja?"

"What are you talking about? What did Kurt just say? What's going on?" James asked, but Wolfgang shook his head. James swore under his breath. Things were bad enough without the language barrier, but there was something strange too. How had they been thrown from the van in a big pile like that? All three of them had cuts and bruises, but more than anything they'd looked sick. And Wolfgang's apparent unconcern was the strangest of all; it was almost like he had seen this happen before.

Sven and James helped Margali to her feet. "I can't believe it." She said looking around unsteadily. "I couldn't stop the lorry. I don't know how we got out. Amanda? Kurt?"

"I'm okay." Amanda said. "I just feel horrible." She had crawled a few feet away where she had spent the last few minutes retching.

"Kurt, what's wrong?" Margali asked. She knelt back down on the ground, James still holding on to her arm. He was surprised that Kurt was still lying on the concrete, his eyes closed. Wolfgang was still kneeling next to him.

"He's okay Margali." Wolfgang said. "Sven, take him back to my trailer. Let him rest. Keep him warm."

Sven looked confused, but scooped Kurt off the road without a word.

"What's going on?" Margali and James asked simultaneously in two different languages.

"It's nothing." Wolfgang said in English so he could answer them both. "He just looked really tired to me." He quickly changed the subject by making arrangements with the other drivers.

They couldn't stay parked where they were so Margali and Amanda found rides in the remaining trucks and they drove in a slow procession to the nearest place they could camp for the night. The Olsson women were kind enough to make space to Amanda and Margali in their trailer and Wolfgang slept on the floor having given his bunk to Kurt.

The next morning found Margali and her family sitting together on a picnic bench staring gloomily off into the distance. They looked like a trio of refugees, still dressed in the torn clothes they had worn the night before. Wolfgang pulled up in one of the smaller trucks with Ivan and Lars. They were each carrying a box.

"We got everything we could." Wolfgang said setting his down on the table so they could look inside. "I don't know whose stuff is whose, but it looks like everything in the front got completely charred. The things in the back of the van fared a little better."

"How could this happen?" Amanda asked, fresh tears welling up in her eyes.

"She was old." Margali said. "I should have replaced that old lorry years ago. I guess I got attached. It was our home."

Lars and Ivan set their boxes on the table and Margali, Amanda, and Kurt picked through the contents listlessly, seeing what of their few belongings they had left.

"Ugg." Amanda sniffed some of the clothes that she pulled out of the box. "We'll have to wash everything. It stinks."

Magali looked sadly at a few books, the edges of their pages charred. She brushed at the ashes and watched them crumple away into the wind. "Some of the Grimoires I kept were over a hundred years old." She said.

"I'm sorry." Wolfgang said.

Margali shook her head and smiled sadly. "It's ironic. When I was a little girl I was always taught not to value possessions. Some gypsy I am."

Wolfgang put a hand on her shoulder. He really liked Margali. She was in many ways, his boss. Franz Gehlhaar was of Rom descent too and had entrusted the business of running the circus to Margali because as a Rom herself, he trusted her. Margali handled the financial side of things and Wolfgang took care of the rest. She may have looked like a fortuneteller, but she was a shrewd bookkeeper and knew how to stretch even the tiniest budget further than anyone he knew.

"Are these all the books?" Kurt asked, looking into box on Margali's lap. "Did you see my bible? The one Father Dietrich gave me?"

"Oh, yeah." Wolfgang reached into the pocket of his jacket. "There were pages falling out and I wanted to make sure it all stayed together. It was actually the first thing we found."

Kurt accepted the slightly charred book and carefully turned the pages. "It was like that before the accident." He said. "It's just a little burned around the edges."

A few hours later Kurt and James were spread out on the floor of trailer he shared with Wolfgang, trying to piece together what was left of Margali's photo album.

"I can't believe how many books you guys had." Wolfgang said from his perch on his bunk.

"They are on the shelves to be packing really close." Kurt said. "Other would not to have staying on the shelves." He accepted a piece of cellophane tape from James and carefully taped a torn photo into place.

"That makes sense." Wolfgang said figuring it wasn't the right time to remind Kurt that only one verb per object was needed to get his point across. "The books on the outside were completely burnt but the ones inside were okay. They must have been protected from the fire."

"I guess." Kurt said distractedly. He was trying to manipulate to halves of the same photo to line them up but kept dropping the tiny bits of paper.

"Here, I let me help…" James started to reach out to help but Kurt moved away from his grasp.

"I can do it." Kurt snapped. James put the tape dispenser down. He'd never seen Kurt get angry before.

"Don't be so upset Kurt. You saved Margali and Amanda's lives." Wolfgang said to him in German. "I can't believe you teleported with both of them at once. That's amazing."

"It was really hard. I thought we were all going to end up back in the truck. But we had already gone over the edge. I had to try." Kurt said.

"I guess you were right about wanting to practice. That it would come in handy someday."

Kurt nodded his head, set the photo he had been working on aside, and picked up another. "It seems like such a strange sacrifice. Our lives are spared but we lose our home and now everyone's suspicious of me. Once again I wonder what is God up to?"

"Would you cut that out?" James shouted. "If you're going to have a conversation can you at least speak in a language I can understand?"

Kurt and Wolfgang stopped speaking German and looked at him guiltily. "Sorry." Wolfgang said.

"I'm sorry before I snapped to you James." Kurt said.

James shrugged. "It's been a crazy day." He said. "I guess I can see why we'd all be tense." To show there were no hard feelings he handed Kurt another piece of tape.

They worked in silence until Amanda pushed the door open. She dropped a drawstring bag on the floor with a heavy thump.

"I had to run each load through three times to get the smell out. When are you going to start doing your own laundry Kurt?" She said. Once again James was out of the conversation, but he didn't feel like asking for them to speak in English for the millionth time.

Without looking up from his work Kurt cried out in a falsetto voice, "Oh Lord, help us! It's a demon. A demon, doing his laundry! Save us! We're all going to hell in a launderette!"

James had no idea what Kurt had said, but it sounded pretty funny. Wolfgang tried to suppress a snort of laughter.

Kurt switched back to his own voice. "Not any time soon," he said.

"What's got you so cranky?" Amanda said putting one hand on her hip.

"Margali talked to Franz Gehlhaar while you were gone." Wolfgang said. Amanda made a face at the mention of the circus' owner's name. "He said that he will pay for a new van for you guys, but only after the end of the summer tour."

"So now we don't have anywhere to live." Kurt said.

Amanda opened her eyes wide in disbelief. "After?" She cried. "That's totally unfair. Where will we stay?"

Wolfgang sighed. "I told Kurt he could stay here. Margali's trying to make space for you and her. We'll work it out." He said.

Amanda rolled her eyes. "We always do." She said.

Dear Brin,

The phrase "never a dull moment" is de rigueur for Circus Gehlhaar. Wolfgang and I are getting an amazing amount done. Among his many titles is "lorry driver" and I've become his partner. Trucks are called "lorries" in Europe. I think the entire show has been written at over 80 Km per hour. (I think that's about 50 miles per hour but I'm not quite sure.)

Two nights ago while we were on our way to Lyon in France we passed through Val D'Isere (in the French Alps) and had this huge accident. There's one family, the Szardoses and they had the most amazing van. It was like an old tall, flat sided delivery van that they lived in but it was incredible inside. Margali, who is the mother, is a real gypsy. Did you know they have a nationality? Roma. I didn't know that.

Anyway, it looked like what you would imagine a real gypsy caravan would look like. The outside was painted with advertisements for the circus and the inside was this incredible little homey space. They were the only family without an electrical hook up so they lit it with gas lanterns and all the furniture inside was handmade and bolted down. It was really old though and Margali was always repairing it every time we stopped.

So while driving through the passes, Wolfgang gets a call on his radio from Margali's daughter that their brakes are out. Wolfgang thought it was a joke at first because before I came, Kurt was Wolfgang's driving partner and apparently they once played a similar prank and Kurt was in Margali's van. (Kurt is Margali's adopted son. I have no idea where she found him.) But it turned out it wasn't a prank and the van crashed into a rock wall and went over the side.

Here's where it gets weird. When we realized it wasn't a prank, Wolfgang freaked out and gunned the motor so we passed all the other trucks at like a zillion miles per hour. I thought we were going to die too. And then he nearly sent my organs out through my mouth by stopping short because Margali, Amanda (her daughter), and Kurt were lying in a big heap in the road in front of us. I looked over the edge and I could see the van burning at the bottom of the cliff. I figured the three of them jumped out, because they were pretty much fine except that Amanda was sick to her stomach and Kurt was completely out of it. The weird part is that Wolfgang didn't seem all that concerned – actually he seemed to know what to do, like it had happened before. Especially the thing with Kurt. I thought he'd hit his head, but Wolfgang was like "No big deal, he's just tired." Tired? From a car accident?

You'll have to let me know the next time we talk if that made any sense. Unfortunately everyone was speaking German so I have no idea what people were saying. I get the impression that Kurt did something that got them out of the van before it fell off the road and that only Wolfgang knows about it but maybe I'm imagining things.

Oh yeah, Kurt's my second roommate now. Wolfgang had to store most of his stuff in one of the equipment trucks so we could all fit. It's not like Kurt has much left – just his clothes and a bible. (He's really really Catholic. Isn't that odd?)

I'm rambling, but it really has been a weird few days. We've been camped a couple of nights but we start for Lyon again early tomorrow morning. I'll call you when I get there. Hopefully you'll have gotten this letter and you can tell me I'm nuts and to stop imagining things.

I miss you.

Love,

Jim

PS - I keep forgetting to tell you. Wolfgang said it's: Hallo, ich'm ein beschütztes Stadtkind von Amerika. (And Kurt said I should add this to make it more clear: Bitte so ausnutzen meiner guten Natur. Ich kann nicht den Unterschied zwischen einem deutschmark und meinem Mastdarm erzählen. )

I don't know what any of that means (they had to spell it for me so I could put it in this letter) but knowing them, I'm sure it's embarrassing.


	21. Chapter 20

_**Chapter 20: Confession**_

"_I have something I need to show you."_

Wolfgang crouched in the bushes, waiting. He pressed the button on his watch, illuminating the dial in the darkness. He had only been here five minutes. He'd give him another ten.

When Wolfgang's watch showed that the requisite amount of time had passed and rose and walked to the doors. They were a pair of large heavy wooden doors, each carved with an ornate cross on the center. He tried to open them, but they were locked and whe knocked it was useless. The doors were too heavy. Wolfgang pulled his hand back and rubbed his knuckles. Next to the doorway, on either side was a pair of leaded glass windows. Wolfgang peeked through and could see the inside quite clearly, which made sense; that was how he had gotten in. He rapped on the window. A moment later he heard the grating of the bolt sliding back and one of the doors opened.

"Can't a guy get a minute alone around here?" Kurt asked, peeking out from the darkness.

"I gave you fifteen." Wolfgang said. "What are you doing?"

Kurt glanced back into the dim interior. "What do you think I'm doing?"

Wolfgang gave a short laugh. "Okay, it was a dumb question. Can I come in?"

Kurt shrugged. "It's not my church." He said and stepped aside so Wolfgang could enter. Once they were both inside he shut the door and slid the bolt back. Without inviting Wolfgang to join him, Kurt returned to the pew where he had been sitting and picked up his rosary.

"Why do you always sneak into churches at night anyway?" Wolfgang asked, his voice echoing in the empty space. He sat down at the pew in front of Kurt and turned around to face him.

Kurt frowned and looped his rosary back on his belt. It was obvious that as long as Wolfgang was here, prayer time was over. "Because I can't exactly visit during the day now can I?"

"I guess not." Wolfgang said. He glanced around the room. Kurt had lit a single votive at the far end. The rest of the light was provided by the moonlight that came through the windows. "It's kind of nice." He said. "Maybe having the place all to yourself makes up for not being able to visit during the day."

"It doesn't."

"And yet you continue to love a God whose subjects won't let you into their houses of worship. Why is that?"

"I don't know. I just do. I have to." Kurt said.

"Have to? What do you mean you have to?" Wolfgang asked.

Kurt sighed. "It's because of who I am."

Wolfgang sat up a little straighter. "This is the second time you've said something like that to me. You don't honestly believe that you're some kind of demon do you? You know that's horseshit right?"

"Wolfgang!" Kurt admonished through gritted teeth.

"Sorry." Wolfgang said sheepishly. "But the question still applies."

Kurt sighed. "I… No, I don't. It's complicated."

Wolfgang was silent long enough for Kurt to resume saying the rosary.

"Do you know that I'm Jewish." Wolfgang announced. Kurt looked up mid-sentence.

"No. I didn't know that." He said.

Wolfgang nodded. "I am. My whole family is. Or they were." Kurt looked confused, but said nothing. Wolfgang continued. "You see in the beginning, Germany and Austria simply wanted the Jews out. And my family was more than happy to leave. Except no country wanted to take any of the expelled Jews in. So there was nowhere they could go."

"I'm sorry." Kurt said.

"It's so much easier to hide when you change your name and deny your faith." Wolfgang continued. "Wagner isn't a Jewish name and we didn't fit the Jewish stereotype. Plus, my grandparents had a bit of money to throw around; they actually helped support the Nazi party. Can you believe that?

"My grandfather always told me it was better than dying. I don't know if I agree. None of them go to synagogue anymore. Sometimes I think more got changed than our name."

"What was your family's real name?" Kurt asked.

Wolfgang shook his head sadly. " They won't tell me." He said. "And they destroyed all the old family records, photo albums, letters, everything and anything that would connect us to our heritage. We have so many secrets that we don't even know what they are anymore."

"I guess I fit right in then. My birth certificate was doctored by your family as well."

Wolfgang laughed. "Some legacy." He said. He glanced back at the candle Kurt had lit, still burning in its glass at the back of the church. "What did you light that for?" He asked.

"To say thank you." Kurt said.

"For what?"

"For reminding me why I'm here." Kurt said. Wolfgang looked quizzical. "It's hard to understand, but sometimes I feel like I'm some kind of cosmic practical joke. God must have made me me for a reason. If He didn't, then what a horrible thing to do to someone. Every time I start leaning towards the joke theory, I get reminded that it's good to be different. That I'm me for a reason."

"You're talking about the accident, about saving Margali and Amanda from the van." Wolfgang said.

Kurt nodded his head. "It just makes it worth it, you know?"

Wolfgang nodded. "I do. Why do you keep it a secret then?"

Kurt sighed. "I don't know." He said. "It scares me sometimes."

"But you told me." Wolfgang said.

"I had to tell someone. I trusted you. And I knew that you wouldn't draw any conclusions about me because you never have."

"You should tell Margali." Wolfgang said. "She cares a lot about you. Maybe more than you know. You should trust her too." He stood up and turned to leave.

"Why did you tell me that thing about your family?" Kurt asked.

"Because some things shouldn't be secrets." Wolfgang said.

Kurt sat on the lowest seat of the stands. He had a CO-2 fire extinguisher next to him with the pin pulled. He spun the pin lazily on one finger as he watched.

Circus Gehlhaar's fire act was Kurt's favorite. It was the most foreign to him, the most removed from anything he knew. Even though he performed as an aerialist, he understood and could even do most of the other acts. But the same attributes that made him such an excellent acrobat made him completely unsuitable for an act that involved manipulating things on fire. That was why he offered to be their fire-watch whenever he could. That way he could sit on the sidelines and watch with the presumption that should one of them actually catch fire, he could come and put them out. His services had so far remained unnecessary.

Fire knife dancing was a cultural art form created in New Zealand by the Maori tribes. It was a competitive dance when performed by men, and a story telling ritual when performed by women. The Maori used a variety of implements when dancing with fire. There were "poi", wicks held on chains with one looped in each hand. The flaming poi were then spun around the body in a variety of arcs and patterns. Kurt had never seen or heard any thing like it. The sound of fire moving through the air as it was spun was unbelievably loud, a great rushing sound like a giant wave or a gust of strong wind. In New Zealand the fire knife proper was a real bush knife on a two feet long handle wrapped in fuel soaked cotton on both ends with the knife end slightly longer than the butt end. It was then spun and twirled with amazing speed and dexterity. Fire knives for circus performance were much more refined. Instead of real knives, the ends were made from strong Kevlar wicks. They held the fuel better and since cotton had a tendency to fling bits of itself in the air as it burned, were much safer for the audience and the performer.

Feuer Langhagen was a German fire breather who had lived among the Maori for five years learning their arts. When he returned to Germany he brought two companions back with him. Tipene Black, whom everyone referred to as "Kiwi" and his eight year old son Amiri. The three of them had been with Circus Gehlhaar for three years and got nearly as much attention as Kurt did. Plus now that Amiri was older, he was ready to become a performer as well.

Kurt was watching Kiwi showing Amiri a new double staff trick. The double staff was probably the most difficult fire tool other than the meteors which, quite frankly, scared the hell out of everyone but Kiwi. Each staff was roughly two feet long with a wick on each end. That meant that there were four separate fire elements that the performer had to keep track of and unless the performer was very ambidextrous, the twirling staffs looked lopsided. Kiwi was amazing with the double staffs. Amiri was still learning the ropes.

Kurt had his eyes on Amiri when Margali sat down next to him.

"Do you have a moment?" She asked.

"I'm their watch." Kurt said gesturing at the fire extinguisher. "I can't go anywhere."

"But you can talk right?"

"Yeah. I can talk. Why?" Kurt asked, but he knew what was coming. Margali had been hounding him about the accident for a week now.

"How did all three of us get out of the van at the same time?" She asked.

" Not this again," Kurt said, "I told you. We fell out."

"But it was going over the cliff."

"We fell out before it went over."

"And the door. It was closed."

"It opened when I pushed you."

"But you pushed me towards the driver's side. There was no door on the driver's side."

"I think we might have slid to the passenger side before we fell out." Kurt said.

"At what point did you unbuckle my seat belt then?"

Kurt, who'd been answering Margali's questions with his usual well rehearsed responses, paused. Margali had never asked him that before. "You were wearing a seat belt?" He asked. He hadn't realized.

"Yes. Did that come off when you pushed me too?" She asked.

Kurt stared straight ahead, saying nothing. "I don't know." He said at last without taking his eyes off Amiri and Kiwi as they worked.

"You did something Kurt, I know you did." Margali cried. "Why won't you tell me? Why was Amanda sick? Why were you unconscious? What happened to us?"

"I was unconscious because I had just fallen out of a van going 60 kilometers an hour. I don't know why Amanda was sick." Kurt said still refusing to look at her. Normally he would have stormed off in a huff at this point, but he was tied to his seat by his responsibility to Kiwi and Amiri. Thankfully Margali stood up.

"Maybe one day you'll feel like sharing." She said and left.

Kurt sighed and put his chin his hands. Why wouldn't he tell her? After all Margali had never treated him differently than her own children. Didn't he owe her the truth? She had saved his life once after all. Perhaps it was that his appearance coupled with the fact that he could now disappear and reappear in a burst of sulfury smelling smoke made even him suspicious. And that didn't even include that strange man who had called himself his father who could do the same thing. The man whose sigil Kurt had since learned designated him as the demon Azazel. Those weren't the kind of things you told just anybody.

Kiwi dropped the two staffs on the floor and threw a piece of fireproof duveteen cloth over them. A moment later smoke issued from the cloth as the flames were extinguished. The three performers started packing up so Kurt slid the pin back into the fire extinguisher and carried it over.

"Thanks." Kiwi said and put it back in the box. "Amiri's getting pretty good huh?"

Kurt nodded and smiled at the boy. He liked Kiwi and Amiri. It wasn't just the fact that they were nice people; it was that they had something in common. It was customary in Maori culture to tattoo intricate patterns onto their faces and bodies. The patterns were meant to ward off evil spirits and in New Zealand Kurt doubted people paid them any mind. But in Europe their dark tattooed faces made them look utterly exotic, even menacing. Kurt had noticed that most people tended to shy away from them, sometimes fearfully. It was something he'd experienced nearly all his life and it was nice to know that he wasn't the only one dealing with the superficial judgment of a society that refused to look past exteriors and see what was truly inside.

Kurt started to follow them, but Feuer held him back.

"I heard you talking to Margali." He said. Kurt said nothing.

"Why don't you answer her question?" Feuer asked.

"I _am_ answering her questions. But it seems that she doesn't like the answers." Kurt said.

"That's because you're a terrible liar." Feuer picked up a small bottle of fuel and a lighter. "The tools of the trade." He said. "Without them our act wouldn't be much of an attraction would it?"

"No. I guess not." Kurt said.

Feuer looked at the bottle of fuel. "A necessity it would seem. As anyone who works with fire knows, a fire breather doesn't breathe fire at all; they blow the fuel out of their mouth and ignite it with a match."

"I… I know. You showed me once." Kurt said.

"Thisty?" Feuer tossed the bottle to him. "Have some."

Kurt stared at his friend wide eyed. "Are you crazy? I can't drink lamp oil!"

"Smell it."

Kurt opened the bottle and sniffed it tentatively. They had illuminated the interior of their van with oil lamps for years and he knew its scent well. But this didn't smell like lamp oil. It didn't smell like anything.

"What is it?" Kurt asked.

"Try it. It won't hurt you." Feuer said.

Still looking at the man like he was crazy, Kurt took a small sip, ready to spit it out immediately. He held it in his mouth and was so surprised that he spit it out anyway. "It's water?"

"That it is." Feuer agreed.

"How is that possible? I mean, wouldn't you blow out the match?"

"It's water because most fire breathers are really fuel blowers. But not all of them." Feuer walked a few steps away. "Let me show you something else." Feuer took a deep breath and when he opened his mouth and exhaled it came out as a great plume of fire. Kurt jumped back in surprise. It was the same thing that Feuer did as part of his act but this time Kurt was holding the fuel bottle and there wasn't a match.

"You're not the only one here with gifts." Feuer said. He took the bottle back. "But I can't do my act like I just did. People don't like what they can't understand. So I use a few props and nobody knows that I'm simply doing what comes naturally to me."

"I didn't know." Kurt said.

"That's because I hadn't told you yet. Now you know. Kiwi knows. So does Amiri. In fact their whole tribe knows. For a people that use fire to tell their stories I was like a God. But here in Europe I'm an aberration, a freak."

"Why did you come back?" Kurt asked.

"Because this is where I belong just like it's where you belong."

Kurt thought about this for a moment. Feuer was right of course. He hadn't even realized that being so different from everyone else was anything but a good thing until he was eight. And even now that he'd seen how most of the world was reacted to him; he still wasn't convinced that it wasn't a good thing.

"Keep your secrets from the audience Kurt." Feuer said. "Don't keep them from your friends, your family. Whatever it is, tell Margali what she needs to know."

Feuer put the rest of the props into their box and heaved it off the ground. "Think about what's important." He said and walked out of the tent leaving Kurt standing alone with only his thoughts.

Margali was sitting alone like she often did. It was nice to get away sometimes even if it just meant sitting one of their picnic tables by herself and looking at the sky. She was a non-performer surrounded by people with larger than life personalities all day. A few moments of silence in the evening was all she needed to recharge. There was a rustle behind her and Margali turned around. Kurt was standing there with his hands in his pockets.

"Mom." He said. "I have something I need to show you."

Author's note: A word on the blatant recycling of characters

When possible, I find it fun to include characters that appear in the comic books. Sometimes this is to tell the story like with Azazel and other times a character just fits in perfectly. I had planned on having a family of Maori fire performers and when I read the Draco I found there was already a Maori character in the canon. How convenient. Kiwi Black is about as un-Maori a name as you can find by the way. Amiri and Tipene are real Maori names. I later came across the Feuer Langhagen character and it just made sense to put the three of them together. It's not important to have Kiwi and Kurt related in this so I don't even deal with it. If you want Kiwi Black to be Kurt's long lost brother, that's cool with me. Otherwise he's just a guy from New Zealand.


	22. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21: Les Chansons de la Forêt**

_"I just can't get through to them. The tricks are amazing, but without movement to tie them together, it just doesn't look right. I don't want them just to run from spot to spot, I want to see purposeful movement, movement that tells the story. I want dance."_

Les Chansons de la Forêt was written in less than three months. Wolfgang and James worked tirelessly – reworking lyrics in French, Spanish, Italian, and English (what Wolfgang considered to be the best "singing" languages) during every spare moment. Kurt had even given up his seat in Wolfgang's truck so the two of them could use the drive time to write. By the time the circus was getting ready to camp for the winter (near Barcelona once again) they were ready to start choreographing and rehearsing.

James was absolutely thrilled with the band. After Wolfgang had contacted him in the states, he'd gone to the library and listened to every bit of gypsy music he could get his hands on. Circus Gehlhaar had a tight band, mainly Rom, from every corner of Europe. He filled their sound out with kit drummer, electric guitar and bass, and his own keyboards. The result was a brilliant gumbo of jazz rock flavored with the spices of old Europe.

He'd solved the complexity of following the performers by composing much of the background music as a series of repeating passages called "vamps" – a technique used in musicals for set changes. As bandleader James was responsible for watching the performance and directing the rest of the band accordingly. He'd also been careful to build in pauses in the music for applause and the ability to add various "hits" to punctuate the various tricks as they were performed.

Three singers had been hired, a man with a lovely tenor/baritone voice to sing as the "Rom Baro" or Gypsy King, a young woman with a wispy soprano to represent Petra's character, and a second woman with a more mature voice to act as a more general narrator. The singers as well as the band, would be outfitted with costumes and would perform out in the open in the ring with everybody else.

Wolfgang wanted the show to be seamless – to create a world in the hearts and minds of the audience and for the next 90 minutes never give them an excuse to leave it. Instead of using the roustabouts to carry props on and off stage, the performers themselves would. And since it was a story being told, the delineations between each act would be blurred with many of the performers onstage whether they were in the spotlight or not.

Writing the show was a balancing act in and of itself. It needed to be written around the various performers skills, to fit them into the story, but that couldn't be done until there was some structure to the story itself. And so they worked, as though they were placing bricks into the foundation that would become a great hall; the whole time knowing that even when they'd put the last mark on the paper, the real work had yet to begin.

By the time they reached Albania they had their outline – every lyric and every note ready for the performers to make it breathe and live.

Kurt was used to long hours of practice, particularly during the winter times, however this winter would be an even greater challenge for him. As the shows main characters he, Lars, Petra, and Gretchen would be on stage in some way or another for nearly the entire show. Each of them had a solo and they were additionally featured in several other numbers.

The addition of the Wollenck family at last made it possible to do a proper routine with the Russian bars. Though they were not acrobats of the same league as Lycka på Himmelen, they were very good and already adept at landing on even narrower beams than the bars. It didn't take long for Sven and Papa to train a new group of porters and flyers to fill out their act.

Gretchen was working on a very long hand balancing contortion routine for her solo and Petra was planning on a solo on silks. She had to work Kurt into the end somehow and the two of them were still experimenting. Kurt's solo which would open the show would be on the flying trapeze. He was a little nervous since solo flying trapeze acts had a tendency to be somewhat dull. He didn't want to put the audience to sleep before the show had even had a chance to begin.

The only one who couldn't decide what he wanted to do was Lars. Another trapeze solo would have been redundant and while he was working on straps and silks with Petra, he didn't feel like he was ready to do either. In the end he decided that rather than do a solo, he would be one of the "showcase" performers in the group trapeze act, the tumbling act, and the Russian bars.

Wolfgang over saw the whole operation, making sure that practice schedules didn't clash and that everyone got the time they needed with the equipment. He flew to New York with James to audition the new rhythm section. It was a strange feeling; he'd never felt so _competent_. Suddenly everyone was asking him for direction and for the first time in his life he knew all the answers. It was like he'd already seen Les Chansons de la Forêt in performance and he was just giving everybody instructions on how to replicate it.

James had commented early in the writing process that the forest didn't hold enough danger. In fact, he had said, the forest didn't appear to have anything in it but Kurt. Wolfgang agreed, but was concerned that they wouldn't have enough performers to have both a gypsy caravan and a forest stocked full of creatures. Sven pointed out that you could have people playing more than one character and that was how he became the leader of the wolf pack. With the same core group playing both forest creatures and gypsies, it was now a problem for their costume designer.

With the addition of forest creatures to the story, a whole new set of opportunities opened up for more unorthodox performances and Wolfgang could finally give Christian Alexander's act the attention it deserved. Christian had been the only American member of the circus before James showed up and he was still quite new. He was from California and had majored in German language at UC Berkeley only to discover upon graduation that just about the only work he was qualified for was as a translator. So Christian had instead indulged his passion for the so called "extreme sports".

Since high school he had competed locally on both his skateboard and his BMX bike. For skating he stuck to the street course, but on his bike he did both halfpipe and street events. After college Christian decided to go pro full time. He competed in 2 summer X-Games and gained sponsorship interest but since he wasn't winning, that interest faded. So Christian went to Germany.

His plan was uncertain. Maybe translator jobs were more interesting in Germany, or perhaps the BMX bike scene was in need of a new American competitor. When Christian found nothing to his liking, he became a street performer.

Christian's performances went beyond just a series of bike and skateboard tricks. He cracked jokes, invited the audience to participate, and juggled pins while balanced precariously on a single wheel of his bike. He made friends with the local artists and on his days off worked with metal sculptor to weld together fantastic new bicycle creations. His act became so popular that he even made it into some of the tourist maps for the city of Berlin. In short he was a one-man circus.

On a solo trip to Berlin Wolfgang saw Christian perform and approached him right away. Christian was a natural clown, playing off the audience with an amazingly quick wit, allowing them to laugh not so much at him, but with him and at themselves as well. His repartee was so quick in fact that Wolfgang was shocked to find out that German was not Christian's native language. Plus, his homemade bikes were marvelous. He knew Franz Gehlhaar hadn't given him permission to recruit performers, but there was no way he was going to pass up the chance to have Christian join their circus.

Christian had loved the idea and even though his wages as a street performer were higher, he joined up with Circus Gehlhaar and became the chief form of entertainment before the show and during equipment changes, the closest thing they had ever had to a clown. As Christian's act was fueled by audience interaction, he ate it up. He loved hoping his bike up the aisles and into the stands so he could jump off to toy with the audience. In fact Wolfgang imagined that Christian was exactly like what Kurt would have been if he had been born blonde haired and blue eyed. The two of them got along famously of course and their impromptu collaborations were some of the most hysterical bits of the show.

But in Les Chansons as it became known, Christian's days of hamming for the crowd and pretending to run over Kurt's tail were over. He would finally get a chance to take the spotlight in an act that focused on his pure athleticism and balance; he was going to take extreme sports to a new level by turning it into art.

Rehearsals were going smoothly. As expected Laurentiu's tightrope walkers adapted immediately to the Russian Bars and Wolfgang could see that that act was going to be one of the show's highlights. They'd brought out the giant trampoline again, but this time used it without the trapeze. Sven and Nils who had been former Olympic athletes before returning to circus life could get some amazing height from a trampoline take off, enough to do four somersaults. Annika and the three other Olsson women were planning on an aerial hoops act that was just breathtaking.

The roustabouts finally became more than simply equipment movers and rope handlers. Wolfgang discovered a number of innovative carpenters and builders in their ranks; some of their families went as far back in the circus as many of the performers' did. They built a large platform that sat suspended near the tent's apex. It had several trap doors allowing performers to make entrances and exits into the ceiling. It also provided the main framework for many of their props such as the trapeze and silks rigs.

There was only one problem and that was the choreography. As much as Wolfgang respected the work of Papa and the others, they were acrobats, not artists. They were coming up with some amazing things, but their focus was on amplitude and complexity, not art.

"I just can't get through to them." Wolfgang complained to James. "Even Kurt who usually listens to me. The tricks are amazing, but without movement to tie them together, it just doesn't look right. I don't want them just to run from spot to spot, I want to see purposeful movement, movement that tells the story. I want dance."

"So you need a choreographer who's a dancer and can teach them that it's not all about incredible death defying stunts, is that it?" James asked.

"That's it." Wolfgang said.

"You mean a choreographer like my girlfriend?"

Wolfgang's eyes opened up wide. Brin! Why hadn't he thought of that? He gave James a giant bear hug of gratitude and ran off to make arrangements to bring Brin to Spain. It was perfect. James would have his girlfriend and the circus would have their dancer. Things couldn't be falling into place more beautifully he thought, especially since Maria would be joining them as well.

Dear Brin,

Did I ever tell you that Wolfgang is a certified genius? No? Okay, it's true, I've only ever said he was a certified maniac. But today I realize how wrong I was because he has seen it fit to hire a choreographer for the show. The best, most skilled, and most lovely modern dance choreographer in New York. (That would be you honey.)

I'm sure Wolfgang will contact you more formally with a contract like when he hired me, but I was too excited not to write you. I know you have your contract with the Civic Dance Theater to fulfill, but that's only for another few weeks right? I have no idea what choreographing a circus involves, but it can't be any weirder or harder than writing the music. Please take the job. Please. Please. Please. (add about a thousand more pleases, I'm running out of room on this postcard.)

Traveling around Europe is amazing, but it would be so much more so with you.

I love you,

James


	23. Chapter 22

**Chapter 22: Fatherly Advice**

_"Is it that you don't like scaring people because you don't want them to be afraid? Or, is it that you don't like scaring people because you don't like the way it makes you feel when they are afraid?"_

James had a suitcase in each hand and a third bag hung over his shoulder but he hardly felt the weight. He walked through the camp pointing out the sights as he went.

"This is where we all eat." He said, nodding his head towards the collection of picnic tables clustered under a large oak tree. "And you can see the big tent way over there. This is where Wolfgang lives but he's never there. And that's Margali's new trailer but I think she wishes she still had the old one. Oh, and you're lucky because since we've got a well there's a shower tent, otherwise you have to use the…" James stopped talking when he heard Brin laughing.

"You're babbling." She said.

James stopped walking. "Oh, okay." He said.

"I think it's cute."

James grinned. "Well, I'll continue then. This is our trailer. Wolfgang shuffled everyone around so that we could have it to ourselves. Normally it's Christian and me in here so everyone calls it 'Wenig Amerika', Little America. Isn't that sweet?" He pushed open the door with his butt and pulled the suitcases in. Brin followed him inside and looked around.

"It's no smaller than a Manhattan apartment." She said.

"Actually, I think it's bigger than my first apartment." James said. He pulled Brin to him and planted a kiss on her forehead. "Anyway, the décor has improved immensely in the last few seconds." Brin laughed and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on the lips.

"I hope I'm interrupting something."

They moved apart and saw Wolfgang leaning into the door. Brin put her arms out to give him a hug. "Wolfgang, you look so respectable with your hair short."

He stepped in. "Why thank you. And you look stunning as always, lovely Brianna." Wolfgang ended their embrace by taking her hand in his to twirl her around and drop her into a graceful dip.

"What, you're stealing my girlfriend after only five minutes?" James said. Brin laughed and gave Wolfgang a peck on the cheek.

Wolfgang looked at his watch. "Two." He said. "Has James given you the tour yet?"

"Sort of," said Brin smoothing back her chin length hair. "But I'm sure I'll be lost for the next week."

"I doubt it. It's not that big. It's going to take you forever to learn how to pronounce everyone's names though." James said. There was a knock on the door and Wolfgang opened it.

"This is Christian." He said, letting in the tall blonde haired cyclist who still looked more like surfer than a circus performer. "He said he'd help out translating for you."

"Oh." Said Brin, surprised. "Thanks."

"No worries." Christian said shaking her hand. "Nearly everyone speaks some English so you shouldn't have too many problems. You'll find that German is pretty much the norm though, so don't be afraid to ask people to repeat themselves. And if I'm not around there's Wolfgang of course, plus Sven and Nils are pretty dialed. They can speak Russian too, which is excellent because the Wollecks are Romanian. Their Russian pretty much rocks, but most of them are still trying to learn German."

"I speak Russian too." Wolfgang said.

Christian rolled his eyes. "Yeah, so you're pretty much covered on the whole Russian thing. Oh, and Kurt can translate for you into German, French, and Latin as if that does any good."

"How do you guys get anything done?" Brin asked. "I mean, it sounds like a giant game of telephone."

Christian laughed. "I know, it's nuts isn't it? But it's all good."

"You get used to it." James said. "Wolfgang tries to speak English when I'm around. So do Kurt and Amanda. I'm never sure if that's English Christian is speaking or not. Everyone else pretty much forgets. Hey, how are you settling in Christian?"

""I'm crashing at Margali's." Christian told Brin as if she actually knew who Margali was. He grinned. "Margali's new trailer is sweet dude. It's actually got rooms with doors. Which kicks because they keep the oddest hours."

"When Margali's van was totaled she needed a new one." Wolfgang said.

"So Wolfgang somehow negotiated three." James interjected.

Wolfgang shrugged. "We were completely over crowded. We needed the space and a proper office. It's better now right?"

Christian and James shrugged in agreement.

There was another knock on the door.

"Is it always like this?" Brin asked.

"Actually no." James said. "Normally people don't knock. And I don't usually get this many visitors."

"Except in this case James has practically tattooed the date of your arrival on everyone's foreheads." Wolfgang said. He opened the door. "Hey speak of the devil."

Amanda peeked in holding a bouquet of fresh picked flowers. "Hi." She said. "I'm Amanda. Oh, these are for you." Brin smiled as she accepted the flowers. "I feel like I know you." Amanda said, "James talks about you all the time."

"I gathered." Brin said. "Thanks for the flowers, they're really nice." She bent down to sniff them.

Kurt looked in. "Wow. Is like an English speaking convention in here. Is James' girlfriend finally get here?" He asked. He had just stepped through the door when Brin shrieked and dropped the flowers. Kurt froze. Brin shrieked again and Kurt was surprised when Christian shoved him roughly out the door and shut it. Nobody spoke.

"Honey, why did you do that?" James asked when the silence became unbearable. Amanda bent down to gather the flowers off the floor.

"I… I'm sorry. I just wasn't expecting… What…Who was that?" Brin said, still holding a hand to her chest.

"That was Kurt." James said. "I told you about him. He was on our living room wall for a year." He didn't want to sound angry but it was embarrassing. He'd been startled by Kurt's appearance too, but he'd certainly handled the situation with more composure. It was true he had had to lie about Wolfgang's art, but so far neither of them had called him on it.

"I know." Brin said wiping her eyes. "When you said he was like that all the time, I thought you were being metaphorical."

James sighed and wrapped his arms around her. "It's okay. It's been a long trip. You're tired. I'll introduce you tomorrow and things will be fine."

"Yeah, okay." Brin said skeptically.

"I've got to go look for him." Wolfgang said, "I'll see you guys later."

Christian tapped Amanda on the shoulder and gestured at the door. Amanda handed the flowers back to Brin. "It was, um, nice meeting you." She said. Brin nodded in silence as she took her flowers. James looked apologetically at Amanda but said nothing. What could he say?

"Why did you do that to Kurt?" Amanda said sternly as she and Christian walked back to their trailer.

"I didn't know what to do. She was completely tweaked." Christian said. "I just wanted her to stop screaming at him. I should go with Wolfgang and apologize." He turned to follow, but Amanda caught his elbow.

"Let Wolfgang handle it." She said.

"You think so?" Christian asked.

"Definitely," said Amanda "There are only three people who can talk to Kurt after something like this happens, Father Dietrich, my mom, and Wolfgang."

Wolfgang found Kurt alone under the oak tree. He was sitting at one of the tables, his chin in his hands staring gloomily off into the distance. Wolfgang sat down at the table across from him.

"Why so blue?" Wolfgang asked.

Kurt shut his eyes. "I am so glad that joke only works in English," he said. "You know why. And can we please speak in German now."

Wolfgang acquiesced. "I'm sure she didn't mean it." He said.

Kurt stayed silent.

"I think you just surprised her, that's all. It's nothing that hasn't happened before. You know once she talks to you she'll like you." Wolfgang said.

"Do I?" Kurt asked.

"Sure. Everyone does. What's eating at you anyway? Usually this kind of thing hardly bothers you at all."

Kurt let his hands drop down to the table. "Isn't it obvious?" He asked.

Wolfgang shook his head. "No, it's not actually. Really, what's bugging you?"

"Oh, Forget it." Kurt said and vanished in a cloud of dark smoke.

Wolfgang stood up and looked around. "Kurt that's not fair." He called out, but there was no answer. The best thing to do now was look for the nearest church.

The church was small, made of stone and with a steep gabled roof. It was the kind of typical little church that dotted the European continent. Wolfgang allowed his gaze to follow the lines of the roof to the steeple. The gargoyle glowering down from the roof's peak looked very familiar.

"You're not fooling anyone." Wolfgang called up. "Why don't you come down?"

Wolfgang could see Kurt's shoulders sink as he sighed and a second later his friend was standing beside him. "Good, now I…" But before Wolfgang could finish his sentence Kurt grabbed him. They reappeared on top of the roof.

"Ahh!" Wolfgang gripped the roof's peak to keep from sliding down. He hauled himself up so that he and Kurt were facing each other, Wolfgang straddling the peak and Kurt perched atop it. Wolfgang craned his neck to look down. "I swear to God Kurt, if you teleport off of here without taking me with you, when I do get down your mangled mutant body will be on the news." He said.

"Don't worry. I won't," Kurt said.

"Well then, are you going to tell me what's wrong or are going to continue to pout like you're five years old." Wolfgang asked.

Kurt stared at him dejectedly for a moment. "It's girls," he finally admitted.

"Girls? What about them?" Wolfgang said, surprised.

Kurt shrugged. "James has Brin. You have Maria who you told me about. Even Lars is seeing Gretchen." He said.

"He is?" Wolfgang interrupted.

"Yeah. We used to hang out a lot more. Now he's with her most of the time and three's a crowd if you know what I mean." Wolfgang nodded sympathetically. "And since Brin's reaction to me is fairly typical," Kurt continued, "I'll never have a girlfriend."

"That's not true. I mean, yes you do have certain obstacles to overcome but trust me, any woman who gets to know you will forget about all that. Looks get a girl in the door, but she stays because of what's inside."

Kurt laughed. "Yeah, you should know Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome, you were quite the Casanova when you first came."

Wolfgang nodded sadly. "I was being stupid. Sewing the royal oats, as they say, is not all that it's cracked up to be."

"At least you had the option." Kurt said.

Wolfgang sighed. "If you'll permit me to give you some fatherly advice," he said. Kurt gave a snort of laughter but Wolfgang forged ahead.

"Women respond to confidence. They want to feel safe, protected; they want to know that they can rely on you and that you'll always be there for them. Now, I've failed miserably in this department but it doesn't mean that you have to."

"I am confident." Kurt said.

"Agreed, with people you know. And with an audience you'll never really meet. But, that's not how you act when introduced to someone for the first time. First impressions matter my friend." Wolfgang said.

"I don't like to scare people." Kurt said.

Wolfgang nodded in agreement. "That's fine. But is it that you don't like scaring people because you don't want them to be afraid? Or, is it that you don't like scaring people because you don't like the way it makes you feel when they are afraid?"

"I don't know." Kurt said, "the latter maybe."

"Then here is another piece of advice: Stop caring."

"What do you mean stop caring? I can't stop caring about that." Kurt said.

"I mean stop worrying whether people are going to accept you or not and just assume that they will. That way, if they don't it's their fault and their loss." Wolfgang said.

"So if I walk into a room and someone screams, I should just carry on like nothing happened?" Kurt said in disbelief.

"Exactly. If you cower in the corner and cringe when people come near you, that's what a woman is going to remember. Even if an hour later you're making her laugh and charming the pants off her." Wolfgang said.

"I'd never do that." Kurt said in mock earnestness.

"Yeah, you're such an angel." Wolfgang said with a laugh. "But you get my point right? Stop worrying. Use your personality to put people at ease. Turn their fear into laughter. Pretend they're an audience if you have to."

Kurt looked skeptical, but finally nodded his head. "Okay." He said.

Wolfgang looked around. "So, can we get down from here now? My ass is really starting to hurt."

Kurt looked over the trees towards the camp. "Do you want to walk back or take the short cut?" He asked.

"That's pretty far. You're not going to knock either of us unconscious are you?"

"No. I've been practicing." Kurt said.

Wolfgang looked off into the distance and shrugged. "The shortcut then." And they were gone.

Brin spent the week watching just as James had done when he first arrived. Occasionally Christian or Wolfgang joined her to translate the conversations between the performers as they worked. She kept careful notes, enumerating each performer's strong and weak points. James hadn't been joking about the names. Thankfully, the show's leads had short easy to pronounce names, but she was definitely having a tough time with learning so many foreign names in such a short span of time.

Of the four leads, Gretchen was the smoothest, the most dancer-like. Lars and his sister were on even ground, they were both athletes more than they were artists. They weren't completely hopeless though. Kurt was the most dynamic. He seemed to be more aware of his body than the others and his proprioception, the ability understand how his movements related to everything going on around him, was almost inhuman. At the same time she wasn't quite sure what to do with him. Brin had been a dancer her entire life and she had spent countless hours looking at and thinking about the way the human body moves; she understood every muscle and every nuance. But Kurt stood just outside the boundaries of that understanding. She wondered, "Did she need to choreograph his tail?" Was it even possible for him to control its movement? And his hands and feet were so different, could he move them and position them in the same way as his fellow performers or would she have to limit everybody else to match him when they were on stage together?

Brin could tell she was on shaky ground with him anyways. James had re-introduced them the next morning by inviting him to eat breakfast at their table. But he hadn't eaten anything and spent the whole time avoiding her gaze as if at any moment he expected her to start screaming again. She wondered how she was going to work with him at all.


	24. Chapter 23

**Chapter 23: Trust Issues**

_"Find away to show Kurt and everyone else that you trust him and that he can trust you. And you have to do it in a way that Kurt can't back out of and where everyone can see you do it."_

It was only a week after her arrival that Brin stood before the assembled performers. They were seated on the floor around her, loosely collected by acts. All of them were dressed in their workout clothes, looking at her expectantly. She glanced over at Wolfgang and started to talk.

"Most of you will each play several roles in this show. It's not going to be a circus in the traditional sense as I'm sure you've figured out, so we have to pay close attention to characterization." She began and then paused to let Wolfgang's translating catch up.

"Most of you play a gypsy and a forest creature." Brin checked her notes. "In fact, our only full time forest creatures are Christian and Kurt."

"Full time forest creatures." Christian said laughing. "Dude, that's righteous. Gimme three Kurt!" He held up his hand to high-five Kurt who returned the gesture rather patronizingly.

Brin stared at him. "Sorry," Christian mouthed sheepishly.

"You'll be changing costumes of course, but if you don't change the way you move as well, the audience will know and the illusion will be lost. So that's what we're going to do today. We're going to invent our "forest creature movement". Brin said.

Some of her audience was looking at her quizzically. By the time Wolfgang had finished translating into German and Russian for her, they all were. She had had a feeling this was going to happen. Luckily, Brin was ready. She pulled out a large portable stereo.

"We're going to dance." She said.

Sven raised his hand. "Dance like how?" He asked.

"However we want. We'll each experiment until we find the movements that we like to define our creatures." Brin leaned over and pressed play on the tape deck. She'd borrowed on of James' many electronica tapes. This one was mainly dance music along the techno and house vein. She'd mix it up later, but she figured this was a good beginning since it was most definitely danceable.

She turned it up as loud as it would go and started dancing around. At first everybody was just watching her. She made a point of not dancing in any particular style, simply moving in a way that was suited to the music. When nobody got up to join her, she made her way over to Lars and took him by the hands. He looked amused at first and tried to follow her movements, but finally got the idea and started experimenting. It wasn't long before she'd managed to coax the rest of the group into dancing around on the floor of the tent.

She noticed that it wasn't long before collaborations started. It seemed that the performers naturally wanted to work in teams. She didn't discourage it, but when she noticed too obvious a link up, such as a catcher and flyer pair together, she wandered over and gently cut in. Christian, apparently still thrilled with their full time forest creature titles had joined with Kurt, but the two of them were being way too silly. She caught Christian by the hand and encouraged him to tone it down. Without his comedy partner, Kurt followed suit, crossing the floor to dance with Amanda, who for the first time would be a performer in the show. Actually, now that he was being serious, Brin realized he was the best of the bunch. Then again, he kind of looked like a forest creature anyway.

Brin tried to encourage them to stay away from contrived movements and come up with something new. And for the most part they were. She was sure that it wouldn't be long before they each created an identity of their own through movement. It was her favorite kind of choreography because it came from the performer's heart rather than a set of instructions.

Brin shut the water off and plucked her towel off the hook. After two weeks with the circus she'd gotten into a routine of taking the first shower each morning. She had to admit that of all the so-called amenities that the circus' camp offered, the shower tent was probably the best. They had water from a well but not much else in the way of plumbing so a careful layout had been important. The shower tent was located a little ways from the camp where the water could drain into culvert and be carried into a nearby stream. The toilets were, well, she didn't want to think about the toilets.

The tent itself was some kind of German military issue. It had a wooden frame and even a hinged door, but the roof and sides were made of olive drab canvas. A small propane boiler sat in one corner connected to a showerhead hanging from one of the wood beams that supported the tent. The boiler had enough hot water for one person to take a five minute shower. She usually stretched it out by turning the water off while she soaped up and then turning it back on to rinse off.

It was morning so the air was cool, a little bracing even as she dried off. The heat of the water had caused the tent to fill with steam so Brin cracked the door to let some of it out. Nearly everybody was still asleep. Brin was a morning person and she relished her time alone before the rest of the circus woke up. In an hour there would be people everywhere, but at that very moment all was silent except for their snores. There was no need for modesty so Brin hung the towel up and started combing her hair.

The door to the tent swung open and she screamed; all at once trying to grab the towel, cover herself with her hands, and push the door shut. "Get out!" she yelled throwing her brush at the door. There was a flash of blue and the door slammed closed. It was Kurt. Why did it have to be Kurt?

Ever since the first day, Brin had felt the whole Kurt situation was rapidly escalating beyond her control. He had startled her that was all. She didn't dislike him. In fact, he was quite charming. He was a good friend to James and Wolfgang clearly adored him. Brin desperately wanted to clear up the misunderstanding of their first meeting but was finding it impossible. And now she had screamed at him. Again.

The problem was not so much with Kurt as everyone else. It seemed that the entire circus had a protective instinct when it came to their most high profile acrobat. Whenever Brin came anywhere near him it was only a matter of seconds before she was diverted and pulled in the opposite direction. She couldn't even get a single word in. It had been weeks and she never had a chance to apologize for the first time she screamed at him. Now she had done it again and it was doubtful she'd ever get a chance to apologize for this time.

Brin sighed. There had to be a way to show everybody, including Kurt, that she wasn't afraid of him.

Brin was running everyone through Les Chansons' opening act when Wolfgang walked in carrying a small stack of papers.

"I've got our messages." He called out in German waving them. Wolfgang, tired of having the circus unreachable for months at a time, had finally brought them into the 20th century with voice mail. Now it was finally possible for friends and family members to contact the members of Circus Gehlhaar where ever they were. The recent addition of a satellite phone and fax machine in Wolfgang's office expanded the communication possibilities even further. He could now contact the places they were going to play and arrange for publicity even while they were on the road.

Rehearsal came to an abrupt halt. Wolfgang looked sheepish. "Sorry to interrupt Brin."

She shrugged. "Anything for me?" She asked as Wolfgang passed various papers to the small crowd around him, glancing quickly at each one to make sure it went to the right person.

"Nope. Since you and James are now in the same country neither of you have any messages."

"What about you? Do you have any messages?" James asked. He had gotten up from behind his keyboards and strolled over.

"As a matter of fact I do." Wolfgang said trying to sound innocent. "Maria called. She arrives next week."

Brin jumped up and hugged him. "That's fantastic news! I haven't seen Maria in years."

"Well it's about Goddamn time." James said. He punched Wolfgang on the shoulder.

Wolfgang held up his hand. "Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Kurt!"

Kurt had started practicing with Petra and had her balanced rather precariously on his hands. "Ja?" He answered without looking away from what he was doing.

"Father Dietrich called."

"Ja?" He switched his grip so Petra could rebalance herself.

"He wants to know how many are coming to mass." Wolfgang said.

Kurt gave Petra a small boost with his hands. She popped into the air and landed in his arms. They both smiled as Kurt gently deposited Petra on her feet. "I'm going." Kurt said as he put her down. He walked over to where Wolfgang was standing.

"I figured that." Said Wolfgang.

"Mass?" James asked.

"Yeah." Wolfgang said. "Kurt has a friend who's a priest. He invites Kurt and anyone else who wants to come for Mass over Christmas. I went last year. It was pretty fun. I'm going to go again."

"Oh. I'll go." James said. "I usually go to mass on Christmas anyways."

"You're Catholic?" Kurt asked.

"I'm a graduate of St. Ignatius Catholic School for boys. Best Catholic education Manhattan has to offer. I was even an Altar boy." James said and rubbed his knuckles on his shirt as though polishing them.

"You were?" Kurt sounded amazed.

"Stop looking at me like I'm some kind of rock star. It's not like it's big deal to be an altar boy. And you've certainly got to watch your behind if you know what I mean." He laughed.

"Watch behind you? Why?"

James opened his eyes wide. "You're kidding. You don't know about priests and…" But before he could finish Wolfgang poked him and shook his head with his finger over his lips.

Kurt looked confused.

"So, where is it?" James asked to change the subject.

"Germany, just outside of Hamburg. It's far. Last year we did to take the train." Kurt said.

"You took a train? How is that possible?" Brin asked. She blanched when Kurt, Wolfgang, and James turned to stare at her. She'd done it again. Maybe it was a good thing that everyone kept her and Kurt separated. It lessened the chances of her saying anything stupid.

"With tickets and luggage, just like everyone else." Kurt said. "They even issue passports to monsters nowadays. What is this world coming to?"

"That's not what she meant." James said.

"I know what she meant." Kurt said. "I'm not in this part of the show. I have other things to do."

"You know" Wolfgang said philosophically after watching Kurt stomp out of the tent, "his English always gets better when he's mad."

"Are you going to go after him?" James asked.

Wolfgang glanced around at the tent flap through which Kurt had made his exit. "No. He's being melodramatic. We all knew what you meant Brin, even if the question was a little blunt."

"I don't know what to do." Brin cried in exasperation. "I know I made a mistake that first day, but I really didn't expect the guy from our living room wall to walk through the door. Now it's hopeless. I might as well stick my foot in my mouth the minute Kurt walks into the room."

"I know what you have to do." Wolfgang said in his "definitive answer" voice.

"Oh no." James deadpanned.

Wolfgang was undeterred. "Find away to show Kurt and everyone else that you trust him and that he can trust you. And you have to do it in a way that Kurt can't back out of and where everyone can see you do it."

"It's that easy huh?" Brin asked sarcastically.

"I didn't say it was easy." Wolfgang said.

"How am I supposed to do all that at once anyways?" Brin asked.

"I don't know. James?"

James shook his head. "No idea."

"You guys are useless." Brin said. She turned away and started gathering everyone up to resume the rehearsal. She wasn't even sure Wolfgang's idea would fix things, and even if it could, how was she going to find a scenario like that. Brin sighed. It was hopeless.


	25. Chapter 24

_**Chapter 24: Learning to Fly**_

_"Kurt, if I did the routine with you instead, do you think it would be safe?" _

Wolfgang led Maria in a winding path through the various tents and trailers. They had spent four days together in Madrid before driving northward, back to Canet de Mar and Circus Gehlhaar. It was early evening, the sun just beginning to set. They could hear James and Brin over in the outdoor kitchen; it was their turn to make dinner that night. After dinner the acrobats would take a break, but James would be in the tent rehearsing the band. Wolfgang stopped at the Szardos' trailer and smiled at Maria. He pushed open the door and looked in.

Kurt was stretched out on his bunk with a book.

"What are you reading?" Wolfgang asked. Kurt held up his dog-eared copy of Captain Blood. "Again? Can we come in?" Wolfgang asked.

Kurt looked up. "We?"

"Yeah, I want you to meet Maria. We just got back."

"Oh, No! I'm busy. Sorry." Kurt leapt out of his bunk with the speed and agility he normally reserved for the trapeze. He pushed Wolfgang out the door and slammed it shut. Wolfgang heard the lock click. He frowned, exchanged a glance with Maria, and knocked on the door.

"The door is shut." Kurt called from inside. Wolfgang saw blinds drop down inside the trailer's windows.

Maria looked confused. Wolfgang made a mental note to explain the whole door opened/door shut custom of circus privacy. In this particular case though, he didn't think it counted. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned his back against the door.

"What's this about Kurt? I want to introduce you. Why don't you come out?" Said Wolfgang.

"That's okay. I'd rather stay in. I have a lot to do." Kurt said through the door. Wolfgang could tell he was right on the other side of it.

"What do you have to do? You're reading a book you've already read fifty times. This is ridiculous." Wolfgang rolled his eyes. Maria was watching him with interest.

"Go away!"

"I'm not going away until you explain what's going on." Wolfgang turned to face the door and tried the handle. It was still locked. He suddenly realized what the problem was. He was afraid of Maria's reaction. "Did we or did we not sit on the roof of a church and have a conversation about this very subject?" Wolfgang said. Maria looked at him quizzically.

"Yes."

"Well, this isn't exactly the kind of response I was talking about. What happened to being confident?" Wolfgang said.

"I changed my mind."

Wolfgang sighed and shook his head. He was about to knock again when Maria took his hand in hers. "He can be a little skittsh at times." He told her.

"Then maybe a different approach is what needed." She said. Maria didn't speak as many languages as Wolfgang, but she spoke German and English as well as she did her native Italian. She gently guided Wolfgang aside and took his place at the door. She tapped on the door softly.

"Kurt?" She asked. There was no answer. "Kurt, I'd really like to meet you."

"Please leave me alone."

Maria twirled a strand of her long dark hair around one finger thoughtfully. " Wolfgang's told me so much about you." She said, "I was really looking forward to meeting you in person."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you." Kurt said.

"Hasn't Wolfgang told you about me?" She asked. There was a long pause.

"Yes."

"And so aren't you the least bit curious?" She asked. There was another pause.

"Yes. But I can't." Kurt said from the interior.

"You can't what?" Maria asked. Her voice was soothing and at the same time almost playful.

"I don't want you to see what I look like." Kurt finally admitted.

"But I already know what you look like." Maria said. "Do you think that matters to me?" There was no answer.

"Well, it doesn't," she continued in a conversational tone. " So. I want to meet you. You want to meet me. Why don't you let me in? It's not polite to keep a lady waiting on the threshold." Wolfgang was watching her with a small smile on his face. She smiled back. "Are you going to open the door?" She asked.

"No."

"I'm sorry," Maria said, "But I just won't take no for answer."

"What!" The door swung open. "What do you mean you won't take no for an answer? How can you say that? Wolfgang?" Kurt asked. He glared at Wolfgang accusatorially.

"Don't look at me." Wolfgang said.

Kurt turned his attention to Maria. She smiled. "Ah. There you are. So, can I come in?"

Nodding his head in defeated acquiescence, Kurt put out a hand and she took it and stepped into the trailer. "This is so much nicer than Wolfgang's trailer." She said as she opened the blinds. Kurt backed away as Wolfgang stepped in and closed the door.

They had the same type of personality. From the moment Wolfgang entered a room to the moment he left, he owned it. He didn't hold court or command everybody's attention, but he made subtle adjustments to conversation and the atmosphere, just enough of a change so that his influence was obvious only to those who knew him. He was like the perfect party host, he made everyone look better and sound wittier.

Maria did the same thing only differently. Whereas Wolfgang leaned in the direction of turning everything into a raucous party, Maria did the opposite. She made things calmer, safer. They should have neutralized each other, but they didn't. Instead, their influences intertwined created an atmosphere of encouragement and creativity.

"Well, now that that's taken care of." Wolfgang said. "Kurt, Maria. Maria, Kurt."

"It's nice to meet you." Kurt said and held out his hand.

"Oh, don't be silly." Maria said. "The way Wolfgang talks about you I was expecting you to walk on water." She pulled him into a hug and gave him a peck on the cheek. "Thanks for keeping him out of trouble."

Kurt stepped back, surprised, speechless for the second time in his life.

When she wasn't choreographing their few dance numbers Brin usually stuck around in the big tent to act as sort of consultant. Wolfgang was right, occasionally the transitions were not so much sloppy as they were utilitarian; no more than a way to get from one place to another. Even if she couldn't block out precise steps and movements, she could usually make subtle adjustments so things looked smoother.

Laurentiu and his family had strung their tight wires and were practicing. Brin had done gymnastics in school as a child and the balance beam always seemed a ridiculously tiny place to do anything more than walk across. The Wollecks confidently hopped up and down, turned cartwheels, and balanced sometimes three people high on a cable no thicker than a telephone wire. It made the space provided by the balance beam look generous.

Other things were going on in the periphery. Sven and Nils were on the narrow trampoline doing flips with so many turns and twists it made Brin dizzy just watching it. Christian was on his bike, riding it up a ramp, and turning lazy backward and forward rolls. It always amazed Brin how he had turned what was basically a kids' sport into a circus act. He finished giving Kurt a break and they returned to the project they were working on together.

Christian wanted to bring more gymnastic type moves into the show and so he was trying to do things like throw himself forward over the handle bars so his legs came up and the back of the bike lifted off the ground. Then he would land on his feet, bring the bike over his head back to the ground and jump back on it. It was basically a forward somersault with a bicycle, the ultimate goal being to skip the step of putting his feet down. Kurt was trying to spot him while he got the hang of it and was having a difficult time dealing with the fact that more often than not Christian lost control of the bike in the air and it fell on one or the other and sometimes both of them.

Christian didn't seem to mind it. He was probably so used to crashes he hardly noticed it, but Kurt clearly wasn't enjoying himself. As Christian started forward over the handlebars Kurt would put his hands on Christian's back and legs to guide his body through the arc until he was back on the bike. When it worked it looked great, but when it didn't Kurt couldn't seem to decide whether to let go of Christian and run for cover or risk another pummeling by the bike while he stayed to make sure that Christian got back on the ground safely.

Christian finally called it a day and Kurt looked visibly relieved.

"Thanks," Christian said, "but stop worrying about me running over your tail. I won't. You looked like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs."

"My tail was the least of my worries." Kurt said.

"Well, we can work on it again tomorrow." Christian said.

"I can hardly wait." Kurt said balefully. Brin couldn't help stifling a giggle. Laughing, Christian peddled toward the ramp, made a final back flip and rode out of the tent.

Brin was distracted by the Wollecks who were now practicing their dismounts. Laurentiu and his brother climbed down from the tight wire platform and caught the rest of their family as they came down from the wires in various ways. They needed to provide filler while above them their tight wires were reeled in to make room for other acts.

They were decent acrobats on the ground as well as on the wire so she helped them move through a coordinated series of tricks that allowed more than enough time to take care of the wires. The end of the routine was their bows. They ran through it several times and by the time they were ready for a break, Brin noticed that Kurt had laid out a bunch of mats and was now working with Amiri Black while Amiri's father watched.

They started out with simple tumbling, forward and backward rolls and cartwheels. After a few passes they switched to more complex front and back handsprings; Kurt spotting Amiri in much the same way he did for Christian. They played around some more doing combinations of various balancing and tumbling tricks. Brin was amazed at how trusting Amiri was. Even when he was trying something new, he did so with the confidence gained by the fact that he knew Kurt would always catch him. It made Brin wish she could do the same thing, but Kurt didn't need a spotter for any of her choreography and so once again she had reached a dead end.

Brin was happy with the opening of the show. She was pretty happy the most of the interim choreography she had done to get the performers from point to point in the ring. The only thing that wasn't working for her was the finale.

Like the arrival of the gypsies on stage, the finale also had the entire circus in the ring, but whereas the opening was supposed to be chaotic, the ending had to tie all the key story threads together. Besides the work of choreographing the movement of the entire cast, she needed to figure out a way to get the leads off stage so they could come back out as couples dressed and ready for the wedding that ended the show.

The beginning worked well enough. Nightcrawler was supposed to have been killed by Lars and is lying in the middle of the floor alone. Petra then floats down from above sitting in a loop of the same fabric she used for her silks act. As she descends, she switches so that her legs are hooked in the fabric and she's upside down. When she reaches Kurt, she kisses him the cheek, takes his hands and when she rises back up, he wakes and rises with her until she lifts him off the ground.

They are lowered back to the ground where Petra detaches the silk from the cable. Then she and Kurt dance together and are slowly joined by the others including Lars and Gretchen who watch the two lovers and realize that they feel the same way about each other. It was easy to fade Gretchen and Lars back into the crowd, but that wouldn't work with Kurt. So they solved the problem by having them go back up into the ceiling to change costumes; this time with Kurt holding on a loop at the end of the cable with one hand and supporting Petra's body as she wrapped herself around him.

The only problem was that Petra wasn't quite getting it. She understood the steps and moved through them gracefully but her problem was tempo. She was either too fast or too slow. Brin had them practice it over and over as she clapped a tempo for them, but it wasn't working. She then tried to dance in Kurt's place, but it proved too complicated for her to dance, count time, and give Petra timing cues. Petra always learned routines best by watching and it occurred to Brin that perhaps the best way was to take her place and demonstrate with Kurt instead. She looked up at the cable and suddenly Wolfgang's words echoed in her head.

She thought about the other day, watching Kurt act as Amiri's spotter and realized that it wasn't that she needed to play the same role, it was that she had to allow him to do it with her. She had to put him in the position where he was protecting her in the same way he'd done for Amiri; to show that she trusted him to do so.

"Kurt, if I did the routine with you instead, do you think it would be safe?" She asked.

Kurt looked confused. "Yeah, pretty safe." He said.

Lars laughed and said, "he hasn't bitten anyone in weeks." Kurt made an angry face at him.

Brin was undeterred. "I mean to do the entire routine, including the end." She clarified.

"Oh, you mean to go all the way to up. Of course. I won't drop you." Kurt said.

"Okay." Said Brin, "Starting at the point when Petra is on the ground."

Kurt signaled to the roustabout on the cable controller to go a little slower this time and then he moved so he was in the center of the ring. Brin joined him and she realized that she had never stood this close to Kurt. She also realized that she had never touched him either and now she would have to. There was an awkward moment where neither of them did anything, then Kurt took her hand in his. Brin rested her other hand on his bare shoulder and gasped.

"You're furry." She said. She had never felt anything so soft. She had had no idea.

"Oh, please don't say 'furry'." Kurt said, "It sounds so creepy." He smiled. "I prefer it to say I'm 'velvety'."

Brin laughed. "Okay, velvety then." She said and cued the music to start. A moment later the novelty of actually dancing with Kurt was gone as they moved through the routine while Petra watched.

When they reached the cable Kurt wrapped his hand through the loop as he spun her away from him and back in again. As Brin twirled back into his arms they were suddenly lifted off the ground, her momentum causing them both to spin in the air. It would have been frightening, but at the same time Kurt had wrapped his free arm around her and hooked his legs around hers in such a way that she knew he was right; he wouldn't drop her. They passed up through the hole in the false ceiling and Kurt swung away to the floor and set her down.

"How was that?" He asked.

"Excellent," said Brin. She looked down through the hole. "How do we get down?" She asked. They were supposed to switch out the loop for a small platform big enough for them to stand on, but the equipment wasn't up there.

"The same way we come up." He said. He took the loop in his hand again and gestured for her to join him. She felt herself once again wrapped in his arms and they descended to the ring below. She stepped away from Kurt and thanked him.

"We'll have to do it again sometime." Kurt said.

"All you have to do is ask." Brin said.

As Kurt and Petra began rehearsing together again, Brin glanced up into the stands where she noticed for the first time that Wolfgang was watching. She smiled at him and he grinned back at her, clapping his hands in a silent one man standing ovation.


	26. Chapter 25

_**Chapter 25: Scenic Route**_

_"Do you think it's possible to remember things you shouldn't be able to remember?"_

"Kraftwerk? Mannheim Steamroller? That's as good as Germany has to offer? It's pathetic." James said.

"Oh, come on. Germany has plenty of good rock influences." Wolfgang said. "How about the eighties?"

James laughed. "Please! We're talking about Nena? Falco? Rock me Amadeus? 99 Luftbalons? I'm sorry, Germany just doesn't exist on the musical map."

"What about the Scorpions then? They had some powerful rock ballads."

"I guess, but hardly groundbreaking."

"Rammstein." Wolfgang announced.

"All right, I'll give you Rammstein." James conceded, "But that's it. Everything else is worthless."

"Well then," Wolfgang said philosophically, "Have you completely forgotten about the German Industrial movement? The one that practically gave birth to techno?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Einsturzende Neubauten." Wolfgang said.

"Bless you!"

Wolfgang smirked. "Ha ha. Laibach, Die Warzau, shall I name some more?"

"Yeah, but does anyone actually listen to German industrial? I mean besides Germans?" James asked. "I'm sorry but your Fatherland is totally lacking in musical influence. Face it."

"Okay, but I'm Austrian." Wolfgang said.

"Oh, even better. I challenge you to name one major Austrian musical influence." James said.

"Just one? Any musical influence?" Wolfgang asked obviously eager to accept the challenge.

"That's right. Any." James said and looking very confident took a sip from the bottle of water he was holding.

"Mozart."

The water sprayed out of James' nose as he started laughing. How had he forgotten about Mozart? Besides being one of the most influential composers in history he and Wolfgang had the same name. "Okay," he admitted, "I challenge you to name another Austrian musical influence besides Mozart."

"Haydn and Mahler."

James slapped his forehead. "Brin can you help me out here? I'm getting trounced by Wolfgang's command of European musical knowledge."

Brin looked up from the card game she was playing with Amanda and Maria, "Sorry, honey. It sounds to me like you weren't paying attention in music history class. Perhaps if you were arguing about European modern dance I could be of more assistance."

James laughed. "That's right Mozart," he said turning back to Wolfgang, "I challenge you to name one influential Austrian modern dancer."

There were six of them packed into Margali's trailer on their way to Hamburg. Even though she had chosen to stay behind, hers was the largest (compensation she figured, from having the smallest most rickety van previously) and so she donated it to the cause.

Wolfgang and James were in the two front captain's chairs, Wolfgang in his favorite position as driver. As always they were entertaining themselves with another long debate about an irrelevant topic. Brin was at the fold out table with Amanda and Maria. The two of them were teaching Amanda how to play various American card games. This left Kurt alone and so he sat up in his bunk saying the rosary, but he found his mind wandering away from prayer to other subjects.

With the arrival of Maria he had seen the mighty triumvirate of comedians that was him, Wolfgang, and Lars breaking. Lars had joined them last year, but now that he and Gretchen were dating, he had chosen to spend Christmas with her family instead. Whereas he and Wolfgang usually spent their evenings watching movies and generally goofing off, it was more common to see him with Maria now. It seemed to him that they had reached a turning point, one where he would watch his friends form relationships while he remained alone.

It made him wish that all six of them were couples, Wolfgang with Maria, James with Brin, and he with Amanda. But that was a little strange wasn't it? Even though technically she wasn't his sister, wasn't it still wrong to imagine the two of them in a relationship other than siblings. Then again, Amanda was probably the only girl in the world who really knew him, who knew that he wasn't a monster, that he was just a person. That he was just like everyone else. Didn't he deserve that? Didn't he deserve Amanda's love and to love her in return?

They swapped drivers and slept in shifts so they could drive straight through to Hamburg without having to stop for the night. Kurt was the only one without a driving permit. Wolfgang had arranged his passport, once again using his family contacts to smooth over the process. After the office had closed for the night, a friend of Wolfgang's mother stayed behind, took Kurt's picture, and they filled out the necessary paperwork. Wolfgang arranged to pick it up the next time they passed through Germany.

So while Kurt had managed to get a passport with his real picture and name on it, the licensing office seemed to be the one branch of the government where Wolfgang lacked any kind of influence. So if Kurt wanted a permit to drive, he would have to go in and take the exam like everyone else. Since he wasn't to eager to see what kind of scene that would create, Kurt left the driving to other members of the circus.

It was Brin's turn to drive and James was sitting besides her to keep her company. Everyone else sat lounging around the main compartment. They were bored of card games so they sat around gossiping about various other members of the circus. The conversation eventually shifted to Kurt's family.

"I'm just disappointed Stephani isn't going to be there." Kurt said. They had all become accustomed to speaking only English when James and Brin were around; it was easier than translating everything. The side effect was that English, always his weakest language was getting much better. "Last year we do to meet up with him on the train." Kurt continued. "It was really great."

"I remember," Wolfgang said. "That was fun."

"How often do you guys get to see each other?" Maria asked.

"Hardly at all," said Amanda.

"I kind of miss when he lived with us." Kurt said. "But he said circus life wasn't for him."

"I can't even imagine anyone thinking that." Said Wolfgang. "You guys are more fun than a barrel of monkeys on crack."

"What?" Kurt, Amanda, and Maria asked in unison.

"I think that's supposed to be a compliment." Said James from the front seat.

"Oh. Well thank you," Kurt said. "And you're more fun than a container of snakes and a cattle prod."

The conversation quickly degenerated into a series of "you're more fun than…" jokes that degenerated even further into attempts to invent insults that sounded more funny than insulting. The normally reserved Brin was the best at this and came up with "You're nothing but a two count no talent ass clown" as an insult for Wolfgang. He was speechless with laughter for nearly five minutes.

Wolfgang returned to the drivers seat as they crossed the French Alps into Germany.

"Should we stop by Gehlhaar's place?" Wolfgang asked in mock seriousness as he confidently navigated the passes. "We're in Barvaria."

Amanda gave a snort of laughter. "How about not." She said, imitating Christian.

Wolfgang pulled off the main road and started down one much less traveled that seemed to lead deeper and deeper into the mountains.

"What are you doing?" Maria asked.

"This is a short cut." Wolfgang said. "Don't worry. It looks a lot faster on the map."

"Wolfgang said 'short cut'." James said. "I'm already worried."

Cheerfully ignoring their skepticism, Wolfgang continued down the much narrower road.

It was certainly the scenic route. This area of Bavaria was much less populated than it was on their usual route. Occasionally the road would widen and there would be a small town or village nestled in the mountains, but it was mostly scenery. Brin pulled out her 35mm camera so she could take pictures as they went.

They were passing through what must have been a little town at one point when Kurt suddenly jumped up and yelled, "Stop!"

Wolfgang slammed on the breaks in alarm. He didn't have time to say anything before Kurt jumped out of the trailer. Amanda followed him quickly. Curious everybody else pulled on their coats and got out as well.

It had once been a street with neat rows of tiny cabins on either side. They were abandoned now, their windows mostly broken, their shutters hanging at crazy angles. Most of them had their doors opened giving a view of the deteriorating interiors.

"This is weird. Why did we stop?" James asked as he peered into one of the houses. Brin shrugged and since she was taking pictures anyway, she crossed the street to get some of the derelict cabins. They were real Bavarian style houses, like what one could find at various tourist attractions in the US, but here they hadn't been for tourists. Real people had lived in them. Brin turned around to take a picture of the group. Kurt was really fascinated by old architecture, so it didn't surprise her that he'd want to stop and look at this tiny ghost town.

But instead of the houses, Kurt was looking at an empty lot sitting between two of the cabins. She walked back to see what was going on.

Kurt wandered into the middle of the empty space and looked around. Amanda followed him and put her hand on his shoulder.

"Do you think it's possible to remember things you shouldn't be able to remember?" He asked her.

"I don't know." Said Amanda, watching a single tear slide down his cheek.

Kurt nodded and brushed his hand across his face. "We should go then. I don't know why we stopped." He climbed in the trailer. James and Brin quickly joined him. Wolfgang noticed Amanda still standing in the vacant lot, her hand over her mouth.

"What's going on?" He asked her as he walked over.

"There used to be a house here, but it was burned down." Amanda said, trying to keep her bottom lip from quivering.

"Really? How do you know?" Wolfgang asked her.

"Because I've been here. Only once, when Kurt was born. It was in the house that stood here." She said. It was one of her earliest memories, just a few images really. A woman in the road. Her mother pulled from a burning cabin clutching a pile of rags. Seeing her youngest brother for the first time as they drove away.

"How do you know it burned down?" Wolfgang asked.

"Because I saw the people who set the fire." She said.

"You mean after your mother took Kurt away?"

Amanda shook her head. "No," she said. "He was still inside." She took one last look around. "I don't know how he could have remembered. We should go." She said and started walking back toward their trailer.

Wolfgang didn't need to be told twice. He wanted to get as far from this place as possible.


	27. Chapter 26

_**Chapter 26: Utter Silliness**_

_"I'm tired of red and black costumes."_

Amanda had her back to one of the thick poles that supported the main tent. She stuck her head out to peek around one side and then the other. She couldn't see Kurt anywhere. That was bad. She slowly backed away from the pole, keeping a wary eye as she peered into the stands.

The attack came from above and Amanda barely had time to push her mask down on to her face and parry Kurt's blade. He had been clinging to the pole above her, watching her the whole time.

"That's totally cheating!" She shouted. She lunged and Kurt hopped out of the way.

"Why do you always say I'm cheating when I'm winning?" Kurt asked. He circled around her and Amanda followed his movements, staying just out of his range. He thought about how different real fighting was from the choreographed fencing in movies. There was a lot of blade clanging in movies, but when you were actually trying to fence someone, there was more circling and staring than clanging. Except when fencing with Wolfgang; then it was a lot of having your rapier knocked out of your hand and running to retrieve it before he caught you.

They were pretty evenly matched. Whenever Amanda attacked Kurt parried and whenever he attacked. It appeared to Kurt that his best defense was offense and he looked for a way to hide for another ambush.

"Are you going to keep chasing me until you get tired?" Kurt asked. They had only been back from Father Dietrich's for two weeks.

"No, I'm going to keep chasing you until you get tired." She said. She'd backed him up against the stands, but Kurt imagined he was just toying with her, waiting for his chance. Amanda jumped forward. "Ah ha!" She cried, "Prepare to meet your doom. Whoa!"

Christian suddenly appeared out of nowhere and scooped her up on his bicycle as he rode by. Amanda grabbed on to Christian with one hand and braced one of her feet against the front foot peg, balanced on his hip. He had one arm around her and pedaled lazily around the ring. She took off her mask and let it fall to the ground.

"What are you going to do now Amanda?" Christian taunted.

Kurt tried to jump in front of him. "Vile cur! Unhand my sister." He shouted and then jumped out of the way before Christian ran over him.

"She's your foster sister." Christian said.

Kurt rolled his eyes. "Unhand that foster sister then." He shouted with renewed enthusiasm.

"But she was winning. I saved your ass." Christian said, still circling the ring.

"Dude, that is so whacked. I can save my own ass." Kurt said briefly switching to English and parrying Amanda's blade as they rode by.

Christian cracked up and almost lost control of the bike. "That was awesome Kurt, you even had the inflection right and everything."

"Thank you." Kurt said with a bow.

"Except, what does 'vhacked' mean?" Christian said with a grin. He slowed down to let Amanda off.

Kurt took off his mask. "I don't know. It's your made up language."

"It's not made up." Christian said indignantly, "most of California talks like that."

"Are you guys still screwing around in here?" Wolfgang asked, walking into the tent.

"Excellent." Said Kurt. "Two against one?"

Wolfgang shook his head. "Nah, one against one. I'll fence in your place while you get measured for your costume." He said.

"Okay, but I'm claiming this as a victory." Kurt said, "Here." He tossed his rapier and his gloves to Wolfgang. Wolfgang held up Kurt's gloves laughing.

"What do you want me to do with these?" He asked.

"Oops. I forgot. Those won't really work for you." Kurt said and took them back. He laughed. "At least I didn't try to lend you my pants."

"I don't know; it would be a lot easier to go to the bathroom." Christian said.

"Eww. That's disgusting," said Amanda.

"That's horrible. I'm never ever lending you any of my clothes." Kurt added, pointing at Christian as he walked outside.

Kurt ducked underneath the low hangings over Lysette's tent door. It was one of the larger ones and served as her living quarters and workspace. Inside it was dark and cool, with a thin carpet covering the power cords that ran her sewing machines. She looked up from her sketchbook when he walked in.

"Ah, how is my favorite body to drape?" She asked in French.

Kurt grinned. He had known Lysette ever since he was a baby. "I'm very well." He said. "How is my favorite body to be draped by?"

"Look at you." Lysette said, standing back and to admire the handsome teenager who had, once a upon time, fit neatly in the crook of her arm. You're all grown up." She pulled him close and kissed him on both cheeks. Kurt backed up and kissed her on the hand like he'd seen in movies.

Lysette giggled. "So romantic! You don't want to run away from the circus with me do you?"

Kurt opened his eyes wide. "You're old enough to be my mother!" he said.

She shrugged. "A woman can dream can't she?" She picked up a tape measure. "So, what are we dressing you as?"

Kurt held his arms up so she could measure around his waist. "As long as it's not red or black I don't care." He said. "I'm tired of red and black costumes."

"But you look so devilishly handsome in red and black."

"That's why I'm tired of it." Kurt said.

Lysette finished writing down Kurt's measurements. "Here, I'll show you want I'm planning." She lead Kurt over to the table where she had been sketching and laid out a few finished drawings.

"Everybody will wear the same base colors; unitards for some, looser garments for others. Shades of grey for the gypsies, shades of brown and green for you." She said, she held up some fabric samples that had subtle variations of darks and lights randomly fading into one another. "I found this fabric. I think it will add more texture than just a flat color."

"It's nice." Kurt agreed.

"Then while they're gypsies they'll accessorize with colored scarves and vests and things. When they have to switch to creatures, they'll go with the base and little props to show what kind of animal they are." Lysette pulled out a sketch showing a wolf with a basic grey unitard wearing a wolf head and fur running down the back.

Kurt nodded approvingly. "What about me?" He asked.

"I'm thinking of something like this for you." She held out a drawing of Kurt wearing a fitted tunic and tight leggings in the promised shades of brown and green.

He smiled. "I like it," he said.

"I'm glad. By the way, do you need any new clothes?" Lysette asked.

"Oh, I do. Everything is too short. I look ridiculous." Kurt gestured to his pants that were a few inches above his ankles.

Lysette gestured at a wooden chest against the side of the tent. "I've got extra fabric in there. If you pick out some you like, I'll make you a few things."

Kurt opened the box and knelt down beside it, picking through its contents. Lysette had been making him clothes for as long as he could remember. She made all of his pants and a few other things as well. Unfortunately her stock of fabrics was more suited to costumes than clothes so Kurt always tried to pick out the most tasteful colors and patterns. Still, nothing he owned ever matched and he had gotten so used to dressing like a circus performer both on and off stage that he hardly noticed anymore.

He handed a few pieces of folded fabrics out to Lysette.

"It's not Paris couture, but it will do right?" She said.

Kurt smiled. "Fashion trends change. I'm sure that in a year or two I'll be all the rage." He said. "Do you want me to send anyone else in?"

Lysette nodded. "Lars or Gretchen. I already measured Petra this morning."

"Okay. And thanks for the pants." Kurt said starting to push through her door hanging.

"It's always a pleasure. And remember my offer if you ever get tired of being an acrobat." She said smiling.

Kurt laughed. "I don't think I ever will, but if I do you'll be the first to know." He ducked through the flap and out into the bright sunshine.

Author's Note: From the moment I saw Nightcrawler's costume in X2 I knew exactly what was happening, because I do the same thing myself. As a costume builder I always have several boxes of scrap fabrics. Most of my clothes are made from the leftovers. (Hence I have pretty eclectic wardrobe. I even have a pair of stripy paints.)


	28. Chapter 27

**Chapter 27: Angels and Visitations**

_"Oh, you mean you have to jump around every night pretending you're the devil? Silly me. I guess they went and changed mass again."_

They were singing as the van drove through Hamburg and to the towns beyond. They had spent most of the afternoon perfecting the song. The music was James' and the lyrics were Wolfgang's. Wolfgang was driving as usual, but James had turned the front captain's chair around so he could face the passenger compartment as he strummed on Wolfgang's battered acoustic guitar.

"They say that dreams enter through the feet

So they recommend bare feet to sleep,

If you want Morpheus with you.

They say that trees wear their clothes backwards,

In the summer they wear leaf coats

And in the winter they take them off."

It was typical Wolfgang nonsense but James had written a very catchy melody for it and soon they had everyone singing along. Kurt jumped up and grabbed Amanda by the hands and started dancing with her while James and Wolfgang attempted to improvise a bridge and a chorus. Brin cut in as they went into the second verse.

"They say that comets are like animals,

With long and bright tails

And they gallop through the night.

They say the rug is the floor

With overgrown hair

The broom is the comb and the vacuum is the blow dryer."

He spun Brin around and putting his hand at the small of her back, dropped her in to a dip. There were some benefits to being the only male in the rear of the van. The song ended and they started it again. They were still singing it when they pulled up in front of the rectory behind St. Stephen's Church.

After putting on the winter coats and hats they hadn't needed in Barcelona, they piled out of the van. The door swung open, but instead of Father Dietrich, Stephani was standing there. Kurt stopped in his tracks.

"No way! They said you couldn't be here this year." He said.

Stephani leaned against the frame and shrugged. "So, I lied." He said, "Or actually they lied. I just wanted to see your face when someone surprised you for a change."

Kurt grinned. "I am surprised! This is amazing." He turned back to Wolfgang and Amanda. "You knew all this time?" He asked.

Wolfgang shrugged. Amanda did the same.

Kurt shook his head. "I can't believe you guys. I'm going to get you back for this." He said.

"For what, having your brother surprise you on Christmas?" Wolfgang asked.

"That's right." Kurt said. "I'm going to commit some random act of kindness and you'll never know what hit you."

Stephani laughed and came out, hugging each of his siblings in turn. Kurt looked up and saw that Father Dietrich was now standing in the doorway.

"Were you in on this too?" Kurt asked.

Father Dietrich raised his hand. "Guilty." He said.

Once they were in the house and introductions had been made, Maria reached into her bag and pulled out two bottles of wine.

"These are for you. My cousins have a small vineyard." She said. Father Dietrich thanked her and took them, trying to read the handwritten labels. "They're in Italian obviously." Maria said. "This is a Shiraz. And this is a Chianti."

"We can try them one night at dinner." He said. "What do they go with?"

"Well, if you let me take over the kitchen for a night, I'll make spaghetti the right way and we can have it with that." Maria said.

Father Dietrich laughed. "Who am I to stand in the way of such an offer? Just give me a shopping list." He said. He threw all their coats over his arm and invited them into the parlor while hung the coats inside the wardrobe in the next room.

"I've never been in a priest's house." Brin said, looking around the room. It was comfortable, with a well-used couch and chairs facing each other in the center. Bookshelves lined one wall and in the corner was a large pine tree with nothing on it.

"Very austere." James said looking at the tree. After their initial greeting at the door, the conversation was entirely in English so James and Brin could follow it.

"We'll probably decorate it tonight or tomorrow." Amanda said. "It's sort of a tradition."

"Oh this is so adorable! Is this you Kurt?" Brin said, picking up a picture from Father Dietrich's side table.

Kurt glanced at it and said nonchalantly, "Nah, that's the other little blue demon kid who hangs out here sometimes."

Brin looked confused and Kurt started laughing.

"Of course that's me. Who else would it be?" He said. He took the picture and looked at it. He looked about ten years old. He was dressed in what had been his nicest clothes and crouched on one of the pews wearing a mischievous grin. "I remember this. This was taken after I was confirmed. Father Dietrich surprises me and took it when I turned to look."

"I thought it captured your spirit." Father Dietrich said walking back into the room.

"Do you to have pictures of other parishioners?" Kurt asked.

"No, but I have that one of you. And Stephani sent me this last year." Father Dietrich handed Kurt a framed photo. It was his whole family, sitting up on the branch of a large tree. Margali was against the trunk with Amanda leaning against her, one arm was casually draped around Amanda's shoulder. Stephani had stood on a lower branch and leaned into the picture and Kurt was perched on a slightly higher branch, his hands folded over his knees and his chin resting on top.

"I remember this being taken." Wolfgang said. "That was the first week I arrived."

"Why is do you have pictures of just us?" Kurt asked.

Father Dietrich shrugged. "You are the ones who come for Christmas every year. I figure it makes you more like family than just part of my congregation."

"Do people ever ask about them?" Kurt asked. "I mean, about me?"

"Sometimes." Father Dietrich said.

"So, do you tell them that it's Nightcrawler or Kurt Wagner?"

"Neither. I just tell anyone who asks that it's a friend."

Kurt closed his eyes and smiled. He loved visiting Father Dietrich at Christmas. Even though Kurt knew he belonged with the circus, he was always happiest here.

"This is a cool church." James said. He was walking around the perimeter, following the stations of the cross, tiny plaques on the wall representing Christ's final hours. Morning sunlight streamed through the stained glass. "I like the windows." He said,d

"I like it too. It's the first church I'd ever been in." Kurt said. He was sitting in one of the pews, watching James.

"And Father Dietrich is a lot cooler than the priests I knew back in New York." James said.

"I guess I was lucky." Kurt said. "I realize now that his reaction to me was to be fairly unique. It could have just as easily gone the other way."

"So, do you take communion with everyone else?" James asked, sitting down in the pew behind Kurt. Kurt turned around to face him.

He shook his head. "No. I could, but I don't. I get to attend mass so infrequently; I don't want to spoil it with a bunch of histrionics." He said sadly. He pointed to the church's second level. "I sit up there."

James looked up at the balcony. "That sucks." He said.

"That's the strangest expression. I guess it does suck." Kurt shrugged. "But what can I do? I'm used to it by now."

"Still, it's a crummy thing to get used to."

"Yeah. It is." Kurt sighed and rested his chin on the back of the pew. "But, like I said, what can I do?"

The door opened and they both turned to look.

"Ah, so there you two are." Father Dietrich shut the door behind him. "It's nice in here in the morning isn't it?"

"It's always nice in here." Kurt said.

Father Dietrich looked around. "True." He said. He sat down next to James. "Maria and Wolfgang are borrowing my car to go into Hamburg. If either of you need anything, you should tell them."

James got up. "I don't need anything, but I might want to tag along and be a tourist," he said. "What about you Kurt?"

Kurt shook his head. "I think I'll stay."

"See you in a little while then." James said and left.

"You and I hardly got to say two words to each other yesterday." Father Dietrich said.

Kurt laughed. "That's what I get for inviting so many people I guess." He said, switching from English to German. His English had gotten a lot better now that he was getting so much practice, but he wanted to have a conversation where he wasn't worried about getting the tense right or throwing in too many extra verbs.

"I don't mind all the visitors," said Father Dietrich with a shrug. "It's a nice change. I rather like being priest to a circus."

"I wish I could come visit more often." Kurt said.

"That's funny, because I've hoped that someday I could take a week or so off in the summer and travel around with you."

Kurt sat up straighter. "That would be fantastic." He said. "You could do that anytime."

"I will definitely try to. So, how are you?"

"Good I guess. The new show we're doing is a lot of work. I have a huge part so there's a lot to remember." Kurt said.

"But you still like performing?"

"I do, but sometimes I wish I could do something else. Or at least that I had the option to."

"Such as?"

Kurt knitted his brow in thought. "Sometimes I wish I could do what you do."

"Don't you already?" Father Dietrich asked.

Kurt laughed. "No. Of course not."

"Hmm. In many ways, I would disagree."

"Oh, you mean you have to jump around every night pretending you're the devil? Silly me. I guess they went and changed mass again." Kurt said.

"You're taking it too literally." Father Dietrich said with a laugh. "You provide a service, correct? You put aside your troubles for a few hours every evening to help others take their minds of theirs. Am I right?"

"Well, when you put it that way…Yes." Kurt said. "But you help people fix their problems."

"Do I? I can give people ideas, but only God can truly fix things."

"I'd hate to imagine the kind of ideas I'm giving people then." Kurt said, leaning forward to rest his chin on the pew in front of him.

"You show people that the fantastic is possible. It's the same thing I show them. That if you believe, anything can happen." Father Dietrich sat back. "We're in the same line of work you and I, whether you believe it or not."

Father Dietrich carried in the last of the dishes and set them beside the sink so Kurt could wash them. Through the kitchen door in the room beyond, the lights of their newly decorated tree twinkled.

"You're right Maria," he said. "I had no idea what spaghetti was supposed to taste like until tonight. Or wine for that matter."

Maria laughed and picked up a dishtowel, but Kurt quickly plucked out of her hand with his tail. "Let someone else do that." He said. James took it and started drying the dishes Kurt was stacking on the opposite side of the sink.

"That was _almost_ what spaghetti supposed to taste like." Maria said. "I still can't get it to taste like my mom's. But then she's the quintessential Italian mother; always offering you food she's made from scratch."

"And by 'from scratch' she means that they grew the vegetables themselves." Wolfgang added.

"We're the poster family for Italy I think." Maria said. "We grow our own vegetables, make our own wine, and I think somewhere I have some distant cousins that make their own cheese."

"It sounds good to me." Father Dietrich said. "I think I come from the poster family for German efficiency."

"Actually, they don't do posters any more." Wolfgang said, "Too inefficient. You get a choice of billboards or small cards to hand out on the street."

"You know, I never even imagined you having a family." Kurt said.

"No one ever does." Said Father Dietrich. "It's like people just expect priests to pop up out of thin air."

"So, being the poster child for scrawny American red-heads myself, I have to ask. Where do priests come from?" James said.

Father Dietrich laughed. "Hamburg, in my case."

"Did you always want to be a priest?" Brin asked.

Father Dietrich shook his head. "I had a choice, I could be an engineer or a doctor." He said. "I chose doctor.

"I went to university in the United States and planned on going to medical school there too."

"That's why your English is so good. I swear, doesn't anyone go to school in Europe anymore?" Stephani said.

"Don't ask me." Wolfgang said.

"So, what happened? Did you not get into medical school?" Kurt asked, trying to get the conversation back on track. He had always wondered how one became clergy.

"No, I was a good student actually. I had to take a lot of sciences of course, and I did very well in them. The only problem was the more classes I took, the more things couldn't be explained." Father Dietrich said.

"I thought that was the point of science." Kurt said, "to explain things."

"Yes and no. You see, scientists can explain most of the phenomena in the universe, but not all. There's always some key detail that can't be explained, but holds all of the known explainable concepts together. For instance, sub-atomic particles always come in pairs, a particle and an anti-particle. No one knows why, they just do. And it's because of that pairing that matter doesn't just fly apart into nothingness.

And with each passing year scientists understand more and more about DNA and evolution. Yet we may never understand exactly how it works; even what is known seems too complex to have happened by chance. And as always, just when we think we have a grip on it, something wholly inexplicable presents itself."

"You mean me." Kurt said.

Father Dietrich laughed and shook his head. "Actually I was thinking of the nature of evolution in general Kurt, but if you'd like to be inexplicable as well, that's fine with me.

So the more I learned, the more convinced I became that the world we live in would not be possible without a divine influence. It is said that science attempts to disprove the existence of God, but I would say the opposite is true. I think science shows us how miraculous God's creation really is." Father Dietrich said. "So, I turned down Harvard Medical School and entered seminary instead."

"Wow." Said James, his eyes wide. "I think I would have gone to Harvard if given that choice."

Father Dietrich shook his head. "I'm sure I would have made a fine physician, but there's a difference between a job and a calling. So, becoming a doctor was the last thing on my mind.

After I got my Doctor of Divinity, I joined the military."

"Really?" said Brin. "I can't even imagine that."

"I can." Said Wolfgang. "The German Army doesn't do any actual fighting anymore."

"That's true." Father Dietrich said. "I never saw any combat. At that time the German military was exclusively involved in relief missions. So it was a good place to be a chaplain. And I got to travel all over Europe and Asia."

"That actually sounds pretty cool." James said.

"It was for a time. But after awhile I missed home."

"What did your family think?" Asked Wolfgang. "Military chaplain doesn't exactly fit into the model of efficiency that Germany attempts to espouse."

Father Dietrich laughed. "No. It really doesn't. And it took a my parents quite a while that is wasn't too late to go back and study medicine. Eventually they got used to it, and at the same time set their sites on my two younger brothers as future doctors and engineers."

"Are they?" James asked.

Smiling, Father Dietrich shook his head. "They became priests too." He said.

Wolfgang blew on his hands to warm them. His finger-less gloves were better than nothing, but it was still cold out. He shifted his position slightly, careful not to let his palette of oil paints drop off his lap into the snow below. He took a round bristle brush and began to lay in the back painting; a tree with broad thick branches against a background of rolling hills covered in pale snow.

Wolfgang was starting to put in the detail when he heard James walk up behind him.

"Coffee?" James asked. Wolfgang glanced up and saw his friend had a mug in each hand.

"Please." Said Wolfgang. He held his face above it's steaming contents until he felt his nose start to thaw.

"What are you doing?" James asked.

"Remember when I was a painter?" Wolfgang asked.

James smiled and shrugged. "I think so. Didn't you have brushes and oil paints kind of like those?"

Wolfgang rolled his eyes.

"So what are you painting?" James asked.

Wolfgang used his brush to point to a tree standing a short ways from the rectory's rear patio. "Kurt says that every year he and Stephani sit in that tree and have a conversation."

James cocked his head. Until Wolfgang had pointed it out, he hadn't noticed them. Through the tangle of bare branches, he could see Stephani sitting up against the trunk and Kurt further out on the branch, his tail hanging down in a lazy arc. "What do they talk about?" He asked.

Wolfgang shrugged. "No idea, but they did it last year too and I didn't have my paints. So this year I came prepared."

James crouched down beside Wolfgang's easel. "You really like doing this don 't you?" he said, "Being part of a circus. You never really got this close to anyone at school, except Maria that is. And Nina, before she…"

Wolfgang shook his head before James could finish his sentence and started painting again. "I do like it." He said, watching his paintbrush trace a slow lazy line of pale blue amidst the shadows of the snow. "It's like that story Father Dietrich told last night. I always thought art was my calling. I was wrong."

"But can you honestly live your entire life moving around like this?"

Wolfgang nodded. "I can." He said but his eyes saddened. "But I don't know if Maria can."

James cast his eyes down to the stone patio. "What if you had to make a choice?" He asked.

Wolfgang shut his eyes and stayed silent a long time. "I would have to let my heart decide." He said at last. "I would follow Maria."

Author's note: The title is shamelessly borrowed from a wonderful book of Neil Gaiman short stories.


	29. Chapter 28

_**Chapter 28: Proposal Number One**_

_"Say 'yes'," James whispered back. "Please, please, please say 'yes'."_

Amidst the swell of organ music, Brin scaled the narrow staircase leading to the church's second tier of seats. Once at the top she looked around and saw James sitting at the controls of St. Stephen's giant pipe organ. He was playing Bach, one of his pieces in the major key, and the warmth of the music seemed to match the soft glow coming from the stained glass. Brin sat down and waited for James to finish.

"Kurt said I would find you up here." She said when James had played the last notes with a trill and a flourish. He turned around.

"Yeah. Isn't this old pipe organ amazing? That was the best part of sitting up here." James said.

Brin looked around quizzically. "Why did you sit up here for mass last night?" She asked.

"I felt bad for Kurt, having to sit up here all alone. It wasn't so bad really."

"You just liked sitting next to that organ." Brin said with a knowing grin.

James smiled sheepishly, caught. "That too," he said. "That looks nice on you." He gestured to the sweater that Amanda had given Brin for Christmas that morning. Brin glanced down at it and smiled.

"I like it," she said. "And I like these new rules for Christmas."

Kurt had told them that Father Dietrich abhorred Christmas as the secular gift giving holiday it was becoming; that the spirit of the celebration of the birth of the savior was being lost in the great flood of materialism that accompanied it. And so Christmas morning had been a simple affair – with only one or two presents for each of them, preferably made by the giver. Wolfgang had had the most difficulty complying, as he loved giving extravagant gifts. But he kept himself in check, presenting each one of them with a leather bound sketchbook in which he had adorned the first page with drawings and a message about what their friendship meant to him.

Brin had gotten the sweater Amanda had knitted herself and in her pocket was a slip of paper that was an IOU from Kurt for trapeze lessons, something she had been hounding him about ever since their rehearsal together.

"I like that scarf Amanda made you. Did you notice they matched?" Brin asked. She sat down on the organ bench besides James and held the scarf he was wearing, despite being indoors, up to her sweater.

"That's perfect." James said. "Now I'm wearing a little bit of you."

Brin laughed at the corny line and pretended to punch him on the shoulder.

James started playing again, but this time instead of Bach he played "When a man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge, belting out the lyrics with as much soul as his voice could carry. Then he switched to "Alison" by the Pixies, which sounded very funny on an organ instead of the distorted electric guitar in the original. Brin giggled.

"Have you ever seen the pipe room for a big organ like this?" James asked.

Brin shook her head.

"Come, I'll show you." James led Brin over to a narrow wooden door and turned the latch. "It's kind of crowded in here." He said as they squeezed their way in.

The center of the room had a little more space to it and James pointed out the various "choirs" of pipes, each with their precise lengths and thicknesses.

"Do you want to hear what it sounds like in here with the organ playing?" James asked.

"Yes, I bet it's amazing. It won't hurt my ears will it?" Brin asked.

"I'll keep the stops as quiet as possible." James left the room and a moment later Brin was engulfed in a flood of sound. She could feel it in her bones, in her heart, and each time she inhaled it seemed that her lungs were a resonating chamber; filling with music before releasing it back into the world.

She could tell James was changing the stops as he played because beside the differences in timbres the volume changed. Finally, he played a few chords in thunderous conclusion.

"So, what did you think?" James asked when he returned.

"It was wonderful. Like getting massaged by music, especially the end" Brin said.

James looked thoughtful for a moment, "What a wonderful way to describe it. And for the end, I had no choice but to pull out all the stops."

Brin giggled. "Is that were that saying comes from?" She asked.

James nodded. "That it did. So, now I'm really going to pull out all the stops."

Brin looked confused, but didn't say anything as James withdrew a small velvet box from behind him. He knelt down on one knee and offered it to Brin who stood speechless before him.

"It would be my honor to be your husband." James said.

Her eyes already wet, Brin took the box in trembling hands and opened it. It wasn't an extravagant ring at all. It looked antique and the burnished silver offset the tiny sparking diamond at its center.

"I don't know what to say." Her voice was hardly a whisper.

"Say 'yes'," James whispered back. "Please, please, please say 'yes'."

The tears that had been threatening to break from the bonds of her eyes, rolled down Brin's cheeks. "Yes." She said; such a tiny quivering sounds, but then getting louder each time she said it, "yes. Yes. Yes!" She slid to the floor and had her lips on his in a single movement. Then they were lost in the warmth of each other's bodies; exploring the fit of every limb and curve.

"I love you Brin." James said.

"I love you…" But Brin's response was cut short by the sound of clapping from outside. She pushed open the door and saw the faces of Kurt, Wolfgang, Maria, Amanda, Stephani, and Father Dietrich beaming them. Brin quickly re-buttoned her blouse, hoping that maybe no one would notice the how hard she was blushing. She had been caught making out in a church once before, again with James only this time in Manhattan's landmark St. Patrick's cathedral, but never dreamed she would ever get caught with her blouse halfway of by a priest.

"Father Dietrich! Ummm. I'm so very sorry Father." She said getting to her feet.

Father Dietrich laughed. "How about we pretend I have only just arrived? Brin, you look fine to me." Then he smiled conspiratorially at James, "But I don't think that lipstick is your color."

"Why you!" Brin gave James a playful swat while he tried to rub the lipstick off his face with the corner of his shirt. "We're you guys listening the whole time?" Brin asked.

"Kurt, you were supposed to be my look out." James said accusatorily.

"I did look out." He said. "But they have powerful methods of persuasion. And I wanted to share the good news as soon as possible."

James smiled and rolled his eyes and they emerged from the crowded pipe room and to join their friends. "I spoke to Father Dietrich and he said he could marry us this summer, when the circus plays Hamburg. Depending on you saying 'yes' or course."

"If that's enough time for you to prepare." Father Dietrich added.

"Time!" Brin cried. "Why can't we just do it right now?"

"Unfortunately because the van is packed and it's time for us to leave." Wolfgang said. He put a comforting hand on Kurt's shoulder, knowing how badly he wanted to stay.

"Next Summer then. I'll make the necessary arrangements." Said Father Dietrich. "I'll keep in touch while you," he pointed at Brin and James," travel of course."

The group exchanged hugs and congratulations, but Kurt had moved off to the side. Brin walked over.

"What is it?" She asked.

Kurt sighed. "I don't want to be jealous." He said. "but I must admit I do desire for what you have. But how can I when I look like this? Like a monster?" He paused to look at his hands, a trio or overly large digits, ones that many would call hideously deformed. He clasped Brin's slender hands in his. "I guess it's hard for someone like you to understand." He said, slowly letting go as he backed away.

"I don't think you look like a monster, Kurt. I think you're beautiful." Brin said to him, matching his pace to keep up. "Someone with as kind a heart as yours couldn't look any other way. Have faith that there is someone out there who is meant for you and you won't spend you're life alone."

"Faith." Kurt repeated with a small laugh.

"Think about what a wonderful friend you've been to James and to Wolfgang and even to me after I screamed at you all those times. Have faith that that kindness will be returned to you."

Smiling, Brin held Kurt's face in her hands and kissed him one on each cheek. "You introduced us to the priest who will join my hand with James' in marriage. I'll always love you for that." He could feel his cheeks blushing a deep violet and for the third time in his life, Kurt was speechless.


	30. Chapter 29

_**Chapter 29: Opening Night**___

"Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name…" 

Wolfgang wondered if this was what it was like to have an out of body experience. He wondered if the rest of the circus felt the same way he did. He was wandering aimlessly through their backstage, a second tent attached to the main tent. The pre-show activity was underway. Along one wall there was a row of tilted mirrors where a few of the performers were putting on their makeup. In the middle of the room, on the large expanse of mats, Kurt and Petra were stretching and occasionally running through a few of the moves from their duets. Everybody was busy and yet Wolfgang felt completely detached.

This was the hardest he had ever worked on anything. And the entire circus had been behind him the whole time; they had as much stake in tonight's outcome as he did. Maybe it was a defense mechanism to keep him from feeling nervous, but as Wolfgang toured the backstage he felt like he was watching a film. The radio headset he wore crackled to life. Though the roustabouts were no longer carrying props around the played an integral part in the show as technicians, responsible for light, sound, and controlling the various pulley rigs for the flying equipment. And he, Wolfgang was somehow supposed to be overseeing it all.

"Five minutes to first call." Wolfgang shouted, repeating it from the radio.

The audience was already trickling in and the real show would not begin for another ten minutes. But performers wandering through the audience and hanging about on the platforms would set the stage early. Wolfgang watched as the random activity ceased. Kurt, Christian, Gretchen, and several of the others who would go on first checked their costumes, making sure they were complete and properly fastened.

Wolfgang walked over to Kurt. He would be the first one out. "Are you ready?" He asked.

Kurt shook his head. "No." He said.

"No?" Wolfgang repeated, so on edge that he was already starting to panic. "Why not?"

Kurt took Wolfgang's hand in one of his and Gretchen's in the other. Gretchen shrugged and took Lars' hand. Soon the entire group was in a circle, all holding hands.

"I just thought we needed some insurance." Kurt said. Everybody looked confused until Kurt began speaking again, his eyes cast toward the floor. "Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever and ever."

Wolfgang smiled. He supposed that if Kurt had asked him if he could say the Lord's Prayer before they went on he would have said no as the circus was strictly a secular affair. However, listening to the way Kurt said it, the Lord's Prayer actually made sense to him for the first time.

"I'm ready now." Kurt said after the group had said amen and released hands. He and Wolfgang walked over to the closed tent flap that separated the backstage were life was safe and predictable from the big tent where anything could happen. The rest of the early performers followed them as shortly they would be following Kurt into the tent.

"I'll see you in about 90 minutes." Kurt said, opened the flap, and was gone.

Wolfgang peeked out and watched Nightcrawler, almost completely obscured by shadow climb the ladder to one of the many static platforms scattered around the tent. There was a brief hush in the audience when he stepped into the light where he sat down and let his tail hang over the edge of the platform. When he didn't do anything besides sit and watch the audience, they quickly grew bored and started talking again. Wolfgang grinned as Kurt shifted positions and started pretending to file his nails with the spade of his tail. A moment later Christian made an entrance from the opposite direction, riding one of his homemade bicycles. Wolfgang backed away from the flap; the show was in good hands.

Once the forest had been established, the creatures slowly melted into the background and made their exits. The accordion player and the narrative female singer stepped into the middle of the ring, which was lit by a dim mottled light, like a forest floor. Kurt used the distraction of their entrance to climb up to the top of the trapeze rigging. As they began playing, he slid down the ropes onto the trapeze where he stood and started swinging.

Wolfgang had written this song in Italian and it had been James' idea to set it to a waltz, which since Kurt was alone, emphasized his loneliness. It took Kurt awhile to get enough momentum to do anything. Meanwhile, James who was with the rest of the band off in the shadows slowly began to join in and pad the accordionist's performance. As the violins took up the melody from the lone accordion, Kurt did his first trick and the audience applauded. The film stopped and Wolfgang was reconnected to the world; the circus had begun.

The next 90 minutes seemed to pass in 90 seconds. Kurt ended his solo by leaping off the trapeze and landing in the outstretched hands of Nils and Sven who bent their knees to absorb the momentum as they caught him. Because of the lack of nets, all dismounts from the higher equipment would be handled this way. The hardest part for Kurt was not speaking to them since they were supposed to just catch him and then fade into the background. His exit was to climb back up one of the platforms and watch the gypsy tribe make their entrance.

The entrance of the tribe was where the show got big. The lights came all the way up and the band kicked in in full as the entire circus streamed in through every entrance and marched past the audience into the ring. Planning this was a logistical nightmare since it required the performers to stage themselves in an area that the audience was using, but with the help of their roustabout ushers, it went smoothly. The group was carrying most of their equipment with them so it acts as a sort of overture of what was to come. Plus it really gave the impression of them moving in since they had to set everything up, or at least store it to be set up later. Once everyone was on stage and the props in their places the music switched and the celebration commenced.

This was the product of Brin's many dance workshops and when Wolfgang scanned the group, he could see her as she had chosen to join the performers in the ring for some of the larger numbers. It was one of the few totally choreographed numbers so while it didn't include any difficult tricks, it was striking to see so many people out in the ring at the same time. Everyone looked like they were having fun, particularly the youngest performers who were being tossed in the air by their various older relatives. The whole party came to an abrupt end when Kurt dropped into the middle of it.

There was a moment of stunned silence and everybody backed away from him except Petra who took a several steps towards him. They were about to touch each other's hands when Lars pulled his sister back. Then, led by Lars, Nightcrawler was chased away. This segued into the first big act, the Wolleck's tightrope act.

The Wollecks had taken a unique approach. Instead of putting the high wire way up above the audience they lowered it to about 12 feet above the ground. The point of their act was not how high they could be, but how many things they could do. To make it even more interesting, there was not one high wire, but three. On the end furthest from the audience the platforms were connected, but on the nearest end there was hardly room for more than on person to stand. This was one of Wolfgang's favorite acts, mainly because it was so outside the box, so different than any other tightrope act he'd ever seen.

The three ropes allowed for all sorts of synchronization and they started out doing cartwheels that led to flips and some simple stacking. After that they moved on to tricks with props such as jumping rope or riding a bike. As each person finished their performance on one wire, a new one would begin on another so that there was constant movement. The finale was Laurentiu's eldest son who carried a chair out on to the center wire. He put it down on the wire and stood balanced upon the seat. The audience applauded. He then put his hands on the back of the chair and pulled himself slowly into a handstand. More applause. Finally he slowly shifted position as he turned and tilted the chair so that it was balanced on the tight rope on a single leg and he was balanced holding a single corner of the chair back. Wolfgang had never seen anything like it ever before. The audience went wild of course.

After pausing the music long enough for applause, James started the band up again still playing the tight rope theme so the Wollecks could climb down from the platforms and distract the audience with additional acrobatics while the first major equipment change occurred. Lars, Sven, and Nils each went to a rope while across from them Kurt leapt from platform to platform releasing the tightropes and attaching a guide cable to them so they could be reeled in without falling on the performers below. Once the tightropes were secured James wound the band down and the Wollecks took their bows before running off stage.

The show went from act to act with the story interwoven between them. Lars tried to tempt Petra; Gretchen tried to tempt Lars. Kurt watched from above. Finally, after Lars threatens her with violence, Petra runs off stage and in to the forest. To set the stage from village to forest the lights changed again and as Petra stood alone in the center of the ring, Christian reappeared on his bicycle and performed his solo.

The stage set included curved ramps that most of the time they were around the perimeter and hardly noticeable. Part of the shift from village to forest was pushing the ramps in close. Christian rode around these and used them as take offs for a variety of inverted aerials that were so graceful they hardly resembled their street park roots. His solo actually happened around Petra who acted frightened at first, but quickly became fascinated. After Christian took his bow there was a moment of comic relief when Christian rode back out with Kurt standing behind him on the foot pegs of his bike as they attempted to cheer her up.

They took the "Full Time Forest Creature" title that Brin had given them very seriously. Despite Kurt's earlier trepidations about working with the bike, they'd worked out some very technical tricks as well as some hilarious gags. After a few passes around Petra they left and a pair of deep green silks was lowered through the trap door above.

For Wolfgang, Petra's solo and subsequent events was the most sublime moment in the show. The flying silks were related to the trapeze in that they hung from the ceiling but that was where the similarity ended. Through a series of slow twists of cloth and turns of her body, Petra climbed to a point high above the audience. From there Petra performed a graceful, angry, yet contemplative aerial dance, using only the knots she tied around herself to keep her from falling to the ground. She arranged the silks around herself so they fell like a great curtain and as the music softened Kurt stepped out from behind them.

James had written a beautiful love theme for the two of them and though a few bars could be heard during their initial meeting, this was the first time the audience would hear it in full. It was the music of falling in love – there were no words only the emotion of longing expressed so beautifully by the young soprano. At first Kurt simply circled around her performance, enraptured by her. Then he grabbed the bottoms of the cloth and slowly twirled them around so that the wrap Petra had started around her hand became entwined around her body so she could spiral down until she and Kurt were inches apart. Then as Kurt let go she twisted herself back up to the top again and looped the cloth around and over her outstretched arms. Kurt grabbed the fabric again and this time pulled her back as far as he could and let go so that she soared above the crowd like an angel, the silk streaming behind her.

What had surprised Wolfgang the most during dress rehearsals was that he had never considered Kurt to be much of an actor. Nightcrawler was just a really extreme version of him. But watching him and Petra together, he was convinced they really had fallen in love. Unfortunately their moment together was cut short by the appearance of the wolves.

The Olsson men, stripped down to their basic gray unitards and covered by fur capes and masks were revealed, each poised on a different pole or platform, one after the other by spotlights. Once the whole pack could be seen, Sven lead them down to the floor where they pulled Petra from the silks and carried Kurt away. Sven carried his cousin up to the top of the trapeze platform, the furs and masks were shed, and Lycka Pa Himmelen performed.

This was Lars' other showcase performance so he was the main flyer. Petra actually didn't do that much since there was no time to really rest after her strenuous solo and she didn't want to get hurt. It worked out though because at the end, after being tossed from catcher to catcher like a rag doll, she struggles and falls. For a moment the audience gasped and then gave a short cheer when Kurt caught her. It was a great device because it really did look like Sven dropped her by accident. With Petra safely in his arms, Kurt ran off stage.

The scene switched again to the village where the women of the village, Annika and her sisters, attempt to use their magic to call out to Petra. Wolfgang had gotten the idea from Margali's stories about her mother. He had never seen an aerial hoops act before this show so he hadn't known what to expect. He'd been pleasantly surprised by the women's performance, but this was really the musical highlight of the show.

Despite having three very talented singers to work with, James still wanted more; he wanted a great chorus of voices to go with the kaleidoscopic patterns the women created on the hoops. He recruited any of the male members of the circus who wanted to sing and then auditioned them. Those who could sing on key became his choir. While the two lead women sang the main melody, the male singer provided a counterpoint. His counter melody was reinforced by a third much simpler melody sung by James surrounded by acrobats all singing into one microphone. It had been a lot for James to juggle trying to sing, direct his singers, and direct the band all at once, but it was worth it. The result filled the tent with sound and as the women dropped off the hoops into their catchers' arms, nearly half the audience was standing.

The aerial hoops also marked the turning point of the show. From then on it was more than half over, the story resolving itself and coming to a close. The women find that their call to Petra worked because Kurt arrives at the village with her still in his arms. She wakes up, but is quickly pulled away from Kurt by Lars. Kurt is then caught and strung up in a net.

It had actually been Kurt's idea, but Wolfgang hated it. He didn't like the idea of stringing any of his friends up in a net, but it especially bothered him to do it to Kurt. Perhaps it was because even though Wolfgang felt that Margali's paranoia was unfounded, there was a tiny part of him that thought maybe she was right. He'd been in New York City and had seen first hand the near weekly anti-mutant demonstrations in Washington Square. More than once he'd witnessed discriminations, even violence against those with obvious mutations. And none of them were even half as obvious as Kurt. It bothered Wolfgang in a way he couldn't quite explain. He knew that it was Kurt's status as a performer that insulated him from most if not all of the ridicule he might have faced. To then place the very thing he was protected from as part of Kurt's performance made Wolfgang nervous.

Nonetheless the short scene was quite touching. It started with a dance between the triangle of Petra, Gretchen, and Lars, but their movements then echoed from above by Kurt who was trying to extricate himself from the net. He manages to open up two sides so that the net hung like a sling and in the midst of his own struggles he reaches down to pull Petra up to safety.

This was followed by the fire knife dance performance by Kiwi, Feuer, and Amiri. Though the aerial hoops were considered the musical highlight, the fire knife dance was the only time James could write the kind of music he did best. James could write in a multitude of genres and styles, but his favorite was electronica. Techno, trance, ambient, jungle, it had so many names and so many possibilities for textures and layers. Since the fire performers could choreograph their routine to the music, and they needed very fast music as well, James was free to compose a magnum techno opus. It gave the band a little break too since he was responsible for most of the performance, triggering pre-recorded sequences and samples off of his master keyboard.

The highlight of the fire act was after Feuer and Amiri took their bows and gave center stage to Kiwi, holding a rope with a small cup attached to each end looped over his shoulders. Amiri and Feuer came forward to light the fuel in each cup. Kiwi then spun around once so that the weight of the cups and their momentum stretched the rope out straight. Then he spun the flaming cups of burning fuel in a dazzling array of patterns.

As much as Kiwi wanted to put "fire meteors", the most difficult of the Maori fire arts, in the show, it scared Wolfgang to death. It was difficult enough to begin with to insure a circus let alone one where a performer came out spinning cups of flaming oil that could splatter the audience if he missed. But Kiwi never missed.

The last act before the finale was the Russian Bars, the culmination of nearly two years of training. With the addition of the Wollecks the act had become much more than what Kurt and Lars had started with Lars' cousins. Besides being an amazing act, it was an important story element as well.

They began with Lars, Ivan, and one of Ivan's older brothers doing synchronized flips. Then the trio took their bows and Lars and Ivan returned to the bars in a sort of competition, which Lars eventually wins. The arrival of Nightcrawler made for a brief humorous interlude as Kurt hopped down on to the bar held by Sven and Nils from above. They tried to shake him off, but he hopped to the next bar where he got a similar treatment, each time landing more like a cat than an acrobat. Finally, after being tossed to the third bar Kurt manages to land on two feet and hold an exaggerated "ta-da!" pose. It was classic Kurt and the audience laughed and clapped until he got tossed onto his head, which got even bigger laughs.

The porters with the large bars stepped aside to allow a pair of porters carrying narrower rounded bars. On these two of the Wolleck women performed several tricks before, still standing on the bars, they were carried off stage. Sven and Nils returned so that Lars could face off with Kurt and for the next few minutes the two of them did their most elaborate tricks. After Lars completes a trick that Nightcrawler can't top, Kurt instead invites Petra up on the bar. Then, with Kurt holding her tightly, she wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. Obviously strained by the weight of two people on the bar, timing themselves to Kurt, Sven and Nils bent their knees and started the bar bouncing. Kurt used the momentum to turn a single backwards salto with Petra still held in his arms. He landed, letting his tail stabilize them and then the two of them hopped off to even more applause. At that moment, Gretchen comes forward to soothe Lars' hurt feelings, but Lars knocks Kurt to the floor, grabs Petra and runs away. The entire cast follows them so that Kurt is left alone on the ground. When the music starts again, Petra is lowered from the ceiling rig as the finale begins.

It was the finale that they had worked so hard on, the one where Brin had allowed Kurt to carry her up into the ceiling as they danced together. From the side Brin watched; all those problems had been solved. Petra's timing was perfect and she and Kurt spun in a graceful arc as they rose high above the audience and finally disappeared.

It was at this point where they had come up with their most creative and unusual solution for the show's ending. It had started out with technical problems with Kurt's costume. Lysette had delivered a fantastic frock coat in deep brown suede to match Kurt's tunic and pants. It was spattered with glossy black paint that glittered in the light as he moved and it fit him perfectly. The only problem was the nine tiny buttons running down the front.

"How much time to I have?" Kurt had asked with doubt in his voice as he carefully manipulated one of the buttons into its hole.

Wolfgang tried not to appear angry with Lysette though it seemed impossible that she wouldn't have noticed such a thing. She had, after all, been making clothes for Kurt since he was a baby. Had it not occurred to her that Kurt wasn't exactly dexterous when it came to his hands?

"Maybe I could do it." Petra said.

Wolfgang paced around them. "Okay, so you guys go up into the ceiling, Petra puts on her costume, then she puts Kurt's costume on him."

"Not the costume." Kurt interrupted. "Just the buttons. I can dress myself just fine."

"Petra buttons Kurt's coat." Wolfgang corrected, "And then they get lowered back down. How long will that take?"

"Actually, I wanted to talk to you about the lowering down thing." Brin said.

Wolfgang looked panicked. "What's wrong with it?" He asked.

"It's just looks sort of dumb. They go up, and then they come down in different costumes. It's so obvious. Can they make their re-entrance in the new costumes from somewhere else?" Brin asked.

"How?" Wolfgang asked. "They'll be up there." He pointed to the dropped ceiling for emphasis.

Brin shrugged. "Maybe they could climb down unseen." She said.

Wolfgang slapped his hand to his forehead. "Okay, they go up. Petra puts her costume on. She buttons Kurt's coat. Then they climb down without being seen. Then they finally make their entrance. James, are you getting this? How much music are you going to have to write for them to do all that?"

"You might as well make it an intermission." Said James.

"It's impossible Brin." Wolfgang said.

"It's not impossible, Wolfgang." Brin shot back. "Nothing's impossible."

"I know a way to get down quickly." Kurt said so softly that he was nearly drowned out by the arguing pair. For a moment it appeared that neither heard him as Wolfgang and Brin continued to debate the staging. Then Wolfgang went silent and turned around.

"Hey, that's right." He said. "You do."

The discussion ended and the end was reworked so that Kurt teleported himself and Petra to a spot backstage where Lars and Gretchen were waiting. Even though he had suggested it, Kurt wasn't happy about teleporting during a show. Even though he had told Margali and most of his friends, he heeded Feuer's advice and kept it from public knowledge. Lars and Gretchen were responsible for keeping the backstage clear of people and James made a few changes to the volume of the music to cover the sound. Except for the fact that Petra always looked a little woozy during their entrance, the audience was none the wiser.

Wolfgang had intended to watch the show, but he was a lot busier backstage than he had expected to be. The next time he peeked through the tent flaps, the entire cast was on stage taking their bows. He tried not to be disappointed because given the fact that the entire audience was standing, he suspected he would have many more chances to see Les Chansons performed. Smiling, he joined the audience's applause. They had done it. It seemed like only yesterday it was he and Kurt discussing the plot for the show over a beer in his crowded trailer. So much had happened between then and now and yet it seemed like it was seconds ago.

Wolfgang was woken from his reverie by the appearance of Kurt, Sven, and Laurentiu backstage.

"No, I'm not going out." He protested. "This is your show."

"Shut up Wolfgang, this is no time to be modest. It's our show." Kurt said and before Wolfgang could escape, Sven grabbed him and carried him out into the ring. It was a strange time to discover the depth of his stage fright and it was a combination of sheer willpower and Kurt's powerful three fingered grip that kept Wolfgang from retreating to the sanctuary of backstage. From that point on he would hide behind his numerous shields, from a painted canvas to his own checkbook, but this night would never be repeated and so Wolfgang took a bow with everyone else before accepting the biggest bouquet of red roses he had ever seen from Maria.

After that night, during the bad times, Wolfgang only had to remember her smile, her lips gleaming red and lovely under the bright white lights, her black eyes brimming with her love for him and be reminded that there was good in the world after all, that there was no reason to ever fall completely into despair even when there seemed no other option.


	31. Chapter 30

**Chapter 30: Channel Crossing**

_"We are pleased to inform you that Circus Gehlhaar has been chosen to be one of the showcase circuses for this coming year's Brighton Circus Festival."_

It was a rare European heat wave. Even at night the temperature hardly dropped and most of the circus had taken to sleeping on the roofs of their trailers rather then endure the stifling heat inside. During the day it was nearly unbearable indoors and out. Even though they did the best to air out the main tent, within the first few minutes of every rehearsal everybody's leotards were dark with sweat. At night it didn't get much better. It was hard to imagine how the audience could stand it.

Lars, Ivan, and Kurt lay in the shade of a large tree trying to stay as cool as possible.

"Even with all the resin in the world my hands still get slippery in this heat." Lars complained.

"Us too." Ivan agreed in his broken German, "Sweat gets on the hands, on the wire. Very dangerous."

Kurt decided it was too hot to complain and stayed silent. Christian trudged over and threw himself on the ground next to them.

"I tried dumping a bucket of water on my head, but it evaporated. Then I tried to get Amanda to turn the hose on me but she wouldn't do it. Something about 'conserving water', that bitch." He said running his hands though his hair. "Man Kurt, it's hotter than hell out here. Can't you do something about it?"

"I tried." Kurt said without opening his eyes, "but my pitchfork melted. Sorry." He briefly debated some sort of retaliation for the jab at his sister but decided against it. Christian and Amanda were spending an awful lot of time together these days so Kurt was sure he hadn't meant it seriously.

"Oh well." Christian sighed. "You were our only hope. Now we're screwed."

They sat in silence again. Kurt figured that their only real hope was for it to rain. A jet of water hit his face and he thought he'd gotten his wish, but when he opened his eyes, it was Wolfgang with a squirt gun.

"Where did you get that?" Christian asked. "Do you have any more?"

Wolfgang shook his head sadly. "Nah, I found this in the tent. Some kid must have left it. Here, it's yours." He tossed it to Christian who immediately used it to hose down Lars before turning it on himself.

"Check this out." Wolfgang said. He held out what looked like a magazine and tossed it to Kurt.

"The Brighton Beach Circus Festival." Kurt read in English off the cover. He opened it and turned the pages, which showed glossy photos of different circus acts. He looked at the back, "It's in England." He said. Lars took it and he and Ivan paged through it.

"And listen to this." Wolfgang pulled an envelope out of his back pocket with a flourish. He removed the folded paper within. "Dear Mr. Wagner," he read, "that's me, not you Kurt."

"I figured."

"We are pleased to inform you that Circus Gehlhaar has been chosen to be one of the showcase circuses for this coming year's Brighton Circus Festival. Please make arrangements with our offices so that we can provide the proper space and equipment for your needs. And the rest is just the business stuff. This is a big deal." Wolfgang said, tapping the letter with this finger. "Not every circus gets to showcase at Brighton."

"When is it?" Christian asked.

"The first week in May." Wolfgang said. "The Brighton festival runs all summer, but the circus festival opens it."

"I've never been to England." Kurt said. "We've never played there before."

"Yeah, we'll have to ferry all the trucks across the channel. And I'll make arrangements for us to tour around Britain for a while since we'll be over there."

"I've never been on a boat either." Kurt said.

"This is great, you guys can work on your English." Christian said.

Both Kurt and Lars looked hurt. "My English is fine." Kurt said.

"Yeah. What's wrong with the way we speak English?" Lars asked.

"Well, your accents then. God forbid either of you should pronounce a 'W'." Christian said. Lars reached over and wrestled the squirt gun out of his hand only to discover it was empty.

For the first time Circus Gehlhaar toured through the winter. Les Chansons de la Foret had received critical acclaim all over Europe, enough that Wolfgang had amassed a small collection of reviews and press clippings. Though Circus Gehlhaar nearly always played to a packed house, their notoriety was more of a local phenomenon. Now they had the unique experience of reading about their performances and seeing pictures of their circus in newspapers. Most of the photos were of Nightcrawler though occasionally Petra or Lars found their way in to them as well. If all the publicity Kurt was getting made Margali nervous, she didn't say anything to anyone about it.

For the winter half of the tour the tents were stored and they played at indoor venues, another unique experience for Circus Gehlhaar. And so for nearly 10 months they stayed on the road, playing to audiences each night. They were tireless, fueled by the success that seemed to grow with each performance as well as the knowledge that it came not from any one of them, but all of them.

Time seemed accelerated and before anyone knew it, the winter was over. Leaves were returning to the trees and the days grew warmer. They had played in countries they had never been to and for audiences larger than they thought possible. Now they made their way toward the coast of France where they would cross the English Channel and play what would be the most important shows of Circus Gehlhaar's career.


	32. Chapter 31

**Chapter 31: Brighton**

_"Can't we be a bunch of lunatics too?"_

Circus Gehlhaar arrived at the site of the Brighton Circus Festival two weeks before start. Given that they would be performing in a different tent with sometimes new and different equipment than they were used to, they needed the time to adjust.

The festival itself would last for two weeks. There were five full circuses including Circus Gehlhaar. These five would share the main performance tent. Dotted around the main tent were several other smaller tents where smaller acts would perform throughout the day. There was finally a decent sized tent, which served only as a practice space.

With so many performers all congregated in one space, it was important to insure that to groups made it to their assigned practice times, had space to warm up and change, and had access to any other facilities they would need. To this end, several facilitators were assigned to the various groups in order to provide a liaison between the performers and the festival organizers.

Terry Hamilton was assigned to Circus Gehlhaar, the Moscow State Circus, and a smaller acrobatic troupe from China. He had been a Brighton festival liaison for 3 seasons and though he only spoke English, he always managed to handle the language barrier with aplomb. Wolfgang liked Terry immediately. He had met with Terry early in order to avoid any incidents involving Kurt's appearance; Terry had looked at Wolfgang's photos and shrugged.

"Do you think you're the only circus with a mutant performer?" He said in his usual cheery Manchester accent, "I wouldn't worry about it mate."

Terry met with his all of his performers on the afternoon they arrived. They assembled in the stands while Terry stood in the middle of the ring, explaining how things would work in what was to be their home for the next month. The first two weeks would be dedicated to rehearsal, making sure all the equipment was working, and making adjustments to the new performance space. He passed out schedules that showed how all the performers would share the same rehearsal spaces. Once the preparations were over and the festival began there was a second schedule outlining both performances and rehearsals. It was going to be a busy month.

The circus festival was a major part of the opening weeks of the internationally famous Brighton Festival that ran all summer. Because of the number of performers involved, there was no way they could house them all near the tents as was they did when they traveled singly. Instead each performing group was given an onsite trailer to keep costumes and supplies as well as provide performers with a place to rest between shows and rehearsals. Large circuses like Circus Gehlhaar actually had two, one for storage and a second provided a few places to sit with a make up bench along one wall. Following Margali's lead Wolfgang covered the boring walls with colorful tapestries and old Circus Gehlhaar posters. Then, in secret he pulled out his paints and retouched them to give Kurt five fingered hands so not to give James away.

The living quarters for the performers were a five to ten minute walk to the festival grounds. This was further away than most of them were used to, but it didn't take long to adjust. The organizers provided a shuttle bus for the performers, but most preferred to walk.

Even though they were living in their own trailers, it was very different from life on the road with Circus Gehlhaar. The festival crew treated the performers very well so there was an element of luxury they weren't accustomed to. Unless Circus Gehlhaar was stopped at a site with a campground, the bathroom facilities were primitive to say the least. Though no one complained about it, they all admitted that the building that housed both shower stalls and toilets with real plumbing was one of the best things about Brighton.

"I'm taking two showers a day the entire time we're here." Brin announced, almost breathless with excitement. She had had the most difficulty of any of them adjusting to the lack of proper bathing facilities. According to James, Brin practically lived for a long soak in the oversized tub they had had in their apartment.

All the performers and crew of the circuses were given hooded sweatshirt jackets with that year's festival logo on the back. Each one was personalized with the name of their circus on the front and their name of the name of their act embroidered underneath. The days were warm, things quickly cooled off once the sun set, sometimes dropping 5 to 10 degrees Celsius. The jackets were perfect for wearing while walking around the complex in the evenings. During the training weeks, it wasn't uncommon to look out on the grounds and see everyone walking around identically dressed. The "circus uniform" became a joke among performers along with the exchange of increasingly imaginative "salutes" when they passed each other.

One of the best parts was living near the ocean. Kurt, whose appearance necessitated that he spend the ferry ride indoors, spent the entire trip lying in a fetal position in his bunk, too seasick to bother with anything but moaning initially wanted nothing to do with anything involving the ocean. Once he was on land again his opinion changed radically.. The cries of the seagulls were musical and in the morning they raised such a cacophony that it sounded a room full of people laughing. The air smelled different and throughout the day a cool breeze blew in off the water. He had spent his childhood traveling along the mild shores of the Mediterranean, but the wild shores of the Atlantic reminded him of his favorite novels by Hemingway and Melville. He spent nearly all his evenings outside, watching for the twinkling lights of the boats far out at sea.

Life in Brighton quickly developed into a routine. Though at first the circuses stuck to their specific rehearsal times, as the days went by they had a tendency to stick around or show up early to watch everyone else. Wolfgang was fascinated to see that for the most part performers from outside of Circus Gehlhaar reacted to Kurt the same way that those inside did. It was as though the other acrobats watched him, acknowledged what he was, and saw only the skills and talent that made him one of them.

On the second day, while the members of Lycka pa Himmelen were cooling down after their rehearsal, they watched members of the Moscow State Circus setting up their equipment. They pulled out two large triangular structures that supported swinging platforms out and bolted them to the floor. The platforms were hardly a foot or two off the ground. Curious, Kurt and the Olsson's sat down to watch.

It was like a trapeze act only upside down. The porters stood on the platforms and used their momentum to swing them in great arcs (sometimes even swinging in a full arc over the top). The flyers would occasionally hop up onto the platform, turn away from their porter and at the apex of the swing, leap off. That was where things really got wild. The momentum of the swing projected the acrobats easily fifteen or twenty feet in the air.

Instead of nets, they landed against large sheets of fabric held at an angle that allowed them to slide to the bottom where they returned to the swings for another turn. Their takeoff flung them up into a graceful arc and they had so much air time that the number of tricks they could do seemed limitless. As long as they finished up with their back to the net and their feet toward the floor, they could do it.

"I know what this is." Sven said, after they had watched for a few minutes, "These are Russian Swings." He turned to Kurt and grinned. "Another Russian invention. It's totally lethal. It's usually a daredevil type act. I've never seen it done with two swings."

Kurt nodded his head without taking his eyes off the show. Both Sven and Nils had been raised by another branch of the Olsson family that mainly performed in Russia. It was there they had first seen the Russian bars performed, so it figured that they were familiar with other equally outrageous Russian circus acts. They watched the acrobats flinging themselves into the fabric nets for a several minutes with something between jealousy and awe.

"That looks like so much fun." Lars said. Kurt agreed.

After a half an hour most of the Olssons grew bored and left. Only Sven, Nils, Kurt, and Lars stayed behind to watch which was lucky since, shortly after the Moscow State Circus took a break to spin the platforms to face each other. When they resumed their practice, they began jumping from one platform to the other. The Circus Gehlhaar members watched open mouthed at what was one of the most amazing displays of agility and timing they had ever seen. Christian, having finished his rehearsal in one of the smaller tents came in with his bike hooked by the seat over one shoulder.

"Dude, that is just sick!" he shouted after watching it for a few minutes.

"We have got to put that act in our circus." Kurt said.

Lars nodded vigorously. "Or even if we don't perform with it, we should get some of those swings anyway." He said.

Sven laughed, shaking his head. "Those guys are a bunch of lunatics." He said.

"Can't we be a bunch of lunatics too?" Kurt asked.

"We do the bars," Lars said, "That's pretty insane."

"That's true," Nils admitted.

"And it would to being the bomb, bro." Kurt said. Christian cuffed him playfully on the side of the head.

A few minutes later several members of the Moscow State Circus wandered over to them, their practice ended for the day. They introduced themselves as Alexi, Oleg, Danya, and Fyodor. Like the Olsson's they were all brothers in the same family who had been doing aerial acts in Russia for generations. They spoke only a small amount of English and no German so Sven and Nils had to translate.

"You're Kurt Wagner. We heard about you." Alexi told Kurt through Sven.

"All lies." Said Kurt.

Alexi laughed. "No, I mean Nightcrawler. We've heard of Nightcrawler in Russia."

As Kurt waited for the translation he realized that this was one of the few times where he didn't have at least one language in common. It made him realize how tough things must be for James and Brin.

When Sven was done, Kurt was surprised. Even though he was technically the lead performer in Les Chansons, he never thought of himself that way. He was part of the circus, not a separate entity. Lars, Petra, and Gretchen had lead parts as well; he wasn't the only one. He asked if they had heard of Circus Gehlhaar as well.

"No, we just heard about Nightcrawler from some friends who were in Germany last summer." Said Oleg.

The whole thing made Kurt a little uncomfortable. Why were people in Russia talking about him and not the circus as a whole? "How does that work?" He asked, pointing to the pair of swings, eager to change the subject. The Russians were even more eager to explain their contraption and it's workings.

Fyodor and Danya were porters, they were built like Sven and Nils, solid and muscular. Oleg and Alexi were the same age as Kurt and Lars were and like their Circus Gehlhaar counterparts were a lot leaner and wiry. After their few attempts at explanation were lost in translation, Alexi threw up his hands in frustration.

"Come. We will show." Fyodor said in English as he beckoned the group over to one of the swings. He pushed the swing far forward and jumped on the back of the platform, pumping to increase its momentum and height. Oleg spoke in Russian to Sven for a few minutes while Fyodor pumped the swing until he could arc it over the top.

"Oleg says there is always at least one porter, sometimes as many as three to control the swing; one on the swing and two on the ground to hold it in place. The porters need to be pretty strong and heavy to offset the weight of the flyer. Then the flyer gets on, turns around, and when the swing reaches the apex, jumps off. You can do anything as long as you have time to land in the net on your back with your feet pointing down." Sven explained, putting into words what they had been watching earlier. As if in response, Alexi jumped onto the swing, which Fyodor had allowed to come back to a more reasonable height and speed. He and Fyodor faced each other for a moment while they got their timing in sync. Then Alexi turned around, coiled up, and as the swing completed its upward arc, sprang off into a graceful forward salto. Then he spun in the air to land on his back with his feet down exactly as Sven had described. Kurt and Lars both clapped as Alexi hopped off the fabric net and returned to them smiling.

"See. Easy. You want try?" Alexi gestured at the swing.

Kurt and Lars had a brief, but intense game of rock, paper, scissors to determine who would go first. Sven could tell there was no point in stopping them.

"Just don't get hurt." He said.

Kurt was the winner so he stood at the spot where Alexi pointed and watched the swing moving back and forth within its frame. It was a lot of moving parts in a small amount of space. He wondered if he was going to be able keep his tail from getting squashed between the swing and the frame. Alexi whispered into Sven's ear.

"Go when it's all the way back, Kurt." Sven instructed. Holding his tail in his hand, Kurt took a deep breath and hopped on just as the swing began its forward arc.

"Good." Fyodor said. "Now, go round." He was still pumping the swing with his body. It was a lot to think about on a platform that was constantly moving. Kurt had good balance and spatial awareness, but this was insane. He switched his grip and turned around. Things made a lot more sense when he was facing the net. Now it was like being on a trapeze. He spent a moment concentrating on the timing. The next time the swing came to its apex he let go and was launched into the air. It was a lot like the Russian bars only he had a huge target to land on. He did a double salto and then imitated Alexi so that he landed in the net and slid down feet first with a huge grin on his face.

"You have got to try that." He told Lars.

They spent the next half hour trying different things. Sven took a turn as a porter while Danya showed Nils how to stop the swing and let go the moment an acrobat landed on it. They turned the swings so Oleg could demonstrate jumping from one to the other with Sven and Nils catching him. None of them wanted to stop when the next group came in to claim their practice time.

After that the two groups started up a creative collaboration. Despite their origins, none of the performers in the Russian swings act had tried the bars and so they traded skills on both pieces of equipment. Soon this spread beyond just Circus Gehlhaar and Moscow State to the other acts. They had come to perform, but it became much more as ideas from all over the globe were traded and shared. Kurt had traveled with and performed with the circus all his life and he couldn't believe the breadth and variety of circus arts on a global scale. There were acrobats from China, contortionists from Mongolia, as well as performers from as far away as Australia. It was like he had opened his eyes for the first time.

Away from the crowds and lights the performers had a chance to truly immerse themselves in their art while learning the arts of others. It was supposed to be a rehearsal period, but instead Brighton had become a melting pot of circus culture.


	33. Chapter 32

_**Chapter 32: Blue Sky**_

"_It's a **circus** festival, Wolfgang. If I can't walk around here, where can I?" _

"Hey, where do you think you're going?" Wolfgang asked. He had been crossing the way from the main tent to Circus Gehlhaar's trailer when he ran into Kurt, Lars, Ivan, Petra, Gretchen, and Amanda all walking towards the opposite end of the pier. They had little Amiri Black with them too.

"This is the only day our schedule let's us see Alexi and Oleg perform. Moscow State is either right after or right before us on all the other days." Kurt said.

"Yeah, but the tent is behind you." Wolfgang pointed to the yellow tent a short ways in the opposite direction.

"We wanted to get ice cream first." Lars said.

"Where, out there?" Wolfgang asked as he gestured towards the open midway, which was teeming with people. "Kurt you can't go out there like that."

Kurt glanced down at his clothes. He was wearing warm-up clothes and his Brighton Circus Festival jacket. It was exactly what everyone else was wearing. "Why not?"

Wolfgang hated echoing Margali's paranoia, but people were unpredictable and crowds were especially so. He was trying to formulate and answer that didn't sound like an insult when Kurt interrupted his thoughts.

"It's a _circus_ festival, Wolfgang. If I can't walk around here, where can I?"

Kurt did have a point, Wolfgang thought. And wearing the sweatshirt jacket that identified him as a performer in the festival certainly helped explain his appearance. Wolfgang shrugged. "Just don't be late you guys." He said.

The assembled group promised they wouldn't and laughing and talking amongst themselves began threading their way through the maze of trailers toward the boardwalk. Wolfgang realized that all four of the show's leads had just wandered off the circus festival grounds into a place where there were God knew how many distractions. It would be easy to lose track of time, especially that bunch. They better not be late, he thought.

The group made their way along the edge of the pier where the crowd was thinner and it was easier to walk. While people glanced in their direction to look at Kurt, they then turned away without incident. It made Kurt wonder if people wouldn't just react like this to him all the time. He had no idea. The few times he'd gone out in public where it wasn't a performance he had been covered from head to toe.

They walked all the way to the edge of the pier where they could see the ocean stretching out to the endless arc that was the horizon. Sailboats and powerboats of every size and variety speckled the water. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. It was a beautiful day.

"Shouldn't go get our ice cream?" Lars asked. "We don't want to be late."

Kurt looked at the crowd milling around the various booths. People had to push past each other to move around. He would be walled in on all sides if he went in there. "I think I'll stay here." Kurt said. There were quite a few people on the boardwalk, but not nearly as many as there were in amongst the concessions.

"Will you be okay?" Amanda asked.

Kurt rolled his eyes. "Of course I'll be okay. Vanilla please."

He watched the five of them, ushering Amiri along with them, push their way through the crowd with the practiced movements of people who did that sort of thing all the time. He had actually hoped Amanda would stay, but he didn't want to make it sound like he was scared to be alone. He wasn't and he hated the way everyone was always crowding around him, hiding him. He wasn't a kid anymore, he could take care of himself. Besides, he was Nightcrawler. People would recognize him, they would know his costume and pass by like they had been doing all afternoon.

After watching Amanda disappear into the throng Kurt returned his gaze to the ocean. The sky was so blue that it was hard to tell where it ended and the water began. There was a slight breeze and he closed his eyes, enjoying the contrast of the sun's heat with the salt scented air. Around him he could hear the white noise of many conversations going on at once, occasionally punctuated by a burst of music or a child's laughter. It was wonderful. If a day like this didn't make one believe that God existed, what would?

Kurt leaned with his elbows on the railing and his chin cupped in his hands. He looked out at the horizon and then closed his eyes again. It was almost better that way. He hoped that it took them a long time to get ice cream. He didn't know if he would ever get to do something like this again. It was marvelous to stand out in the open enjoying the sunshine just like everyone else. It made him feel…normal. A frown crossed Kurt's face but he pushed the thought from his mind. He was who he was. Why let that spoil such a perfect moment?

All too soon he heard the footsteps of his friends returning. It seemed that they had only just left.

"That was quick." Kurt said, his eyes still closed. "I thought I was the only one who could tele…" He opened his eyes. "Port. Umm, hello." He switched to English for the greeting because it wasn't Lars or Amanda or any of the others who stood next to him, but three strange boys. They were only a few years older than he was and wore the kind of baggy pants and chain wallets that he always identified with Christian. They weren't carrying skateboards though.

"What are you supposed to be?" One of them asked. He had dark hair, which he spiked up and tipped with red.

Kurt swallowed. He'd been in these situations before. People didn't like to be scared, or didn't want to deal with the idea that he was different, and they sometimes reacted with hostility. Following Wolfgang's advice, he had always managed to defuse these encounters. He just hoped he could get rid of them before everyone came back because if he didn't Amanda would tell Margali and she would lock him in their trailer for the rest of eternity.

"I'm not supposed to be anything." Kurt said. "What I am is the Incredible Nightcrawler. Have you come to ask when the show starts?" He had never gotten the hang of making jokes in English; there were so many puns and plays on words that he just didn't get. He decided to play it straight.

"You're a circus freak?"

"Six thirty." Kurt said, ignoring the boy's comment. "But I would come early. We usually sell out."

"Nice tail. Did you make it yourself?"

Inwardly, Kurt rolled his eyes. That was the best they could do? "Well, it's been lovely chatting with you, but I really must go. Auf Wiedersehen." Kurt took a step away from the railing, but he was grabbed by the shoulder and pushed back.

"We don't like Germans here. And we especially don't like German circus freaks."

"Really? I wasn't aware that this place belonged to you." Kurt said. "I'll have to keep that in mind next time I want to visit." He tried to turn away and was again pushed back into the railing, more roughly this time. The boys had closed in around him.

"Do you know what we do to circus freaks who mouth off?" Spiky hair asked. They were even closer now and Kurt was pressed as far back against the railing as he could go. He realized there was no way he was going to get rid of them and he was going to need help if they kept threatening him like this.

"Lars! Amanda! Ich brauche helfen!" Kurt yelled their names as loud as he could. He didn't know if they were even near by, but it was worth a shot. No one came.

"Sorry, I don't see any other circus freaks here." One of them, he had a t-shirt that said "Independent Trucks" on it, grabbed him by his jacket.

Kurt realized that the only thing to do was run. He slipped his arms out of the jacket, climbed onto the railing and leaped over their heads.

"What the…"

Kurt didn't stay to listen. He landed on all fours and started running on his hands and feet. He was faster that way; he didn't care how strange it looked. He was faster and more agile than they were so they probably hadn't even had time to react to his escape before it was too late to catch up. But he wasn't about to check and see if they were following him.

It surprised Kurt when he felt a hand close around his tail and he was yanked off his feet. It threw him off balance and he scraped his knees as he fell to the wooden boardwalk. It hurt like stubbing your toe. Kurt balled his hands into firsts for a moment trying not to say every curse word in every language he knew. The one who had pulled his tail, Independent Trucks was on the ground too, his eyes wide.

"That's… That's attached to you." He said.

Kurt could see the boy's friends catching up. He wasn't going to wait for them. The boardwalk was above the beach now, sitting on thick stilts nearly 30 feet above the sand. It was a little too chilly for swimming and the beach was dotted with a few couples here and there. They strolled arm in arm, swinging their shoes in their hands, oblivious to what was going on above them. Kurt flung himself towards the railing. All he had to do was go over it. Then he could climb under the boardwalk where they couldn't follow him. He would wait for Amanda and Lars and everyone else to come back and everything would be fine.

It didn't work. He'd just reached the railing and put his hands on it when he was roughly pulled away. "Autsch!" He yelled in surprise reaching for the rail again. He was even more surprised when they lifted him off the ground and threw him over the top of it.

For a moment Kurt thought he could catch it with his tail, but he missed. That cost him precious seconds. If he could right himself, he could land. He would be okay. They would have had their fun and he could return to the trailers and pretend nothing happened. The ground rushed up too soon. He'd gone over railing headfirst and it looked like he was going to hit the ground that way too. Kurt put his hands out to brace the fall even though he knew it was the wrong thing to do. He hit the sand, his arms folded beneath him, and the impact knocked the wind out of him. There was an explosion of pain and he couldn't catch his breath, but it was over. He just needed a moment to get himself together.

The Circus Gehlhaar group returned from the concessions and walked back along the outside of the boardwalk. Three boys walked past them and one of them clipped Amanda on the shoulder. He kept going without apologizing.

"Hey!" Amanda said, but they were walking too fast. "Jerk." She commented under her breath when they were out of earshot. Petra shot them a dirty look as well.

Lars looked around. "Is this the right place?" He asked. The end of the pier where they'd left Kurt was empty. There was no one there.

"Where did he go?" Petra asked.

Lars shook his head. "I don't know." Kurt's ice cream was melting onto his hand.

"Maybe he's already at the tent?" Amanda said. "He could have gone to save us seats."

Lars looked around again. Why would Kurt tell them to meet him here and then leave? It didn't seem like him, but it was probably getting close to the Moscow Circus's show time. Perhaps Kurt thought he was doing them a favor; that was more in character. "I bet he did. Let's go meet him before his ice cream melts all over the place."

They turned and walked toward the yellow tent leaving the boardwalk behind them.


	34. Chapter 33

_**Chapter 33: Innocence Lost at Last**_

"_Because we're bored. And because you're a freak. Because you exist."_

"You made it." Wolfgang said. "I was sure I was going to have to go in after you guys."

"I cracked the whip." Amanda said. "Lars and Ivan wanted to stay and talk to Alexi all day."

Wolfgang surveyed the group. There were only six of them. "Where's Kurt?" He asked.

"He's not here?" Lars said. "He wasn't at the show either. We figured he changed his mind and came back." He glanced around at the assembled group and all of them shrugged.

Wolfgang shook his head. "I haven't seen him."

"That's really strange." Lars said.

"He's probably at our trailer. I'll go get him." Amanda said.

"If he's gone off gallivanting by himself and lost track of time, I'll kick his ass." Wolfgang said and he mimed a swift kick to the backside. "We don't have much of a show without him."

"I'm sure he's around." Petra said. "He might even already be in the warm up tent."

Wolfgang watched them walk off in various directions, Amanda towards her trailer, Lars and Gretchen towards the Circus Gehlhaar trailer to get their costumes, and Ivan and Petra towards the warm up tent. If any of the other performers had turned up missing this close to show time he wouldn't have been worried, only irritated, but with Kurt it was different. One would have expected that someone who looked like Kurt would experience near constant persecution and assault so the fact that he had been thus far unscathed was something of a miracle to Wolfgang. Even more miraculous was that Kurt seemed blissfully unaware that such a thing was possible. But the possibility existed and someday it would happen. Wolfgang just hopped it hadn't happened today.

Wolfgang frowned and walked back to their office trailer. He didn't want to give Margali any bad news if he didn't have to. He would have to hope for Kurt to turn up on his own.

Spitting sand out of his mouth Kurt pushed himself up on his elbows and then immediately dropped back down to his chest. His right arm felt funny and when Kurt looked at it, he noticed that his forearm was bent where it shouldn't have been. He'd broken it. They were going to be so angry with him. How could he have been so stupid? He never should have left the circus festival area in first place and he certainly shouldn't have allowed himself to be left alone. He couldn't even imagine the reaction he was going to get from Margali when she saw he wasn't going to be able to perform that night.

Holding his arm close to his body and wincing, Kurt rose to his feet and looked around. The pier from which he had fallen was high above and stretched back to a point where the beach sloped upward so they met. Kurt started up the incline, his progress slowed by the sand. There were three people walking in a tight group towards him. Kurt stopped. He recognized their silhouettes and his shoulders slumped. Who are these people, he wondered. And why won't they leave him alone?

Undaunted, Kurt resumed trudging toward the far end of the beach even as the three boys approached. They started jogging towards him and Kurt stopped again. He wasn't in any mood to play games with them anymore. He had broken his arm, he was going to be in trouble, and it was these three idiots' fault.

"Why can't you just leave me be?" Kurt asked when they stood face to face.

"Because we're bored." Red spikes said. "And because you're a freak. Because you exist."

"Bored?" Kurt shouted. "You're bored! What gives to you the right…" Before Kurt could finish his sentence, he was pushed to the ground. He fell on his right arm, which until that moment had sort of settled into a tolerable throbbing ache. When he hit the ground it exploded into pain a second time, stars filled Kurt's vision and he doubled over on his side, not realizing that the voice screaming was his.

Kurt wasn't quite sure why they started kicking him. Maybe it was the same instinct that makes a predator wait until its prey is weakest before closing in. He didn't know. He looked up and there was a boot very close to his face, so close that it shouldn't have surprised him as much as it did when it connected. He felt another kick to his stomach that knocked the wind out of him. Kurt covered his face with his hands and tried to fold himself into a protective ball. This didn't seem right. How bored did one have to be to commit violence like this?

He made it his singular goal to teleport to safety as quickly as possible, but every time he tried to look for a place to go, a place where he wouldn't be seen, a spray of sand or the treads of their shoes quickly obscured his vision. There was no way he could get his bearings; he couldn't even judge where the top of the boardwalk he'd just fallen from was. It was hopeless. Kurt curled up as tightly as possible and prayed.

Kurt wasn't sure if his prayers were answered or if maybe his assailants had become bored of him too, but suddenly everything stopped. He slowly turned onto his chest and opened his eyes, breathing hard and spitting sand out of his mouth. His whole body was shaking, more out of fear and adrenaline than anything else. A man in dark clothes was walking towards them swinging a short stick lazily in one hand. It took a moment for Kurt to recognize the man as a policeman, what Terry had called a "Bobby". But it didn't matter; he wouldn't be here when the man arrived. Kurt picked the most open spot in the darkness under the pier and then was gone.

Kurt reappeared on what he expected would be the ground. He hung surprised in the air for a moment and then dropped down two feet into a cement-lined ditch. He hadn't expected to fall, but it didn't matter. No one would find him down in here. Kurt turned onto his back and took a few deep breaths, the coolness of the concrete beneath him almost comforting. If his arm had hurt before then this was a whole new definition of pain. Kurt was probably the least frequently injured of all the members of Circus Gehlhaar but this was way beyond the realm of what limited experience he had. It was like it was too much to be contained in a single individual; Kurt could imagine it spilling out of him and on to the ground around him.

He intended to hide in the ditch and rest until he could muster enough energy to walk back to their tents or at least go to some place where he could ask for help. He tried to stay focused, to stay awake in case they came back. He wasn't sure what he would do if they did, but it seemed better to be ready. The problem was his mind kept wandering. One minute he was looking at the blood congealing on the palm of his hand and the next he was thinking about something he'd done years ago. Each time it happened Kurt admonished himself not to drift off again, but it was futile. What he really wanted was for Wolfgang or Lars to come find him. But how could they? They didn't even know where he was.

A shadow crossed over him in the dim light. Kurt sighed. Not again.

"Look, if you're wanting to kill me, why didn't you just to do it in the first place?" His voice was coarse from yelling.

"Now, why would I want to do that to my own son?" A voice from above him said in German.

Kurt opened his eyes and saw Azazel standing at the edge of the ditch. He was wearing a British Police Officer's uniform. That had been him walking towards them on the beach.

"Tsk, tsk." Azazel continued. "You don't call, you don't write. What has it been since last we met, three, four years? What's a father to do?"

Kurt frowned. "Is that why you're here Azazel? To tell me I don't write enough? So noted. Now go away, I've got bleeding to do."

Azazel knelt down at the edge of the culvert. "I see you've done your homework and learned my name. So, is that your choice then? You would lay in this ditch and bleed rather than come with me?"

Kurt knitted his brows. "Come with you where?"

"To my home of course. If you've done your homework you should know where that is as well."

"Yeah." Kurt said. "I know where that is." It was getting hard to talk, but he had to stay awake.

Azazel shook his head sadly. "Obviously I'm here because I see you've gotten yourself into a bit of trouble. I've come to your aid." He said, his voice dripping with mock sincerity.

"Yeah, you're really great at showing up whenever I get into trouble." Kurt said.

Azazel's expression turned stern. "Insolence isn't going to get you anywhere. Make your choice."

"You can take me back to where the tents are." Kurt said. The day's events were bad enough without having Azazel to deal with as well.

"Sorry. That wasn't an option." Azazel had stood up and now had his arms crossed over his chest.

"I'll stay here then." Kurt said.

Azazel shook his head. "I swear if I didn't see the resemblance, I'd say you weren't mine. Goodbye then Kurt."

And to Kurt's surprise Azazel turned and walked away. He suddenly felt the weight of his predicament and now the only one who knew he was there was leaving. "Azazel!" He called after him, "Can't you at least tell someone where I am?" But there was no answer. Kurt didn't want to waste his energy but he could feel his shoulders shaking as hot tears ran down his cheeks.

Wolfgang looked at his watch. This was getting ridiculous. They were in the backstage tent. Everybody was assembled, in costume, and ready, everyone but Kurt.

"Tell me where you went again? Exactly what happened?" Wolfgang said to Lars.

"We walked along the edge of the boardwalk to the end." Lars repeated, hating that he had become the spokesperson for the party that was responsible for losing his best friend. "Then Kurt wanted to stay and look at the water rather than go into the crowd for ice cream. So he stayed behind and when we came back he wasn't there anymore."

"And then what?"

"I told you. We went back to the tent to watch the guys from Moscow. We thought we would see Kurt there but we didn't. We watched the show and then we came back here."

"Could he have gone anywhere else? With anyone else?" Wolfgang asked.

"Lars told you everything that happened." Amanda said.

"Can I go look again? Back at the last place we saw him?" Lars asked.

"You don't think Kurt would be dumb enough to still be waiting there do you?" Wolfgang asked.

"No, but… Maybe he left a note or something." Lars said. He shrugged, "I don't know what else to do."

Wolfgang nodded. "Okay, go and come right back. What can it hurt?"

Lars jumped up and ran out of the tent.

Normally before the show the backstage area was a tightly controlled chaos. People were stretching, running through bits of the show, and generally milling around. This time people sat in tight clumps, saying very little. Wolfgang knew they were all thinking the same thing; that there was a difference between someone missing and someone being lost.

Lars returned to the tent running even faster than he had when he left. He was carrying something in his hand.

"I didn't see it before." He told Wolfgang breathlessly and he held up one of the festival jackets worn by all the performers. Wolfgang took it and turned it over in his hands. His heart sank; across the right breast it read "Circus Gehlhaar – Nightcrawler". Amanda came over to look and he handed it to her.

"What does this mean?" Amanda asked, not realizing that she had repeated the phrase several times.

Wolfgang took a deep breath. "It means that I have to cancel the show." He said.


	35. chapter 34

_**Chapter 34: Missing Not Lost**_

_"When your family decides to have a crisis, you guys don't mess around do you?" _

Their new trailer, which was so much bigger than their old van was suddenly too small. Margali paced from her sleeping compartment in the back to the front captain's chairs and back. She didn't dare leave in case Kurt came back, or if someone needed her. She had seen Amanda out looking, and she knew that nearly all of the members of the circus had joined her. It was best that someone stay behind. Margali heard the door open and whirled around.

"Kurt?"

But it was Annika Olsson. "Sorry, it's just me." She said. "Do you need anything?"

Margali sank down in one of the passenger seats and shook her head. "No. I just need to know that Kurt is safe, that's all." She said.

Annika sat down and put a hand on Margali's shoulder. Margali had to resist the urge to force her hand away. It was meant to be a comforting gesture, but even that seemed shrill and false.

"Terry found some more flashlights." Annika said.

Margali drew in a shaky breath. The last time anyone had seen Kurt the sun was in the middle of the sky; now they needed flashlights. She nodded numbly. What could she say? Should she be glad that they had more flashlights when her son was missing?

"Lars is really worried." Annika said.

Margali could feel anger surging inside of her at the mention of Lars' name. "He should be." She said.

Annika knitted her brow. "Margali, you don't actually think Lars is responsible do you?"

"Isn't he?" Margali said. "Why was Kurt by himself? Why did Lars leave him alone?"

"It wasn't just Lars; Petra was there, and Ivan and Gretchen. Amanda was there. Are you going to blame all of them?"

Margali balled her fists so tightly she could feel her nails digging into her palms. "How could they have been so stupid?" She said.

"Kurt's seventeen years old. He's not a child anymore. You can't protect him forever." Annika said.

"Can't I?" Margali said. "If not me than who?"

"God." Said Annika. "You many not believe in Him, but you have a son who does." Annika stood up. "Maybe one day you'll have to let Kurt find ways to protect himself." She said. "I'll let you know if there's any news."

Margali stared straight ahead, saying nothing. She hardly noticed Annika leave. She was about to get up and look out the window when she was struck but a searing pain that sliced through her temples as though it meant to rip her in two. Margali gasped and fell to the floor. Her vision filled up with fire, flames licking at her from every direction. Slowly those flames darkened and they were replaced by water so cold that it threatened to freeze her to her core. Clutching the sides of her head, Margali lurched to her feet and staggered to her bed where she lay down.

She could feel life being sapped out of her by some unseen force. Long ago she had given this energy willingly to practice the magic of her ancestors, but she had all but ceased when she started having children. Her life, her position on the way had become too valuable to fritter it away so easily. And yet, now, against her will it was being sucked away. Margali curled up and even as she struggled against it, she followed to visions it gave her. She could hear waves against the shore, there were footsteps above, the world was dark and cool, she was in pain.

Margali opened her eyes in surprise. She knew where Kurt was. She knew exactly where he was. She sat up quickly, but when she went to rise her legs buckled beneath her and she fell to the floor. Whatever it was that had given her this vision had taken the strength she needed to act upon it. There had to be some way to tell someone. She had just enough strength left to do that. She just hoped they would hear her.

Wolfgang shined the beam of his flashlight behind of row of concession stands that had been boarded shut for the night. Several large rats skittered into the shadows but there was no sign of Kurt. Exasperated, he turned in a circle, shining the light around him. How did you find someone with Kurt's coloration, who blended seamlessly in shadow, after dark? It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Unless he happened to catch Kurt in the light directly, he would miss him entirely.

He could hear the voices of the others, calling out Kurt's name, his full name, the one that Wolfgang had given him. Exhausted, Wolfgang sat down on a bench. Officially Kurt had been missing for nine hours, but it had only been a little over four since Lars had come back with Kurt's jacket. Since then he had been pulled in a dozen different directions. He had had to find Terry and cancel the show. Then he had returned to backstage tent to tell everyone that they wouldn't be performing. The festival organizers hadn't been satisfied with Terry's explanation and had sought out Wolfgang to hear it for themselves. He had spent the rest of the time organizing a search, dividing a map of the festival complex up and after the sun went down finding enough flashlights for everyone.

Wolfgang knew he wasn't alone in blaming himself; he was sure that the same thought was going through the minds of everyone who had left with Kurt that afternoon. When he'd given the news to Margali he'd expected her to be angry with him, but instead she nodded her head and shut the door to her trailer behind her as though she already knew, that she had been expecting this all along.

Though he had already covered his area of the map at least four times, but Wolfgang got up to start again. He didn't know what else to do and he was starting to worry that perhaps Kurt wasn't there to be found at all, that he'd been taken somewhere. Wolfgang had heard rumors in America about mutants being kidnapped and experimented on, even used as weapons. It sounded like urban myths to him. Nobody could tell the mutants apart so long as they didn't do anything unusual, they looked the same as everybody else. Or most of them did. He jumped up on to the bench and looked around as though maybe the height would give him some advantage.

"Kurt! Kurt Wagner!" He cupped his hands around his mouth to make his voice louder.

Nothing.

Wolfgang stepped down and was suddenly overcome with the desire to walk to the edge of the pier. It was the first place they had searched after Lars had found the jacket. There was no sign of Kurt there though; there was no need to look again. And yet he was pulled there, almost against his will.

Standing at the edge of the pier Wolfgang looked around him. Nothing. Why had he come here? He started walking back towards the concession area and stopped. He couldn't put his finger on it, but walking away from the pier was uncomfortable. Curious, Wolfgang walked back. It was better. Shining his flashlight around him, Wolfgang walked down the pier towards the beach. The closer he got to the beach, the more the cold uncomfortable feeling grew. If he walked back towards the pier, it went away. It was the strangest thing.

Suddenly Wolfgang understood. He didn't know how it was happening or how he knew this, but it was showing him where Kurt was. He was more systematic this time. He moved in a careful pattern, changing direction each time warmth was replaced with chill. Soon he was walking in a tight circle about halfway between the pier and the beach. But there was nothing there, Kurt wasn't there, nor was there anywhere that he could have hidden.

Wolfgang sighed. It had been wishful thinking. It was amazing how strong the power of suggestion was. He had wanted it to be true so badly that he almost believed he had become Kurt's personal divining rod. He stared down at his feet, shining the flashlight on the weathered boardwalk. With the light, he could almost see between the boards to the beach below. Wolfgang's eyes opened wide. Below him. Could it be?

He dropped to his knees and tried to look between the cracks in the wood but it was impossible. He went to the edge of the railing and looked over, trying to crane his neck to see underneath the boardwalk, but it was too far down and too dark. Ignoring the cold prickly feeling that came with leaving the spot, he jogged to the end of the boardwalk and around it onto the beach. Once on the sand he waved the beam of his flashlight around and called Kurt's name. There was no answer and no sign of Kurt.

Slowing his pace, Wolfgang waited until he felt the cold discomfort fading from his limbs. It was working. He called Kurt's name again, still walking forward. He stopped and looked up, trying to gage if he was beneath the spot on the boardwalk where he had been sure Kurt was. A few more steps forward and he was there. Wolfgang turned and looked into the blackness under the boardwalk, the light from the lamps above hardly penetrated the forest of pylons that supported the pier. Wolfgang took a deep breath and holding his flashlight out in front of him, plunged into the darkness.

Even with the flashlight it was nearly impossible to see. He had to put a hand out in front of him to keep from bumping into things. Wolfgang took several slow steps deeper into the shadows. Suddenly the ground dropped out from under him and he landed in freezing cold water nearly up to his knees. He gasped as the icy water instantly chilled his body to the bone. The light showed that he was in a shallow culvert, maybe three feet wide and not more than two feet deep. Still following his instinct, he waded forward back towards the beach, trying to ignore the freezing water as he did so. Its level was dropping and Wolfgang realized that the ditch was meant to divert seawater away from the pylons as the tides came in and out, preventing them from being undermined.

Wolfgang shined the flashlight down the length of the ditch and felt his blood run cold. Partially submerged in the icy water, was Kurt. He was lying on his side with his back against the side of the culvert. Ignoring the resistance of the water against his legs, Wolfgang pushed forward. He knelt down beside Kurt, shining the flashlight into his face. Kurt didn't respond and for a sickening moment Wolfgang thought his friend was dead. But then a particularly powerful wave sloshed briny water into Kurt's nose and mouth and he started coughing. The feeling of relief was so intense that Wolfgang thought he was going to faint, but it passed as he leaned down to lift Kurt's head out of the water before another wave came and suffocated him.

It was too difficult to see what was going on in the ditch; he couldn't hold the flashlight and keep Kurt out of the water at the same time. Wolfgang put the flashlight on the sand above the culvert and dragged Kurt out of the ditch. He shook Kurt by the shoulder, but Kurt stayed silent, his eyes closed. Even in the dark he could see the dried blood clinging to the soft fur on Kurt's face and in his matted hair. A few of the cuts still oozed, unable to clot in the salty water. How long had Kurt been lying there? Wolfgang didn't want to think about it. He shook Kurt by the shoulders again.

"C'mon. Wake up. Kurt, you're scaring me." He said.

Wolfgang was torn. Should he leave Kurt there and go for help? What if he couldn't find him again? He wasn't even sure how he had managed to find Kurt this time. Then again, he wasn't doing much good down here all alone. Wolfgang's answer came in the form of Amanda's voice above him. Leaving Kurt and the flashlight behind, he dashed out onto the sand and into the light cast from above. He called Amanda's name and he could see her looking from side to side.

"Below you." Wolfgang called up. Amanda came to the edge and looked down over the railing.

"It's Wolfgang." He yelled. "I found Kurt. You need to find Terry. Tell him we need a doctor."

"Is Kurt okay?" Amanda asked.

"No, it's bad. He needs a doctor. Hurry."

Amanda shook her head. "I'm coming down there." She said and started towards the far end where the boardwalk met the beach. Wolfgang jogged along, following her progress from below.

"No, Amanda, listen. Find Terry. It's important." Wolfgang said.

Amanda stopped.

"Please hurry." Wolfgang said. "And get some blankets."

Above him he could see Amanda looked torn, but she seemed to come to a decision and took off running in the opposite direction.

Wolfgang went back to the edge of the culvert and holding the flashlight in his teeth, he dragged Kurt out to where the streetlamps lining the railing cast a dim glow onto the sand. Wolfgang took off his jacket and wrapped it around Kurt in a futile attempt to make him warmer. Then there was nothing to do but wait. Wolfgang had never felt so powerless in his life.

Even though it seemed that time had stopped, a glance at his watch told Wolfgang only a few minutes had passed. Two figures were jogging towards him. When they got closer he recognized Sven and Christian.

"These are the only blankets we could find on the grounds. Lars is going to get more. Oh my God." Sven said. He dropped the blankets down beside Kurt. "What happened to him?"

Wolfgang unfolded one of the thin wool blankets and Sven helped him slide it under Kurt's still form. "I don't know." Wolfgang said, "I can't wake him up."

Christian leaned down and shook Kurt by the shoulders. "Hey Kurt. Wake up. Wachen Sie auf. Nicht mehr Spiele jetzt." He shouted. When there was no response he looked at Wolfgang hopelessly.

"I thought Christian could help." Sven said.

"You have medical training?" Wolfgang asked.

Christian shook his head. "No, but when you've spent as much time at skate parks as I have, you see a lot of injuries. Is this how you found him?"

Wolfgang shook his head. "He was back under there, lying in a ditch." He said pointing into the darkness beneath the pier.

"Wow. How did you find him in there?" Christian asked.

"His hands are like ice." Sven interrupted. "Do you think it's hypothermia?"

"How the hell should I know?" Christian shot back. "No one ever got hypothermia at a skate park."

"Wait," Wolfgang held up his hands, feeling calmer than he should have. "This won't help. Christian, what should we do?"

"You shouldn't have moved him, but I guess it's too late for that. Why is he all wet?"

"He was in the water and it was nearly covering his face. What was I supposed to do?" Wolfgang asked.

"Wait for an ambulance. They have special equipment for this kind of thing." Christian said.

Now it was Wolfgang's turn to lose his temper. "An ambulance! What ambulance? There isn't going to be an ambulance. We can't take Kurt to a hospital. Is that the extent of your medical knowledge? Call an ambulance?"

Christian faltered. "Well, I…"

"He really is cold." Sven interrupted again. He pressed a large hand against Kurt's cheek. "Maybe we should get him inside where it's warm and then talk about this."

Wolfgang ran his hands through his hair. "Okay, yeah. We'll take him back to our trailer on the grounds; it's the closest."

Lars caught up with them as they neared the grounds. He was carrying the blankets from Kurt's bed. "Amanda told me where to find you." He said as he followed them into their office trailer. Sven laid Kurt on the floor and took the blankets from Lars.

"Where is Amanda?" Wolfgang asked.

"We went to get the blankets and when we got there, Margali was passed out on the floor." Lars said. He knelt down on the floor beside Wolfgang. "I'm really sorry Kurt. I didn't know…"

"It's okay." Wolfgang said. "Is Margali all right?"

"I don't know." Lars said, "Amanda said she would stay with her. She asked me to ask if you would look after Kurt."

"Of course I will." Wolfgang said as he and Christian pulled off Kurt's wet clothes. "When your family decides to have a crisis," he said to Kurt, "you guys don't mess around do you?"

Even with his wet clothes gone and wrapped in several dry blankets Kurt was shivering.

"Is there any heat in this box?" Wolfgang asked.

Obediently, Lars and Christian started searching the walls, peeking behind the tapestries and posters.

"Just tear them down!" Wolfgang shouted. In response the two of them began pulling the tapestries from their hooks, leaving them piled on the floor amidst the shreds of Wolfgang's posters.

"Crank it." Christian said, when Lars pulled down one of the hangings to reveal a small forced air heater. "Turn it all the way up." He prompted at Lars' look of confusion. Lars obliged, spinning the dial into the red.

The temperature was already rising in the small space.

"You sent Terry for a doctor?" Wolfgang asked Lars who nodded quickly. Wolfgang looked around the room, that strange powerless feeling filling him again. "What do we do now?" He asked.

Christian pointed at Kurt's right arm, which was swollen and oddly deformed. " I could try and splint his arm." He said, already looking around for something to use. "There's no blood so it might not be that bad."

"Yeah. That's a good idea." Said Wolfgang. Christian knelt beside Kurt and inspected the damage. Lars and Sven stood a few feet away, watching. Sven put his arm around his young cousin who was bravely trying to hold back tears and said something comforting in Swedish.

"I remember seeing paramedics use a folded blanket as a splint once." Christian said. He took one of the extra blankets that Sven had brought down to the beach with him. "I'm going to like, straighten it and then wrap this around it. You hold above his elbow to keep it from bending." Christian said to Wolfgang and then carefully lifted Kurt's arm, trying to realign it so that awful deformity was straight again. He gave a tentative pull and Kurt seemed to come alive instantly, arching his back and howling. It was so inhuman, so primal that Christian let go and everybody jumped back a foot or two in surprise.

"Whoa. I'm not going to try that again." Christian said.

"Good idea." Wolfgang agreed, catching his breath. He looked down at Kurt. "Oh, hello."

Kurt had his eyes opened and was gazing, unfocused, around the room. He coughed and then asked, "Azazel", his voice so weak that it was barely a croak.

"What did you call me?" Wolfgang asked.

Kurt turned to look at Wolfgang and a slow recognition crossed his features. "Wolfgang." He tried to take a deep breath but he winced in pain.

"Is everyone all right? Kurt asked.

Wolfgang gave a short laugh. "We're all fine." He said. "How about you?"

Kurt tried to sit up but was gently restrained by Sven. "It hurts," he said as he dropped back down to the floor. "My arm hurts."

"I wish there was something we could do." Sven said.

"Actually, he could use some clean dry clothes. Can you and Lars go back to his trailer for that?" Wolfgang directed, instantly feeling better now that Kurt was awake and talking. "and Christian, maybe you could wait out side for the doctor in case Terry hasn't given him all the details." The trailer quickly emptied, leaving Kurt and Wolfgang alone.

Kurt rolled over on his side, pressing his wet hair against Wolfgang's knee. "My Rosary. I need my rosary," he said. "It hurts so much."

"We'll get it for you Elf." Wolfgang said, brushing the damp curls away from Kurt's eyes. "I'm going to take care of you. You're going to be fine."


	36. chapter 35

_**Chapter 35: Dr. Mallory**_

_"He doesn't bite or anything, does he?"_

It was the ringing of the telephone that woke Geoff Mallory up. He switched on his bedside lamp and nudged his partner.

"I'm not on call." He said, "Are you on call?"

Paul mumbled something that sounded like "no" and nestled deeper into his blankets. Geoff fumbled the phone from the cradle.

"Hello?" He croaked. It was Terry; he sounded frantic and apologetic at the same time.

Geoff was up, dressed, and behind the wheel of his car before he was fully awake. He was driving towards the Brighton Festival grounds where a circus acrobat had fallen. He wasn't sure why Terry had called him and not an ambulance, but Terry was a mate and so Geoff didn't question it. There were some things you didn't question, a friend as old as Terry was one of them.

Geoff pulled up near the location Terry had given him, a trailer in the circus festival's administrative compound. Terry had been working for the Brighton Festival since Geoff had moved there. This was actually the second time that Terry had called him out to the grounds for some special purpose.

He would have expected a tent rather than a trailer, but this whole thing was a bit dodgy to begin with and Geoff was beginning to get a picture in his mind. No doubt some performer had gotten himself into some sort of embarrassing trouble, some sort of _sexual_ embarrassing trouble. On the few occasions his friends had called on him for "special favors" as a doctor, it inevitably ended up this way, the kind of scenario that was simply too absurd to explain to a stuffy trauma doctor even in a place as liberated as Brighton. He and Paul would laugh about it later; the two of them had a collection of such stories after 10 years as both doctors and lovers.

Geoff followed the American, Christian he thought his name was, who had met him at his car, through the maze of trailers. He could only catch bits and pieces of what Christian was saying; he spoke quickly and in the kind of American patter that was as impenetrable as the working class banter one heard in British pubs.

"We brought him in here." Christian said outside of a trailer with the words "Circus Gehlhaar" painted on it in flowing script. "You're not really religious are you?" Christian asked as he opened the door.

"What? I… No. I'm…" Dr. Geoff Mallory stepped through the door and stopped, his mouth open. He wasn't sure what he was looking at. A costume? A man? Both?

"Is… Is this my patient?" He stammered.

A second man with dark hair and keen dark eyes, kneeling on the floor, looked up. "Christian did you tell him nothing?" He said sternly. He turned to the doctor "Yes. This is Kurt. He's an acrobat with our show."

At first Geoff thought that he was American as well, that perhaps this was an American circus. "I'm Dr. Geoff Mallory," he said.

"Wolfgang Wagner. I manage Circus Gehlhaar." With a name like that Geoff was fairly certain the dark haired man was not an American; he pronounced the 'W's as 'V's like a European.

For the first time his patient stirred, moaning and trying to shift his position. Geoff knelt down next to Wolfgang. "Is he?" But Geoff didn't know what to ask. "Is he real?" is what he wanted to say but that didn't make any sense.

"He's a mutant." Wolfgang said quickly, as though it was an uncomfortable subject and he wanted to get it out of the way as quickly as possible. "Kurt was born like this. But, he's just like anyone of us. He's our star acrobat. He was missing nearly all day. I think he fell off the boardwalk. No one knows what happened."

Geoff nodded, situating himself at Kurt's side. Mutants had been covered in his medical school curriculum for exactly two weeks. The instruction had not been part of anatomy or physiology, but rather part of a trauma medicine ethics class and had consisted entirely of instruction on ways trauma physicians could physically and legally protect themselves should a mutant come into their care. There had been a few pictures, some short descriptions; they never mentioned anyone looking like Kurt. There was no mention of any actual treatment.

He pulled a few items from his bag. Geoff shined his small penlight over Kurt's skin. He could see bruises and cuts on his face and hands; "defense wounds" something in the back of his mind told him, but it was hard to get past the sharp teeth and thick, clawed fingers. What could he possibly have needed to defend himself against? The eyes were a menacing yellow under half-mast lids. He reached out towards his patient tentatively when Kurt spoke. It sounded like nonsense.

"Nine bitters of what?" Geoff asked, repeating all that he had understood.

"It's German. He said, 'No, please don't hurt me'." Wolfgang said.

Geoff gave smile. Funny, he had been thinking the exact same thing. "Tell him I won't." He said. He went to move closer and then paused. "He doesn't bite or anything, does he?" Geoff asked. A glance around the room told Geoff he had said the wrong thing.

"Of course not." Wolfgang said in undisguised disgust. "And he speaks English as well as you or I."

"Sorry." Geoff said sheepishly. He put the penlight down and reached out a gloved finger towards the cut on Kurt's cheek that seemed to be bleeding the worst.

There was no warning. One minute Kurt had looked docile, half asleep and the next moment he was up, baring his teeth and planting his sturdy feet against Dr. Mallory's chest. He kicked him across the room.

Geoff hit the opposite wall of the trailer with a crash. He sat unmoving, trying to catch his breath, wondering if they had called the right kind of doctor. Maybe what Kurt needed was a veterinary surgeon, not someone like him. He was a doctor to humans, not to, well, whatever it was that Kurt was.

"I'm so sorry." Wolfgang was at his side, trying to brush him off. "I can't believe he did that." Geoff nodded and climbed to his feet. He couldn't believe it either. At the other end of the room the young American who had walked him here was delivering a lecture in rapid German.

"Really Christian. That's unnecessary." Wolfgang snapped. He turned back to Dr. Mallory. "He said that if he tries that again, the next person to get kicked will be Kurt." Wolfgang shook his head. "I'm really sorry. I… He's so confused. That's not what he's like. We really need your help. Please."

Dr Mallory looked down at his patient, still shivering, and wrapped in blankets; he looked innocent enough now. Geoff was about to say "no" when the trailer door swung open. Another boy of obvious European descent barged in.

"I got it." Lars said. He knelt down next to Kurt and pressed something into Kurt's hand, the pair exchanging a few words in German. When Lars stepped back Geoff could see that what Kurt was holding tightly in his good hand was a string of rosary beads.

Geoff wasn't sure why that changed his mind. He wasn't particularly religious so that wasn't it. And Kurt honestly wasn't any less scary with rosary beads than he was without, so what was not it either. Geoff knelt down at Kurt's side again and realized that it was because the only one in the room who saw Kurt as an "it" or "thing" was him. Everyone else was his friend; they were worried about him. People didn't worry about monsters like that.

"He speaks English right?" Dr. Mallory asked again. Wolfgang nodded and sat back down next to him.

"Kurt, hey, Kurt." Dr. Mallory finally got Kurt's attention by snapping his fingers until he slowly turned his way, staring at him with unfocused yellow eyes. "I'm a doctor. You know what a doctor is right?"

Kurt nodded. "Ja. Doktor." He said.

"I need to make sure you're all right, but I need to touch you to do that. Is that okay? I'm not going to do anything that's going to hurt. I just don't want to you kick me again."

Kurt glanced over at Wolfgang who nodded encouragingly, and responded in German.

"I don't get it." Wolfgang said. "He speaks English. I don't know why he keeps answering in German. But, he said it's okay, he's sorry."

Starting at Kurt's head, Geoff slowly traced his hands down the length of Kurt's body. Kurt remained still this time. When Geoff's hands stopped shaking it began to feel like a normal exam. Kurt was every inch an athlete, beneath skin that was covered with a light peach fuzz of deep blue fur, Geoff could feel taut perfectly developed muscles; like examining a medical school mannequin. There were a lot of cuts and bruises and when he drew his hands along the sides of Kurt's ribs there was the familiar grinding of crepitis, the sound broken bones scraping against each other. His right arm was obviously broken so he left it alone; there was no reason to risk another trip across the room.

Meanwhile Geoff asked questions, most of which were answered by Wolfgang and a few by the boy, Lars. It seemed the only thing they knew for sure was that Kurt must have fallen or jumped from the top of the boardwalk to the sand below. How or why he had done it was still a mystery. It was great enough distance, that acrobat or not, Dr. Mallory was worried about what injuries he couldn't see. Falls like that nearly always meant internal injuries.

Kurt was even less help; he didn't know where he was, what had happened, or how he had gotten there. He answered Dr. Mallory's questions in confused German that even Wolfgang was having trouble translating.

"How about your arm? Do you remember hurting your arm?" Dr. Mallory asked as he and Wolfgang dressed Kurt in the dry clothes Lars had brought.

"What did this happen? Did I teleport here?" Kurt asked, suddenly alert and speaking in English for the first time.

Wolfgang gave a startled nervous laugh. "Don't be silly." He said. He gave Dr. Mallory an apologetic look, as though to say "don't people with head injuries say the funniest things". "Sven carried you here. Remember?" he said.

At Dr. Mallory's request they had cleared out the trailer so it was just the three of them. Lars made the most fuss about leaving and Sven nearly had to carry him out. Christian too was reluctant to leave, but promised to keep everyone outside posted and check back in the morning.

Geoff ran his hands down the length of Kurt's tail. "Do you have full control of it?" He asked.

Again looking somewhat dazed, Kurt gave a crooked smile, "Of course. It's mine. Wolfgang. Tell him." Kurt said, taking longer and longer pauses between each phrase. He slowly let his eyes close.

"Hey, are you okay? Kurt?" Dr. Mallory tapped Kurt's shoulder.

"It's… Pre…Hen…Sile." Kurt said, the last syllable trailing off.

"Hey, Elf, stay awake." Wolfgang said. Kurt's response was to let the rosary slowly slip from his fingers.

Dr. Mallory tapped Kurt on the shoulder again but there was no response.

"What's going on?" Wolfgang asked. "Why did he stop talking? He was okay before."

Geoff sat up straighter, moving much quicker. He didn't like talking patients suddenly going silent either. He rubbed the knuckles of his hand hard on Kurt's chest, but there was no response.

"What's going on?" Wolfgang repeated, watching Dr. Mallory listening through his stethoscope. He suddenly felt like things were going in slow motion, he wanted something to happen fast, anything, anything that would make Kurt open his eyes and start talking again.

"Can you carry him?" Geoff asked.

Wolfgang just stared at him, unable to move or think.

"Pick him up. We have to take him to my car." Dr. Mallory said. "Wolfgang!"

Wolfgang jumped at the sound of his name. "Is he going to be alright?"

"We have to go to my clinic. I can't do anything for him here anyway." He said. "Can you carry him?"

Wolfgang nodded numbly and gathered Kurt into his arms. "Just tell me where to take him." He said.


	37. chapter 36

**Chapter 36: Traumatic Incident Number 3**

_"No one belongs here. Only people who are hurt or sick come here because they need help. Right now, that's you. Let him help you."_

They ran through the maze of trailers, Geoff picking his way through from his vague memory of following Christian. He was surprised when his little white Honda came into view. Wolfgang climbed into the back set, pulling Kurt in with him. Geoff spent a moment arranging Kurt so that he was lying on his side and then hopped in the driver's seat.

It was a bumpy ride over the gravel and cobblestones as they drove away from the old part of the city. Wolfgang stared ahead miserably, trying to brace himself with his hands and knees to keep Kurt from bouncing around too much. He couldn't believe this was happening. It was like a nightmare coming true and the absence of either Margali or Amanda made it worse. Anything that happened to Kurt was now his responsibility. He would either return from this night a hero or a villain depending on Kurt's survival. The irony that he'd spent his life dodging responsibility only to have his heaped upon him in greater and greater quantities was almost painful.

"I just realized we've done this backwards." Said Dr. Mallory from the front seat.

"Oh?" Wolfgang said, trying to keep Kurt's head steady as the car hit pothole.

"I should be back there with him. You should be driving. It's too late now. Can you tell me if he's breathing?"

Wolfgang fought the urge to panic. Medical stuff scared the crap out of him. He hated visiting the doctor, couldn't deal with hospitals, he couldn't even watch those medical shows on TV. "How will I know?" He blurted out.

Geoff was a little surprised by such an obvious question. "Is his chest rising and falling?" He asked.

Still fighting the urge to break down into a useless panic attack Wolfgang realized that, yes, Kurt was breathing.

"Now check his pulse. On his neck."

Wolfgang put his hand on Kurt's neck. Nothing. "I don't think he has one." He shouted.

"Relax. Right here." Geoff held two fingers in the groove along side of the trachea where the carotid artery lay. Wolfgang followed his example and breathed a sigh of relief.

"He's got a pulse too." He said.

"Perfect. Good job. If any of that changes, you let me know." Dr. Mallory said. Clearly, as an assistant Wolfgang was going to be less than useless, but he would figure out a way to make it work.

Wolfgang nodded, his fingers still pressed against Kurt's neck.

It seemed a small eternity before Dr. Mallory pulled up to a white two story building. He climbed out and opened the back door.

"This is my clinic. We have most of the equipment a small trauma room has. I can help him here. Follow me." Said Dr. Mallory, pulling out a set of keys and going to the door.

Wolfgang pulled Kurt in his arms again and followed the doctor through another maze; this time it was clean white hallways instead of trailers.

"In here," Dr. Mallory led them into a dimly lit room with a large X-Ray machine in the center. He gestured for Wolfgang to lay Kurt on the table.

"I'll tell you this right now," Geoff said as he gathered various cartridges of x-ray film, "if that break in his arm is anything unusual, I'm going to have to refer you to an orthopedic specialist." He held up his hand at Wolfgang's protests, "It's because of what he does. If I reset the bones wrong, it ends his career."

"This needs to stay as quiet as possible. If his medical records get out…" Wolfgang started to explain.

"I know." Dr. Mallory said. "Trust me. I've heard the same rumors you have. You're worried that if someone with the wrong intentions finds out about your friend, you may never see him again. But I took an oath too. I won't cost a person his livelihood. Let's see what the x-rays say and then continue this conversation."

Wolfgang nodded. "What do you want me to do?" He asked. Beside him Kurt stirred, threatening to roll off the table. Wolfgang put his hands on Kurt's shoulders to keep him in place.

Geoff looked at Kurt's hands. He had never seen anything like them before. He was going to have x-ray both his arms. He needed to know what things were supposed to look like before he could even try to fix what was wrong.

"Just keep him still." He said to Wolfgang. Geoff carefully laid Kurt's hand on the cartridge. It had been a while since he'd taken an x-ray actually. There were so many things one learned in medical school that became the responsibility of nurses and technicians after graduation. Taking a moment to re-read the controls, Geoff unlocked the unit and turned on the focusing lamp, letting it shine a cross haired window of light down onto the plate below.

"Wolfgang?" Kurt slowly opened his eyes.

Dr. Mallory was being so quiet and serious that Wolfgang suppressed his desire to jump up and down at the sound of Kurt's voice. "Hey Elf, welcome back," he whispered.

"Where is this? What are we doing?" Kurt asked in German. "What is that machine?" He asked, his eyes becoming wide and sounding more frantic by the second.

"It's okay Kurt, it's like a camera." Wolfgang said.

Kurt shook his head. "I don't like this." He said. He sat up, scooting himself backwards away from where Dr. Mallory was still fiddling with the controls. Wolfgang tried to stop him.

"It won't hurt. You won't feel it." Wolfgang said. "It's a camera."

Kurt shook his head. "No. This isn't right. Wolfgang, let's get out of here."

Wolfgang tried to hold Kurt on the table, all the while telling him he would be fine, but Kurt only struggled harder. Dr. Mallory stopped working and watched. He couldn't understand the conversation, but it didn't sound good.

"Just tell him it will be okay." He told Wolfgang. Wolfgang was having a hard time keeping Kurt still; he didn't want to injure him any more than he already was, but Kurt was fighting him with everything he had.

"I'm trying." Wolfgang said. "Kurt, relax. I won't let anyone hurt you. Just…" And suddenly Wolfgang was grasping at thin air, tendrils of dark sulfury smoke drifting away from the spot where Kurt had been. "Damn it!" He shouted. Wolfgang turned to look at Dr. Mallory who was staring at him wide eyed.

"Did. Did he? Did he just?" The doctor stammered.

"Yeah." Wolfgang said, running his hands through his hair, "he can do that."

"Did he disappear?" Dr. Mallory asked, looking around the room.

"He teleports. He could be anywhere now." Wolfgang said in dismay. He sighed. "I'll go look for him." But when Wolfgang opened the door, he saw he wasn't going to have to look very far.

Kurt was lying on the floor, halfway down the hallway. He must have simply teleported to the other side of the door and then tried to run but was too exhausted to go on. Wolfgang knelt at Kurt's side. He was expecting Kurt to be unconscious so he was surprised to see him awake and staring at the ceiling.

"What are you trying to do to yourself?" Wolfgang asked him.

"Home." Said Kurt weakly. "Let's go home. I don't belong here."

Wolfgang laughed. "No one belongs here." He said. "Only people who are hurt or sick come here because they need help. Right now, that's you. Let him help you."

"No. This is all wrong." Kurt insisted. "What are all these machines? I can't stand this."

"I know. But I'm here. I promise I won't let anything bad happen to you." Wolfgang said. He heard footsteps and the squeak of wheels. Wolfgang looked up to see Dr. Mallory standing behind him with a small, wheeled cart.

"Everything alright?" He asked.

"I think so. Sort of." Said Wolfgang.

"I think we need to take a different approach." Dr. Mallory said. He'd brought Kurt into the x-ray room first because it was the most efficient, but he should have remembered that Kurt had said he'd never seen a doctor before, let alone an x-ray machine. He'd been terrified. Geoff's rotation in pediatrics had been years ago, but the clinic was a family clinic so he saw kids everyday. Kurt may have looked older, but he was going to have to treat him like a "peds" case if he was going to get anywhere. That meant going slow and explaining everything. And when that failed, drugs.

Geoff pulled a few folded blankets from the cart and knelt down next to Kurt who shied away. "Lift up his head." He told Wolfgang. Wolfgang did and the doctor slid the folded blankets under Kurt's head for a pillow. "Better?" He asked.

Kurt nodded his head, still looking miserable.

Dr. Mallory pulled a few more items from the cart and arranged them on the floor. He set a small green oxygen cylinder near Kurt's head and held out the tubing for Kurt to look at. "It's just air." He said. "See?" Geoff demonstrated how a nasal canula worked, holding the tube under his nose and sniffing. "What to give it a try?" He asked.

Kurt glanced over at Wolfgang, who gave an encouraging nod, and agreed to let Dr. Mallory slip the tubes over his ears so the canula rested under his nose.

"Not so bad right?" Geoff asked. Kurt shook his head. "Okay, I'm going to do something that's going to hurt, but only for a second and then you'll feel better."

"Nein". Kurt shook his head.

"Let him help you." Wolfgang said. "Sometimes things hurt before they get better right?" Kurt nodded. "And look." Wolfgang said. He pulled out the rosary Kurt had dropped on the floor back in the trailer. "I'll hold it for you until he's done. Then you can have it back."

Defeated, Kurt acquiesced.

Dr. Mallory laid out the rest of his things and then looked at Kurt's good hand. He wasn't sure how he was going to do this. As a medical student he had started dozens of IV lines on all kinds of people. But that had been years ago, now it was the nurses who did that. He hadn't started a line in at least two years. And then there was Kurt's coloring; it made it impossible to see his veins. This wasn't even taking into account the fur. He put a tourniquet around Kurt's arm and watched.

There was a good vein in Kurt's hand that he could use; at least he hoped it was a vein. Geoff had only now considered that perhaps Kurt's differences went beyond his appearance, perhaps they were physiological as well. For all he knew, Kurt's blood could run backwards. He was just going to have to take it as an article of faith that Kurt really was "just like anyone else" as Wolfgang had told him.

He cleaned the site and held the catheter and stylet poised above it. It was a little nerve racking starting an IV on a patient who had already kicked him across the room once and had recently proven he could disappear.

"Keep a good hold on his arm." Geoff told Wolfgang. Wolfgang nodded and Geoff was worried that he looked like the fainting type. He didn't have much faith in him anyway; he'd never met anyone who couldn't tell whether a person was breathing or not.

"Ready Kurt?" He asked. "It's going to pinch, but only for a second." Kurt nodded bravely and shut his eyes. It was up to him now and so Geoff took a deep breath. Poised above the vein he slowly slid the needle in, feeling Kurt's whole body stiffen as he did. There was a string of what sound like German curse words, but Geoff stayed focused. There was a flash of blood in the chamber and he slid the stylet back to lock it in place. It was like he was on autopilot as Geoff taped the line in place and attached the inlet port. He realized he'd been holding his breath the whole time and exhaled gratefully.

"Not so bad." He said cheerily. "Are you okay Kurt?"

Kurt shook his head; his eyes still squeezed shut.

"Then please let go of my ankle." Wolfgang said weakly. Geoff looked over and watched as Kurt's tail slowly released the coiled hold he had on his friend's ankle. He laughed, it had been Wolfgang cursing, not Kurt.

Geoff drew up a syringe of saline and locked it to the port in Kurt's hand. "Okay, this isn't going to hurt, but it's going to feel really weird, like water running into your arm."

Kurt nodded, his eyes still closed. Geoff depressed the plunger and watched the IV site for leakage, but it was perfect, not a bad job at all given all the pressure he'd been under. He unscrewed the lock on the saline syringe and put it aside.

"What's in my hand?" Kurt asked.

"You can look." Dr. Mallory said. He held up Kurt's hand so he could see. Kurt opened his eyes, looked at his hand with a vague expression of horror and closed them again. Dr. Mallory picked up a second syringe, much smaller than the first.

"Okay, I'm going to do that again, but this time you're going to start to feel sleepy. That's okay. That's what we want. Ready?"

Kurt nodded again and this time, as Geoff pushed the plunger he watched Kurt fighting to keep his eyes open and then slowly letting them close. He'd done it. Now, he could finally work.

He was surprised to see Kurt open his eyes again. "Wolfgang?" He asked groggily.

"Yeah I'm right here. Oh yeah, I promised didn't I." Wolfgang carefully wrapped Kurt's rosary around his left hand a few times.

"What did you give him?" Wolfgang asked.

"Morphine, and some valium." He said and then answering Wolfgang's murderous look, he said, "I'm not afraid of him. I would have done the same thing for any patient who was that frightened and in that much pain. There's no point in torturing him."

Geoff looked down at Kurt. He looked relaxed for the first time since he'd seen him that evening, his breath coming in steady inhalations and exhalations. It was a much better impression than he'd had earlier. He pulled the last items of the cart and set them before Wolfgang.

"This is sterile saline. It's the same stuff people use for their contact lenses." He said as he opened a liter bottle of clear liquid that looked like water and poured some into steel pan. He ripped open a paper package of 4 by 4 gauze pads and soaked some of them in the saline. "Use these to try and wipe some of the blood and yuck off of Kurt's face. He'll feel and look a lot better. Use as much as you like and put the dirty ones in this pan here. Meanwhile I'll set the x-rays up." Geoff said.

Wolfgang did as Dr. Mallory asked. A lot of the blood on Kurt's face was caked and matted into his fur. It took a lot of the saline to get it out, but it was working. Wolfgang had felt so completely out of control for so long that it was nice to have a job, something he could do, where he could see actual results. Kurt looked pretty out of it, but Wolfgang started talking to him anyway. It was better than talking to himself.

"This looks a lot better, Kurt. It really does." He said. "Hey Kurt."

Kurt slowly turned to look over at Wolfgang, his gaze unfocused.

"Earth calling, are you still with us?" Wolfgang said.

"Mmmmm."

"I'm really sorry." Wolfgang said. "For this whole trip. The show. Everything."

"Why?"

Wolfgang was surprised to find his eyes tearing up. "Because I wrote it. Because it really happened to you and it's exactly how I wrote it."

"Lars tried to kill me?" Kurt asked.

His voice was so slurred that it took Wolfgang a moment to figure out what he said and that it was supposed to be a joke. He meant to laugh, but started crying instead. He couldn't speak for a few minutes, but finally he composed himself. Kurt tried to hand him one of the gauze squares to wipe his eyes.

"If it's really like the show," Kurt asked, "Do I get the girl in the end?"

Wolfgang laughed, finally getting it right. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. "Sure, which ever girl you want." His voice still shaking slightly, like he was about to start crying again.

Kurt smiled. "Amanda. I would pick Amanda." He said dreamily.

Wolfgang was silent. His sister? Had Kurt really meant to say that? He was thinking of how to respond when Geoff poked his head into the hallway.

"Okay, I've got everything set up. We'll take some pictures and then I can stitch that cut on your face." Dr. Mallory said.

"My face?" Wolfgang said. He put his hand to his cheek and it came away bloody.

"I think he got you with his tail." Geoff said. "It's okay."

He picked Kurt up and had Wolfgang carry the oxygen as they returned to the x-ray room. This time Kurt was much more cooperative. Dr. Mallory had all the pictures he needed within the few minutes and had Wolfgang carry Kurt into an exam room.

Wolfgang sat down in a chair. Kurt was curled up on his side on an exam table. He still had his rosary wrapped in the fingers of his left hand. It was midnight and Wolfgang could feel his eyes closing against their will, his head nodding forward before he jerked upright in an attempt to stay awake. It had to be almost over now. They had found Kurt, they had a doctor, and everything was going to be fine. He just had to stay awake a little longer.


	38. chapter 37

**Chapter 37: Treatment**

_"Don't think I don't understand what Kurt goes through. Mutants aren't the only target for discrimination and ridicule. Do you know what this place is?"_

Geoff shook Wolfgang by the shoulder. He was curled up on the love seat in the waiting room, attempting fit his whole body onto the longest piece of furniture in the room even though was still inadequately short. Geoff watched him come awake slowly, like he had been dreaming and he wasn't sure if the interruption was real or not.

"Sorry, but I need your help again." Geoff said. He motioned for Wolfgang to follow him. Wolfgang rose and followed in silence.

"How old is Kurt?" Geoff asked after they entered his office. Geoff put a few of the x-rays up on the lighted wall viewer.

"He turned seventeen a few months ago. Why?" Wolfgang asked, covering his mouth and yawning. He looked at the images Dr. Mallory had hung: Kurt's three fingered hands, one of the arms obviously broken, the other intact, and several views of his chest. Dr. Mallory pointed to the broken arm.

"Do you see how the bones aren't totally broken, more like bent, like snapping a tree branch?" The doctor said, tracing along the two bones in Kurt's forearm. He was right, Wolfgang had broken his arm once too, his x-rays had shown clean lines where the bones had fractured, not the jagged bending that Kurt's did.

"It's called a 'greenstick' fracture. It's common in very young children whose bones are still flexible. It's very rare for someone Kurt's age to have a break like this. I've never heard of it happening." Dr. Mallory continued. "The good news," he said, reading downcast the expression on Wolfgang's face "is that I can fix it and it will probably heal very quickly."

"So Kurt's bones are flexible?" Wolfgang asked.

Dr. Mallory shook his head. "Not flexible as in elastic, just less brittle than a normal adult. It should have broken cleanly, but it didn't." He pointed to the other x-rays. "It could have just been luck. He broke several ribs and the fractures are more characteristic for someone his age."

"Can you fix those?" Wolfgang asked.

"It's not a matter of fixing, they're all in place. Kurt just needs to keep still and let them heal."

"And his arm?"

"I'll make it straight again and then put a cast on it. He'll wear it for a month or so and then he should be fine. It's not as bad as it looks from the outside really. Like I said, he's lucky. I'll guess that in less than three months he'll be performing again." Dr. Mallory said.

Wolfgang looked at the view of Kurt's good arm.

"I've never seen anything like it." Dr. Mallory said, echoing Wolfgang's thoughts. "I was expecting to see vestigial pieces of the two other fingers, or some other evidence of normal hand development. But I'm afraid this is 'normal', even his wrists are slightly different to accommodate the changed anatomy. I suspect I would see the same kind of adaptations if I looked at his spine and his feet, maybe even elsewhere."

"What does that mean?" Wolfgang asked.

Dr. Mallory shrugged, but his expression remained serious. "I don't know. I thought mutants carried a single gene that expressed itself at puberty, but were otherwise normal genetically. But, Kurt's anatomy represents massive genetic differences on a large scale."

"So, like, he's not really a mutant then?" Wolfgang asked.

"I don't know if the term has a real definition." Dr. Mallory said, "People could spend years studying him and maybe never figure it out."

"But they won't right?" Wolfgang said, his voice turning menacing.

Dr. Mallory shook his head. "No. I'll give you these x-rays, everything. There will be no record Kurt was ever here other than my memory."

"And that?" Wolfgang prompted.

"Will stay secret." Dr. Mallory finished. "Don't think I don't understand what Kurt goes through. Mutants aren't the only target for discrimination and ridicule. Do you know what this place is?"

Wolfgang shook his head.

"It's a family clinic. We'll see anyone, but our clientele is nearly exclusively homosexual. Things have calmed down since AIDS was first diagnosed, but that doesn't mean discrimination doesn't happen medically and socially. I can't end it everywhere, but I can make sure it doesn't come in my door."

"You own this place?"

"Myself, my partner, and two other doctors. We came here from Manchester after my partner Paul was attacked. He was still in medical school. I just finished my residency. The trauma room wouldn't treat him, pretending they were too crowded. In the end, we did, myself and several others. I called Terry, who you must know, the next day." Dr. Mallory said.

"Terry Hamilton? Our liaison here?" Wolfgang asked.

Dr. Mallory nodded his head. "He was a mate of ours in Manchester. Brighton is very friendly to homosexuals if you haven't noticed."

Wolfgang smiled. "I have." He said.

"Manchester was working class and homophobic as hell, but it was home. Terry already lived in Brighton. I hated to leave, but I didn't want to put Paul in danger ever again. We moved here after he finished school. We started the clinic five years ago."

"It's nice. It's like a hospital." Wolfgang said, looking around, marveling how since joining Circus Gehlhaar he had seemed to have tapped into this underground of amazing individuals, people who celebrated their differences instead of hiding and trying to fit in. It made his rich, privileged upbringing look more and more like a hindrance with everyone he met.

"Speaking of hospitals, I do have one concern." Dr. Mallory said. "That's very far to fall," he said, "and I think we'd be deluding ourselves if we said that there was no one else involved since it is fairly obvious that Kurt was in some kind of fight."

Wolfgang nodded. "He never goes far from our grounds normally. The circus is very protective of him. But, I think we've always known that someday, people would try to hurt him."

"These injuries here," Dr. Mallory pointed to several ribs that to Wolfgang's untrained eye looked the same as all the others, "I'm worried about them. In an ideal world I would want Kurt in a hospital where we could observe him at least for a few days."

Wolfgang shook his head. "That's impossible." He said.

"I know, but these circumstances nearly always mean internal injuries. Most of the time it's not serious, but it can be."

"How?" Wolfgang asked.

"If this is internal bleeding and it doesn't stop, it could kill him." Dr. Mallory said. "But there's no way to know. It could be nothing."

"I guess we'll have to hope it's nothing." Wolfgang said.

"I agree, but at least stay the rest of the night. Kurt will be comfortable; I can keep him on oxygen and give him some fluids. If it's only for my own piece of mind, please." Dr. Mallory said.

Wolfgang looked at his watch. It was so late already that it hardly seemed to matter. "Okay." He said. "Just for tonight."


	39. chapter 38

**Chapter 38: Milk and Cookies**

_"Here, I think I can fix you up with something."_

Geoff Mallory was good at taking catnaps. It seemed that, besides medicine, the chief skill learned during the intern years was how to fall into a meaningfully deep sleep even if it was only for minutes at a time. The second skill was to know when to wake up and when to just appear awake while still gaining all the benefits of sleep.

A strange noise caused Geoff to open one eye and then another. He had been napping in the winged armchair he kept in his office for such a purpose. Standing in his doorway, swaying slightly, was his patient. Geoff sat up in his chair.

"Kurt? Are you okay?" He asked.

It was a shock to see Kurt awake, let alone walking around, but surprises from Kurt were fairly common at this point. Kurt brushed his hair away from his face with his good hand; the one that still had his rosary tangled around the fingers. He looked a little lost actually.

"Wo ist Wolfgang? " he asked sleepily.

"Wolfgang? Uh, Wolfgang's sleeping. Are you okay? Do you need something?" Geoff got up.

"Ich habe Durst. "

"I'm sorry. I can't understand you when you speak German." Geoff said. "Can you say it in English."

"Thirsty." Kurt said after a moment's consideration.

Geoff laughed. It had to have been hours since Kurt had last eaten or drunk anything. "Here, I think I can fix you up with something." He put a hand on Kurt's shoulder and guided him down the hall to the staff breakroom. Kurt may have been walking but he was still far from awake. His tail was dragging on the ground like an after thought and several times he tripped over it like he didn't know it was his.

Geoff guided him over to a chair and sat him down. Kurt spent a few seconds looking around before clumsily arranging himself so that he was crouched precariously on the seat's edge.

"Maybe I can convince you to switch chairs." Geoff said, offering Kurt a much sturdier chair with arms. Kurt climbed down and took up the same position in the new chair, but this time he looked a lot safer with the arms to keep him from toppling over the side.

"Do you always sit like that?" he asked.

Kurt's response was a string of German and a nod.

"I'm just going to assume that's a 'yes'." Geoff said. "So, you're thirsty. Let's see."

Geoff rummaged around, but there wasn't much. He pulled out what looked like a clean tea mug and filled it with water. "This is a start." He said setting it down in front of Kurt. Geoff could tell how groggy he still was when Kurt tried to drink it without lifting the mug from the table and spilled most of the water on the floor.

"Let's try that again." He said. This time he helped Kurt hold onto it as he gulped the water greedily.

"Better?"

Kurt nodded his head enthusiastically. "Ja."

"How about something to eat? Are you hungry?" Geoff asked, realizing at that very moment he was starving.

He got up and poured Kurt another glass of water. There was even less chance of finding anything edible in here. Geoff opened the refrigerator and found the remains of a week old birthday cake from one of the staff, and an apple. There were a few unopened cartons of milk though. Up in the cupboard Geoff spotted the tartan wrapper of a box of Scottish shortbread cookies, his favorites, especially with milk.

Geoff collected a second mug and brought it with him to the table. He ripped opened the shortbread and poured the milk. He was on his third piece before he realized he hadn't offered any to Kurt.

"Here. They're really good. They're from Scotland," he said. Kurt reached out, but his rosary was still tangled in his fingers. After a moment spent trying to remove it, he changed his mind and took the cookie from Geoff's hand with his tail.

"Wow. That's quite a trick." Geoff said. "Here, let me help you with this." The rosary wasn't wrapped as tightly as it looked and it took only a moment to free Kurt's hand.

"Danke." Kurt said. He let the rosary sit on the table and transferred the shortbread to his hand before biting into it.

"Like it?" Geoff asked. Kurt nodded. "They're even better like this." Geoff dipped one in milk and held it out to him. Kurt accepted it daintily with fingers that reminded Geoff more of a cartoon character than anything else. He suspected that he had undergone the same transformation that anyone who spent any time with Kurt did. Features that had once been frightening seemed drained of their menace, taking on a cartoonish quality, like someone had tried to draw a monster and gotten it all wrong.

They finished off the cookies and most of the milk. Kurt knew about doctors from books and movies but had never been in a doctor's office so he was curious about everything from the posters on the breakroom walls to the stethoscope that was still draped over Geoff's shoulders. Finally Geoff led him back to the exam room that he had turned into a bedroom for the night.

"I thought casts were white?" Kurt said looking at his arm.

"They were. Now they're made out of fiberglass instead of plaster so they come in colors. I thought the blue was a good match. I usually let patients pick, but you were sleeping." Geoff said.

"I like blue." Kurt said. "How long do I to have it on?"

"A month maybe. Not long."

"And this." Kurt held up his other hand, where Geoff had placed the IV.

"A few days if you don't mind it. In case something happens." Geoff said.

"What could happen?" Kurt asked.

Geoff smiled. "Nothing, I hope." He fixed the blankets and helped Kurt lie down.

"Can I go home then?" Kurt asked, making a face as Dr. Mallory tried to put the tube with the oxygen back around his ears.

"In the morning I'll take you and Wolfgang back," he said.

Kurt smiled. "Good," he said.

"But I might come by and visit if you're not too sick of me."

Kurt shook his head.

"Then get some more sleep. Morning will be here soon enough." Geoff said. He dimmed the room lights and watched Kurt close his eyes.

Geoff passed the breakroom on his way back to his office and saw Kurt's rosary sitting on the table where he'd left it. He scooped it up, looking at it in his hand as he walked back to where Kurt was now sleeping. It seemed odd that someone who looked like Kurt would be so religious. Then again it appeared that Kurt was a perfect paradox; everything on the inside in perfect opposition to what was on the outside. He should have expected it.

Geoff returned to Kurt's room where he returned it to it's usual place on Kurt's left hand, wrapping it around once and then closing Kurt's fingers on it, watching his sleeping features shift into a slight smile as though in a silent acknowledgement of thanks.


	40. chapter 39

**Chapter 39: The Show Must Go On**

_"Looks like our ride is here."_

Wolfgang sat up with a start. Light was streaming through the waiting room windows. He rubbed his eyes and uncurled himself from his cramped position on the loveseat. As he sat up and stretched his arms, he noticed someone knocking on the window.

"Christian?" Wolfgang pulled back the bolt and unlocked the clinic's front door so Christian and Maria could come in. He stared at them numbly, wondering how they'd gotten there.

"Terry told us where to go and lent us his car." Christian said. He looked around the waiting room with interest, taking in the various HIV, AIDS, and human rights awareness posters on the walls.

"I got worried when you never came home." Maria said. "Is everything okay? What happened?" She reached toward the cut on Wolfgang's cheek that Dr. Mallory had taped closed.

"Kurt did it." Wolfgang said.

There was a flash of disbelief on Christian's face. "Really? How did that happen? What were you guys doing here?"

Wolfgang shrugged, not yet awake enough to put the evening's events into words. "He was kind of upset. It was an accident." He mumbled.

"But you're both all right?" Maria asked him. "How come you never came home?" She brushed his hair out of his eyes.

"It just got so late, you know…" Wolfgang trailed off, once again not even knowing where to start. It was like he'd been on a different planet than the rest of the circus since he had run through the maze of trailers carrying Kurt in his arms. It was hard to imagine that the rest of the world had been operating while he'd been away.

"So Kurt's okay?" Christian said.

"Yeah, yeah. He's down this way. The doctor said we can take him home." Wolfgang slid his feet back into his shoes and waved them down the hall with him. They turned the corner to where Kurt was sleeping, curled up on his side on the exam table. Despite Wolfgang's clean up attempts he actually looked a little worse now that the bruises on his face had started to puff up. One eye was nearly closed, but at the sound of their footsteps, Kurt opened the other one.

"Hey buddy," Christian said as he entered the room. "Everyone's been really worried about you."

"Why?" Kurt asked groggily.

Christian started laughing. "Why? You're hilarious. Why do you think?"

"Are you sure you're okay?" Maria asked Wolfgang. They were still standing in the hallway. He looked so lost to her as though during the night he had forgotten the way and was now adrift without a compass or direction.

"I'm fine." Wolfgang said with a curt nod. He looked around. "The doctor is here somewhere." He said.

"Right here." A voice said. They turned and saw Dr. Mallory coming down the hallway.

"Looks like our ride is here." Wolfgang said to him.

Geoff looked at his watch and nodded. "Just in time too. Staff will be showing up in a half hour or so."

"Ready to go home?" Christian asked, helping Kurt sit up.

Kurt nodded, still half asleep.

A few minutes later Christian and Marie were slowly walking down the hallway with Kurt between them. It was a relief to see him awake and walking again, sounding more like his old self. Wolfgang could feel the strange hard lump that had settled in his chest ever since Margali and Amanda had entrusted him with Kurt's care, starting to melt.

"I'll come by and check on him later today." Dr. Mallory told Wolfgang.

"He looks better." Wolfgang said.

Dr. Mallory nodded in agreement. "A lot better. Still, it pays to be cautious. He's a tough kid, but he did have a pretty rough night."

Wolfgang took Dr. Mallory's hand and shook it. "Thank you so much, for everything. I could tell you were a little nervous at first."

"I think you meant to say 'terrified'." Dr. Mallory said. "I certainly have learned not to judge a book by its cover."

Wolfgang smiled. "Yeah. I think he teaches that one to a lot of people."

"It's been a pleasure." Dr. Mallory said.

"Likewise."

They parted and outside the clinic Wolfgang saw Christian sitting behind the wheel of what must have been Terry's car. Maria was in the backseat with Kurt who was dozing with his head on her shoulder. It was good to be going back. Wolfgang felt like he'd lived a whole lifetime between last night and this morning.

Christian did a little fancy maneuvering to get the car as close as possible to Margali's trailer. Wolfgang and Maria walked with Kurt the rest of the way. Amanda opened the door when she saw them approaching.

"We were so worried." She said, crossing the distance between them and pulling Kurt into a tight hug. "I'm so sorry I couldn't go with you. Mom was sick. She was so worried."

"Is she okay?" Kurt asked as the four of them walked side by side.

"Yeah, just a little tired. I'm sure she'll feel even better when she sees you." Amanda said.

Margali met them at the door; she had dark circles under her eyes but was nevertheless overjoyed by her son's return. She helped Kurt, who was making a valiant effort, but still unsteady on his feet, navigate the steps into their trailer. Wolfgang started to follow but Maria held him back.

"I think they can handle it from here." She said.

Wolfgang nodded, suddenly reluctant. He had felt so strained by the responsibility of Kurt's care and yet now it felt strange to be giving it up. He turned away, but felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned back. It was Margali.

"Thank you for listening." She said and gave him a small peck on the cheek.

"What? Listening to what?" Wolfgang asked, but Margali only smiled and retreated to the van's interior.

Shrugging his shoulders he followed Maria back to their own trailer. "I guess I should start making arrangements for whatever needs to happen next with the circus." He said.

"Not until you've had a shower and some sleep." Maria admonished. "Look at you."

Inside their much smaller trailer Wolfgang looked in the mirror. He was sure that at some point yesterday he had looked respectable, but he could tell he hadn't for a long time. His hair was sticking out in a dozen different directions and he had a shadow of dark stubble on his cheeks and chin. Add to that the bags under his eyes and the cut from Kurt's tail and he looked quite disheveled indeed. His shirt was un-tucked and wrinkled from sleeping in it, plus it was streaked with Kurt's blood. He unbuttoned it and left it in a pile on the floor, still staring at himself in the mirror.

He didn't know how to feel, it was like his organs had turned to ice. It wasn't until he was standing under the hot water of the shower with Maria massaging shampoo into his hair that he felt his insides start to thaw.

He couldn't do this anymore. This whole trip had been a nightmare for Kurt and it had been his fault. Starting with the ferry and now this. Wolfgang felt like he had wandered down the wrong path and even though he knew it was wrong, he couldn't get back, that he was from now on misguided and that Circus Gehlhaar and Kurt in particular would suffer for it. Leaning close in to the woman he loved, Wolfgang let his tears mingle with the water cascading down his face. He couldn't do this anymore.


	41. chapter 40

_**Chapter 40: Unexpected Guests**_

_"As flattering and stylish as black is, I do like other colors."_

Amanda jumped up when the door to their trailer opened. Father Dietrich poked his head in.

"Hello?"

"Oh wow." Amanda said. "You made it. This is amazing. Kurt is going to be so happy."

"Thank the lord for English speaking countries where we can actually do something useful." James announced, carrying in the Father's suitcase.

"And we survived left handed cars on right handed roads. Or is it the other way around?" Brin said holding up the keys to the circus' smallest truck, the one they always used to run small errands with.

"I'm sure Wolfgang can arrange a hotel or something later." Amanda said

"It's fine. I'm not worried about it." Father Dietrich said. He turned to Margali. "How are you? You look tired."

Margali sat at their table, dark circles ringing her eyes. She rose from her seat at the table. "Hans, it's so good to see you." She said. "I'm alright now. It was a long night."

Father Dietrich took off his coat and turned to see Amanda, James, and Brin all staring at him. "What?"

"It's just…" Amanda began.

"We've never seen you dressed like that." James finished.

Father Dietrich looked down at his clothes. "You don't like my traveler disguise?" He asked. "The collar is a privilege, not an obligation." He said in response to their faces. "When I travel dressed as a priest I have a ten foot radius around me where everyone acts like they're still in church. This is easier on everyone."

"I think it's the Hawaiian shirt." James said.

"What can I say? As flattering and stylish as black is, I do like other colors. I get them all in at once this way." He shrugged. "I'll change if it makes you that uncomfortable." He said.

"I like it." Margali said.

"It doesn't," said Amanda. "It's just different than what we're used to. Anyway I don't think Kurt will care."

"That's true. Where is he?" Father Dietrich said looking into Kurt's empty bunk.

"In mom's bed." Amanda said. "It's quieter back there and bigger." She stood up and led him to the back of the trailer to where the door to Margali's room was. She slid it open and looked in. Kurt was pretty much how he'd been since Wolfgang brought him back, asleep except he had turned onto his back instead of on his side like how he normally slept. She knelt by the side of the bed to wake him and then turned to look at Father Dietrich when she couldn't.

"What's wrong?" He asked.

"I don't know. I can't wake him up. And it sounds like he can't breathe." She said.

Father Dietrich joined her, sitting quickly at the edge of the bed. She was right. Up close he could see Kurt struggling with each breath he too k and he didn't stir even when he lifted one of Kurt's eyelids. He'd served as chaplain at several different hospitals and though the doctors rarely bothered to explain their patients' medical conditions, he had enough experience to know when someone was in trouble.

"Did the doctor leave a number you could call?" He asked Amanda.

"Yes." She said, standing up and starting to back away.

"Call it." He said. "Hurry."

Without a word Amanda turned and ran out of the room. Margali rushed in with James and Brin following.

"What's going on?" She said. "What's the matter?"

Father Dietrich shook his head. "I don't know." He moved aside so that Margali could take his place next to her son. He listened to her trying to wake him, speaking to him in comforting tones. But, other than the sound of his labored breathing, Kurt was distressingly silent. And so Father Dietrich did the only useful thing he could think of. He prayed for him.


	42. chapter 41

**Chapter 41: Traumatic Incident Number 4**

_"It was an accident. I didn't mean for it to happen."_

Geoff Mallory bustled into the trailer, surprised that he'd been able to follow Amanda's directions through the compound. The Brighton Festival living quarters of Circus Gehlhaar were even more maze like and complicated than where the office trailers had been.

"Where's Amanda?" He asked, knowing that Wolfgang and any of the others he had met last night were probably sleeping the way he should have been. Amanda's was the only name he now knew besides Kurt's, and he had no idea what she even looked like.

"Here." Amanda called from the back. "We're all back here."

Geoff moved through the trailer which was much newer than nicer than many of it's neighbors. Kurt was in the back room with several others. A woman with blonde hair wearing dark clothes moved away so he could sit at the edge of the bed where Kurt lay.

Kurt looked the same as he had when he left just a few hours ago except that something was now terribly wrong. He could see the tendons and muscles in Kurt's neck straining with every breath he took. There was a small trickle of blood running from his nose. He had a small bag with him, the same one he had brought the night before. He pulled his stethoscope and penlight out so he could examine Kurt again.

"What's happening to you Kurt?" He muttered to himself as he worked. He couldn't understand how this was the same patient who had walked out of his office that morning. There certainly wasn't any danger of Kurt kicking him across the room now and Geoff found himself wishing it were the other way around.

"He was okay before." Amanda said. "He just said he was tired." She tried to keep her voice from shaking.

"I know. I'm going to do everything I can." Dr. Mallory said. "I have another doctor coming from the clinic with some equipment."

As if on cue a man dressed in a white coat struggling with several large bags pushed the door open. "Geoff? Am I in the right place?" He asked. He had neatly combed dark hair and the name "Dr. Gallo" was embroidered on his coat; he had obviously rushed out of the office without changing. He joined them, dropping bag after bag as he released their straps from his shoulders.

"This is Paul, my partner." Geoff said brusquely, he was already unzipping the cases and pulling things out.

Paul looked up and smiled briefly at everyone. He spent a long moment looking at Kurt, but had didn't seem surprised by his appearance like Dr. Mallory had when he first arrived. Dr. Mallory had obviously explained things to him. For a few moments no one spoke but the pair of doctors who worked efficiently and quickly, Paul often handing the right thing to Geoff without being asked for it; the two of them speaking in half sentences that neither needed to finish.

"We need to… Oh, you started one. Can you hand me the… Thanks." Paul said as accepted a bag of fluid and plugged the tube into Kurt's hand. He spent a moment looking for a place to hang it before Amanda took it from him.

"Something's wrong isn't?" Father Dietrich asked.

Geoff looked up into yet another face he didn't recognize. "Something. I'm not sure what yet." He said. "Are you part of the circus too?"

Father Dietrich shook his head. "I'm a friend. I'm Kurt's priest."

Geoff nodded in understanding, shifting his attention back to the task at hand.

Nothing they did was working. Kurt hadn't improved. In fact, he actually appeared to be getting worse and it slowly dawned on Geoff that his greatest fears were being realized. He understood what was happening, why Kurt couldn't breathe, why his blood pressure was dropping, why nothing they did seemed to help him.

Despite his appearance the night before, Kurt had been bleeding internally, but not bad enough that the blood couldn't clot, that the wounds couldn't begin to heal. But sometime during the night one of those clots had come loose, forced into circulation by the blood moving through his veins. And then it had been slowly carried closer and closer to his heart until it lodged there, robbing the organ of its ability to pump blood, a condition known as "pulmonary embolism". It killed thousands every year. Surgery, trauma, any event where there was bleeding, there was the possibility of this complication. And so even as they had sat together eating shortbread cookies, Kurt's fate had been sealed.

Had they been in a hospital Kurt's prognosis would have still been poor. Advances were being made in this area all the time, new drugs and techniques that might have saved his life. Even so, there were only maybe a dozen or so surgeons in the world knowledgeable enough and they were too far away. Here in this trailer, less than five minutes away from a hospital, help was still beyond them. They may have well been on the moon.

Geoff turned to the man kneeling beside Kurt's head. "You said you're a priest?"

"Yes."

"If you want to administer last rites, you can. That's a good place to be, so you're out of the way." Geoff said. He looked into Paul's eyes and could see his partner had been thinking the same thing. They would continue to work, but they were doing it now not for Kurt, but so his friends and family would know that they had fought with him until the end.

"I'll get my things." Father Dietrich said. He rose slowly and with the feeling of unreality returned to the front room of the trailer.

Even before Kurt had been found, when it was just a phone call from Wolfgang telling him Kurt was missing, he had made the decision to come here. Though his relationship to the circus was primarily through Kurt and he considered Kurt a friend, he cared about all of the families in Circus Gehlhaar. In the many years since he and Kurt first met, he had come to serve as priest to several other of the circus's members and their families. And even those who may not have shared in his beliefs still came to count on him as listening ear and spiritual guide. It was something he enjoyed. Some of the closest bonds of family and friendship he had ever seen existed here. It was as though by sacrificing the stability of living in one place, the deeper need for warmth and understanding drove them. He chose not just to come for Kurt, but for all of them.

He hadn't known what to pack. He had nearly left his stole and his oils behind, including them only at the last minute as though to ward off the possibility that they would be needed. His hands were shaking as he reached into his suitcase.

Father Dietrich tried to stay out of the doctors' way as they worked, but he couldn't help but notice that more often then not, they were staying out of his way. He had administered last rites for his parishioners before and it was always difficult; probably the hardest thing he had to do. He usually dealt with it but pretending he didn't know them; it was only while he worked, so that he could commit his full attention to the task at hand. And then afterward he mourned for them.

But with Kurt that was impossible. Everything about him was so distinct that there was no way he could keep up the ruse for long. From the way the oil soaked into and matted the fur on his forehead to his palms with their thick sturdy fingers, there was no one else Kurt could be. It seemed that the doctors finished at the same time he did, the three of them stepping back nearly in unison.

The room was completely still, it's occupants frozen as though in a tableau. Brin sat with Amanda, she had put her arm around Amanda's shoulder to comfort her friend. Next to them was James, sitting a little apart from them, his mouth opened in surprise. Father Dietrich was still at the head of the bed with Margali still beside him. In the middle of it was Kurt, lying on the bed with his head tilted at an unnatural angle, his eyes part way open so that the whites showed.

James slowly closed his mouth and forced himself to swallow. "Someone should tell Wolfgang what happened." He said in what was barely more than a whisper. He was met with silence and he slowly rose to his feet. "I'll go tell him." He said. The room stayed silent and still as he left, but it was as though his action thawed them all so that they began moving again when he was gone.

"I'm so sorry." Dr. Mallory said. He slowly peeled off his gloves so he could wipe his nose and eyes. His partner, Paul, who had only known Kurt through Geoff's stories, if at all, kept his eyes downcast.

Father Dietrich let his hand come to rest for a moment on the top of Kurt's head before he laid them against Kurt's eyelids to close them. He looked up and caught Margali's glance. For a moment she looked resigned and then something in them changed. She stood up.

"No." She said. "This isn't happening." She sat down next to Kurt on the bed, nearly shoving Dr. Mallory to the ground. He jumped back in surprise. She took Kurt's hand in both of hers, squeezing it tightly and closing her eyes.

"Magali." Father Dietrich said. He put a hand on her shoulder, but she shook her head, now rocking back and forth squeezing Kurt's hand tighter and tighter. On the other side of the room Amanda leaned forward, slipping out from under the arm Brin had put around her shoulder.

"Mom. Stop." She said.

"No!" It came out high pitched and hoarse, like a scream. The two doctors, who had begun putting their equipment away and removing the evidence of their interventions from Kurt's body stopped and moved away. Grief could tear families apart and they knew better than to hang around in the middle of it.

The room had begun to fill with a strange energy – the same charged feeling that came before a lighting storm. Father Dietrich could feel the hair on his neck standing on end. He was sitting the closest to Margali and somehow, it seemed to him as though she was the locus of it, she and Kurt. She was squeezing his hand so tightly that it looked like bones were about to snap.

"Margali, what are you doing?" Father Dietrich asked.

The energy in the room changed, shifting to feel darker, even sinister. Yet Father Dietrich wasn't sure what they were feeling at all. "Margali?" He asked again and suddenly her eyes opened wide, her expression becoming trapped and frightened. Father Dietrich still had his hand on her shoulder. "Margali, whatever you're doing, stop it." The energy was building, becoming too much to bear.

And when it seemed that it was impossible for it to build any longer, the release came. A great discharge of power so intense that everyone was thrown backward in a circle around the pair, the world going black even as they fought to understand exactly what was happening.

Kurt opened his eyes and tried to draw breath. He couldn't. He was choking; there was something in the way. He struggled for a moment, gagging and coughing, the world threatening to return to darkness as it closed in around the corners of his eyes. Suddenly Brin was there, looking down at him. There was a frantic moment where it appeared that she too was at a loss for what to do, but then she reached out a hand and used it to withdraw the offending object from Kurt's throat. Kurt turned onto his side, still gagging but happy to at last draw breath.

"That was horrible." He said, still gulping air gratefully. "What happened? What was that?" He repeated himself in English when he remembered it was Brin he was talking to.

Brin was staring at the tube still held in her hand. She turned and looked at him. "Kurt?" She asked. "Kurt I thought you were…" She trailed off, looking around at the rest of the room, at everyone else lying on the floor as though blown backward by a great gust of wind. What had happened?

"What is that? Why was that in my mouth?" Kurt asked. He sat up, now looking around the room as well.

Brin looked at Kurt in wide-eyed wonder. "They put that down your throat. The doctors." She said, gesturing toward Drs. Mallory and Gallo who were still unconscious on the floor. "To make you breathe, I think."

Kurt knitted his brow. But, that's what he had been choking on. It had made it hard to breathe, not the other way around. Then he sat up straighter, looking in surprise at where the priest had been thrown against the wall, Margali sprawled out unconscious with her head against his chest. "Father Dietrich?" He turned back to Brin. "How did Father Dietrich get here? What's going on? Mom? "

He hopped down off the bed and Brin gasped. A moment ago she had been watching him die, hadn't she? Wasn't that what had happened? She opened her mouth, but didn't speak.

Kurt touched Margali on the check and she groaned, rousing Father Dietrich as she shifted position. He looked confused for a moment, but then seemed to come around, making the same wide-eyed expression as Brin.

"Kurt?" He sat up quickly, gently lowering Margali to the floor as he did. He reached out, like he was going to touch Kurt but was afraid to. "God in Heaven, how is this possible?"

Behind Kurt, Brin shook her head. She didn't know how it was possible either.

Kurt could feel the corners of his mouth turning down hard as a frown formed on his face. How had all these people gotten in here? And why were they all lying on the floor? And most importantly, why did everyone suddenly seem afraid of him? The others stirred now too, rubbing their eyes and groaning as they came awake. Kurt climbed back onto the bed and pressed himself as far back against the wall as possible. He didn't like this. When Margali saw him there, she gave a quick shriek of surprise and then covered her mouth with her hand.

"It's all right Kurt, I'm not going to hurt you." Dr. Mallory said as he cautiously approached, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. He wasn't sure how his patient, who a moment ago had had neither respirations nor a pulse, was now awake and talking to them. Kurt shrank away from him and shook his head.

"Margali, what did you do?" Father Dietrich asked.

She shook her head. "It was an accident." She said, her normally strident voice sounding like that of a scolded child. "I didn't mean for it to happen."

James was silent as he and Wolfgang made their way toward Margali's trailer. When he had arrived in Wolfgang's trailer, James had found himself strangely mute, as though by not telling Wolfgang that Kurt was dead he could somehow change what had happened. He still hadn't said a word even as they made their way back to Margali's.

"James, what's going on?" Wolfgang asked him over and over as they walked.

They stopped at the door of the trailer, James barring the way.

"What's the matter with you?" Wolfgang asked. "What's going on here?"

"Father Dietrich is here." James said, finally finding his voice. Wolfgang looked confused. "He's here and two doctors are here." James took a deep breath. When he had left to fetch Wolfgang he hadn't realized how difficult this was going to be.

"Something happened to Kurt?" Wolfgang said.

James nodded. "Father Dietrich was able to perform last rites." He said. "But there was nothing the doctors could do. So he… So Kurt…" Wolfgang pulled James out of the way and opened the door. He stormed through the trailer and stopped at the door to the back room. James arrived a moment later and looked over Wolfgang's shoulder into the room, his jaw slack with disbelief.

"I don't believe it." Said James. "When I left, he was…" But he didn't finish his sentence, because now Kurt was sitting up of the edge of the bed while one of the doctors held a stethoscope against his chest.

Dr. Mallory sat back, bending his stethoscope in his hands thoughtfully. He looked over to where Wolfgang stood in the door. "I can't find anything wrong with him." He said.

Wolfgang looked confused. "That's good right?" He said.

The second doctor, Dr. Gallo took Geoff's stethoscope and put the earpieces in his ears. "May I?" He asked Kurt. Kurt shook his head and moved to the opposite end of the bed. He glanced suspiciously in Father Dietrich's direction; still not sure of how the priest had gotten in their trailer, his confusion overshadowing any happiness he had over seeing his friend and mentor.

"You're fine." Father Dietrich said. "Everyone was just worried that's all." He told Kurt.

"Wait a minute." Wolfgang said. "James just told me Kurt was dead." He turned back to James. "That's what you were trying to say right?"

"What?" Kurt asked.

"Wolfgang!" Father Dietrich shouted before James could answer. Whatever it was that had happened was strange enough without discussing in front of Kurt.

"But I'm not dead." Kurt said.

"No." Father Dietrich said. "You're not."

Kurt nodded as though Father Dietrich had confirmed what he already knew and he wasn't sure why no else seemed convinced. The sound of someone sobbing broke the silence and for the first time he noticed Amanda, still curled up on the floor where she had fallen. "Amanda, what's wrong?" He asked. He got off the bed and knelt on the floor beside her.

She sat up, her eyes wet with tears, looking past Kurt to glare at Margali. "Mom, how could you?" She said.

Margali looked stricken. "Amanda, I…"

"Amanda?" Kurt went to put his hand on her shoulder.

She whirled around. "Don't you touch me!" She shouted. "Get away!"

Kurt froze in surprise, but then retreated once again to the far corner of Margali's bed, folding his body up tightly and wrapping his tail protectively around himself.

"Amanda…" Father Dietrich started to speak, but Amanda stood up, placing her hands on her hips, still glaring at Margali.

"How could you?" She asked again, more forcefully, nearly dripping with venom.

"Amanda, what's wrong? Kurt's fine." Wolfgang said.

She glared at him for a moment. "I know Kurt's fine." She shouted. "But I'm not." Then she pushed Wolfgang aside and ran from the room and out of the trailer without looking back.

"Will somebody please tell me what is happening?" Wolfgang said. He was met with stunned silence as though nobody knew how to answer. Then Dr. Mallory stood up.

"Wolfgang, this is my partner Paul Gallo. If you come outside, we will explain, or at least attempt to explain, everything." He said. He beckoned the two of them. Dr. Gallo stood immediately, but Wolfgang hesitated looking from Kurt to Dr. Mallory and back as though he wasn't sure who was going to give him the best answers. Finally he followed the two doctors from the trailer.

"Would you like me to go find Amanda?" Father Dietrich asked Margali.

She shook her head. "No. This is something only I can solve." She said and left without another word. At the same time James gave a quick nod to Brin, motioning towards the door. She too got up and left so that it was just Kurt and Father Dietrich alone in the room.

"How did you get here?" Kurt asked Father Dietrich, happy to have someone to answer his questions at last. "How did you even know to come?"

"Wolfgang called me and told me you were missing. And then later I tried the office phone and left a message. Amanda called me back and said you'd been found but were at a hospital. It was a little confusing for a while." Father Dietrich said.

"You came just for me?" Kurt asked.

"For you, and for your family too. Everyone was very worried about you. So was I."

"How did you get here? How long was I missing? I don't remember any of that." Kurt said, knitting his brow in confusion. He was looking around the room, taking in the various things the doctors had left behind, trying to figure out why he wasn't in his own bed. "I remember Christian picking us up in a car." Kurt said. "And Dr. Mallory. I woke up in the middle of the night and he gave me something to eat." He had other memories too, but they were even more vague, nothing he could put into words yet.

Father Dietrich slid the stole from around his neck and shook his head. "I took a plane and I only got here a few minutes ago." He said. "I wish I could tell you more, but I know less than you do."

Kurt shifted so he could look out the window and shivered. "I don't like not knowing," he said.

"Here." Father Dietrich picked up the blanket that had been tossed aside while the doctors worked. He put it around Kurt's shoulders. Kurt took the edges and wrapped himself tighter. It was so strange to be sitting on Margali's bed in this trailer that had never really felt like home; at least not in the same way their old one had. And it was even stranger the way everyone was acting, both frightened of him and angry with him at the same time. At least Father Dietrich seemed to be back to normal.

"I'm glad you're here." Kurt said.

Father Dietrich smiled. "So am I."

"And, I like your shirt."


	43. chapter 42

**Chapter 42: Runaways**

_I just don't understand it. A blue circus acrobat gets attacked in broad daylight and nobody saw it? Even New York wasn't that bad._

Wolfgang wasn't sure what pulled the circus together in the days following, but somehow they did it. He arranged with Terry for Circus Gehlhaar to keep its practice times so that they could begin to prepare a show without Kurt. Though there was talk of having him continue to perform in a less active version of his part in the end it was decided that it would be better for Kurt if he stayed on the sidelines until his arm healed. Dr. Mallory still couldn't say why Kurt had suddenly started breathing again and he didn't really want to take chances. When Wolfgang told him, he couldn't tell whether Kurt was pleased or not.

Despite the different origins and backgrounds, the various circuses at the festival had been horrified by what had happened. Many of them had helped look for Kurt that night and so he had a fairly steady stream of visitors. So many that Father Dietrich, who had adopted the role of Kurt's primary care taker, threatened to post visiting hours. Oddly enough it was Christian who spent the most time with them and shared the responsibility. Not that Kurt needed much help with anything. Other than the cast on his arm and the fading bruises on his face, he appeared fine even if he still couldn't remember the details of what happened.

"Dude, you should always travel with us." Christian said to Father Dietrich one afternoon while the three of them sat in the shade outside of Margali's trailer. Christian was hunched over his small chess set. "Everyone else sucks at chess. I haven't played a good game of chess like this since I left Berlin."

"Thanks, but I don't know if my act really fits in." Father Dietrich said. He watched Christian slide a pawn forward, still balancing his finger upon it while he decided if he liked the move or not.

"Isn't it kind of disrespectful to call a priest 'dude'?" Kurt asked.

"Probably, but I don't care." Father Dietrich said. "I've been called worse."

Christian lifted his finger off the pawn. "That would be checkmate then." He said, adding a "dude" at the end with a grin.

"What? With a pawn?" Father Dietrich surveyed the board. "My God you're right." He said after a moment's inspection. "I didn't see that coming at all. I've been worried about your knight the whole time."

Christian laughed. "I know! That's why it's there. I love doing that. Pawns are your friends." He started setting up the board again. "Do you want to play?" He asked Kurt.

Kurt shook his head. Christian had already beaten him twice that day. He'd also lost against Father Dietrich once. He liked chess and could play fairly well against an average player like Wolfgang or Lars, but he couldn't hold his own against either of these two. They were far better players.

The door to the trailer opened and Amanda stepped out.

"Hi." Kurt said, looking up at her and shading his eyes.

Amanda glanced in his direction long enough to let him see she'd heard him and then looked away. "Hi Father. Christian." She said addressing each of them in turn.

"Where are you off to?" Christian asked.

"I'm meeting Brin." She said. "We're going shopping. Need anything?"

"What kind of shopping?" Christian asked with interest.

"There's all those cute little shops just in town. Since we don't have rehearsal until later, we thought we'd look around. Want to come?" She asked.

"Actually, yeah." Said Christian. He stood up. "We're done playing right?" He said to Father Dietrich.

"I think I can say I've lost enough today." Father Dietrich said.

"Cool. Kurt you want to…" Christian stopped speaking; looking back and forth from Kurt to Amanda, realizing that there was no way Kurt could have joined them, that even in best of circumstances it would have been a stupid question. "To… to hook up later?" He asked. He wondered if his attempt to keep his foot out of his mouth was too obvious. As always, Kurt was a gentleman.

"Sure." He said. "After rehearsal maybe."

"I'll see you guys later then." Christian said. He trotted after Amanda who had already started walking away.

"I think they're dating." Kurt said to Father Dietrich after they were out of sight.

"You do?"

"I don't know. Maybe. They tease each other all the time but they're always hanging out. There must be a reason she sticks around for all the abuse." Kurt said, trying to keep the edge of bitterness out of his voice.

"I imagine that would be difficult here. It's hard enough for people to make it work without all the moving around and instability." Father Dietrich said.

"Yeah." Kurt said. He spent a few minutes contemplating the chessboard that Christian had left behind. "Amanda still won't talk to me." He said.

"I know." Said Father Dietrich.

"And mom is acting all weird too. I keep asking them what's wrong and they won't tell me. I wish we'd never come here." Kurt said. "Not just because of what happened on the pier, even the boat ride was horrible."

Margali had told Father Dietrich about the ferry ride across the channel. Apparently about halfway through Amanda had gone to get something from their trailer and found Kurt lying on the floor so seasick he couldn't even stand up. "Lots of people get seasick on boats Kurt." He said.

"But I couldn't do anything about it. I had to wait until Amanda found me. She said I would feel better outside but mom wouldn't let me go. It was horrible. It's not fair." Kurt continued.

"I know it isn't." Father Dietrich said.

"I hate it here, but I don't want to have to do that all over again." Kurt said, still looking down at the board and pushing at the chessmen with his finger as he spoke.

"You won't have to." Father Dietrich promised.

Kurt looked up. "How?" He asked.

"I don't know. We'll figure something out. I promise you."

Kurt sighed and stared off into the distance, back in the direction that Amanda and Christian had gone. He wondered what was happening to him. Not long ago he had been so positive that God existed, that He loved him, that He had a plan for him. But lately Kurt's faith had been clouded by feelings of doubt. It just seemed that the older he got the clearer the limitations his appearance placed on him became. Lars, Christian, Wolfgang, Amanda, everyone he knew could go anywhere they wanted, freely, openly, without worry. It was something he could never do for if he couldn't be himself in a place like this, how could he possibly be anywhere else.

How could God create something like him and then place him defenseless in a hostile world? What sort of loving God would do such a thing?

Kurt flinched when Father Dietrich put a hand on his shoulder.

"What happened was very scary Kurt, for you and for everyone who cares about you. People deal with fear in different ways. You of all people should understand that."

Kurt frowned. He did understand that. It had been a lesson he had slowly been learning his whole life.

"It's like they're angry at me though. I wouldn't be angry at them if they almost died." Kurt said.

"I know it doesn't seem rational Kurt, but sometimes our feelings aren't. They care about you and so the idea of loosing you is very hard, so they're angry now, angry that they had to face that loss. That will fade in time." Father Dietrich said. It was the only explanation he could think off and it didn't make sense even to him, but it was the best he could do. He hoped to talk to one or both of them later, to find out the cause behind their actions.

Kurt stood up. "I'm going inside." He announced.

"Are you all right?" Father Dietrich asked.

"I'm fine. I just want to be where there aren't any people." Kurt said.

Father Dietrich had been about ask if he wanted company, but he took Kurt's hint and stayed silent. He watched Kurt close the door to the trailer and frowned. He had done the right thing in coming here and yet there were so many things he didn't understand. Rifts were forming where they shouldn't have and he still wasn't even sure what he had seen. Margali had appeared to raise Kurt from the dead. But how was that possible?

Then again it didn't matter. Kurt was alive; however it had happened was beyond his control. And yet it seemed that his family was determined to hold him responsible for it. Maybe they just needed some time, it had to be difficult living in such a close-knit community. For all the benefits he saw, perhaps now he was seeing some of the drawbacks. Either way, this was hardly an environment where Kurt could concentrate on healing from his wounds.

Father Dietrich put his chin in his hand, thinking. Maybe it was time for Kurt to run away from the circus, even if for just a little while.

It wasn't until the next day that Father Dietrich found Wolfgang. He looked harried, sitting in the office with its tapestries and posters still lying in shreds on the floor. He had the circus' date book in front of him and had just hung up the phone.

"Sorry." He said. "This is a rescheduling nightmare. Everything is going to get pushed out a week, some venues have cancelled, other's are swapping dates; it's insane." Wolfgang took a breath. "But, what can I do for you."

"What's the problem?" Father Dietrich asked.

"The contract." Wolfgang said with a sigh. "Technically, without Kurt it's a different show and they way our contracts read, a venue can claim we're in violation if they want to. It's a big pain. Makes me wish we had a lawyer."

"Surely they understand that what happened is beyond the circus' control." Father Dietrich.

Wolfgang made a face. "Sort of. They keep bringing up understudies. It's a little hard to explain that there isn't anyone on the planet who can understudy Kurt. Plus I've been in touch with the police and that's a dead end."

"What do you mean?" Father Dietrich asked.

Wolfgang heaved a great sigh. "We're looking for witnesses. We still don't know what happened to Kurt." He shook his head. "I just don't understand it. A blue circus acrobat gets attacked in broad daylight and nobody saw it? Even New York wasn't that bad. So, what did you want to talk about?"

"Kurt, actually." Father Dietrich said.

"Oh, yeah?"

"What were you planning to have him do while his arm heals?"

Wolfgang shrugged. "Do? I didn't think he'd be doing anything."

"What I mean is, the plan is just to have him ride along with the circus right?" Father Dietrich said.

"Yeah. I don't think he'll want to stay here." Wolfgang said.

"What if instead, I took him back to Hamburg with me? He could stay at the rectory with me until you get back to Europe. I thought maybe he could use a break." Father Dietrich said.

"Really? You would do that? Is that allowed?" Wolfgang asked.

"Allowed? Of course it's allowed."

"What did Margali say?"

"She said it was up to Kurt. I just thought I should check with you before I asked him." Father Dietrich said.

Wolfgang scratched his head. "I guess. What about seeing a doctor and all that?"

Father Dietrich shrugged. "I am the chaplain at three different hospitals. I do know some doctors." He said.

"Yeah, but with Kurt…"

"I'm aware of the risks," the Father interrupted.

Wolfgang nodded his head. "Okay. Yeah. When would you leave?" He asked.

"In a few days. When the circus leaves Brighton, I thought we would take the ferry to France and take the train the rest of the way." Father Dietrich said.

"Or, you could come with me." Wolfgang said, his face brightening. "I was planning on just renting a car and driving through. I could drop you off on the way."

Father Dietrich looked confused. "On the way to where?" He asked.

"Salzburg, of course." Wolfgang said.

Father Dietrich was still confused. He thought the circus was planning to stay in Britain for the next two months. "What's in Salzburg?" He asked.

Wolfgang had begun to look irritated. "My home." He said as though it was the most obvious answer in the world. "I'm going home. I can't do this anymore. I'm terrible at it."

Father Dietrich was floored. "You're quitting?" He asked in disbelief.

"I don't know if I'd call it that." Wolfgang said.

"What would you call it?" Father Dietrich cried. "Wolfgang, you can't just leave. You have a responsibility to these people. This is your job. You can't just walk away from it just because something difficult happened."

"It's not just this one thing." Wolfgang said with a sigh. "I'm not cut out for this. I thought I was, but that's just it. I'm going to get things set and then turn it all back over to Margali, you know. It just feels like a job to me now."

Father Dietrich slapped his palm against his forehead. "That's because it is a job. Even jobs you love still feel like jobs. What were you expecting? That it would be just you and Kurt driving around goofing off for the rest of your life? You told me once you wanted to put this circus on the map. Well, you did that. Didn't you realize things would change?"

"I…" But Wolfgang faltered. Was Father Dietrich actually yelling at him? "You don't understand." He said at last, "It's worse than a job; it's just too hard."

If anything, Father Dietrich's expression of disbelief became even more pronounced.

"I thought Kurt was dead okay?" Wolfgang shouted. "The way he looked in that ditch; I thought I'd killed him. I can't go through that again. No one should be expected to have to deal with something like that."

"My God, you're serious aren't you?" Father Dietrich said. "Did you honestly think that you could go though life without anything bad happening ever? That everything would always be perfect?"

Wolfgang was silent. He'd expected Father Dietrich to understand, to be supportive even. He hadn't expected this. Suddenly he was ten years old again, his own father's disapproval reflected in the priest's eyes.

"And more to the point," Father Dietrich said, "Since when is what happened to Kurt your fault? Why is it that you insist on trying to control everything? And then why do you take the blame for the things you can't?"

"What are you talking about? It's not about control." Wolfgang said. "I came to Circus Gehlhaar because my family was trying to put me in charge of one of their companies. I didn't want that kind of responsibility."

Father Dietrich slammed his fists down on Wolfgang's desk making the younger man jump. "So instead you took responsibility for the lives of several dozen people and their families? Wolfgang, that doesn't make any sense at all. Because if that's the case then why are you trying to leave?"

"I told you why. This is too hard, what happened to Kurt, trying to fix it so the circus can keep playing, all of it. I can't do it." Wolfgang said. "I thought you would understand. I thought maybe you would even help me."

"No. I won't. Life is hard Wolfgang." He said. "Do you think it was easy giving Kurt last rites? Do you think something like that is ever easy?"

"No."

"You're right, it's not. But I would do it again if I had to." Father Dietrich said.

Wolfgang shrank back into his chair. "Father, I really don't think you understand. I have to leave. I can't stay."

Father Dietrich frowned. "I can't stop you." He said, his voice calm. "But I will tell you one thing; if you chose to return to Europe, you will do so alone."

"But, I…"

"No." Father Dietrich said, without waiting to hear what Wolfgang had to say, "You'll not be traveling with us. That's final." He opened the door and turned to leave.

"I've made my decision." Wolfgang said.

Father Dietrich paused in the open doorway. "Maybe you should think about unmaking it." He said. He let the door slam shut behind him.


	44. chapter 43

_**Chapter 43: Normandy Bound**_

_"When I chose to baptize you, I promised God and myself that I would look out for you. This is part of that promise."_

Kurt stood beside Father Dietrich at the dock. Behind them the Portsmouth to Caen, France ferry's engines idled. Cars will still making a slow procession onto its decks. The circus too was packed and ready to move on, it's trucks parked in the distance.

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" Wolfgang asked.

Kurt nodded.

"I'll miss you." Brin said, giving him a peck on the cheek. "Try not to push it. I sprained my ankle once and all I wanted to do was dance. I kept re-injuring it and then it took even longer to heal. I know how hard this must be for you."

Kurt nodded in understanding, but not empathy. He knew that he should be feeling the way Brin described, but oddly enough he didn't.

"I won't be gone long." Kurt said. He traded hugs and hand shakes with Lars, James, and Sven. It was strange saying goodbye to so many people at once, almost overwhelming. He had been so excited at the prospect of staying with Father Dietrich that he hadn't realized the sacrifice it required. He'd never spent more than a few hours apart from any of these people and now it would be weeks. Kurt looked out towards the trucks, trying to catch a glimpse of Margali or Amanda, both of them were conspicuously absent from the group who had come to see them off at the dock.

"Your bags are all set." Christian said, jogging up from the opposite direction. "You can collect them when you get to France."

"Thanks Christian." Father Dietrich said.

"I've decided to stay." Wolfgang announced, "with the circus."

Kurt looked confused. Father Dietrich raised his eyebrows in silent acknowledgement of his choice, but said nothing. There was nothing to say. He could hardly congratulate Wolfgang for reversing a decision he never should have made in the first place.

Christian looked at the two of them appraisingly and started laughing.

"Yes?" Father Dietrich asked.

Still laughing Christian said, "This is so great. You guys have to play some practical jokes on people. Like, stand on either side of someone and argue about whether they should sleep with their neighbor's wife or something. Or, Father you could spill your holy water on Kurt and he could pretend he was melting." He did a quick imitation of the Wicked Witch of the West's famous exit from Wizard of Oz.

Christian's performance was met with stunned silence. "Oh come on," he said. "Tell me you weren't all thinking the same thing."

After another moment of uncomfortable silence, Father Dietrich cleared his throat. "I'm sure we were all thinking along the same lines Christian. It's just that you were the only one with enough bad taste to say it aloud." He said.

Christian made a face. "Well, that's what I'm for I guess. Sorry Father. I was trying to lighten the mood."

"It's quite alright." Father Dietrich turned to Kurt. "Ready?" He asked.

Kurt nodded, pulling up his hood.

He followed Father Dietrich down the gangplank and as he stepped on board gave a last look out at the brightly painted trucks of Circus Gehlhaar. It was a lot harder to watch them leave than he was expecting. After so many years spent traveling in those trucks he never thought he'd see them pull away without him.

They had only been traveling for a few hours when Father Dietrich found himself alone, the seat beside him against the window of the ferry's passenger compartment empty. Though most of the passengers arrived by car, he and Kurt were some of the few to walk on. Six hours at sea was too long to spend sitting in the below in the cramped car park, so the ferry's top deck was equipped with a large lounge and a separate compartment with seats for ticketed walk on passengers. It was mainly empty and they found a pair of seats by the window.

Kurt took the window seat and for a few moments busied himself with a blanket, curling up on the seat to face the window and wrapping it around himself with a practiced nonchalance. When he was done, Father Dietrich could only see Kurt's silhouette and it appeared that Kurt was simply an average passenger taking a nap. He sat down beside him and it wasn't long before the hum of the engines had lulled him to sleep as well and so Father Dietrich was surprised when he woke up to see Kurt's blanket lying empty on his seat.

A quick inventory of the boat decks found Kurt towards the ferry's bow, standing at the railing. It wasn't hard to recognize him since he was the only one wearing a long winter coat on such a bright summer day and the fact that he had given up fighting with the wind to keep his hood from blowing off made it even easier.

"How are you feeling?" Father Dietrich asked as he leaned against the railing.

"Terrible" said Kurt. "It's not fair. I was so excited; I'd never been on a boat and I love all those old movies of Wolfgang's. You know, Captain Blood, The Sea Hawks, Scaramouche; adventure on the high seas. I thought only people with poor balance got sea sick."

Father Dietrich shrugged. "So did I."

"Last time, on the way to Britain, everybody kept saying I would feel better if I went above decks" Kurt said. "So this time I came out here."

"And do you feel better?"

Kurt shook his head. "Not really." He put his elbows on the railing and rested his chin in his hands. "It just feels like the whole world keeps sliding away. I can't explain it. How much longer do we have?"

Father Dietrich looked at his watch. "About four more hours. I didn't mean to fall asleep; that's what happens to me on boats." He laughed. "When I was in the military we spent a month on an American aircraft carrier and I got nicknamed 'the sleeping priest'. It was a little embarrassing."

"That doesn't sound as bad as 'the vomiting blue acrobat'," Kurt said dolefully.

Father Dietrich laughed. "No, you're right. I think I got off light considering."

Kurt started to laugh as well, but then stopped suddenly. "Oh no, not again." He mumbled and moved a few feet away to quietly retch over the side. When he was finished he turned around and sat down on the deck with his back against the railing.

"I think I officially hate this." Kurt said.

Father Dietrich sat down next to him. "I still have those pills that Dr. Mallory gave you," he said.

Kurt sighed. "The ones that will make me 'drowsy as hell, but I won't be sick'? No thanks. That man lives to put me to sleep."

"How bad could it be? It's not like I'll be awake to keep you company." Father Dietrich said. "I appear to be reprising my role as 'the sleeping priest' quite faithfully so far."

The boat lurched almost imperceptibly, but Kurt shut his eyes anyway as though contemplating whether to take up Father Dietrich's offer or just throw himself over the railing and get it over with. "Okay." Kurt said at last, "how much worse can it get?"

Father Dietrich stood up and then helped Kurt to his feet. There really was something about boats that screwed up Kurt's normally infallible sense of balance. It made Father Dietrich wonder if Kurt's perception of the world went beyond what was considered normal; like the way they said dogs could sense the magnetic poles of the earth, and that maybe somehow being on water disconnected him from it. It certainly helped explain why someone who could dance on a wire only a little thicker than a pencil and turn quadruple somersaults without getting dizzy could barely master the act of walking while on board a ferry.

The cutting of the engine was what made Father Dietrich open his eyes. Outside the window, he could see the last of the cars streaming from the ferry ramp onto the dock and away, a mixed batch of British and European license plates crowding onto the streets of Caen, France. From here they would catch a cab a short distance to the train station and then travel nearly 700 miles to Hamburg. It was a long journey and the nature of it gave it the feel of a pilgrimage even though Father Dietrich was going home.

As promised by Dr. Mallory's prescription, Kurt was curled up on the seat beside him fast asleep. Father Dietrich hated to wake him, but he shook him by the shoulder. "Time to go." He said quietly.

"Mmm? No. I'm staying right here." Kurt said with his eyes still shut.

"Okay, but that means we'll be sailing back to Portsmouth in about an hour." Father Dietrich said.

"Huh?" Kurt sat up quickly, nearly sliding off his seat. "Why didn't you say that in the first place?" He asked thickly, blinking quickly and trying to wake up. "Is this France?"

"That's right. We're almost there. We'll be in Hamburg by tonight."

Kurt stood up and looked around. The passenger compartment of the ferry was empty now, which was fine considering that Kurt's hood had fallen down and his coat was hanging off one shoulder so that it dragged on the ground. Father Dietrich had to stifle a laugh. Kurt really did cut quite a forlorn figure, he stood sleepily rubbing his eyes with his good hand, his other in a cast that had since been scribbled with everyone's well wishes.

"Not a very fun week." Father Dietrich said straightening out Kurt's coat and flipping the hood back over his head. He remembered Margali doing the same thing when Kurt was eight, trying cover him up and smuggle him out of the church before he could catch a glimpse of Kurt's appearance. He had been angry at her for doing it at the time, for not trusting him to see through Kurt's demonic façade and look at the person within. He was a man of God, wasn't that his job? Unfortunately she had been right and now he couldn't help but see the irony as he did the same thing. Then again, Kurt wasn't the only one who traveled in disguise. As he had for the trip out, Father Dietrich had shed his priest's collar in favor of more casual clothes.

"Ready?" Father Dietrich asked.

Kurt nodded.

"Then let's go get our things. We have an hour to catch our train." He said. They left the compartment empty and made their way through the tangle of decks and ramps until they were at last standing on French soil.

Kurt shut his eyes and exhaled. "Everything is normal again." He said.

Father Dietrich looked between Kurt and the boat. He was less than a foot away from the gangplank. "Really? That's amazing," said Father Dietrich.

"Something about being on a boat screws up my perception of up and down." Said Kurt. As if to test this theory, Kurt ignored all pretense of traveling incognito and did a backward handspring, stalling a moment to balance on his good hand he then gave a push and popped himself back onto his feet. "See, all better," he said.

Father Dietrich laughed. Though it would have given Margali or Wolfgang a heart attack, he didn't mind the stares from the milling passengers. It was the first time he'd seen Kurt actually act like Kurt since that horrible day when he arrived. He took it as a sign that they truly were putting Brighton behind them.

"Come on Nightcrawler, let's go before I start having to sell tickets." Father Dietrich said. He put his arm around Kurt's shoulder and led him away from the ferry.

"It's a much better act than my vomiting over the railing routine." Kurt commented as they walked.

"I suppose this prevents us from ever running away and offering our services on a cruise ship. In nómine Patris zzzzzzzzzz…." Father Dietrich laughed at his own joke

"Father!"

Father Dietrich shrugged. "Well, that's what it would be like, every Sunday." He said with a grin. "Confession would certainly be much improved though."

Kurt pretended to cover his ears. "I'm not hearing this." He said.

"Oh, don't be such a stick in the mud. I take my work very seriously. I don't think it's a sin to make a few jokes. It's hard work, a little laughter makes it easier."

"I can't wait to see what it's like to live at the rectory." Kurt said, changing the subject. As naïve as it sounded and despite having seen the inside of the rectory, Kurt had spent three years thinking that Father Dietrich actually lived inside the church. He'd been very disappointed when he found out the truth, mainly because he thought the church was the most amazing house ever. Even so, he was looking forward to seeing more of what Father Dietrich's life was like for as much as he loved performing, he secretly wished that there were away for him to go to seminary like Father Dietrich had, to serve God in the same way. He knew it was ridiculous, but it was his favorite dream.

"You look happier than I've seen you look in days." Father Dietrich said. He had collected a trolley and the two of them wandered amidst the rows of luggage looking for theirs.

"I am." Kurt said. "Things were so horrible; everyone was acting so strange. Even so, I miss everyone terribly, but I'm excited about living with you. I'm glad they let me go. And that you're letting me stay." Kurt paused and smiled. "Thank you" he said, bowing his head slightly.

Father Dietrich spotted Kurt's battered leather suitcase which would have been a dull brown had it not been covered with so many decals, a record of his lifelong travels through Europe. He dropped it onto the trolley.

"It is my pleasure Kurt" Father Dietrich said, putting his finger under Kurt's chin and gently raising his head so their eyes met. "When I chose to baptize you, I promised God and myself that I would look out for you. This is part of that promise."

Kurt smiled. "I wish everyone could be like you," he said. "You're the only one who still acts like you're my friend."

"That's because I am your friend," Father Dietrich said.

It was quite a long walk to the road where they could catch a taxi to the train station. Even with trolley to carry their luggage it was still slow going. The sun had reached its apex in a cloudless sky and they were both sweating as they walked. Kurt's recovery had been nothing short of miraculous, but the trip had taken a lot out of him and he was clearly exhausted. Father Dietrich slowed his pace, but that didn't make a difference. Kurt was an athlete, and therefore didn't seem to understand toning his physical activity down a notch or two. Father Dietrich pushed the trolley over to a bench.

"What are we doing?" Kurt asked.

"Taking a little break. You look like you could use it."

Kurt shook his head. "I'm fine," he protested.

"No. You're not. I've been watching you slowly fade since we got off the boat. So, sit." Father Dietrich gestured at a bench and with a look of defeat mixed with relief Kurt slowly sat down, secretly grateful for the break.

"I can't wait to introduce you to everyone." Father Dietrich said while they sat. "It's a small parish so I'm the only priest, but there are two deacons and a grounds keeper. Plus we have a very active bible study group who meets twice a week in the church basement. I'm only providing them with the space to meet, but I often join them. They're a very bright group."

Kurt looked stricken. "I have to meet people?" He asked.

"Of course. What did you expect? There's quite a lot that goes on at the church, the place is packed during the day," said Father Dietrich. "It's something you never saw because you always joined us during the holidays. People where home with their families."

Kurt frowned. He didn't like meeting new people; he hated getting through that initial first impression, trying to gage whether or not they were afraid, horrified, or simply unbelieving, sure that he was a man in a costume. He'd taken Wolfgang's advice to heart and could usually defuse the situation if needed. Once he had made enough jokes and done enough tricks to put them at ease he was fine; it appeared that very few people were immune to the charms of the incredible Nightcrawler. He was thankful for it, but at the same time he hated it. No one else had to jump through such hoops to ensure people didn't run screaming from his presence. He felt a little better since Father Dietrich had insisted on this rest stop, but the old weariness, the one that came from being so radically different in appearance from everyone else, was back.

Yes, everything was normal again. Both the good things and the bad.


	45. chapter 44

**Chapter 44: Useless Disquises**

_"You're not the only one on this train that people are afraid of."_

Kurt looked out the window at the scenery rushing by. The closer the train came to Hamburg, the more familiar the landscape became until he could recognize familiar landmarks from earlier trips. Despite the many inconveniences it created for him, he always loved it when Margali abandoned her well-loved van in favor of the train.

Kurt had lived in Europe all his life and seen more of it than most, but it had always been through the windshield of a vehicle. And even when they stopped, he still wasn't truly free for then he viewed the world from behind the barrier that was Nightcrawler, as though the character he played was a shell around his true self. It was like seeing everything from inside a bubble, like he was some kind of rare artifact able to exist only if he remained protected.

On the train, he'd still watched the world go by through a window, but it was different. It wasn't just him and his family alone in the van, there were other people in the car with them. And while it was annoying that he had to wear shoes and pretend to sleep under a blanket the whole ride, there was a certain excitement to it. He liked going to the station, watching Margali or Amanda buy tickets for them, and then getting to sneak onto the train in his big coat. When traveling as a family, they always sat in a group of four seats facing each other and the rule was that he always got the window seat next to Margali while Amanda and Stephani had to fight over who got the window in the pair of seats across from him. That way, he could usually angle himself so he couldn't be seen at all from the aisle, but could still peak out from under the blanket to see out the window. It was true that he missed all the goofing off and roughhousing they did when traveling in their van; things which Stephani and Amanda were still free to do, he could still get in a few sneak attacks with his tail under the blankets, stifling his giggles so that his brother and sister blamed each other rather than him.

He always liked the idea of traveling with so many strangers, sharing an experience with them instead of providing one. It was the only time in his life when he was part of the audience, all of them watching the scenery pass by; getting tiny glimpses of the lives lived along the train track, like watching a film of the world. Combined with the fact that nearly all train travel had been to and from visits to Father Dietrich, he had come to associate trains and train travel with happy memories. Even so, this trip was different. This wasn't an ordinary visit to Father Dietrich's. And there were still so many questions in his mind.

What was it that what had happened to him in Brighton? He still had only the most fleeting memories, but he remembered staring at the water from the pier, not as Nightcrawler, but as Kurt Wagner, who was seventeen and happened to be a circus aerialist besides, and who liked the ocean and boats as long as he wasn't on them. The fact that he was blue, had a tail, and looked like an embodiment of what for centuries people had given the label "demon" seemed completely irrelevant. But had it been? Because the next thing he could clearly remember was that people who had known him for years were suddenly afraid of him. Even Father Dietrich had looked at him with fear in his eyes. Was that the price he had had to pay for his transgression, for daring to be himself in public for just five minutes?

Kurt frowned, it wasn't true; he did have one other clear memory. Azazel had been there. But why? Since when had Azazel ever had anything to do with him other than that single appearance when they were introduced? While Kurt had committed the sigil that Azazel had drawn in the dirt to memory, he had done so mainly to ensure that he never drew it accidentally. And yet he was sure Azazel had been there.

There was movement on the seat beside him and Kurt turned to look. Now that they were getting close to Hamburg, Father Dietrich had gone to change. Kurt hadn't liked the idea of being left alone, but since he certainly couldn't have joined him, nor asked Father Dietrich to change his clothes in the passenger compartment, he had remained silent. He was way too hot with both his hooded coat and the blanket, but he figured it was better that way so he stared out the window trying to think cool thoughts.

The sound next to him didn't sound like Father Dietrich so Kurt tried to turn and see what was going on without actually letting anyone see him, which turned out to be impossible. It was a boy about ten years old. He had dark hair, a pair of keen brown eyes, and the kind of sturdy classical features that seemed unique to Germany. He looked like what Kurt would have imagined Wolfgang looking like at that age, already handsome and destined to only become more so.

"Whoa. What are you?" The boy asked, a little too loudly.

Kurt had been trying to hold his hood over his face with his good hand. He let go. There was no point in hiding now, but there was no reason to cause a scene either. He put his finger over his lips. "Shhh. I think what you meant was 'who are you'," he said, "and it's not polite to ask unless you introduce yourself first."

The boy looked slightly taken aback. He moved as though to leave which would have been fine with Kurt, but then stood his ground. "Are you really blue?" The boy asked.

Kurt turned away. He knew it was rude, but he didn't feel like answering such obvious questions. They rode in silence for a few minutes. The boy tapped Kurt on the shoulder.

"My name is Kurt," the boy said.

Kurt turned around with mild disinterest. "That's my name too," he said. He was surprised when that boy's face lit up.

"Really? That's so cool. There's another boy named Kurt in my school, but he's mean. Are you a monster?" He asked.

Kurt shut his eyes in exasperation. "Of course not," he said, "I'm an acrobat in the circus."

"Wow. That's even cooler than being a monster!" The boy announced.

Kurt had to laugh. "I guess it is," he said.

"Is your name really Kurt too?"

"Yes." Kurt said with a nod.

The boy settled back into his seat, seeming perfectly happy to have taken up residence there. "I was named after my great grandfather. Where you named after anyone?"

"You ask a lot of questions, but yes, I was named after the strongman in our circus."

"Was he really strong?"

Kurt smiled and nodded. "He could lift one of the big tent poles all by himself. And he used to let me ride on his shoulders."

The boy nodded curtly as though he felt this was sufficient to qualify the man as strong and changed course. "How come you only have three fingers instead of five?" He asked.

"Because that's how many fingers God gave me." Kurt said.

The younger Kurt nodded again as though satisfied with this answer as well. "How come you have a hood on? Can I see what you look like?"

Kurt shook his head. "No, people are sometimes afraid of how I look." He said sadly. The truth was, he wanted nothing more than to take his hood off. He was used to wearing a lot of layers, but the cast on his arm seemed to be messing with his ability to regulate his body temperature and he was uncomfortably warm.

"That's stupid." The boy said with a frown. "Why would they be afraid of the way God made you?"

Kurt decided he didn't mind the boy all that much. At least he asked some good questions. "I honestly don't know," he said.

A woman stopped beside them and Kurt turned away quickly to look out the window again. He tried to concentrate on the scenery going by, but beside him the boy was tapping him enthusiastically on the shoulder.

"This is my mom." He said. "Mom! He's from the circus. His name is Kurt too. He's blue."

Kurt looked around and gave her a quick closed mouth smile before turning back to the window. He figured it wouldn't be long now before his new companion was gone so there was no point in being overly polite.

"Let's go honey. He doesn't want to be bothered." The woman said.

But the boy protested. "We were talking." He said. "I'm not bothering you am I?"

To Kurt's own surprise, he should his head. "It's fine, Miss," he said, still not looking directly at her. "He can stay if he likes. I don't mind."

"See" the boy Kurt said.

"Do you really perform in a circus?" The woman asked.

Kurt nodded his head and then realized that from within the hood, she probably couldn't see the gesture. "Yes," he said aloud, "I'm an aerialist and an acrobat." She didn't seem frightened of him at all. In fact, her attitude was much like her son's, curious and nothing more. It made Kurt wonder how many people out there were like her.

"Is that difficult?" She asked.

"No. I mean, it's hard work, but it's not difficult. Not for me." Kurt said. "But, I've been doing it all my life."

"Did you always look like that?" The boy asked.

"Kurt!" His mother said sternly.

Kurt jumped instinctively at the sound of his name and the boy laughed. "It's okay." Kurt said. "And yes, I have."

"That's so cool." The boy said. "I wish I looked like you. I wouldn't hide though. I'd be like…" The boy started making scary faces and postures. "Everyone would think it was really cool," he said.

Kurt watched the boy with a look of consternation. He had no idea did he?

His mother gave Kurt an apologetic shrug. "You know where I'm sitting then," she said. "If he starts bothering you, just tell him to come back and sit with me."

"I will." Kurt said. He watched her go and then looked back at his new companion who was still sitting in Father Dietrich's seat, apparently thrilled with the arrangement.

Not one to keep quiet for very long, the boy started telling Kurt stories about school, which he found very interesting. He wondered if that was what school had been like for Stephani when he was younger. Though Stephani always brought home books and papers for Kurt to see, he rarely talked about what life at school was like.

"Ah, we have a guest," a familiar voice said after they had been talking for about ten minutes. Kurt looked up and saw it was Father Dietrich, now properly attired returning to his seat. He figured they must be very close to Hamburg.

The boy smiled. "Hi," he said with a casual wave.

"His name is Kurt too." Kurt said.

"Are you really a real priest?" The younger Kurt asked.

Father Dietrich laughed. "I'm afraid so," he said.

The boy got up so Father Dietrich could sit down and then sat on the arm of Father Dietrich's seat, apparently not ready to leave yet. "Where are you going?" He asked.

"To my church in Hamburg." Said Father Dietrich.

"I'm going to Hamburg too! My grandparents live there." The boy shouted enthusiastically.

They continued their conversation, with the boy asking questions about everything under the sun while Kurt and Father Dietrich took turns attempting the answer them. The boy seemed thrilled to have such a unique fount of knowledge at his disposal and stepped up his questions until he had the both of them scratching their head.

"I think we maybe speaking to the next Descartes." Father Dietrich commented.

"Who's Descartes?" The young Kurt asked.

Before Father Dietrich could answer the train lurched as it rounded a sharp bend of track. The boy fell off the chair arm and landed in Father Dietrich's lap.

"Oops." Said Father Dietrich as he helped him back to his feet and brushed him off. "Maybe that's not such a good place to sit."

"It certainly is not." Said a stern voice. It was the boy's mother, whom Kurt had met a few minutes earlier.

The three of them looked up.

"This is my mom." The boy said to Father Dietrich.

To Kurt's surprise she took her son by the arm and pulled him in close to herself, laying a protect arm over his shoulders. "Don't you dare touch him again," she said glaring at Father Dietrich.

"I assure you I meant no harm." Father Dietrich said.

Kurt was speechless. It was almost like she was afraid of Father Dietrich. But why? He couldn't begin to imagine.

"Let's go Kurt" the woman said, "come back and sit with me now."

"But we were talking" the boy protested.

"Not anymore. Let's go," she said and without another word she pulled her still protesting son towards the other end of the train.

Kurt was thoroughly confused. He looked over at Father Dietrich who had taken his glasses off and rubbed a hand across his eyes.

"It's so frustrating." Father Dietrich said before Kurt could speak.

"What's frustrating, Father?"

Father Dietrich looked surprised as he put his glasses back on. "Sometimes I think you're lucky to live the life you lead," he told Kurt.

Kurt was even more confused. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"You're not constantly bombarded by opinions. Your views on the world are your own, not what you've been forced to think by reporting biased towards presenting things in the worst possible light," said Father Dietrich.

Kurt had never heard him say anything like that before. It sounded like the kind of thing Wolfgang or Christian would say. "Ummm…" Kurt started to speak, but wasn't sure what to ask.

"It is very common for the news to portray priests as…" Father Dietrich paused, " as taking advantage of the close relationship they have with their younger parishioners."

Kurt scratched his head. "What is that supposed to mean?" he asked.

"I can explain better when we get home if you like," Father Dietrich said, "but the short version is that you're not the only one on this train that people are afraid of."


	46. Chapter 45

**Chapter 45: Pilgrim**

_"If any of you feel unable to keep your mind open for the duration of his stay, I would ask that you stay home and not return until he has returned to his."_

Father Dietrich didn't usually do any entertaining in the rectory other than his yearly visits by Kurt and his family. This didn't exactly count as entertaining either though, since his guests were the entire staff and clergy of St. Stephen's. Besides the paid employees of the church, several of members from each of both the church's woman's auxiliary and the bible study group were there.

Though his plan to bring Kurt to the rectory for the summer seemed perfect at first, it wasn't an hour before he realized that it was fraught with problems. If he were living at the rectory totally alone, there would have been no difficulties. But he didn't live alone. The church was the core of a bustling and vital community all working together in service to God and for the good of society. Unless Kurt wanted to spend all of his days hiding in his room, which was hardly a therapeutic environment, he was going to have to get to know everyone and they him.

Father Dietrich had almost scrapped the plan for good; it was simply too much to ask. He had gone to bed one night deciding that it wasn't even worth mentioning the idea and woke up the next morning feeling horrible. If it had been Lars or Amanda or Wolfgang who had required his aid, Father Dietrich wouldn't have thought twice. And yet here he was prepared to deny Kurt the opportunity because he was too afraid to face the consequences that would come from admitting the acquaintance of a "demon". He'd never felt more ashamed in his life.

And so Father Dietrich steeled his resolve and once the necessary permissions were in place from Kurt's end, began to carefully cultivate the seeds of Kurt's introduction. He had done so cautiously, by beginning with a careful inventory of those who would be most likely to accept Kurt for whom he was. He wanted those who could look past the demonic exterior and see a young man whose love of God ran through the deepest core of him and know that they were looking into the eyes of a soul whose gentleness and kindness knew no bounds.

It was a tall order.

It was true that the Father had a slight advantage in that he had looked for these very traits in his staff, but still, Kurt was a lot to take in at once. He placed the most hope with Alexandra Fraser, the Parish's director of religious education. She was very young and Father Dietrich thought she would have made a wonderful priest had she not been female. Her mother was South African and had married a German geologist who had gone to the continent to study its wealth of precious gems, in particular a mine that was bursting with sapphires. She was the daughter of a mine foreman and they had fallen in love. It was like the stuff of storybooks, Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending, Father Dietrich had heard the story more times than he could count and it still warmed his heart. And so he named Alexandra, who herself had to contend with the triple obstacle of being black, African, and female in her struggle to fit into their primarily Caucasian male dominated pastoral staff, to the position of Kurt's ambassador.

Even before they were on the ferry to France, Father Dietrich had been in contact with Alex, setting the stage for their arrival. He wanted at least one person to know the whole story in detail before they arrived. Plus, he valued Alex's opinion and so he needed her to help him plan Kurt's introduction. Now, nearly two weeks later, Alex and her peers were all assembled in his small living room, a casual group sitting on the furniture but those who couldn't find seats reclined on the floor as well. He could hear them from the kitchen as they chatted amongst themselves.

"He didn't tell me exactly what was going on, but I think it has something to do with that boy in the pictures." He could hear Alex saying, being purposefully vague. He could pick out her voice anywhere, the German language made even harsher by the strong vowels of her native African accent.

"Kurt? The one from the circus?" Karl, his second deacon asked.

"That's the one." Alex said. "I heard he was injured recently and that's why the Father took that trip to England."

There were murmurs of ascension and understanding and so Father Dietrich took that moment to open the door from the kitchen. "Coffee's ready." He called down the hall. Conversation ceased and was replaced by the sound of footsteps. There were a few chaotic moments in the kitchen where everybody collected coffee along with rolls and croissants before they slowly trickled back into his living room. Father Dietrich knew that Kurt could hear all this from his room in the converted third floor attic. He could only imagine the thoughts going through Kurt's head.

Father Dietrich turned and faced the group how had retaken their seats and looked him expectantly. "Well, here goes." He thought and with a silent prayer that God would get him through this without screwing things up. He took a deep breath.

"Nearly ten years ago, a small circus rented the lot behind our church to park their trailers and use as their living quarters during a series of performances outside of Hamburg." He said. "They've parked there every year ever since." Father Dietrich tried to keep his voice natural, conversational, and not let it fall into the authoritative tone he used for sermons. He waited for a response, and when nobody spoke, he continued speaking.

"I went to their performance and they had the most extraordinary young performer. His name was Kurt Wagner and he wore a very elaborate costume, like a blue demon. And despite his young age he put on an impressive performance. I left the show thinking that 'the Incredible Nightcrawler', as he was called, might make for an interesting sermon topic, perhaps about not judging a book by its cover.

"Two days later he was standing in my church and I discovered that his costume wasn't a costume at all…"

"That's why you have these pictures." Karl interjected, finally understanding why Father Dietrich kept the pair of photographs, "He's this little boy." He held up the picture of Kurt in his confirmation clothes, grinning at the camera. This was going well, Father Dietrich thought, Kurt hardly looked menacing in that picture.

"That's right." Father Dietrich said. "And looks can be deceiving, because several days after our introduction, he asked me to baptize him. He was eight years old. Now he's seventeen."

He went on for a few minutes, answering questions about Kurt and the circus, trying to keep it in a semblance of chronological order so not to be confusing. Meanwhile the photos of Kurt and his family were passed around. They spoke for nearly an hour before he reached the present.

"About a week ago he was attacked and left for dead in Brighton, England." Father Dietrich said. There was a collective gasp. Alexandra put her hand over her mouth. "He has a long recovery ahead of him, not just from his injuries, but from the shock of what happened to him. I don't think he totally understands it."

"Has it never happened before? I mean, the way he looks…" It was Roberto, the leader of the church's study group who also shared the responsibility for teaching catechism with Alexandra.

"As miraculous as this seems, no, it hasn't. The circus has protected him so meticulously from the outside world that though he has experienced prejudice since the day he was born, he has endured very little violence. It is my hope that we can provide for him here a place where he can both recover from his injuries and make his peace with God, hopefully to come to an understanding of what happened to him." Father Dietrich said.

Heads nodded in understanding of the situation, but no one spoke.

"Now we come to the most important part of why I brought you here," Father Dietrich said. "Kurt arrived yesterday and if any of you feel unable to keep your mind open for the duration of his stay, I would ask that you stay home and not return until he has returned to his. I will forgive you your intolerance in hopes that you use the time to reflect on the seriousness of your action."

His gazed circled the room, trying to judge the character of those he worked with and prayed with everyday, because the time for discussion was over. No one made a sound. No one looked away. It was time for Kurt to make his introduction.

The rectory was small house with many tiny rooms. The most spaciously laid out was the first floor, which mainly consisted of the living room, an anteroom, and the kitchen. The second floor had two bedrooms; Father Dietrich's own room and a comfortable but Spartan guest bedroom where visiting clergy could stay. Accessible by a narrow staircase was a third story that had once been the attic. It had been divided in half to provide a second smaller guest room and Father Dietrich's cluttered study. Dormer windows let in some light but the ceilings sloped sharply downward all the way to the floor.

The third floor guest room was where Kurt always stayed. He was used to sleeping in the top bunk where the ceiling wasn't more the a few feet from his nose. He could never relax sleeping in a regular bed on the floor. He felt oddly vulnerable with the ceiling so high above him and so Kurt always choose the cozy attic bedroom as his. Besides the comforting slope of the ceiling, Kurt liked the tattered old quilts on the bed and the chintzy flowered wallpaper. He was especially fond of a hand made stuffed toy, an ancient floppy dog that Father Dietrich's mother had made him out of blue calico when he was a boy that always lay across the foot of the bed.

Kurt was sitting on the bed cross-legged and barefoot when Father Dietrich arrived. His tail was draped over the side and onto the floor where it twitched to it's own rhythm. Long ago Father Dietrich noticed that whenever Kurt was under stress he tended to revert to animalistic behavior and postures such as pacing or twitching his tail like a cat. It was one of Kurt's many odd quirks and it made Father Dietrich wonder if there were more to him than his unusual appearance; that Kurt's differences were much deeper and more profound. Kurt was oblivious to all of this of course. He was praying the rosary, carefully maneuvering the well-worn beads through his sturdy fingers as he murmured to himself softly in German. He waited for Kurt to look up.

"Everyone's ready." Father Dietrich said when he had Kurt's attention. "Would you like to come down?"

Kurt didn't move.

"They're the ones I told you about, and I told them a little bit about you." Father Dietrich said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "They want to meet you."

Kurt remained silent, a series of conflicting emotions crossing over his face like it always did while he was making a difficult choice. It made Father Dietrich realize that over the years he had known Kurt, he had gone from seeming older than his years to younger. When he was eight he seemed overly serious, like a small adult, but now that he was seventeen he hardly seemed like someone who was only a year away from adulthood.

This was the downside of being raised in such a sheltered environment. Within the circus community Kurt was confident, outgoing, and a consummate professional, but out in the world he was lost, seemingly stuck in early adolescence. Father Dietrich had never worried about it, but now he wondered if perhaps he should have. Kurt was no longer a child who happened to look like a mischievous blue imp; his demonic features were much harder to forgive on an adult. He had gone from cute to scary in a world he hardly understood, something that had already proven itself to be a dangerous combination.

Kurt sighed and shook his head. "I can't," he said sadly. "I can't do it. I'm sorry."

Father Dietrich moved closer to him on the bed. "But why Kurt? You can't hide forever. There's no reason for you to hide now. Please, you have to trust me."

Kurt shook his head a second time. "I'm sorry Father," he said.

Father Dietrich was surprised to see Kurt trying to blink back tears. He sighed. He couldn't force him to come down; dragging Kurt into the room kicking and screaming wasn't exactly the type of impression he had hoped Kurt would make.

"All right." He said at last. "You can stay up here today, but you will meet everyone and next time I won't let you off so easy."

"Thank you." Kurt said gratefully.

"It's been a rough few weeks hasn't it?" Father Dietrich said.

Kurt nodded in silence.

"We all have them." He tousled Kurt's hair. "Everybody does. It just makes the good times seem even better right?" Father Dietrich stood up when Kurt didn't answer. "I need go back downstairs now." He said. "Are you going to be all right?"

"I'll be fine." Kurt said.

Father Dietrich nodded and got up. He left quietly, closing the door gently as Kurt resumed his praying.

Only a few minutes had gone by when there was a knock on the door. Kurt got up to answer it, his fingers still marking a place on his rosary. He was expecting Father Dietrich, but instead there was a woman standing there. Kurt froze; he wasn't expecting anyone but Father Dietrich. He had promised hadn't he? Then again, she was beautiful. Her dark skin was nearly the same shade as Kurt's only in a hue that was the color of coffee. She wore her hair in braids that were pulled back into a loose, but neat ponytail. But the most striking feature was her eyes, they were large and expressive with irises of such a deep brown that they were nearly black. The reflected light stood out on them in sharp contrast.

"Hello Kurt," she said, "May I come in?"

It took Kurt a moment to find his voice. He'd seen dark skinned people before. Kiwi and Amiri had skin that was nearly the same shade, but it was more than that. She had a regal bearing and those giant eyes appeared to be able to penetrate directly into his soul. And her voice; Kurt had never heard an accent like that. It was so strong and had such presence; like the mere sound of it could stop evil in it's tracks and leave it quaking in fear.

"Hello," he said at last.

Alex smiled. "I'm Alexandra Fraser," she said as she held out her hand. "But everyone calls me 'Alex'. I work with Father Dietrich here."

Kurt moved away to perch himself back onto the edge of the bed. "I don't mean to be rude, but Father Dietrich said I didn't have to meet anyone today." Kurt said.

Alex laughed. "I guess he did say that." She said, "But when he told us you weren't coming down I was so disappointed that I had to come up. I hope that's all right."

Kurt sighed. So far she hadn't run from the room screaming or tried to set him on fire so she couldn't be that bad. In fact, Maria had said almost the same thing when he refused to open the door for her and he liked Maria a lot. "It's all right," he said quietly.

She wandered around the room. Kurt had set some of his things out and hung up a few of Wolfgang's posters, ones that had escaped Wolfgang's doctoring of his hands ever since James had met him at the airport. "What's it like, the circus?" She asked stopping to give one a closer inspection.

Kurt stared at her. It was such a huge question. Did she mean what was performing like? Or did she want to know what it was like to grow up as a member of a traveling circus? Or maybe she wanted to know what the people in the circus were like. He wasn't sure. Alexandra turned around.

"You grew up with them right? Did you enjoy it?" She asked.

Kurt smiled. He did enjoy it. His childhood was probably the only time when he felt he was normal; back then he had no idea how his appearance would affect the course of his life, it was the only time when he was just Kurt, when he didn't have to become Nightcrawler every night. And as much as he loved to perform, he missed the simplicity of his earliest memories with the circus.

"It was the happiest time of my life." He said.

"What about now?" Alex asked.

Kurt was silent again. What could he say? He loved performing as much as ever, but it was the all or nothing nature of it that bothered him. "Things are just more complicated." He said.

Alex laughed. "Aren't they always." She said.

"Where are you from?" Kurt asked suddenly. "I've never heard anyone talk like you do."

"Kenya. That's where I grew up."

"That's in Africa" Kurt said, "That's a long way from here. Do you miss it?"

Alex nodded. "Yeah, I do," she said. "What about you? Do you miss your circus?"

Kurt looked around the room, at the posters he had put on the walls to make it feel like home, the silly wallpaper, and the fact that for the next two months the room wouldn't move and he wouldn't have to perform or even practice. They were the two main factors that had defined his life and it was hard to imagine them not happening. He thought about standing on the deck of the ferry and watching the painted trucks pulling onto the road without him. "Ever since I watched them leave without me." Kurt said.

Father Dietrich picked up the last of the plates and carried them into the kitchen.

"So, what's he like?" Karl asked Alexandra. She had been the only one to talk to Kurt; everyone else had stayed in the living room. He never did come down. Now they were the only two remaining.

Alex pulled on her coat, "He's like anyone who's had to hide who they really are their whole life. I can't even imagine it."

"Why did Father Dietrich bring him here?" Karl said.

Alex shrugged. "I don't think he had anywhere else to go. And Father Dietrich likes Kurt. He's always spoken of him very fondly."

"But why couldn't Kurt have stayed with the circus?"

Alex shrugged. "Other than the reasons the Father told us earlier?"

"Maybe something more happened, something he's not telling us." Karl said.

"You'll have to ask Father Dietrich if you want to know." Alex said. She opened the door. "But I think he did the right thing."

"But why is he hiding then?"

"Maybe you should take a closer look at those pictures." Alex said.

"But if it's nothing more than his appearance… What if it is something more?" Karl said, leaning close, almost whispering.

Alex frowned at him, but said nothing. "I have to go." She said after staring him down for nearly a minute with her stern dark eyes. The she dipped the tips of her fingers into the small Fount of holy water Father Dietrich kept at the door. She made the sign of the cross, the water flinging from her fingers harder than she meant it to. " I don't want to be late, and this conversation is pointless," she said and let the door shut behind her.

"What's going on?"

Karl turned around. Father Dietrich was standing in the living room, apparently finished with whatever needed doing in the kitchen.

"I'm sorry, I should have been helping you." Karl said, quickly collecting his and Alexandra's cups and carrying them into the kitchen.

"What's going on?" Father Dietrich asked again, following him.

Karl put the cups and saucers into the sink and turned around. "I just don't think this is a good idea."

"What's not a good idea?" Father Dietrich said.

"You know what I'm talking about. Why wouldn't Kurt come down? What's he afraid of?"

"Attitudes like yours I expect," said Father Dietrich sitting down at the table.

Karl stared out the window over the sink; he could just see the edge of the garden where Alexandra had begun to overturn the dirt. They had a grounds keeper, but only she was allowed to tend to her small garden, which, every summer became the centerpiece of the church grounds.

"You're… Impractical" Karl said.

"I'm what?" Father Dietrich asked with a short laugh.

"Impractical. First you run off in the middle of the night to minister to a circus and now you've brought a circus freak to live with here."

Father Dietrich stood up so fast his chair knocked back into the wall. "Did I just hear you correctly?" He asked.

Karl looked immediately chastised. "I apologize. He's a talented performer. You said. But this is a church."

Father Dietrich looked around. "Actually, this is the rectory. It is also my home."

Karl closed his eyes. "I just don't think this was a good idea." He said. "What if the diocese finds out?"

"I'm sorry, did you not hear my little speech earlier? Because you still seem to be here." Father Dietrich said.

"I'm not going to tell anyone or do anything if that's what you're worried about. And if Kurt ever does come out of hiding, won't treat him poorly. I'll do as you asked." Karl said.

"I suppose I should be relieved." Father Dietrich said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

"I'm just trying to be reasonable. You don't know how the diocese will react. And I'm trying to understand why you did this."

"He's a practicing catholic and a member of this church in good standing. I'm his priest and my purpose in bringing him here was to help him heal from wounds to both his body and soul, as a priest should." Father Dietrich emphasized the last part of the sentence. "And what's more, as a Christian, it is my obligation."

"Moral obligation?" Karl repeated. "What are you talking about?"

"When Kurt was baptized there was no Christian in good standing who was also a member of his circus. He needed a sponsor. So I am also his Godparent."

"You're what?" Karl asked in disbelief.

"You heard me," Father Dietrich said.

To his surprise, the expression of outrage on Karl's face softened and he give a rueful laugh. "I swear Father, sometimes I think God put your heart where your brain is supposed to be."

"Is that so bad?" Father Dietrich asked.

"No, it's not. It's why I was so honored when you picked me as Deacon here." Karl said and smiled.

Father Dietrich returned the gesture, finally understanding that Karl's intent was not to insult him or Kurt. Still, it paid to be cautious. He took Karl by the shoulder and steered him towards the front hallway. "If you want to take that two month sabbatical, you can feel free," he told him.

"Father, I'm just trying to warn you," Karl said. "I don't want you to make a mistake you may regret someday."

"I know," Father Dietrich said sadly and then leaving his Deacon by the door, he started towards the stairs. He turned his wrist to check his watch. "I think your sabbatical started about five minutes ago."

"Father…"

Father Dietrich turned around. "I know," he said. "Your message is loud and clear. Now, I've got work to do." He heard the door close as he reached the second floor and it made him wonder why the right choices were always the hardest to carry out

Author's note: The resemblance between Alexandra Fraser and Storm is entirely coincidental. She is entirely based upon one of the chaplains at the hospital where I stayed a few weeks ago. She made fairly regular visits to my room and we had some very interesting conversation about religion and her role as a woman and an African American in the clergy. But it's a convenient accident, no?

And one more: Bluefooted did this great drawing with Nightcrawler sleeping on a bed with a stuffed blue patchwork dog. I loved the image and shamelessly stole it. The scene she drew never actually appears in the story; I just liked the idea of there being a blue stuffed animal on his bed. Sort of an homage if you will…


	47. chapter 46

**Chapter 46: Nightmares**

_"Most people wouldn't call that a nightmare at all,"_

Mornings at the rectory were blissfully quiet compared to those at the circus. Before Brin, Kurt had been the circus' sole early morning riser. Now he shared his mornings with her and though he didn't mind it, he liked the rectory even better. His window faced east and so he woke with the sun most mornings, the room filled with orange light. Father Dietrich was a deep sleeper and on all days but Sunday, usually came down a few hours after Kurt had been up. He was something of a night owl and though Kurt himself was fairly nocturnal, he usually fell asleep to the sound of Father Dietrich in his study, the room across from his on the third floor.

The rectory had an old deep claw footed tub. It was the classic European tub; with a handheld sprayer that hung on a hook like a telephone. It was deep enough that Kurt could put his whole body including his head underwater if he wanted. Kurt was used to fairly limited bathing facilities so that even the plain cement shower building in Brighton had seemed like an incomparable luxury. He could only imagine the kind of jealousy he was engendering from Brin, getting a whole summer in a place with a bathtub.

It was a typical morning. Father Dietrich wasn't up yet; the house was utterly silent. Kurt filled the bath and got in. He'd only been soaking for a minute or two when he noticed that the water was turning blue. At first Kurt thought it was his reflection, but a second glance made it obvious that it wasn't, that the water was turning opaque. He wasn't sure what was doing it actually, but it was the same shade of blue he was. To test his theory Kurt used a washcloth and rubbed the skin on his arm, more blue came off making a stain on the once white cloth. It was rubbing off of him. Somehow, he was shedding. It was morbid curiosity that made Kurt try rubbing even harder and with soap this time. To his amazement, he could see what looked like pink flesh under the blue fur that had covered his body since he was born.

He turned his attention to his hand and started working on it. It was the hand with a cast on it and Kurt had forgotten to protect it with a plastic bag. Even though the doctor had said this new kind of cast could get wet, he had suggested covering it anyway. Unexpectedly, the cast peeled away though the minute Kurt put water on it, practically dissolving the moment the water touched it. He now had his entire right hand exposed for the first time in weeks. With the same curious drive as before, he set to work on it with the soap and the washcloth. As he expected, bits of blueness started to fade away. Then he felt something break loose and he was able to peel away a bit of blue furred skin from one of his fingers. Kurt's mouth opened in amazement. The bit that had fallen off revealed perfect normal pink skin underneath.

There was a loose edge now and he grabbed it, peeling off larger and larger bits. They fell into the water, floating on top of it like tiny icebergs. When Kurt had pulled enough bits off he held out his hand in astonishment. One of his fingers was its usual thick blue self but he had revealed the other to be two slender pink digits that had been hidden beneath his fur. All this time and he was perfectly normal.

Kurt could feel himself starting to shake. How could this be? Why hadn't anything like this happened before? Had he honestly spent his entire life hiding when he could have been normal? That all he had to do was take a bath and he could have avoided a lifetime of ridicule and prejudice.

He looked at his hand again, at the strange pink digits peeking out from what he knew to be him. This was wrong. This wasn't him inside and there was also the horrific realization that the bits of blue skin and fur floating around the tub were off for good. He could finish what he started, but he could never be himself ever again.

Kurt tried to scream but he couldn't, he couldn't seem to inhale enough air to get any volume; he cries came out strangled and nearly silent. After several minutes of struggling he took a deep breath and cried out at the top of his lungs.

Father Dietrich was still half asleep but he was able to follow the cries that had woken him to Kurt's room on the floor above. He staggered up the stairs and turned on the light.

"Kurt! What's wrong?" He asked.

Kurt silenced himself mid-scream and looked around in confusion. He held his hands out and stared at them. "It was just a dream." He said.

"What?" Father Dietrich asked. "What was a dream?"

"I had a nightmare." Kurt said breathlessly. "I had a dream that I… That I wasn't me inside."

Father Dietrich sat on the edge of Kurt's bed. "What do you mean?" He asked.

"It was like I could peel myself away and see who I really was underneath." Kurt said, the details of the nightmare already fading from his mind.

"And who were you that it made you start screaming?" Father Dietrich asked.

Kurt shook his head in confusion. "I wasn't anyone," he said. "I was normal. I looked just like everyone else."

Father Dietrich looked quizzical. "Most people wouldn't call that a nightmare at all," he said.

"I guess. But it scared me anyway." Kurt rubbed his eyes. "But I'm okay now" he said.

"Are you sure?" Father Dietrich asked, resting his hand on Kurt's shoulder.

Kurt nodded his head. "Yeah. I'll be fine," he said.

Father Dietrich gave his shoulder a last squeeze and stood up. He went to the door. "Come get me if you need anything" he said.

"I will," Kurt said.

Father Dietrich shut out the light and Kurt listened to his footsteps as they retreated downstairs. He lay back in bed staring at the ceiling. There were only a few feelings and images remaining from the dream that had been so vivid in his mind only moments ago. What a strange dream it had been. And like Father Dietrich, he too wondered why it had been frightening to look like everyone else.

Author's note: When I started this project, I wanted to have a story about the kind of dreams Kurt had. At first I wanted him to have dreams that looked like 1940's horror movies with people coming after him with torches and pitchforks in grainy black and white. It was originally supposed to be funny. However, that changed when one of my Nightcrawler costume makeup experiments failed. I put too much sealant in and the blue makeup formed a kind of wrinkled skin that I could peel off. I looked in the mirror as it was happening and thought to myself if this isn't Nightcrawler's biggest nightmare, I don't know what is.


	48. chapter 47

_**Chapter 47: Gardening at Night**_

_"So why not? I mean, how many times can one say the rosary anyway?"_

There was a knock on Kurt's door and he jumped. For a moment he was angry, but it faded quickly. In the circus closed doors meant the occupant was not to be disturbed. But this wasn't the circus; this was the real world where people knocked on closed doors.

"Come in." Kurt said.

He was expecting Father Dietrich, but it was Alexandra who poked her head in the door. "Gardening" she said.

"Gardening?" Kurt asked, confused.

"Yes," Alex said, stepping in. She was wearing a large floppy straw hat and carried a small crate with a handle that was filled with tools and seed packets. "It's time to plant. Care to join me?"

"Where?" Kurt asked.

"Well, in the garden of course," she said.

"You mean outside?"

Alex smiled. "That's where the garden is," she said.

Kurt shook his head. The idea of sitting outside in the sun wearing his hooded coat sounded horrible. It was real summer weather outside, hot and even a bit humid in the sun. The cast on his arm only made it worse. "That's okay," he said.

"Have you ever planted a garden?" Alex asked.

"No, but…" Kurt trailed off. He actually did want to help her. He knew exactly the spot she was talking about. It was a small, protected area on the far side of the church where a statue of the Blessed Virgin stood over a small congregation of flowering plants and vegetables. He had always liked sitting there as a child. But how could he possibly go outside without being covered? So far he'd evaded Father Dietrich's attempts to introduce him to anyone but Alexandra. This meant that he was constantly dodging the church staff and as long as he could find a place where no one could see him to teleport from, he was fine.

But he couldn't do that if he was out in the garden with another person.

"You don't want anyone to see you," Alex said matter-of-factly.

"Yeah," Kurt said, nodding.

"What about tonight then?" She asked.

"Tonight?" Kurt looked confused again.

"Sure. We can plant the garden tonight. I don't exactly need to work on my tan, what about yours?"

Kurt stifled a laugh. "No, my tan's good," he said.

"So why not? I mean, how many times can one say the rosary anyway?"

Kurt looked down at the beads in his hand. She did have a point. He'd gotten in the habit of saying the rosary when there was nothing else to do. It was a good way to fill time and since he barely had any free time with the circus, he could usually say the whole thing over the course of a week. But here he had nothing but free time so his average was considerably higher.

"Okay," he said at last. "What time?"

"Tonight. After the sun has gone down. You don't have plans to be anywhere right?" Alex said.

Kurt smiled and shook his head. "I'll be here," he said.

As promised, Kurt met Alex in the garden that night. Together they took the flats of seedlings that she had started in the warmth of the small shed that sat next to the rectory and carefully placed them in the dirt. Alex had the garden all planned out, flowers radiating out from the statue of Mary with vegetables along the sides and at the corners.

For the first week nothing seemed to be happening, though the seedlings got taller and sturdier, there were no flowers or vegetables and the garden required little more than watering and a bit of weeding. It wasn't long though before the plants exploded into bloom, surrounding the Virgin with color and life.

By the time there were vegetables to pick, Kurt had been living at the rectory for over a month. He had the routine down and was never seen by anyone but Father Dietrich and Alexandra. Teleportation made this easy as long as he could find a shadowy spot. He kept the door to his room locked from the inside so that he had a safe place to retreat to at all times.

The only close call was when a contractor doing a painting estimate had caught him in the church. There was no way Kurt could teleport out of the church without the sound echoing everywhere and he certainly didn't want to be seen. Either way there would be questions. After dodging the contractor several times, he had finally resorted to teleporting around the church yelling at him in Latin, hoping to scare him away. It worked. The contractor thought the church was haunted and ran from the building. Kurt's last teleport was to his room and he vowed to be more careful after that.

Even with all the hiding, Kurt was surprised by how comfortable he'd gotten. He spent most evenings in the garden, the light from Father Dietrich's study casting a soft yellow glow over the whole yard. After he was done, he usually visited with Father Dietrich in his study, listening to the progress of that week's homily.

"We have peppers now." Kurt said, standing in the doorway of Father Dietrich's study. They were the slowest growing. They had had small green tomatoes on the vines within a few weeks, but it had taken most of the summer for the peppers to ripen to the point where they could be picked.

Father Dietrich swiveled his chair around. "Really? This is the best garden we've ever had I think."

"Alex says I have a green thumb, but I told her I thought my hands were colorful enough without that." Kurt said. He walked in and sat down in the chair next to the desk.

Father Dietrich shut the notebook he was writing in quickly. It was a red binder that Kurt had never seen before. And Father Dietrich usually typed his sermons out on the computer but that was sitting dormant off to the side.

"What is that?" Kurt asked.

Father Dietrich looked at the red notebook guiltily. "I'm procrastinating," he said glancing back at Kurt. "This isn't the sermon I'm supposed to be writing."

"What is it then?"

Father Dietrich's gaze returned to the book and he slowly opened it again. Kurt could see the Father's neat handwriting, the kind of handwriting he would never have. "They're stories; stories for children." Father Dietrich said. Kurt looked confused.

"It's an old project that I started while I was in seminary. When I was a kid I was the only one who listened during Sunday school and then when we got home, I'd tell my younger brothers all the stories from the bible that they hadn't been paying attention to. So, while I was in seminary, they said I should write them down like I used to tell them." Father Dietrich explained.

"What are you going to do with them?" Kurt asked. The binder had quite a bit of paper in it.

"They're written for children to read," Father Dietrich said, "I suppose one day I'll try and find an illustrator."

"Wolfgang!" Kurt shouted, "Wolfgang could do it. He's an amazing artist."

"Maybe." Father Dietrich said, smiling. "I don't think they're quite ready for that yet."

"Are they the ones you told me when I was little?" Kurt asked. One of his fondest memories was from when he was eight, sitting in Father Dietrich's church and listening to him telling him about Jesus' life. He knew first hand that Father Dietrich's brothers were correct; the priest was a really good storyteller.

"Some of them, and I've written some new ones." Father Dietrich said. "I'll let you read them someday."

"I'd like that," Kurt said. He watched sadly as Father Dietrich opened a drawer and put the notebook inside. As he was closing the drawer, Father Dietrich stopped.

"You're only going to be with us only two weeks longer aren't you?" He said.

Kurt nodded gloomily. "Ten days," he said.

Instead of shutting the drawer, Father Dietrich reached back in. He took the book and handed it to Kurt. "I suppose I could use another opinion, someone to do a bit of editing maybe" he said. "I trust you."

Kurt took the book in his hands, suddenly afraid that he might rip the pages. "Do you mean it?" he asked.

"Of course," Father Dietrich said.

Kurt beamed at him. "Thank you," he said. He had an urge to pull the older man into an embrace, but resisted it. "And thank you for everything.'"

"It's been my pleasure Kurt." Father Dietrich gave Kurt's unruly curls a quick tousle.

"I'm going to read them now," Kurt said.

Father Dietrich watched him leave and could see through his door across the hall when Kurt threw himself down on his stomach on the bed. Within a few minutes he was reading contentedly, his chin cupped in his palms and his tail twitching languidly. Father Dietrich could see the rosary that he'd given Kurt after his baptism, glinting in the light of the lamp from his bedside table. He noticed that Kurt kept it close at hand, usually wrapped around his wrist, most of the time.

He looked so perfectly at ease, like he was home. Father Dietrich just hopped that when the time came, Kurt would want to return to Circus Gehlhaar.


	49. chapter 48

**Chapter 48: Traumatic Incident Number 5**

>I>"No matter how you name it, you are uniquely suited to carry my mantle. You're voice, your appearance, and your natural flair for the dramatic. It is only a matter of time."

Outwardly, Kurt appeared happy. Or at least he hoped he did. And in some ways, he was. He loved being able to go to mass regularly. And he enjoyed the time he spent with Father Dietrich and with Alexandra. The only problem was nighttime. He had nightmares all the time, not as bad or bizarre as the one where his skin was coming off, but enough that he woke up every time.

They were about what happened on the beach and more specifically who had come to visit him there. He was sure it was Azazel now and that Azazel had tried to convince him to come to hell. At least that's what he his dreams were about. But there was no way he could be sure. He just couldn't remember. And so one night he decided that it was time for his questions to be answered, not just about the beach, but all of them.

He had no problem sneaking out of the rectory after dark, it sometimes seemed to Kurt that he had been created first for stealth and that his abilities as a circus performer had been an afterthought. It was easier now that Father Dietrich had taken him to a doctor to get that horrible cast removed. He hadn't liked that saw the doctor had used one bit, but he was glad to be rid of it. It made climbing much easier and it was nice to be able to use his right hand again.

He went to the open stretch of field where the circus always camped when they visited Hamburg. Now it was vacant, just a flattened area with a few trees, the last of their fall leaves clinging to them. Kurt shivered; it was cold without a jacket. And despite his appearance, the soft blue fur that covered his body did nothing to keep him warm.

Kurt knelt down and pulled at the dried grass. The dead roots released easily from the soil and soon he had a sizable patch of bare earth. He smoothed this with the palms of his hands and stood. With the spade of his tail he carefully traced the lines of Azazel's sigil. When he finished a shiver that he wasn't sure was from the cold passed over his entire body. For so long people, those who didn't know him, had made so many incorrect assumptions about who he was and what he could do that now, now that he was actually living up to those expectations made him slightly queasy.

Kurt stood expectantly before the scratches in the earth before he realized that he was missing the key ingredient, his own blood. He had no knife and after a fruitless search for a sharp rock returned to the sigil and sank his teeth into the fleshy part of his palm beneath his thumb. This act too frightened him somewhat. Was this why his teeth were sharpened fangs rather than flat; so he could easily access his own blood to summon demons?

He closed his eyes and held his clenched fist out over Azazel's mark, feeling his blood falling to the ground in steady drops.

BAMF!

Azazel's arrival was so abrupt that Kurt wasn't prepared for it. He opened his eyes and backed away quickly, nearly tripping over his feet. At first, Azazel stared at him in utter shock, like he didn't know how it was possible. Then a smile slowly spread over his face. "At long last you learn to pick up the phone…in a manner of speaking. To what do I owe the honor?" Azazel asked.

"I have questions for you. Questions I need answered." Kurt demanded ignoring the expression of triumph on Azazel's face.

Azazel's posture changed and he gave a familiar sort of bored shrug. Kurt was surprised to realize that he had the exact same mannerism. "Name the first question then." Azazel said.

"You've never told me who my real mother is." Kurt said. "I wish to know. Who is she?"

"You're mother wasn't exactly the nurturing type. You're better off no knowing her. I don't know her name, nor what shape she keeps. Put her from your mind." Azazel said.

Kurt shook his head, his arms crossed over his chest.

Azazel sighed. "One day you may find a woman who looks at you through your eyes. Until that time, she will remain a mystery to both of us."

Kurt frowned. He was already tired of the way Azazel always responded in innuendo and riddles; how he had to fight for even the tiniest concrete fact. But even he could see he would never get anywhere with this one. He moved on.

"Why did you show up on the beach that day, but then refuse to help me?" Kurt asked.

"We'll be here all night with your questions" Azazel glanced at his watch. "Perhaps instead I simply tell you the whole story."

Kurt nodded and sat upon the crumbling stone fence.

"I feel comfortable leaving the manner of your birth out of it. I think you already know that side of the story quite well. And it is, as a matter of fact, inconsequential."

Kurt nodded. Agreeing that story should remain untold.

"And we've already been over the whole angels and demons thing so I don't have to go over that either right?"

Kurt nodded again.

"Okay, then. Let's start right in with the metaphysics shall we?

"You see, Demons, or angels depending on your preference, need minions on Earth. They do their bidding, keep watch on things. It is very strenuous to leave the metaphysical plane and come here unless you were actually born here. I had such high hopes for you, but I couldn't raise you, and I knew you're mother wouldn't bother, so I called out to the one person who I knew would."

"Margali?"

"Excellent. I swear I thought you were a complete buffoon when I met you, but you're shaping up quite well." Azazel seemed to be enjoying himself now, pacing back and forth before him like a minister in his pulpit. "The night before you were born I sent a message to Margali.

"I had no idea what form the message would take, but I knew she would hear me and that you would be picked up. And for the most part, things went exactly to plan."

"Why did you know she would hear you?" Kurt asked.

"Ah, finally you ask something truly consequential. Because Margali is bound to me and my kind by her blood, as is the rest of her family. You know of Margali's magic, her 'sorcery' as she calls it?"

"Yes."

"Well, magic that old hardly resembles the silly incantations and trickery that define the word today. Margali and her kin are part of a magical lineage that is so old that it is encoded into them at a genetic level. Her very existence is enough magic to keep certain forces in line."

"What forces? What are you talking about? Margali is a fortune teller."

"It's a nice ruse isn't it? Kind of like how you pretend to be an acrobat in a costume. She and her sisters are but stepping stones on a path of magic that has existed since before the history books." Azazel said.

"But what does that have to do with you? Or with me?" Kurt said.

Azazel smiled, circling around Kurt almost hungrily. "For those that speak, there must be those who hear. Margali and her kin are seers; they have heard the voices of the angels and spread their words for centuries. Without her family, I would be mute, as would all of my kind."

"So, you sent the message to Margali that I was coming, because you knew only she would hear?" Kurt said.

"Exactly. And come she did. She took a route never before traveled by your circus and arrived at the exact moment of your birth. All precisely to my plan." Azazel said.

Kurt was suddenly horrified. "Your plan?" He said.

"Exactly." Azazel smiled broadly.

"But, you lost track of me. When?"

Azazel suddenly looked serious. "Yes, I did. When you would have been in your eighth year I lost track of you, Margali, and Amanda. I thought you'd perished and I'd somehow missed it. After a while I stopped looking." Azazel smiled. "But then you kissed that girl and of course the next day you passed through my realm. You were once again marked in my sights. You seem to have a habit of disappearing."

"I was eight." Kurt repeated. The year he'd been baptized. Had that had something to do with it? What if he could be baptized again? Would he disappear a second time?

"Why is that so interesting to you?" Azazel said. "Is there something you know that would explain your disappearance?"

Kurt shook his head. "No idea." He said. Azazel didn't look convinced.

"So what is your plan for me anyway?" Kurt asked, suddenly understanding Azazel's the expression of surprise and triumph on Azazel's face. He'd had been baptized a second time, in a way, when Father Dietrich had administered last rites. But now he'd ruined it by letting Azazel know he was alive.

"I need a voice. The bloodline of the seers who once served my kind grows thin – the winding way that was a great road is now but a narrow path, ill-used and uncared for. If I'm going to have any influence at all, I need one of my own to speak for me. My other children are hardly suited for the task; ill formed and barely in control of their gifts. That leaves you.

"And we all know how much you love to hear yourself speak in front of an audience. I couldn't have planned it better myself." Azazel said.

Kurt backed up a step. "That's… that's not what I do." He said. "I entertain people."

"Call it what you will. No matter how you name it, you are uniquely suited to carry my mantle. You're voice, your appearance, and your natural flair for the dramatic. It is only a matter of time." Azazel said.

Kurt shook his head, still backing away. This was all wrong.

"I brought war and weapons to this Earth." Azazel continued. "I brought science and technology. All the things that the humans use to corrupt and pollute this planet of theirs was mine once. My gifts." Azazel took up a clod of earth and crushed it in his hand, letting the dirt run between his fingers. "I have more gifts, Kurt. These you will bring, as my son and servant.

"I came to collect you on the beach because it appeared to me that you would come willingly. You will come, whether it is willingly or not. I have been patient, but my patience will not last forever." Azazel said.

"Never." Kurt said. "I'm not who you think I am."

"Oh, yes. That silly book you carry around, and that man who lives up there on the hill. You think that makes you some how different?" Azazel said.

Kurt stiffened. It hadn't ever occurred to him that these conversations were between anyone but him and Azazel, or that Azazel had any real influence on anyone besides him.

"You leave him alone." He shouted.

Azazel looked up at the rectory, a single light shining from the upstairs window. "What's his name? Dietrich? Hans Dietrich? Should I be insulted that you call him 'father'? Perhaps it's time he learned who your real father is?"

"No!" Kurt screamed and without thinking, he leapt into the sigil he had drawn, scratching through it with his feet until it was nothing but churned up mud. He watched Azazel lose corporeal form and then fade completely. Kurt sank to his knees breathing hard, wondering exactly what had been set in motion and for how long he could hold it at bay.


	50. chapter 49

_**Chapter 49: Not all Those Who Wander are Lost part 1**_

_"God in Heaven Kurt! What ever is the matter?"_

Kurt ran up the hill towards the church without paying attention to where he was going. He just wanted to get as far away from Azazel as possible. When he reached one of the church's stone walls he teleported without slowing down to think. He materialized inside the church, his momentum carrying him into the back row of pews so that he nearly knocked them over. He dropped to his knees, breathing hard with his eyes shut. When Kurt opened them the first thing he saw was the giant crucifix that hung above the altar and he thought he was having visions. It was a moment before Kurt realized that he had teleported into the church. He had been so upset by Azazel that he hadn't been looking where he was going.

Mentally chastising himself for such sloppiness, he stood up and walked into the center of the nave.

He'd always loved this church. It was the first one he had ever seen and it was still his favorite despite having been in dozens of churches all over Europe. Maybe it was leftover childhood superstition, but of all the churches, he was sure that this was the one that God truly lived in.

God.

Should he even be here now? Would God forsake him now that he had discovered the truth, that he really was the child of a demon, that his destiny was to speak for the archangel Azazel? A more chilling thought was that perhaps God had forsaken him years ago. After all, he had spent his entire life thinking that God had favored him, that God had engineered his birth, his being found by Margali and the circus; that all the good things that had been in his life were a direct result of God's influence. It was a little haughty, be then again he was so different than anyone else, it had only seemed right to assume that God had something particular in mind for him.

But now he knew the truth, that God hadn't been responsible; Azazel had. Everything that Kurt had known to be true; that he was special, that God loved him, that God had looked out for him on the day he was brought into the world, was a lie.

He had been walking up the nave towards the altar as he contemplated the influences over his life and stopped when he stood before the long table with its candlesticks. The crucifix hung above him. Christ had died for their sins, Kurt had believed it from the moment he saw him when he was eight years old, but not for his. His destiny was to serve sin. It was almost too much to bear and when he felt that he could endure no more, he lashed out, knocking over the table and screaming.

What he was yelling was unintelligible even to himself. The mix of rage, and horror, and revulsion he felt couldn't be put into words. How could God abandon him like this? How could it happen here of all places?

Sobbing, Kurt sank down next to the upturned table. He had never felt so lost. He started to cry, quietly at first until he was wailing at the top of his lungs like he hadn't done since he was a very young child. Sorrow had pierced him to the core and it didn't seem like he could ever stop.

Father Dietrich stood outside the church door, frantically fumbling with his keys. He'd heard the screams from within the rectory. Something horrible was happening inside his church and he had hardly stopped other than to throw on something more presentable than his pajamas and a pair of shoes. He'd been surprised to find the doors locked and no sign of entry. But the screaming continued and so with shaking hands he slid the key in the lock and turned it.

The church was empty save for the sound of sobbing. There wasn't a living soul inside, at least not that he could see. Father Dietrich followed the sound down the center aisle of the nave to the altar. It wasn't until he was nearly upon the altar that he could see that the source of the sound was Kurt. He was lying on his side in the shadows, practically beneath the wreckage of the central table where the Sacrament sat during mass.

"God in Heaven Kurt! What ever is the matter?" Father Dietrich said. He broke into a run and knelt beside Kurt who did appear to have heard him. He pulled Kurt's bloody hands away from his face, not sure what he would find. "Are you hurt? What happened?" he asked.

Kurt was still screaming when he felt gentle hands trying to pry his own away from his face. He sat up in surprise, trying to wipe the tears from his cheeks. He only succeeded in smearing blood across it; it mixed with his tears and soaked into his fur. He looked around, realizing that in his panic over Azazel he'd completely smashed up the altar. "I'm sorry," he said, still sobbing, "I'll fix it."

"It's all right, Kurt. What happened? How did you get in here?" Father Dietrich took Kurt's hand, the one with the most blood on it, and looked at it. There was a small pattern of cuts on it, like a bite made by sharp teeth, teeth like Kurt's. And had Kurt just apologized for the damage to his altar?

"What's going on?" Father Dietrich asked.

"Ummm." Kurt paused, gently extracting his hand from the priest's grip. "I had another nightmare," he said.

"But how did you get in here? What happened to your hand?"

Kurt looked around him, suddenly feeling like a trapped animal. He'd never told Father Dietrich about how he could teleport himself, or about anything else that had to do with Azazel for that matter. He didn't like keeping anything from him, but he didn't know how Father Dietrich would react. It was the only secret he had and given the circumstances, it was important he keep it. But he hated to lie.

"Through the door." Kurt said.

"But I locked the door. I had to unlock it to come in here. It looks like you bit your own hand. What's going on Kurt?"

"I… I'm…" Kurt stood up quickly. He tipped the table back up right, but it was now missing a leg and it crashed back down to the floor, missing Father Dietrich's head by inches. The priest jumped back in shock and Kurt cringed; he was just making everything worse. "I'm sorry!" he shouted. He went to pick up one of the candlesticks that had rolled over next to his foot and to his surprise Father Dietrich grabbed him from behind, wrapping his arms around him as he pulled him away from the altar.

"Stop it." Father Dietrich said, he still had Kurt's arms gripped tightly in his hands as though he was afraid of what would happen if he let go. "What's gotten into you?" he asked.

Kurt stared at him. The truth was nothing had gotten into him, at least nothing that hadn't already been there. He couldn't answer. He didn't want to have to lie to Father Dietrich anymore. He turned, pulling himself from the Father's grip and ran from the church.

Kurt was sitting in the kitchen watching the sun come up when he heard Father Dietrich's footsteps on the stairs. Kurt had run from the church and gone directly to his room where he'd locked the door. He'd sat awake in the room with the lights off. He'd listened to Father Dietrich return to the church. The priest had stood outside his door, but he didn't knock and finally, had gone away, evidently returning to his room. A little while afterwards, Kurt had packed a bag and snuck downstairs with his it, his rosary, and bible, and his big coat thrown over his arm. From the sound of the steps, Father Dietrich had gone upstairs to check Kurt's room first.

"Did you get any sleep at all?" Father Dietrich asked as he came into the kitchen.

Kurt shook his head. "You're up early," he said.

"It's Sunday." Father Dietrich said.

It was? Kurt had completely lost track of time. "I'm so sorry about what happened to the altar," he said. "Will you be able to fix it in time?"

"All ready fixed," Father Dietrich said. "That leg has always been kind of loose. It's come off before." He sat down at the table across from Kurt. "You have to tell me what's troubling you," he said. "I can't help you if you don't tell me."

"I can't. I'm sorry, but there are some things I can't tell you?" Kurt said.

"I've got about an hour before I need to start getting ready for mass. We could go into the box if you like. You don't have to keep your secrets from God. God has unlimited forgiveness."

Kurt shook his head again. "I think God already knows. And…" He paused. "It doesn't matter. This is something I have to fix." Kurt slid his bible and rosary across the table to Father Dietrich. "Would you look after these for me?" he asked.

Father Dietrich looked surprised. "Why on Earth… Kurt, what's going on?"

"I'm sorry Father. It's something I have to take care of. I don't want anything to happen to these, they mean a lot to me." Kurt said, swallowing hard. He'd made up his mind over night. He had to get rid of Azazel; he had to keep him away at all costs. He had spent the entire night mulling the possibilities short of killing himself. When inspiration struck it was his bible that was indirectly responsible, not the words of the book, but the piece of paper he'd tucked into it years ago.

Years ago when Kiwi and Amiri Black came to the circus, Kurt had been fascinated with the tattoos on their faces. They had told him about how the Maori believed that the tattoos frightened evil spirits away, that the decorations had served as a ward, keeping evil from attempting to possess their bodies. This was exactly what Kurt needed and he had considered trying to return to the circus to find them, but then he had realized, the Maori tattoos were in the wrong language. He needed to speak Azazel's language, the alphabet for which was written on a paper he kept folded in his bible. And there was only one person besides Azazel whom he had ever known to use those symbols, Margali's sister, Martuska Szardos.

The only problem was that he didn't know where Martuska was. He was going to have to summon Azazel again. He was going to have to ask for his help.

"Kurt, I'm serious. You're scaring me. What is going on?" Father Dietrich said.

Kurt shut his eyes. He knew how this must all look, but he had to follow through, for himself and for Father Dietrich. He couldn't have Azazel threatening him that way. Kurt stood up.

"Please look after them for me." He said. He started towards the door, but he couldn't leave it like that. He turned around. Father Dietrich was still sitting at the table as though in shock.

"I know how strange this must seem, but please understand, it's necessary."

"Necessary how?" Father Dietrich asked.

Kurt could see the utter confusion written on the priest's face, but he shook his head, shifting his coat in his hands. "It's just necessary. I have to go. I'm sorry," he said. He left the kitchen, walking down the hall towards the door.

Father Dietrich got up and followed him. "Kurt, what are you doing? The circus is already back in Europe. Wolfgang is supposed to pick you up next week," he said.

"I'm sorry," Kurt said again. He pulled on his coat and opened the door.

"Where should I tell them you're going?" Kurt could hear Father Dietrich's voice from the doorway as he ran down the hill.

Once he was in the clearing where he had summoned Azazel the night before Kurt went through the same actions, scratching Azazels' mark with his tail and then opening one of the punctures he'd made on his hand.

Azazel took longer to appear this time.

"Twice in as many days!" the angel shouted gleefully. "So you've made up your mind then?"

Kurt shook his head. "Not quite," he said. "I need your help. I need to find Margali's sister."

"What do you need her for?" Azazel asked suspiciously.

"Because I need to corroborate your story. Margali never told me about her family being seers. I need to find out if what you say is true." Kurt said, hoping he was putting enough naïve earnestness in his voice to fool Azazel.

"What makes you think she'll talk to you? Unlike Margali, Martuska still follows Romani traditions." Azazel said.

"That's my problem." Kurt said.

"So you want to know where she is?" Azazel asked.

"Yes." Kurt said.

"And if I tell you, how will you get there?"

Kurt had considered this and it was a problem. "I'll find a way," he said.

Azazel smiled broadly. "I could help you, you know," he said, "I could take you to her."

Kurt looked skeptical. "How?" he asked.

"My realm may open upon any door I chose, even that of Margali's sister. All you have to do is ask." Azazel held out a hand.

Kurt didn't move. It was true he had intended to set out right away and the idea of a shortcut was inviting, as long as he could take it without Azazel discovering his true motivation.

"I promise you safe passage." Azazel said.

Kurt looked around; the sun was starting to come up. In less than an hour people would be arriving for mass. He wanted to be as far away as possible before that happened. It was hard enough leaving a place where he had been so happy. He stared at the steeple of St. Stephan's now silhouetted against the lightening sky for as long as possible, trying to burn it into his memory. He took Azazel's hand in his own.

Kurt felt himself pulled forward, similar to the feeling of teleporting but slower and completely silent. Then he stepped onto what felt like cold marble. He looked around, not sure what to expect and to his surprise saw only blackness. And it was so cold. He could see his breath in the air and could already feel himself starting to shiver.

"This is hell?" Kurt asked. He was expecting something different.

"This is what I choose to let you see." Azazel said. Then he started chuckling. "Hell…" he said under his breath, and laughed again. "So are you coming?" Azazel asked, he motioned for Kurt to follow and chose a direction as though he could see his destination despite the fact that they were surrounded by featureless black.

Kurt followed him slowly, stepping gingerly on the cold stone ground. He wondered where they were going, and more importantly, whether Azazel was truly going to let him out when they got there.

A quick Author's note

I could post the rest of the chapters right now.

But where's the fun in that?

Instead of posting in groups of 5 to 10 chapters like I have been, I will post the last group one at a time for the next few weeks. This will give me time to polish up the sequel that I have been working on so that when I'm done with this, I can go right into posting that. I have, however, put up the teaser quotes for each chapter, so it's not like you get nothing.

To those who have read and reviewed, thank you so much. You have no idea how happy I am when I see a new review has arrived. Many have expressed surprise to see so few reviews, but there's no trick, what you see is what there is. I don't have a beta reader and I kind of write in a bit of a vacuum so it is great to get even a little bit of feedback.

Thanks to all who have read and enjoyed and God Bless,

e


	51. chapter 50

**Chapter 50: Lost**

_"Well, as everybody knows, demons and angels are one in the same. They just have different agendas."_

Kurt was freezing, but it was bothering him less and less. A few minutes ago every time he put one of his bare feet down on the icy marble floor he was sure he would stick to it and it felt like someone was driving a nail of ice through his leg. Now he hardly noticed the cold.

It seemed like they had walked miles though the landscape never changed beyond anything but infinite blackness. He wanted to ask Azazel how he knew where they were going, but he was afraid of what might happen if he did. Finally they stopped.

"Do you see them?" Azazel asked.

Kurt squinted into the darkness. He saw nothing – like gazing into a pool of ink. And then he saw it, a mere shimmer of light at first, a warm orange glow that increased in intensity until he could make out trees and a few trailers parked beneath them.

"Yes," Kurt said.

"Then go for it is there you will find the one you seek."

Kurt felt Azazel push him forward. He wasn't sure how he was seeing what he was seeing. Was it a door or a window he could step through? Or was it just an image? How did he "go to them" as Azazel asked? Kurt reached out – feeling for some kind of barrier between where he stood and what he saw. And then he was pulled forward – like someone grabbing his hand and yanking.

"Ah!" he cried out and closed his eyes. When Kurt opened them again, he was standing in a small thicket, just beyond the circle of light cast by the gas lanterns.

"Azazel, where are we?" He asked, turning. But Azazel was gone. The dark room was gone. He was alone. There were footsteps and Kurt quickly teleported behind the nearest tree. He recognized the silhouette of Martuska Szardos as she walked past, carrying what looked like a large kettle. He was still trying to make sense of what had just happened. Had that really been Azazel's realm, just a vast expanse of darkness? From Margali's books he had understood Azazel's realm to be synonymous with hell. Had that been it?

Martuska was walking away quickly, he didn't want to lose track of her. But if he had really just passed through hell? Kurt bowed his head and recited a prayer of contrition. He hoped that God would understand that all this was necessary.

He tried to follow Martuska as quietly as possible, but the ground was littered with twigs and had only made a few careful steps before one snapped.

"Who is that?" Martuska said in Romani as she whirled around – looking in the direction of the sound. She was looking straight at him, but from the way she was walking curiously forward; Kurt could tell she couldn't see him.

For a moment Kurt was silent. He knew about thirty words in Romani and that was mainly limited to a few greetings and the funny little phrases Margali used to say when they were kids. Add to that their favorite things to call him, "beng", "marimé", and "gadje" and he still wasn't exactly conversant. But if he remembered correctly, Martuska spoke German.

"Kurt Wa… It's Margali's son." Kurt said in German. If Martuska had been a man, Kurt would have been expected to make a more formal presentation of himself; that was the Romani custom. As it was he was glad he didn't since he wasn't very familiar with Romani customs.

Martuska squinted into the darkness. "I can't see you." She responded in German.

Taking a deep breath, Kurt stepped out into the light cast by their lanterns.

Martuska stepped back and hissed at him "Beng!" she shouted. "Margali's devil son. Get away from here!"

Kurt had to duck away when she took a swipe at him with the kettle, which thankfully, was empty. Kurt let her fling insults at him for a few minutes. Most of them he knew though a few were new to him. When she tried to hit him a second time with the kettle, he caught it in his hands and kept it.

"I said get away!" Martuska shouted at him and when Kurt stood his ground she stormed off towards the trailers. Kurt teleported so that he was in her path. Martuska screeched in surprise.

"I'm not going anywhere," Kurt said. "At least, not until I've talked to you."

"I won't listen to your words. Now go away."

Kurt shook his head and to his surprise Martuska gave a huff of impatience and ripped the kettle out of his hands. He followed her as she started down her original path, away from the trailers. When he couldn't convince her to stop or even look in his direction, he teleported into her path again.

Martuska's response was much the same. She screeched though now she glared at him angrily.

"I'm really hard to get rid of," Kurt said.

Martuska put a hand on one hip and considered him for a moment, still glaring daggers, then she thrust the kettle at him. "Then you can carry the water for me," she said.

Kurt took it and followed her to the well.

"What is it you want?" she asked.

"I need your help." Kurt said as he worked the pump until water poured from the spigot into the large pot.

"I don't help demons." Martuska said.

Kurt stopped pumping as the water began to spill over the edge. He picked the kettle up by the handle, leaning back to counter balance it's weight. "And yet you would ask one for his help," he said.

Martuska's eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. Kurt began following her back towards the trailers.

"And if you believe in demons, then you must believe in angels," he added.

"I might," Martuska said.

"Well, as everybody knows, demons and angels are one in the same. They just have different agendas." Kurt said. "You haven't asked me what my agenda is."

"That's because I don't care. Put it there." Martuska said. She pointed to a stand with a hook that stood over a small fire.

Frowning, Kurt hung the hoisted the kettle up onto its hook.

"I expect you to be gone," Martuska said. She glared at him from the doorway of one of the trailers.

"Maybe," Kurt said with a shrug. "Mind if I use some of this water? I'm pretty thirsty." Kurt used his hand to scoop some out to drink, then he teleported out of sight into a shadow cast by a stand of trees. From there he watched Martuska dump out the water with a grunt of irritation and start back towards the well. He couldn't help but smirk even though he was sure he hadn't endeared himself to her that that stunt.

Kurt hadn't really expected to live outside for so many days and he certainly hadn't packed for it. He supposed he had spent his entire life "camping", but he always had some sort of roof over his head. Since following Azazel to Martuska's camp however, the trees had been his only cover.

He'd learned he was in Spain and though the days were warm it cooled down considerably at night. Kurt had made a sort of home for himself in a thicket of trees a short distance from where Martuska's trailers were parked. His coat was warm, but he woke up freezing every morning, shaking the dew out of his hair and hopping around to get the circulation back in his hands, feet, and tail.

He was getting a little restless and more than a little discouraged. Every night he'd tried to convince Martuska to listen to him and it always ended the same way. She went into her trailer and he returned to the woods. The strange thing was that he was pretty sure she was leaving food out for him. It was hard to imagine why else they would be throwing away perfectly good fruit and loaves of bread that were nearly whole. Even so, it was hard to imagine that he'd left Father's Dietrich's for this.

Even though only four days had passed, it seemed like an eternity to Kurt. He had always lived surrounded by people so a few days spent living alone in the woods made him feel like he was going mad. Wolfgang had lent him the German translation of Thoreau's Walden once and it was hard to imagine how anyone could live in isolation like that. At least Thoreau had his cabin, Kurt thought.

He would have liked his bible or his rosary at least, but he'd had a feeling that Azazel would make him an offer like the one he had. It didn't seem right to carry such objects across a space that was, as Kurt understood it at least, Hell. But, at least he would have had something to do now.

As darkness fell that night, he crouched in the shadows of the thicket nearest to Martuska's camp waiting for Margali's sister to come out to collect water for that evening's meal. When he heard the sounds of footsteps on leaves and branches behind him it was too late for him to do anything as he was pulled to the ground by a hand gripping him by his hair.

He let out a shriek of surprise that was answered in a torrent of Spanish. He struggled against the many hands that held him down while another attempted to bind him with loops of thick rope. Under the cover of the trees in the darkness there was barely enough light even for Kurt to make out the faces of Franco, Martuska's husband and his sons.

They spoke a mix of Spanish and Romani to each other and it seemed that they were experts with knots because it wasn't more than a minute or two before Kurt was bound fast, unable to free his hands or feet.

"Let me go!" Kurt shouted in German and then again in Spanish. Franco laughed and threw him to the ground.

Franco gave a quick nod to one of his sons, "Drag him this way," he said.

Kurt felt his bonds tighten as he was pulled along the ground and out into the open. He twisted and jerked, trying to dig his feet into the ground, to keep them from bringing him any closer to their trailers. He started shouting the old Romani proverbs that Margali used to say at them in an effort to convince them he meant no harm.

" May mishto les o thud katar i gurumni kai tordjol! Shuk tski khalpe la royasa!" Kurt shouted. It was nonsense, but his Romani was pretty limited after all. He wasn't really even sure what he was saying.

"Bengesko niamso." Franco said.

"Mashkar le gadjende leski shib si le Romeski zor!" Kurt responded, which meant, ironically, "surrounded by Gadje, the Rom's only defense is his tongue".

"I said be quiet," Franco said. He shoved Kurt face first up against a rotting tree trunk.

Kurt cringed against the side of the tree trunk. How could this be happening to him again? He tried to hold his bound hands up in front of his face, making himself as small as possible.

"What are you doing in our woods?" Franco asked.

"Nothing," Kurt said.

Franco gave him a look of distrust.

"I came to see Martuska." Kurt said, swallowing hard. "She's my aunt."

"She's no relation of yours." One of Franco's sons said.

"Margali is my sister and she calls that child her son," a voice broke in from above them and everybody looked up to see Martuska Szardos standing in the doorway of the largest trailer.

Franco shouted back at her in Romani and the two of them began to argue with Franco's statements apparently being supported by his sons. Meanwhile Kurt pulled frantically at his bonds, trying to free his hands and feet by yanking on the ropes with his tail.

The argument reached a fevered pitch then seemed to cut off suddenly. Kurt could see the look of angry defeat in Franco's eyes as he watched him take out a small pocketknife and cut through the ropes. Kurt stood up quickly and backed away from them, not sure of why he'd been freed or what they wanted from him. For a few minutes nobody said anything.

"So what are you waiting for?" Martuska said at last. "Get out of here. And don't come back."

"Please, I…" Kurt began but Martuska cut him off.

"No. I said leave. Next time Franco finds you – I won't come to your aid. Now go." With that Martuska turned away toward the interior of her trailer and let the door shut behind her.

Kurt didn't move at first. Was that it? Had he journeyed all this way for nothing? How was he going to get back? And more importantly where would he go? He couldn't go back to Father Dietrich, not after Azazel's threats. And he had no way of finding the circus other than once again summoning Azazel to ask him to take him to Margali. And at what price? Kurt certainly couldn't imagine Azazel allowing him to freely cross his realm a second time.

Kurt suddenly understood how alone in the world he truly was. There was no life for him outside of Circus Gehlhaar. He couldn't find a new place to live, a new job, or even walk down the street. His very existence was predicated on the myth that his appearance was a costume. There was nowhere he could go, nothing he could do.

Franco and the others were still staring at him expectantly.

"I'm going." Kurt said. He turned away from them and walked slowly into the woods to fetch his things. Though after that, he did not know what to do next, his options were so limited they hardly seemed to exist at all.

Perhaps Azazel had engineered this too. Maybe he hadn't allowed Kurt free passage at all; that he knew Martuska would so stubbornly refuse to help him, and that in the end he would be trapped far away from anyone who could help him, anyone except for Azazel himself.

But he couldn't accept Azazel's offer, he just couldn't.

And yet it seemed that all his life he had played into Azazel's hand – even in his most earnest attempts to serve God. In fact at that moment it seemed to Kurt that everything he'd every understood about his own faith, about God's plans for him, had been turned and twisted back against itself by Azazel's silent yet constant meddling.

Kurt stared down at his meager pile of possessions and shoved them into his rucksack. He didn't even miss his bible and his rosary for it seemed that God truly had forsaken him.

Looking around he realized he was lost in every way possible.


	52. Chapter 51

**Chapter 51: Martuska's Answers**

_"It seems that as the world becomes more fascinated with science and technology, the harder it is for people to believe in magic. But it is still there, if you peel back the layers of "scientific fact", that is all that's left."_

Once packed Kurt shouldered his rucksack but didn't move. There was no point. He had nowhere to go. He could stay here and be tied up again by Franco and the others or go find persecution elsewhere. Suddenly all the good places in there world, his home (such as it was), Circus Gehlhaar, Father Dietrich's rectory seemed impossibly far away. And as he stood contemplating his options, his feet seemed to grow roots into the ground.

Kurt didn't know how long he stood there. Seemingly unable to move.

"I thought I told you to go." A voice said, issuing from somewhere in the darkness as though it belonged to a ghost.

"Martuska?" Kurt asked, trying to peer into the darkness to the source. He recognized her accent, so close to Margali's, yet on this nearly moonless night it was too dark for even his eyes to pick out any detail.

Martuska stepped out of the shadows. "You're still here," she said.

"I… I know." Kurt stammered. "I don't have anywhere to go. You have to help me."

Martuska laughed. "I can't figure out if you're very stubborn or very stupid," she said when she was done chuckling.

Kurt sighed. "Maybe a bit of both," he said.

"Why did you let Franco catch you?" Martuska asked.

The question caught Kurt off guard. Why? He had been overpowered. Just like on the beach, there was no way he could have run. "How?" Kurt asked, feeling more stupid than stubborn. He knew Martuska wouldn't have asked the question unless she already knew the answer, an answer he obviously didn't have for her.

"You can move yourself great distances in the blink of an eye, and yet you let three men bind you with ropes. Why?" Martuska asked. "Why did you let them?"

Kurt felt all the blood drain from his face. Why indeed? He had simply forgotten he could do it. She was right; he had let them catch him. There was no reason he'd had to endure any of that. Kurt shook his head.

"Never let people hurt you again," Martuska said, "not when you have the power to stop it from happening."

Kurt had been looking down at his feet, but now he looked up at Martuska. Why was she telling him this? Kurt nodded, still not sure what was happening. Was she actually going to help him? Or at least listen?

"Why me?" Martuska asked.

"I can explain everything," Kurt said, trying not to sound as desperate as he felt. "Just please give me the chance."

"I've sent them away, Franco and the boys," Martuska said. "Come. We will talk."

Kurt dropped his things and fell to his knees. "Thank you." Without thinking he reached for her hand to clasp in his own and she pulled away quickly.

"You forget yourself." Martuska said, whatever warmth that may have been in her voice a moment ago was gone. "Never touch me." She turned and began walking towards the camp.

"Hurry," she said, "There isn't much time."

Martuska's traveling home was more like Margali's old van, the one Kurt had grown up in, and even though his relationship with his foster aunt was tense, he felt instantly at home amongst the familiar furnishings and tapestries; the warm glow of oil lamps instead of the harsh 12 volt bulbs that powered the lights of their new trailer.

Martuska motioned for Kurt to sit down. He did so, thankful that the stools at her table had no backs so he didn't have to shift the chair to one side or the other to accommodate his tail. Martuska set a mug of tea down in front of him. Then she slowly lowered herself onto her own stool.

"You are persistent," she said.

"It's important," said Kurt.

"And you do know, that it is only because of your connection to my sister that I allow you in my home, Beng." Martuska added.

Kurt glared at her. "Beng" was the Rom word for demon and one of his least favorite insults. "Yes, I know. I'm all marmé." He said with a sarcastic sigh. "Can you at least call me Kurt?"

Now it was Martuska's turn to glare at him. "Do you mock my ways?" She asked.

"No," Kurt said, "I'm just reacting the way anyone would to being called "filthy" and a demon."

"So then tell me why you have come here?" Martuska asked him.

"I need your help." Kurt said.

Martuska smiled coyly. "And what makes you think I will help you?" She said.

"Because you said you believe in angels." Kurt said.

"Oh?"

Kurt took a deep breath, not sure how much of the truth he should tell. Wondering what the fine line between what would get him help and what would get him kicked out of the trailer was. There was an intense moment of debate in his head. "And because I've met Azazel." He said at last, unconsciously holding his breath.

Martuska sat up straighter, narrowing her eyes. "Azazel." She said. "Now that is interesting."

She hadn't kicked him out yet so Kurt allowed himself to exhale. "He follows me and I don't want him to. I love God and wish to serve Him, but I can't if he's around. I have to keep him away somehow." Kurt said.

Martuska stood up abruptly and Kurt wondered if now was the part where she kicked him out of her trailer. Instead she went to a cupboard and pulled out a large dusty tome. She flipped the pages absently as she thought. Finally she settled on one that seemed to satisfy her.

"So it is true," she said. "You are a scion of Azazel."

"I don't know." Kurt said. "I think so. He told me I was. But, I don't want to be. I need you to help me get rid of him."

Martuska laughed. "You can't 'get rid' of a demon," she said. She gestured at Kurt. "See, I couldn't get rid of you."

Kurt rolled his eyes.

"What makes you think I can free you from his presence? Why didn't you go to Margali for help?" Martuska asked.

It was a good question and Kurt didn't like thinking about the answer. Of course he would have preferred Margali's help, at least, in the past he would have. But now Margali was cold and distant to him. He wasn't sure if she would have bothered. "I don't know." Kurt said. "Something's wrong. She…" He trailed off, not sure if he wanted to tell Margali's sister how she had stopped talking to him, how Amanda suddenly wouldn't even look at him.

"She is angry." Martuska announced.

"Angry? How would you know? Why would she be angry?" Kurt asked.

Martuska returned to her seat and leaned towards him.

"Because Margali made a terrible mistake." Martuska said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "A mistake that cost her everything and one that you are partially responsible for."

"Me?" Kurt said in surprise. "What did I do?"

"Oh, it wasn't intentional on your part." Martuska said, leaning back. "I have always known that Margali would make the mistake someday. She was too blinded by her love for you."

"What's wrong with that?" Kurt asked.

Martuska smiled. "Nothing, unless one is a member of my family."

"Azazel said you were 'seers'." Kurt said.

"Yes, the scions of Enoch, the first man to hear to the voices of Angels and therefore forever linked to Azazel's kind." Martuska said. "You must see where the danger lies."

Kurt shook his head.

Martuska sighed. "It seems that as the world becomes more fascinated with science and technology, the harder it is for people to believe in magic. But it is still there, if you peel back the layers of "scientific fact", that is all that's left."

Kurt smiled. "Father Dietrich says the same thing," he said.

"Well, then perhaps he would understand the position that both you and Margali have placed me in."

"Placed you in? You weren't even there." Kurt said, growing more confused by the moment.

Martuska laughed. "You don't even know." She said as she chuckled to herself. "You understand nothing."

Kurt frowned. That wasn't true. There was plenty he understood. He understood the danger he faced in coming here. He understood that if he hadn't come, that Azazel would soon force him to bend to his will; possibly even putting Father Dietrich in danger at the same time. He understood that he had been alienated from the family he loved even if he didn't understand why.

"By all rights you should be dead." Martuska said.

Kurt's frown deepened. "But I'm not dead." He said. He was tired of hearing this.

"No. You are very much alive due to the sacrifice made by your mother and her daughter. And by myself." Martuska leaned forward again, her face just barely inches from Kurt's own. "And for what you now possess, I should kill you where you sit so that I might take back what is not rightfully yours."

Kurt jumped back out of his seat. "Why are you threatening me?" He asked. "I haven't done anything."

"Not intentionally." Martuska said. She motioned for Kurt to sit back down. "But you have most definitely done something, and act which threatens to remove the balance that my family and your kind have enjoyed for eons."

Kurt threw up his hands in frustrations. "You and Azazel both!" he shouted. "Riddles, prophecies, pronouncements, will you never just speak in plain sentences?"

Martuska gave a smug laugh. "Fine." She said. "You did die. And when she saw this, Margali blindly, stupidly, attempted to sacrifice a portion of her life to give you back yours."

"Ummm. Okay. Can Margali do that?" Kurt asked. He'd never seen Margali perform any magic beyond a bit of slight of hand with tarot cards.

"Yes. It would be a stupid thing to try to do, to anyone, and for you it was nearly fatal, not just for her, but for every living female member of her family. I'm shocked she even attempted to perform such reckless magic."

"What? Why?" Kurt asked in surprise. It didn't make any sense.

"I thought you said you met Azazel." Martuska said.

"I did. He didn't say anything about women. Just that you were seers."

"Yes all may hear, but the women hold the path, the way. It is the lineage that forms the line between the planes of the angels and ours. We are both a wall against the darkness and a path to knowledge. And Margali's attempt to save your life was a foolhardy, she risked far too much." Martuska said.

Kurt was silent.

"When Margali released her life force to you, for a moment the ethereal plane and the earthly plane were linked. And though your physical being was devoid of life, the part of you that walks on the opposite plane was very much alive.

And so like a drowning man being offered a branch, you nearly pulled your savior into the water with you." Martuska explained.

"But I wasn't aware of any of that." Kurt said. "I don't even remember Margali doing it."

"Of course not. But that is the danger. It was this very fate that I attempted to warn Margali of when I saw she had taken you in." Martuska said.

"Warn her?"

"Yes. When it became clear to me that she either didn't know or care who you were, I left messages for her attempting to warn her of your identity."

"The symbols on the door?" Kurt asked. Martuska nodded her head. "But I thought those were to frighten me away."

Martuska laughed. "If they were they certainly didn't do a very good job. No, they were warnings to Margali. All but one, that was a test to see if you could read your own language. Thankfully you could not."

"But why would you need to warn her in the first place? I mean, what's the problem with it?" Kurt asked.

"There is an undercurrent of power that surrounds those of us who stand on the path. Even if we are unconscious it is still there, providing one half of the balance. The other half comes from angel kind, and to a certain degree, from you?" Martuska said.

"Me?" Kurt asked. He was getting confused. This was so far outside the realm of anything he believed in that he wondered if Martuska wasn't simply making it up. Then again, he had no reasonable explanation for why Margali and Amanda were suddenly treating him differently. Could there be truth in Martuska's words, he wondered.

"Yes. You can't help it. And that is precisely why Margali should have never taken you in in the first place. The combined nexus of two magical beings with opposing power living together would be incredibly strong. I suspect that is exactly what attracted the two of them to you in the first place."

Kurt shook his head. "Azazel told me he called to Margali."

"I mean afterwards. Just being near you would have given them an incredible surge of power." Martuska said.

Kurt frowned. "But then what about me. Wouldn't I have been similarly attracted to them?" He asked.

"But you were." Martuska said. "Particularly to your sister, the end of the line and therefore the most powerful." She smiled knowingly. "An attraction beyond what is expected of a family member." She added.

"She's my sister, that's all", Kurt said defensively.

Martuska gave him a long look. "Have you forgotten I'm a seer?" She asked.

To change the subject Kurt pulled from his pocket the paper on which he had copied the angelic alphabet, wishing he still had the bible he'd always kept it folded in. He smoothed it out on the table. "I always liked them," he said.

For the first time Martuska smiled a real smile, not to mock him, but the recognition of a homesickness that he didn't even know he had.

"So, then what happened? Why was Amanda so angry?" Kurt asked.

"Once she became aware of her mistake, Margali did the only thing she could to save herself and her daughter, she gave up her place on the Winding Way to you. Now the path has twisted back on itself as I alone attempt to stay the positions once held by three people."

"I'm on it?" Kurt asked.

Martuska shrugged. "For all the good it does, yes."

There was the sound of wheels on gravel and a pair of headlights crossed the wall. Martuska stood up suddenly, knocking her stool to the ground.

"You must leave now." She said urgently.

"But, I…" Kurt stammered. Surprised by the change in her demeanor.

"Franco and his sons have returned. If they find you here, they will burn this trailer down with both of us in it. Go!"

Kurt gathered his things and ran for the door.

"Idiot!" Martuska shouted. "Not that way. They'll see you. Go your way. Find me again in the morning when they are gone"

For a moment Kurt was baffled. His way? Then he understood. He quickly glanced out the window, catching sight of a spot where he wouldn't be seen. And then he was gone, leaving Martuska alone with only the lingering scent of his teleportation.


	53. Chapter 52

_**Chapter 52: The Crownless Again Shall Be King**_

"_There exists no magic in ink, your power lies in your blood."_

If Kurt slept that night, he wasn't aware of it. Even after a few days of it, he still wasn't used to sleeping outdoors, with little more than his coat as a blanket. He piled up as many dry leaves as he could scrape together, but he could still feel the cold hard ground beneath him. Every sound in the woods caused him to jump awake; he wasn't so much afraid of the animals there, but that Azazel would return having figured out his plan. Kurt hoped he could convince Martuska to help him; that she could help him. Though he'd been thankful for Azazel's shortcut, he never wanted to feel so cold again.

When he heard the sound of the old engine on Franco's car start, he stood and started towards the camp. Sitting on a large rock outside the door to Martuska's trailer was that accursed black kettle, empty and expectant. Sighing, Kurt snatched it up and took it to the well. He was sitting on the side of a large log besides the fire pit tending to the boiling water when Martuska sat down beside him.

For a few minutes they said nothing while Martuska made tea and poured it into two enamelware mugs. Kurt took the mug from Martuska and wrapped his hands around it as though it were possible to warm his whole body with it.

"I need to set things right," Kurt said at last, still staring into his tea, not daring to look Martuska in the eye. "If there really is a path, you know, what you were describing last night, then Margali and Amanda should be on it, not me."

When Martuska was silent Kurt continued. "And, at the same time I need to hide myself from Azazel," he said, looking up at last. "I didn't mean to, but I've ruined everything. Will you help me?"

Martuska stared at Kurt impassively for a few minutes as though weighing her options.

"And what do I get out of this?" She asked. "You're asking an awful lot it seems."

"You said you were on the Winding Way by yourself. You'd have Margali and Amanda there with you again." Kurt said. "And, you'd be rid of me of course."

Martuska gave a short laugh. "Are you saying I'm stuck with you until I grant your wish?"

Kurt shrugged. "That or your husband catches me."

She regarded him for a long time, staring at him with such hard cold eyes that Kurt couldn't help but squirm; it felt like she was looking through him, reading his thoughts, his deepest desires, and his greatest fears. He shrank away from her without meaning to.

"Azazel has plans for you." She said at last. "His time has past, but you… Your ascension is at hand. You could rule the world. And yet you wish to hide? Why is that?"

Ascension? Rule the world? What was she talking about? Kurt shook his head. "I don't know what you mean by my ascension, or ruling the world, but that's not what I want. I… I want to perform in the circus, and serve God, and…" Kurt paused, it sounded so strange put into words because it should have been obvious. "I want to be normal. Just me. Just Kurt Wagner." It was what anyone would have wanted. Why couldn't anyone see that?

Martuska squinted at him thoughtfully.

"It will not be easy," she said at last.

Kurt sat up straighter. Was she going to help him, to grant his wish? Did she even know how?

"Putting the Way back to its natural order is simple, but as for Azazel…" Martuska shook her head. "I have never heard of such a thing being done. Very few may hide from angels."

Kurt's hands were shaking as he unfolded the paper from his pocket. It was deeply creased from the years it had spent tucked inside his bible. He handed it to Martuska.

"I looked inside of Margali's books to find their meaning. And… Azazel uses them. I thought maybe I could use them too, to keep him away." Kurt said.

Martuska stared at it, written in his neatest thirteen year old hand writing, and started chuckling.

"Margali told you nothing did she? You really didn't know?" she said.

Kurt shook his head.

Martuska pursed her lips as she stared at the symbols. "I don't know…" She said, more to herself than anything else. She turned the paper over in her hands a few times as she thought and then spoke. "Angels are divided into choirs, each with their own task in accordance to their position. Azazel is a watcher."

"A watcher?"

"They see those who sin so that they might be judged. Anyone who has the mark of a sin upon them, Azazel sees." Martuska said.

"And if one is innocent?" Kurt asked.

Martuska shook her head. "They are invisible to him."

Kurt nodded. This was why Azazel hadn't been able to see him after his Baptism at eight. It also meant that he had been invisible once again after Father Dietrich had performed the extreme unction. But he'd gone and summoned Azazel himself. Plus there was the matter of his ability to teleport. From what Azazel had told him during their first meeting, it seemed that Kurt passed through Azazel's realm each time he did it. So there was no way he could truly hide for long, not unless he chose not to teleport again. But it would be difficult to give that up, the ability to move from place to place in the blink of an eye like that had opened so many doors to him, doors that had previously been closed because of his appearance.

"You would need to be marked, permanently, in such a way that Azazel would not be able to find you," Martuska said.

"Yes," Kurt said quickly. "I was thinking the same thing." He told Martuska about Kiwi Black and his son Amiri, how in the Maori culture the tattoos on their faces were believed to drive away evil spirits. "Could you do that to me?" Kurt asked. "With those symbols? Would that keep Azazel away?"

Martuska smiled. "Very clever." She said. "You have the right idea, but this is different." She took Kurt's hand in hers, turning it over so she could see where he had bit his own hand in order to bleed on Azazels' sigil.

"Your blood is of great significance." Martuska said, running her fingernails along the palm of Kurt's hand. It made him uncomfortable and Kurt tried to pull his hand away. Martuska tightened her grip. "The magic I could do with you, dead or alive. It seems that Margali wasted yet another opportunity."

Kurt gave a stronger tug and finally freed his hand. He rubbed his hands together vigorously – trying to rid himself of the feeling of her grip. He folded his hands tightly against his chest – making himself as small as possible.

Martuska laughed. "Don't worry," she said coyly. "I won't hurt you."

Kurt wasn't convinced. He flinched and moved away as Martuska ran a gnarled finger down his cheek. He didn't like it, the way she was touching him now when yesterday she wouldn't even let him take her hand in thanks.

"Do you know what to do?" Kurt asked and Martuska gave a snort of laughter.

"In theory, yes, but such a thing has ever been tried. Your kind is very rare."

Kurt bit his lip in thought. "What about Margali and Amanda? What do I need to do to return them to their proper place?"

"You're lucky in a way. The simple act of cutting yourself off from Azazel will restore the positions Margali and Amanda once held, if they choose to retake them." Martuska said. "You see, the Way is a structure created by legacy. Each stop along the way is represented by another generation." Martuska explained. "The first position is said to be held by Merlin, who served King Arthur."

"Wow," said Kurt, "But I thought it was all women."

"Who said Merlin wasn't a woman?" Martuska asked.

"Legends and stories?"

"Who said legends are always true? The Way is very old and its arcane ways are very secret. With each passing generation the Way is fortified; Margali is very powerfully magical, Amanda even more so. Angel kind are different – they are immortal. And their children who walk this earth…"

"Yes?"

Martuska shrugged. "Like I said, they are rare."

"Azazel said there were others."

Martuska nodded and gave him a small sly smile. "He's been very busy I suppose. He's been trying to re-ascend for years and that is exactly why Margali's mistake was so grave. Where you now stand, you could destroy the Way forever."

"I can?" Kurt furrowed his brow. It was like something out of a legend or fairytale. Was this really happening to him? "And then what would happen?" he asked.

"That depends on you." Martuska said.

"Oh, like whether I want to take over the world or not?" Kurt said with a laugh.

"That's exactly it, you… and those who have influence over you. Do you think you're in this alone?" Martuska said. "It only emphasizes the gravity of Margali's error. That's why she fears you now. She meant to save you and instead made you the key to the end of creation. "

Kurt furrowed his brow. Who had influence over him? No one, except for maybe Azazel but even then he wasn't sure. Other than calling Margali to the place of his birth and showing up a few times, how much affect had Azazel had on his life? And the end of creation? That seemed a little much. He frowned.

"Okay then," Kurt said in his most matter of fact voice, "what do I do to keep any of that from happening?" That was the goal wasn't it? None of this mattered if he could somehow hide himself from Azazel's influence. If Azazel couldn't find him then there was no danger, right? He wouldn't be able to end creation or anything.

"Simple." Martuska said. "You must look like you have never sinned."

Kurt laughed. "But that's impossible," he said. "I mean, everyone sins sometimes, even in small ways. It's inevitable. I'm not a saint."

Martuska shook her head. "I didn't say you must never sin. I said you must look like you haven't. It's all a matter of what Azazel sees. If you don't appear to have sinned, he can't see you."

"Okay, I think I understand," Kurt said. "But how?"

"You were right about the symbols, they can be used to create zones of magical influence. It may be possible to create one around you." Martuska said.

"Like the tattoos that Kiwi and his son have," Kurt said.

Martuska ran her finger down Kurt's cheek again. "There exists no magic in ink," she said. "Your power lies in your blood."

"My blood? But how…" Kurt trailed off. What did that mean? That he needed to be marked by his own blood?

"The cuts must be deep enough to shed blood," Martuska said.

"Cuts?" Kurt asked, sitting up a bit straighter. "What are you talking about?"

"Each mark made must go deep enough to draw your blood." Martuska said simply.

"You're going to cut me?" Kurt asked.

"No," Martuska said. Kurt breathed a sigh of relief. "You'll make the cuts yourself."

"What?" Kurt asked in surprise, sitting up and jumping back. He had backed away so many times in the course of the conversation that he was running out of log.

"You must be the one to perform the act. The power lies within you, not me." Martuska said.

Kurt shook his head. "I can't cut myself. I… I don't understand why it has to be me."

"It must be a deliberate act on your part, but don't worry, you won't know you're doing it."

"I won't?" This was getting confusing.

"You see, you're still quite young. You have a whole life time to commit sinful acts and in order for this to work, they must all be hidden. So, unless you want to keep coming back, you'll have to hide them all at once." Martuska said.

Kurt couldn't help but laugh. "How do I do that?" He asked.

"I'm a seer. I can guide you."

Kurt frowned. "So, let me see if I understand this. You're going to foretell my future so that I can cut marks into my skin but that I won't know I'm doing it?" He said.

"Exactly," Martuska said. "It's the only way."

Kurt shook his head. This all sounded so far fetched.

"It's the only way," Martuska said again.

Kurt stood up. "I don't understand," he said. He shoved his hands in his pockets and paced back and forth.

"If you want to be rid of Azazel then you have to give me control. If you want to hide yourself forever, you have to give me control." Martuska said simply.

Kurt stopped and turned back to her. He wasn't sure he trusted Martuska especially not enough to allow her to control his actions in the way she seemed to be suggesting. "I can't do that." Kurt said.

Martuska shrugged. "Then it is only a matter of time. The fact that you're still able to decide tells me that Azazel has yet to truly attempt to persuade you."

Kurt slumped back down on the fallen log that had been his seat. "I can't," he said.

Martuska said nothing.

Kurt looked back up. "It was Azazel who brought me here," he said.

Martuska smiled. "Did he?"

"Yes, I… I tricked him." Kurt said, but it suddenly sounded silly in light in all that Martuska had said.

She smiled again, but said nothing. It made Kurt feel even more indecisive. He thought about his conversation with Azazel outside of Father Dietrich's house. Azazel had made it seem like he controlled him from the moment he was born, pulling strings from behind the scenes with Kurt as his puppet. What if this was just another string? Even worse, what if Azazel had called to Martuska in the same way he had called to Margali?

Kurt frowned, grinding his teeth together as he thought. On one hand, he would do anything to rid himself of Azazel. And yet, Martuska was asking so much. Somehow the idea of the tattoos that Kiwi and Amiri wore was more palatable than the idea of slicing into his skin. The message was so different. Would anyone understand what he'd done and why he'd done it?

"Where would you… Where would I… Where would the marks go?" Kurt asked.

Martuska shrugged. "That depends on what I see," she said.

"And I won't know what's happening?"

"You'll be conscious, but unconscious to your thoughts and actions. I will guide your hand."

That didn't sound like something he wanted to do. Kurt shook his head. "I can't." He stood up and paced around the small fire. Martuska watched him impassively.

"It's your choice." Martuska said. "Is that your decision?"

Kurt turned quickly. That was it, she was giving him just a few moments to decide? "No, I… I'm thinking." He said, stalling for time.

Martuska straightened as though she was listening to something. Kurt strained his ears but heard nothing. "You'd better think fast then. Time's almost up."

Kurt was pondering what this meant when he heard the roar of a car engine. Franco was returning. He turned back to Martuska.

"If you let him catch you, I won't stop him this time." She said. "That is, if you say no…"

He had seconds to decide. And yet he still had so many questions, so many doubts. But he already knew what would happen if he said no. In a way it already had and in those moments he'd felt more hopelessness than he ever had.

"I'll do it." Kurt said, as he watched the grill of Franco's old car burst into view from the trees. He turned back, expecting to see Martuska still sitting on the log, but she was up and standing right behind him.

"Good. I was hoping you'd say that." She said. She reached out; grabbing Kurt by the shoulder so hard he could feel her nails digging into to his skin.

"Hey!" but even as he shouted, he could feel something strange happening. He was slowly dropping down onto his knees without meaning to, as though he no longer had control of his own legs. Was it Martuska's doing? He tried to tell her to stop, that he wasn't ready. He didn't know what to expect, but it wasn't this. Candles maybe, magical talismans, like the things that Margali had around the place when she read fortunes for people. He hadn't expected this. He tried to speak, but the words came out as strangled grunts, completely unintelligible. And at the same time he realized that his own thoughts seemed to be slipping from his control.

Kurt looked up and realized he was now lying on his side on the ground. Franco was standing over him, his sons flanking him as usual. There was a sharp knife in Franco's hand and Kurt realized that they had come prepared, that if he'd refused, then Martuska would have been the one to persuade him. Not that she would have needed to. When Franco knelt down and pushed him on to his back, Kurt realized he was totally unable to move. Eyes wide, he stared up into the sky. Franco and his sons were pinning him down, but there was no need. Knowing that he could no longer speak Kurt screamed at the top of his lungs, anything to get them to stop.

"It will be easier if you don't fight," Martuska said.

Kurt could still feel her fingernails digging into his shoulder, closing down so hard that he could feel blood seeping beneath them. His eyes were closing and his last thought was how could he fight if he couldn't move? And as consciousness left him entirely, he was sure he was going mad.

Author's Note: The titles of this story and "Not all who wander are lost" are from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. They are part of a poem describing the manner of Aragorn, the Kind of the West's return to the throne of Gondor and it's one of my favorites pieces of verse in the book.


	54. Chapter 53

_**Chapter 53: Truth Lies Tears and Laughter pt 1**_

_"You people sure know how to make an entrance."_

Kurt opened his eyes very slowly. He felt horrible, almost like he had on the boat across the channel, only worse. He ached everywhere, but a careful inventory told him he was intact, lying curled up on top of his coat under a large oak tree. He mustered the energy to sit up and looked around.

He had expected to see the cluster of trailers and old cars that belonged to Martuska and her family but the clearing was empty. There was no sign of anyone every having lived there. Kurt stretched and without thinking, rubbed his face. He could feel raised ridges that hadn't been there before and for a moment he was confused. Then he remembered the symbols; they were on his face now.

Kurt ran his hands over his skin more gently this time, trying to use his hands to picture in his mind what it looked like. He wasn't sure what he had expected it to be, but this was more than he had anticipated; they were everywhere, more numerous than the tattoos on Kiwi's face. Kurt could feel them on his forehead, cheeks, and chin. There were even marks along the bridge of his nose. Kurt shook his head. Had he really done this to his own face? As Martuska had promised, he couldn't remember anything. He wasn't even sure where he was.

Kurt dropped his hands from his face with a sigh and his breath caught in his throat. There were marks on them as well. Kurt stared at them, tracing one finger gently along the fine lines of scab that had formed when the cuts had been made. No wonder his face itched. Slowly Kurt pushed up his sleeves. There were markings on his arms too. And on his legs. And on his chest. They were everywhere.

Kurt was instantly horrified. Martuska had said they would represent the concealment of a lifetime of sins, past, present, and future. But there were so many. It was hard to imagine how there could be that many. From the looks of it, he wasn't going to lead a very good life. And had it worked? Was he really hidden from Azazel now?

There was no way to know of course. Only time would tell for sure.

Kurt stood up feeling slightly dizzy. He put a hand out to the thick trunk of the oak tree to steady himself as he looked around once more.

"Martuska?" Kurt meant to yell, but his voice came out as a hoarse croak, like he hadn't spoken in a very long time. How long, he wondered. How long had it been since Martuska had rendered him unconscious? He shook his head as though he could shake of the memory of Franco holding him down while he screamed for them to stop.

Kurt cleared his throat and called her name once more, but there was no answer. Martuska was gone. He was alone. Kurt sank back down to the ground and wiped hot tears away from his eyes. It seemed that even in his efforts to free himself of Azazel's influence, he was forsaken yet again. He was lost in the woods and to make things worse he was now covered with strange symbols carved directly into his skin. It was just another thing to set him apart, to make him different. Another thing for people to stare at.

Kurt shivered and he slowly pulled his coat from the ground to wrap around his shoulders. He slumped against the tree, wondering what to do. Tears that he hadn't bothered to wipe dripped onto his coat, forming beads in the wool. The dilemma he'd thought he'd had at after Franco's capture was real now. He really was lost and with no way to find either the circus or Father Dietrich. He thought about giving up, about living in the woods for the rest of his life. He was sure he'd get used to it. He'd probably even make a decent hunter, with his tail and his sharp teeth. Maybe this was his destiny, to be a weird scarred mad beast in the woods, neither animal nor man.

No.

Kurt shook his head, once again trying to physically rid his mind of an image, that of himself gone feral in these woods. That was not what he wanted. He wanted his family and his friends. He wanted to find the circus. He wanted to go home.

Kurt heaved himself to his feet and pushed his hands through the sleeves of his coat. He shouldered his rucksack and set his jaw in a grimace of determination. He would find his way out of this. He had to. But first he needed to find his way out of the woods.

An hour later Kurt dropped to his knees on the concrete, his rucksack pitching forward and dumping its topmost contents onto the road in front of him. He had been teleporting continuously since he'd found the road at the edge of the woods, following it by making a series of jumps to the horizon, each time finding a vantage point where he could see as far ahead of him as possible.

But he couldn't go on forever. He was exhausted, too tired to teleport again even as he tried to. His whole body was trembling and damp with sweat. The strange dizziness he'd felt underneath the tree was ten fold now. Kurt shut his eyes and slumped further forward so that his head was resting on the warm concrete. He lay like that for several minutes and was starting to drift off when the sound of a blaring truck horn woke him.

Kurt picked his head up, registering for the first time that he was in the middle of the road. His brain working faster than his body, Kurt slowly stood up. He could barely find the strength to stuff his few possessions back in his bag before staggering off to side of the road where he'd be hidden in the shadows of the trees. He felt the rush of wind as the truck thundered past, still blaring its horn. He was too exhausted to think about how close it'd been.

He napped in the shade, but his sleep was disturbed by strange dreams, their fleeting images already forgotten when he woke. Still, it was better than nothing and when he stepped back out on the road, he found he had enough energy to continue his journey.

It was nearly another hour before Kurt saw anything but farms. The landscape was a patchwork of fields broken up by the low stone walls and rows of poplar trees that were a staple of European agriculture. He could have been anywhere so when he saw what looked like a fenced in fairground in the distance, he changed his course.

It was only a few hops before he was standing outside the gates looking at a row of familiar posters plastered onto the wooden fence.

"Limited Engagement. Les Chansons de la Forêt. Circus Gehlhaar."

It seemed too unbelievable, but he was looking at himself, poised on the bar of a swinging trapeze in Wolfgang's familiar swirling oils, repeated over and over again. These were the posters Wolfgang had made, before they had changed the show so that he was no longer in it. Kurt looked down and saw a stack of the posters sitting loose with a rock on top of them to keep them from blowing away. With shaking hands he slid one from the pile.

Could it be that he had found his way home? Kurt dropped to his knees in a combination of fatigue and gratitude but then a horrible thought struck him. What if they had already played there? What if they were gone already? What if he'd missed his chance?

"Excusez-moi! Vous là! Que faites-vous?" A woman's voice said.

Kurt jumped to his feet and turned around only to see an old woman who screamed and then took off in the other direction, yelling in incomprehensible French.

He sighed. It was so typical, but he was too tired to care. He stared down at the poster where the dates had been written in by hand. The information was useless though since he had no idea what day it was. He would have to ask. Still looking down at the poster and fighting the urge to simply curl up on the ground and sleep, Kurt pushed open the gate to the fairground and started towards a small building that looked like an office.

Kurt had been teleporting steadily since the incident with the truck and crossing the yard seemed like a nearly impossible task. Even keeping his tail aloft was too much work so he let it drag on ground behind him as he made slow progress over the uneven ground. He was nearly there when a man burst from the building.

"What are you? What are you doing here?" The man demanded in French.

Too exhausted to speak, with shaking hands, Kurt held the poster out in front of himself like a shield, hoping the man would understand.

Wolfgang pulled the trailer to a stop inside the gate and cut the ignition. He turned to say something but Maria was out of her seat and out the door before he could open his mouth. Wolfgang sighed and gathered up his paperwork from the back before exiting out the side door to follow her.

It was obvious from Maria's stiff legged gait that she was angry and so the rest of Circus Gehlhaar cut her a wide margin, except for Wolfgang who trotted behind her calling her name.

"Maria! Maria, how long are you going to be mad at me? You've been giving me the silent treatment since Spain," he said as he caught up.

Maria stopped and turned on one heel. "Germany," she said and started walking again.

"Germany? Germany! But we're in France now?" Wolfgang said. "We won't be in Germany for another two weeks. You can't stay mad at me that long!" He trotted after her again and caught her arm. Maria yanked it out of his grasp.

"Leave me alone or it will be Italy." She said.

"We're not going to Italy."

"Exactly." Maria crossed her arms over her chest.

Wolfgang sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "Would you be less mad if I told you I was on edge because I'm worried about Kurt?" he asked.

"No, Kurt's been missing for two weeks." Maria said.

"All the more reason to be worried."

"But you only started acting like an asshole yesterday." Maria finished.

"Yesterday?" Wolfgang asked, confused. "What did I do yesterday?"

"It's not Father Dietrich's fault that Kurt got lost." Maria said.

Wolfgang threw up his hands. "Is that it? Because I got pissed at him on the phone? I thought you were angry because I was wrong about that turn you wanted to take and the one I took got us all lost."

"That too." Maria said. "If you'd looked at the map like I said instead of being all high and mighty about it. And you didn't need to pull the attitude with Father Dietrich either. It's not his fault."

"It's not?" Wolfgang asked. "Last I remembered Father Dietrich promised to look after him. I'd say that makes it his responsibility."

"What is he supposed to do?" Maria argued back. "He's a priest, not a detective."

Wolfgang threw up his hands. "How else do you expect me to find him? It's not like I can put up signs all over Europe that say 'Lost: Blue circus acrobat. Reward if found.' As if I don't have enough to do."

"Why is it always about you?" Maria started to say, but stopped abruptly as an elderly man with stooped shoulders approached them.

"Êtes-vous du cirque?" the man asked.

Maria turned to Wolfgang expectantly with arms crossed over her chest. He was the big master linguist, not her. Wolfgang nodded. "Oui. Circus Gehlhaar. Nous serons ici pour les deux semaines suivantes."

"You people sure know how to make an entrance." The man said to Wolfgang. Wolfgang looked back at their colorful trucks and laughed.

"I guess we do." He agreed. He tried to give Maria an apologetic glance as the three of them started walking towards the office for the small fairground. She looked away.

"Yes. You do. It was the craziest thing I'd ever seen. Scared the hell out of my wife." The man continued.

Wolfgang furrowed his brow. "It did? What do you mean?" he asked. Evidently the man wasn't talking about their trucks.

"I've never seen anything like it, except on your posters of course." Said the man. He opened the office door and ushered them inside.

"Our posters?"

By now Wolfgang was mystified. He gave a confused glance at Maria who was straining catch the gist of the conversation, their argument forgotten for the moment as she registered Wolfgang's confusion.

"Didn't say much. I think he's sick." The man said.

"What?" Wolfgang said. "What do you mean…"

"Kurt!" Maria shouted.

The office was small and homey with a small desk and a few tattered looking armchairs. Sitting in one of the chairs was a dark figure who was unmistakably Kurt Wagner. Wolfgang opened his mouth in shock.

"So he's with you?" The man said, "That's what I thought."

"We know him." Wolfgang said in a daze. How on earth had Kurt gotten to France? "He's with us," Wolfgang repeated.

Maria crossed the room and knelt down beside where Kurt was sitting. Getting over his initial shock of seeing him there, Wolfgang realized that Kurt hadn't moved or even acknowledged their arrival. He was sitting with his head down and wrapped in his old hooded coat, the same one that he had been wearing when they saw him off in Brighton except now it was tattered and mud stained. He looked terrible, like he'd been wandering around for those weeks that he'd been missing. But why Kurt would want to do that, he didn't know.

"Kurt? Kurt, are you alright?" Wolfgang asked as he took up a spot besides Maria. Up close he could see that Kurt was shaking, his eyes half closed, and it reminded him of how Kurt had looked after teleporting with him for the first time. But there was something else too. The fine fur that covered Kurt's skin was matted with blood. At first Wolfgang thought that Kurt had scratched himself like on tree branches, but on closer inspection he could see fine lines had been cut into his skin. They were symmetrical, deliberate.

"What happened to you?" Wolfgang asked, tentatively reaching out a hand to trace the lines along Kurt's cheek.

Kurt opened his eyes slowly, looking at them feverishly, without a spark of recognition. "I'm early," he said, "but the circus is coming."

"Yeah, we're here, Kurt." Wolfgang said. His voice softer as he pushed a lock of stray hair away from Kurt's face. "The circus is here." He looked over at Maria who had taken one of Kurt's trembling hands in her own. She returned Wolfgang's glance, echoing the same confusion he felt. What was Kurt doing here? And moreover, what had happened to him?

"He must have teleported here. I think it's hard for him sometimes, takes him a while to recover, like if he goes a long distance or takes something heavy with him." Wolfgang said to Maria, ignoring the elderly couple behind him. Hopefully they didn't speak German.

"What about these?" Maria asked, tracing a finger along the one of the cuts on Kurt's hand. He flinched and pulled away.

Wolfgang shook his head. "I don't know. Can you find Margali?"

Maria nodded and left quickly.

"He's been missing for two weeks." Wolfgang told the old man before turning his attention back to Kurt. He watched Kurt shut his eyes again, slumping further down into the chair, still trembling. "What's the matter Elf?" He asked Kurt in German. " Did you try to teleport too far? Who did this to you?"

"So tired," Kurt said, not bothering to lift his head.

"Hang in there okay. You can rest in your trailer." Wolfgang said.

"He showed up out of nowhere about 10 minutes ago." The man said. "Right outside the gate."

Wolfgang looked at Kurt's hands, trying to hold them in his own to keep them from shaking but he was distracted by the markings on them. They were like the ones on Kurt's face, carved into his skin all the way up his wrist and arm. Who would do such a thing? He shook his head again.

The door opened. Maria had returned with Margali. Wolfgang moved aside. He wasn't sure how Margali would react; she had been so distant with Kurt before he left Brighton. But so had he to be honest. It was like every time he saw Kurt it was a reminder of how he had let him down, he saw his friend lying bleeding in the ditch below the pier. And so he had avoided him. Looking at Kurt now made Wolfgang feel even worse. He should have done something. He should have been looking for Kurt after Father Dietrich's first call, when Kurt had only been gone for a few hours.

But he hadn't. He'd left it to Kurt to find them. And somehow, Kurt had. But at what cost?

Wolfgang turned to see that Margali was as curious about the markings that had been cut into Kurt's skin as he had been. She looked him over in silence before laying a hand on his forehead.

"You did it. You found us." She told Kurt and then turned to Wolfgang. "He's sick." She announced. "He needs to rest, that's all."

"But what about all these cuts?" Wolfgang asked, forgetting where he was, that they were being watched. "Have you even seen anything like them? Who would do such a thing?"

Margali shook her head. "They mean nothing." She said as she reached toward Kurt again.

Kurt opened his eyes. He was still so tired. What had Martuska done to him? She had said that the symbols cut into his skin would "negate" sin, but what if they affected him in other ways too. She had spoken of mystical life forces intertwining with nature, the kind of things he didn't really believe in. But what if they were real? What if she had somehow cut him off from his and now he was destined to wither away to nothing. What kind of life was that?

Kurt gasped. He wasn't sure how it was possible, but Margali was standing in front of him. She didn't know. She didn't know what he'd done, what Martuska had done.

"No!" Kurt tried to push her hand away.

Margali stepped back in surprise as Kurt jumped to his feet. He had to find Wolfgang or Christian. Margali still thought he was responsible for pushing her from The Way, still thought he'd tried to kill her, and he was in no condition to explain things. He needed to rest, to gather his strength if he could. He had to find someone who would protect him until he was ready.

Margali reached out and put her hand on Kurt's shoulder. "It's alright," she said. "You're safe."

Kurt shook his head and grabbed hold of her arm. The room was spinning worse than before, darkness closing in on the corners of his vision. He was losing consciousness, it was the same as it had been beside Martuska's fire. Margali was responsible. She had to be. Kurt struggled to stay on his feet but he knew he was swaying.

"Please don't hurt me. I can explain everything," was all he managed before consciousness left him entirely.

Amanda and Christian came through the door in time to see Kurt swoon to the floor, still grabbing on to Margali's arm.

"Dude, is that Kurt? What's he doing here?" Christian was so surprised he actually said it in English. He didn't bother to repeat himself. As far as he knew, Kurt was still in Germany, staying with Father Dietrich.

Wolfgang was kneeling on the ground with Margali, helping slide his folded up jacket under Kurt's head. It was strangely like the night he'd found Kurt under the pier, but different. This time Kurt had found them, not the other way around.

"Christian, can you bring Magali's trailer around?" Wolfgang asked as he stood up.

"What? I don't get it. What happened? How did Kurt get to France?" Christian asked.

"I'll explain everything later," Wolfgang said. He looked panicked, almost desperate. "I don't want people to see him like this."

Christian shook his head. "Explain it now," he said crossing his arms over his chest. He didn't know what to say. Wolfgang obviously knew something he didn't. Margali and Amanda were both sitting beside Kurt engaged in an intense whispered conversation that he couldn't quite hear.

Wolfgang looked back at Maria who shrugged. Then he explained to Christian the events of the last two weeks, starting with the call from Father Dietrich that Kurt had wandered off on his own on some kind of personal errand and ending with his mysterious appearance in the office of their next venue, apparently just a few minutes before the circus pulled up.

"You didn't tell us?" Christian asked in disbelief. "How could you not tell us?"

"I didn't want people to worry." Wolfgang said, running his hands through his hair to smoothing it back. "I didn't know what to say. Not while everything was up in the air."

The truth was that he was afraid of what would have happened. Traveling these last few months without him, Wolfgang had come to realize that within Kurt existed the heart and soul of Circus Gehlhaar and that they were incomplete without him. Sure, they performed each night, and the performances were jaw dropping as always, but there was a spark missing. They were going through the motions of being Circus Gehlhaar, it was a facsimile. And when Wolfgang exhausted all the possibilities, he realized that the only thing truly missing was Kurt. He wasn't sure what telling them that Kurt was off on his own lost in the wilds of Europe would do to them. He didn't know what this would do to them.

"You could have told us the truth." Christian said.

"No, I couldn't have." Wolfgang said. "What would you have done?"

"I…" Christian paused. He would have wanted to go look for him of course.

"Would you have wanted to perform?" Wolfgang asked.

"Of course not." Christian said.

"Would anyone have wanted to?"

Christian shook his head. He doubted it.

"That's why I didn't say anything. But he's back now; it doesn't matter. Please, get the van." Wolfgang said, his voice practically pleading.

"You're an asshole." Christian said, shaking his head.

"No, I'm trying to run a business. And do what's best for the circus." Wolfgang said matter-of-factly, even though in his heart he agreed with Christian. It was the kind of thing his father would have done. He was an asshole. He'd been an asshole ever since Brighton.

"Do what he says Christian."

It was Margali's voice. Christian looked down at her. She had Kurt's head cradled in her lap. He looked bad, sick, but not as bad as it had been in England. Christian looked back at Wolfgang, still not sure what to do.

"He'd be all right. Do what Wolfgang asks." Margali said. "He found his way back to us. Everything is going to be all right now."

Something about the way Margali said it Christian knew she was right. He nodded

"I'll be right back," he said.


	55. Chapter 54

**Chapter 54: Truth, Lies, Tears, and Laughter part 2**

_"Welcome home then, Kurt, welcome home."_

Christian pulled the van he shared with Margali and Amanda away from the area designated for the circus' living quarters and back to the front gate. He'd lived with the Szardos family even since he'd abandoned his and James' "Wenig Amerika" trailer so that Brin could have a space to live. It was supposed to be temporary, but he liked the Szardos'.

A sliding door divided the sleeping spaces so that Margali and Amanda were off in their own rooms in the back. He and Kurt shared the much smaller bunks off of the main living area. Christian slept in the bottom bunk that was supposed to be Stephani's though as far as he knew, Stephani had never actually slept in it. Kurt had the top bunk, which he had personalized with a weird blend of old Circus Gehlhaar posters and religious ephemera. He'd also removed the ladder since he didn't need it and the hallway was a lot larger without it. Each night Christian fell asleep to the sound of Kurt murmuring his prayers at the foot of the bed. Sometimes he went on for so long that Christian didn't even hear him vault into the bunk above.

Most of the time the arrangement worked well. And when things didn't work out Christian just imagined he was living in the zaniest most off the wall sitcom plot imaginable. "See what happens when a California surfer joins up with old style European traveling circus and lives with two gypsies and a guy who looks like the devil". Sometimes he could almost hear the laugh track. You couldn't pay people to make stuff up as good as what they came up with on a daily basis. The truth was, Christian didn't want to move out. Life was too fun.

Amanda was waiting just inside the door of the office and as Christian pulled up she stepped back into the office interior. A moment later Wolfgang emerged carrying Kurt, who was so bundled up in that coat he always wore whenever he left the circus that he was hardly recognizable. Christian opened the side door and looked around. He almost wanted them to be caught, wanted someone to see what Wolfgang was doing. But the rest of the circus was parked on the other side of the fairgrounds, already engaged in the routine of making themselves at home, and he could hear the sound of their semi trucks being unloaded as the roustabouts lost no time setting up the big tent. No one knew about this little drama as it was being played out, as far as the rest of the circus was concerned this was just another stop on the tour without Kurt. Wolfgang was going to get away with this just like he got away with everything else he did.

The four of them got on and Wolfgang dropped Kurt on Christian's bottom bunk. Kurt moaned and shifted, but didn't wake. Christian got up from behind the driver's seat to watch.

"I can't believe you didn't tell us about this Wolfgang," he reiterated as Margali unwrapped Kurt's coat from his face and shoulders.

"That was his decision Christian, it can't be undone now," Maria said.

"What happened to him anyway?" Christian asked.

"No idea," Wolfgang said. "Margali?"

Margali looked up. "I'll need some warm water and a cloth Amanda," she said. "I can't read anything with this much dried blood." She ran a finger along Kurt's cheek, trying to trace one of the lines that had been carved there.

"You said that those cuts didn't mean anything," Wolfgang said.

Margali shook her head, squinting at Kurt's hand and arm.

"I could be wrong," she said. "I need to see better to be sure."

"I'll pull around to the living quarters," Christian offered. "There's a wash building with hot and cold water. You guys coming?" he asked turning towards Wolfgang and Maria.

"I better stay here for a little while and smooth things over with the management. They seemed a little confused by all this." Wolfgang said.

"I'll stay behind with Wolfgang," said Maria.

"Okay Dokey," Christian said with mock casualness as he dropped into the driver's seat once again.

"Please don't tell anyone," Wolfgang warned him, "not yet at least."

"Hey, I'm not telling anyone. I'm just pulling around to our parking space so Margali can 'read' Kurt better is all. If that's okay with you." Christian said, the irony all too evident in his voice.

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

"All right, we'll be back in a little while and then you can let us know if you need anything," said Wolfgang. Christian nodded and watched then jump out before pulling the van around the back.

He sat with Kurt and Amanda while Margali prepared the water.

"You guys were all pissed at Kurt before, when he left with Father Dietrich" he said, watching Amanda pushing Kurt's unruly curls out of his eyes as he slept. "You wouldn't even talk to him. Why the big change?"

"I know. Mom says we might have made a mistake," she said. "That's what she's trying to figure out."

"What kind of mistake?" Christian asked. He didn't like mysteries.

Amanda sighed and shrugged her shoulders. "It's really complicated. I don't even think I could even explain it to you. Let's just say mom thought Kurt tried to hurt her, maybe even kill her."

Christian tried to suppress a snort of laughter. "Kurt? Are you kidding?"

"He had a very good reason at the time. And then what mom did…" Amanda stopped playing with Kurt's hair and cupped her chin in her hands, thinking. "I was angry at both of them I guess. I told you, it's complicated. It was a bad few days"

"I guess…" said Christian. He turned back to see what was taking Margali so long just as she came into view carrying a large bowl of steaming water with both hands. There were a few thin towels draped over one arm. "Ugg. That stinks," he said as she set it down on the floor.

"I put some herbs in it," Margali said as she soaked one of the towels in the water. "They have… antiseptic properties."

Christian made a face. "What about rubbing alcohol and bactine and stuff? You're going to get that smelly herbal stuff all over my bed."

Amanda gave him a look of silent disapproval and was quickly joined by Margali.

"What?" Christian said, looking wounded.

"If you're going to stay, then be quiet," Margali said. "I'm working."

"I get it. Recipes from the old country and everything. Fine. I'll be quiet." Christian rolled his eyes and moved toward the front of the trailer where he picked up a book and feigned disinterest. Maybe he would have to move soon after all. Sven and Nils had some room, if you liked swarthy Swedish acrobat types. Or Feuer Langerhan had his own trailer; he wouldn't even need heat during the winter. Christian sighed and peeking over the top of his book watched Margali lay her hand on Kurt's forehead.

"He was looking for us, but at the same time he's afraid to come back. He knows the depth of our misunderstanding," Margali said. "He was totally unaware of what he'd done and now that he knows, desperately wants to repair things. He was trying to explain it himself before he collapsed."

"Is that what all these symbols are for? I don't recognize them," Amanda said.

Margali shook her head. "No, I don't think so. And I have seen them before. My mother and sister used them, but never like this." She sighed and picked the towel out of the bowl, wringing it out with both hands.

"They go all over his chest too," Amanda said, lifting up Kurt's blood stained shirt and looking under it.

"They do?" Margali dropped the towel back in the bowl and frowned. "All this has to come off then."

"Did Kurt do all this?" Amanda asked.

Margali shook her head. "I don't see how. Kurt's never had any instruction in the use of this or any other magical alphabet. And the symmetry and dexterity," She glanced at Kurt's hands. He'd adapted remarkably well to a world full of tools for five fingered hands, but there was still a noticeable difference in his work. "I don't think he would have been capable."

Margali looked up at Christian who had given up his ruse of pretending to read ever since it looked like she could read Kurt's mind. "It looks like we need your help after all," she said.

"Déjà vu." Christian said as he got up to join them.

"Huh?" Amanda asked.

"You weren't there, but in Brighton, after Wolfgang found him," he said, as he raised Kurt's hands above his head so Amanda could slide his shirt off, "I helped pull Kurt's clothes off then too."

"That's right, mom was … sick," Amanda said. She didn't like thinking about that weekend at all, so many bad memories all at once. She gave Christian a sad half smile. "Thanks for helping out."

Christian shrugged. "It wasn't a big deal," he said. He pulled one of the thin blankets down from Kurt's bunk so he could have some modesty. "Wow, I know the whole modern primitive body scarification thing is in now, but that's pretty extreme huh?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Margali said. "It really depends." She reached down for the towel again to wring it out.

Christian sat back down in his chair with his book. "Depends on what?" he asked.

"On what they mean," Amanda said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Christian was about to ask what they were talking about, but Margali had started working on washing the dried blood off of Kurt's skin and a moment later he jerked awake.

"Hurting me," he said groggily, sounding as though he had been caught in the middle of a sentence.

"I'm sorry," Margali said, "there's infusion of nettles in there, it stings." She leaned down to soak the towel and wring it out again, the clear water becoming murky and dark.

Kurt rubbed his eyes and stretched, still waking up. Margali had most of his face clean and they could see a symmetrical pattern of angular swirls had been carefully cut into his skin, deep enough to leave a permanent scar but not so deep as to be disfiguring to the delicate muscle beneath. It was the perfect symmetry that had Margali's attention though.

Working more quickly, Margali held Kurt's arm over the bowl and squeezed water over it so that the dried blood ran down his arm and hand and back into the bowl. Kurt flinched and tried to move away.

"You're all right. It's just water," Amanda said, climbing into the bed to sit with him. Margali handed her a fresh towel so she could work on his other arm. "No one's going to hurt you," she said when Kurt continued to try to pull away.

There was a spark of recognition in Kurt's eyes and he stopped struggling. "Amanda?"

"Yeah, we're just trying to get you cleaned up. What happened to you?" Amanda asked.

But Kurt wasn't listening. He sat up quickly, backing quickly away from Margali and Amanda.

"Relax Kurt, we're not trying to hurt you," Margali said. She reached out for Kurt's arm, but he vaulted over the two of them in a flurry of movement. Christian jumped up to block his way, fairly certain that after two weeks of carefully lying to the entire circus about Kurt's whereabouts, Wolfgang's planned homecoming for Kurt didn't involve him running out of his trailer naked and spattered with blood.

Christian went to grab Kurt by the wrists and only had time to catch a glimpse of the expression in Kurt's eyes to know that for some reason he was truly panicked. There was a bang and an explosion of air and for a moment Christian thought that somehow Kurt had exploded. He had only seen Kurt teleport once or twice and never up close. Except that Kurt hadn't gone anywhere. Kurt seemed to realize this fact and that he wasn't wearing anything at the same time and his look of panic shifted almost comically to one of horror.

"Here," Amanda said, quickly pulling Kurt's blanket off the bed. She draped it around his shoulders as he sank to the floor though whether it was out of weariness, frustration with his inability to teleport, embarrassment, or a combination of the three, Christian couldn't tell.

"Why couldn't I teleport?" Kurt asked. H e reached up with a shaking hand to wipe a small trickle of blood from his nose.

"Maybe you're just tired," Margali said. "Now please, stop trying to run away. I'm not angry. I'm not going to try to hurt you."

"You're not?" Kurt said sounding relieved and turning around.

"No." Margali laughed. "Now, are you going to tell me what happened to you or am I going to have to just sit here guessing?" She held out a hand and Kurt accepted it in silence, climbing shakily to his feet and returning to the edge of Christian's bunk. But instead of talking he allowed Margali to work in silence, wincing every so often as Margali cleaned the last of the dried blood from his fur.

When she was done Margali handed the bowl to Amanda. "Be careful," she said. Amanda took the bowl and motioned Christian to follow her. He looked back at Margali and Kurt and then at Amanda as though to say he preferred to stay.

"Let's go," Amanda said in a tone that brooked no arguments.

With a frustrated sigh Christian heaved himself out of his chair once again and followed her.

"What are you doing?" he said when they got outside, "Kurt was going tell us what happened."

Amanda shook her head. "No, he was going tell mom what happened. Here." She handed the bowl to Christian and started opening one of the trailer's outer compartments. "Don't you remember when I told you, there are only three people Kurt talks to, Father Dietrich, Wolfgang, and my Mom?"

"Yeah, I do remember that," Christian said. "When Brin first came."

"So, he left Father Dietrich's, Wolfgang struck out for some reason, that leaves my mom. He wouldn't have said a word with us in there." Amanda said.

Christian started to dump the water out onto the ground.

"No!" Amanda caught his hand and tipped the bowl back up. "What are you doing? You can't dump that out there."

Christian looked started. "What's wrong, it's just water."

"No, it's got Kurt's blood in it too. You can't just dump it in the dirt like that," Amanda said. She pulled a bucket out of the compartment and shut it. "Dump it out where there plants and stuff. The roots will suck it up."

"Why? Is Kurt's blood like, good fertilizer or something?"

"Something like that," Amanda said.

Christian shrugged. "What's the bucket for?"

"I'm going to wash Kurt's hair. It's gross," Amanda said.

Christian dumped the bowl out over thick patch of tall grass and bushes growing at the edges of their campsite. He jogged back to the wash building where Amanda was standing. "There you go," he said holding out the empty bowl to her, "I'm sure those plants will be a foot taller and blue by tomorrow morning."

Amanda made a face and turned the hot water spigot, waiting for the water to get warm.

"I still don't get it," Christian said.

"Don't get what?" Amanda asked.

"The big change of heart. I mean, you wouldn't even look at Kurt back in England and now you want to wash his hair. I don't get it." Christian leaned back against the wall. He stared off into space for a few moments thinking about it. He'd tried to make jokes and be light hearted while it was happening, but they were some of the darkest times in his life. "Kurt kept asking where you guys were," he said, "And the first couple of days after it happened, when he was totally out of it, he would wake up at like six every night all freaked out thinking he had to get ready to perform. It was weird. He was like a clock."

Amanda sighed, staring at the water rushing into the bucket. "I know. I said I was sorry."

"I don't care about that. It would have been nice if you were there for him, but whatever." Christian tapped his hands on the wall nervously. "But there has to be some reason why you guys changed your minds."

"It's because of mom," Amanda said after a long silence. "She had this dream a few nights ago where her sister came to her and said 'the gate is closed, the way is open, and your angel will have scars'."

Christian waited for her to finish but when Amanda said nothing else he spoke. "That's it? That was her dream?"

"That was it," Amanda said, picking up the bucket and leaning back against its weight.

"Oh, well it's perfectly clear to me now," he said with a sarcastic laugh. "Honestly, what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Amanda shrugged. "I don't really know exactly. I think mom's hoping that maybe Kurt can tell us. I think she thinks it means she was wrong. Coming?"

"I don't know. Is the secret society through meeting yet?" Christian asked.

Amanda narrowed her eyes. "What's the matter with you?" She asked. "Why are you being so difficult about this?" She was used to Christian being so easygoing. She'd never heard him sound so cynical before.

"Sorry, I guess I don't really believe in this kind of stuff," he said. "It just seems like a lot of needless suffering for Kurt in the end."

"I don't believe in it either really," Amanda admitted, "but I know my mother, and she knows about some pretty amazing stuff. She says to never discount a dream."

"Even if it's contradictory statements about scared angels?"

"Scarred angels, but yeah." Amanda said with a shrug. "Anyway, coming?"

"Yeah," Christian said. He held the door open for her so she could carry the bucket of hot water up the steps.

The scene was pretty much how they had left it except that now Kurt was dressed in a clean shirt and shorts and he had his face buried in Margali's shoulder. She had put her arms around him. Obviously they'd walked in on Kurt's explanation still in progress, the very end at least.

"Oh," Amanda stopped, Christian bumping her from behind.

"It's okay," Margali said. She pushed a lock of her hair aside and craned her neck around so she could look Kurt in the eye. "Right?" She asked.

Still sniffling Kurt nodded and wiped his eyes. "I'm sorry. I just missed you," he said.

"We missed you too," Amanda said, putting the bucket down and sitting down at her mother's back so she could look Kurt in the eye.

"But what about before?" Kurt asked. "What about what happened before?"

"What did I just say about that?" Margali asked him.

"That it doesn't matter, that you made a mistake, and that if I can forgive you…" Kurt stopped to wipe his nose again and Christian found his comedy side, the one he couldn't quite control, wondering if this wasn't the "very special episode" of his sitcom, the one in which the funniest and usually least accessible character shows that he's human after all. Except that with Kurt there had never been any doubt.

"That if I can forgive you," Kurt said, beginning again, "we can be a family again."

"That's right," Margali said.

"Of course I forgive you," Kurt said, reaching up to wipe fresh tears from his eyes. "All I wanted to do was come home."

Amanda took Kurt's hand in hers. "Welcome home then, Kurt," she said and using her index finger to tilt Kurt's head up, she planted a kiss on his forehead, "Welcome home."

Author's Note: The title "Truth, Lies, Tears, and Laughter" is a line paraphrased from the lyrics of Cirque du Soleil's "Quidam".


	56. Chapter 55

This is it. The last chapter of Even Angels have Scars. I hope you like it. If you've been reading this and haven't posted a review, it would be really great if you posted one. I'll have the sequel up soon. Thanks for your comments and support everyone!

_**Chapter 55: Psalms**_

_"I hope you can forgive me Lord, for what I am about to do."_

Kurt covered his head with a towel as he left the tent and wiped the sweat out of his hair. He was going to have to cut it. He usually kept it a little on the longish side to cover his ears, but this was getting ridiculous. He hadn't had it cut since the spring and it was too thick and curly to let grow for more than a month or two. Plus he couldn't believe how completely out of shape he was. A little more than an hour of messing around with Sven and Lars on the trapeze rig and he was ready to collapse.

Everyone had told him to start slowly and at first that had been easy since he wasn't even sure if he wanted to go back to performing at all. But after a few days of watching the Olsons practicing, it was like being six again and he was dying to join them. And at first he'd felt like a complete klutz, even missing catches, something he never ever did before. But that phase had passed quickly and now after a few days of regular practice ,the trapeze was starting to feel natural again and he was once again at home in the air.

Kurt looked around their encampment and sighed. It had been such a long summer and now that he was back, doing what he had always done, with people he'd known his whole life he wondered what it had all been for. Had God planned this for him? Was God even real? At the time it seemed as though he would never find his way back and now that he was here, the memories were already fading so much so that it seemed that he'd never been away.

He thought about that night in Father's Dietrich's church, how he'd come to realize that the things that he believed were the work of God, his unique appearance and abilities, Margali finding him and bringing him to live with the circus, all the things that made him special, were actually the work of Azazel. But was that true? Kurt had always believed that God had worked through Margali, but what if God had worked instead through Azazel?

He ran the tips of his fingers over his face. His hands, which were normally very callused, had gotten softer during his long hiatus from performing and he could feel the raised scars that Martuska had made him cut into the skin of his face. It was still hard for him to picture himself doing such a thing and Kurt preferred to imagine that they'd gotten there by some other means.

There was the sound of footsteps behind him and Kurt turned quickly.

"Where are you off to so fast?" Lars asked.

Kurt shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "To take a walk maybe."

"Can I come? The Wolleck's took over the highwire so we won't be able to practice again until later."

Kurt gave a non-committal nod as he started towards the woods so Lars followed..

Lars had been Kurt's first official visitor after his return to the circus. Wolfgang had woken him from a strange dream he couldn't quite remember, something sliding out of his hand and being told to pick it up again; the images driven from his memory even as Kurt had opened his mouth to describe them. He could tell had fallen asleep with his hair wet from the way it was sticking out all in different directions, but he was too tired to care. And as strange as it was to be back, he realized that he wanted the company. Maria had brought a bowl of soup and some bread and Wolfgang had brought Lars as though they knew the combination would heal both body and soul.

Lars had obviously been briefed on the state of Kurt's face because he'd carefully avoided the topic during his entire visit. And then afterwards none of his other visitors had said anything. In fact, since his return not a single member of the circus had mentioned a single word. If Kurt hadn't been able to see the cuts on his face in the mirror himself, he would have thought there wasn't anything remarkable about his appearance at all. Despite the collective effort to pretend the marks didn't exist, Kurt wondered if he would ever get used to them.

"I think you're getting better," Lars said, "I told you you wouldn't forget. How are your hands?"

"Huh? Oh, my hands are fine," Kurt said as he held them out. Sven had taped them earlier since standard gymnastics grips didn't fit and skin rips were a common injury after long breaks. Lars looked at the worn spots in the tape appraisingly and nodded as though satisfied so Kurt let his hands drop to his sides without a word.

They walked for a while in silence, leaving the circus' grounds and taking a narrow but well worn path into a small wooded thicket.

"What was England like?" Kurt asked as they reached a clearing, swatting the branches away with his hands. Sunlight cut through the trees in bright rays, like spotlights on a floor of dried leaves.

Lars shrugged. "It was okay. Brighton was the most fun, I mean before… you know." He was silent for a moment. "The best part was when we took a break in London," Lars said. "James took the band into a recording studio and they recorded all the music from the show. We even got to go in one of the days and sing all the back up vocals. But mostly we wandered around looking at all the tourist stuff. We went to the British Museum and then Wolfgang took a bunch of us to the Tate Gallery, which was cool because he actually kind of knows about art. And I think we saw the Queen's car."

"Really?" Kurt said. He tried not to sound jealous, knowing that even if he had been with the circus at the time, they wouldn't have let him wander around London anyway. But still, he'd never seen London except in pictures. "Why did they record the music?" He asked, desperate to change to subject before Lars started telling him any more about their London adventures.

"Some kind of deal Wolfgang put together. They're going to release the music as a soundtrack and then later, some film company is going to film the show." Lars said.

"They are?" Kurt asked in surprise, "when?"

"When you can perform again I guess." Lars said. "Pretty cool huh?"

Kurt nodded. "I think I'll be nervous," he admitted.

Lars laughed. "You're never nervous," he said.

"I've never been in a movie," Kurt said.

"We'll be famous!" Lars said.

Kurt laughed. "Who will watch it I wonder."

Lars shrugged and they stood in awkward silence for a few minutes. Lars kicked at the dirt with his foot. Finally he looked up. "Did it… Did it hurt? You know, your face…" He gestured at his face with his hand.

Kurt shook his head. "I don't remember it happening."

"What about now?" Lars asked.

"No, I hardly notice it. Only if I look in the mirror or touch my face," Kurt said.

"Oh," Lars sounded uncomfortable, "sorry. I didn't mean to ask. I just…" He trailed off. "Sorry," he said again.

"It's okay," Kurt said. "I guess I've got to get used to them. I don't mind. Really," he added when Lars didn't look convinced.

"I think they're kind of cool looking," Lars said.

"Do you think so?" Kurt asked. He didn't think the marks looked cool at all.

Lars nodded.

"I suppose it doesn't matter one way or the other." Kurt said. "It could be worse. It could be like, rude messages or a recipe for cookies or something."

"What are you talking about?" Lars asked with a laugh and Kurt realized that no one besides him and Margali knew that they had meaning.. For the last few days he'd been walking around imagining that everyone could see a life time of sin exposed on his skin. He had been ashamed of the marks, ashamed of what they meant and how they had been put there. But Lars didn't know, to him they were just designs.

"I'm going back," Lars said, "coming?"

Kurt shook his head. "In a few minutes," he said.

"Are you all right?" Lars asked.

"I'm fine," Kurt said, a little too quickly, as though he was making an excuse even though he really did mean it. He was tired of everyone looking at him like he was about to explode at any minute or asking him if he needed anything. He just wanted to be himself, for everything to be normal again.

Lars shrugged. "I'll see you later then."

Kurt watched his retreating form weaving its way through the trees until he was staring at an empty path. He wasn't sure why he'd wanted to stay behind except that it was a nice place to sit and think and he'd had so little time alone since he'd gotten back. It felt like his life had been a puzzle where, over the course of the summer, the pieces had been scrambled. He'd spent the last week or so putting them back; Margali, Amanda, Wolfgang, Lars, the circus… It was actually starting to look like his life again. But there was still one thing missing and it was maybe the most important piece of all.

He had no idea how God fit into the puzzle anymore.

It had been so easy before that day Azazel had suddenly appeared and introduced himself. Kurt shook his head. He wished he had never kissed that girl. Not that it would have changed things. But now that he had freed himself from Azazel's watch did that change things? Did it matter in the eyes of God? Had it ever mattered in the first place?

He thought of the beginning of the sixth psalm:

"Do not reprove me in your anger, Lord, nor punish me in your wrath.

Have pity on me, Lord, for I am weak; heal me, LORD, for my bones are trembling.

In utter terror is my soul-- and you, Lord, how long...?

Turn, Lord, save my life; in your mercy rescue me."

Was that what he was? Weak? Did he need rescuing?

Kurt sighed. Somehow, he didn't think so. He had been absently picking at the edge of his taped hand and without thinking he started to peel the tape off. He was surprised when he saw blood running down his fingers and it took a moment for him to realize that the tape had pulled the scabs off of the cuts on the back of his hand.

He clasped his hands and pressed the towel that had been draped over his shoulder, against it. He was fairly certain that nothing would happen if his blood dripped on the ground without Azazel's sigil there, but given the cost of hiding, he didn't want to take chances. It made him see the irony of it all. Why did it have to be so easy to contact Azazel and so difficult to reach God?

Kurt picked the towel off his hand and looked. The bleeding had already stopped. The cuts didn't go very deep and they rarely bled anymore, but as he unclasped his hands he realized that he hadn't prayed since the morning he'd left the rectory. How strange that he had simply abandoned something that he did every day, something that was as natural to him has breathing, without even realizing it. Kurt dropped to his knees.

"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." The gesture was familiar, like walking into a room he hadn't been in since he was a child and suddenly remembering what was inside of every drawer and every cupboard. Kurt closed his eyes.

"I've always tried to be your most humble servant, Lord. And I've never once questioned why you made me the way I am or asked you why I was put here to do what I do. I've always had faith that whatever your reasons, whatever your plan, they are just and good.

"Which is why I hope you'll understand why, at this time in my life, I'm not sure if my faith was justified." Kurt felt a fat tear slide down his cheek and hit the dry leaves on the ground. "I'm sorry Lord, that I am in doubt, that my faith in you is shaken, but I hope you can understand. And I hope that you can forgive me for asking, just this once, for a sign. I need to know that you're still watching, that you're still here. I need to know that you love me as much as I love you."

Kurt stayed on his knees in silence with his eyes still shut. The stillness of the woods was like a roar in his ears punctuated by the occasional bird song or creak of branches. Without opening his eyes Kurt rose to his feet. He spun around in place a few times until he didn't know what direction he was facing. He took a deep breath.

"I hope you can forgive me Lord, for what I am about to do," he said. Then he teleported.

Kurt had never teleported with his eyes closed and so for a moment he was disoriented, unsure if he had "arrived". He opened his eyes slowly, not sure what to expect. At first he wasn't sure what he was seeing, why the world suddenly seemed so dark. Was he inside something? Kurt reached forward and his hand came to rest on the rough bark of an oak tree. With a gasp he backed away. He wasn't inside anything, he had been so close, just inches away, to the tree's broad trunk that it had completely filled his vision. It had been an illusion.

He wasn't sure how long he stood there, staring speechless at the tree, one hand still resting on the bark, the only sound was his shaky breathing. How could he have been so reckless? Who knew what might have happened if he'd been just a few inches off. He was lucky he wasn't dead.

Or had he just received what he'd been asking for?

Kurt was surprised when he started laughing. It started as a low chuckle, deep in his chest and almost silent, that built until he was laughing out loud with his head thrown back and gasping for air.

There was no way to know!

And that was what faith was all about wasn't it? He'd never known for sure why Margali had driven past the house he was born in that day; never known whether it was because Azazel told her to, as he described, or because she wanted to take a short cut like Wolfgang had, or because God directed her to. And it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was what he believed.

Kurt backed away from the tree, staring through the branches at the sky and at last he had his answers.

He was still smiling as he pulled the door to his trailer open. Margali was inside, standing on a chair. She was reaching up and hanging a large swag of luminous purple fabric along the ceiling, tacking it to the wall with a staple gun. They had only had the trailer a few years and Kurt was happy to see that Margali was slowly converting the inoffensively dull beige interior to something that looked much more like their old home. He was equally pleased to see that as each one of the overly bright 12 volt light bulbs that lit the trailer burnt out, it wasn't replaced with a new one. Instead an oil lamp was mounted in its place. The trailer, which had seemed so foreign to them at first, was finally starting to look and feel like home.

"Do you like it? It's from India," she said as she shifted the fabric to show the color change in the light. "Sari fabric."

Kurt nodded in approval. "How did you get sari fabric from India?" he asked.

She shrugged. "From Wolfgang, where else? His sister is traveling there and he had her send it general delivery to the post office. Nice huh?"

Kurt picked up the trailing edge to admire the embroidery along the selvage line. "I like it. You should cut a bit off and make a skirt for Amanda." Kurt said.

"Ooh. Good idea. Hand me that knife would you." Margali motioned to a pearl handled ceremonial knife on the table. Kurt picked it and was overcome by déjà vu, dropping a knife because his hands were slippery and being told to pick it up and begin again. But Martuska had promised him he wouldn't remember. Though he wasn't sure what was worse, remembering or not remembering.

"Kurt?"

Margali's voice startled him out of his reverie. "I'm sorry," he said, "I was just thinking about… about what happened." He said.

Margali stepped down from the chair and put her arm around Kurt's shoulder. "This knife belonged to my mother," she said. "There were two. She gave one to me and another to my sister."

"It looks familiar," said Kurt. "Most of it I don't remember, but I remember the knife for some reason."

"What you did was very brave. I'm proud of you," she said as she gently took the knife from Kurt's hand. Kurt said nothing as he watched Margali nick the silk with the knife. Then gave a quick tug and they tore in a perfectly straight line.

"There," she said setting aside the smaller piece, "that should make a nice skirt for Amanda. I'll be sure to tell her it was your idea." Margali folded the fabric and put it on the table with the knife sitting on top.

Kurt smiled and then bowed his head, his fingers unconsciously tracing the lines on this cheek.

"You'll get used to them," Margali said, brushing his unruly curls aside.

"I know," Kurt said. "I just keep thinking of that day, the one where Lars showed me those pictures and Stephani called me a demon. You said they were wrong, but they weren't were they?" Kurt could feel his eyes welling up with tears again and he brushed them aside quickly.

"Oh, Kurt, of course they were wrong," Margali said putting her arms around him and drawing him in close.

"But Azazel…"

"Azazel means nothing. I've always told you that it's the choices that you make that make you who you are," Margali said.

Kurt sighed and buried his face in Margali's shoulder. He thought about that tree in the woods, his little "test". "It was my choice to be baptized," he said.

"I know it was," Margali said. "Speaking of which, you have a package too. Hans sent you something. Wolfgang picked it up when he went to get the fabric."

Kurt leaned back to look at Margali, his grief and confusion momentarily forgotten. "Hans? Oh, right," he said. Kurt always forgot that Margali referred to Father Dietrich by his first name.

"How did he know to send it here?" Kurt asked.

"I called him and told him you were here. He's been very worried about you," Margali said.

Kurt nodded. "Did you tell him about the… my…" he gestured to his face. He was fairly certain that Father Dietrich was not going to understand why he had made the markings on his face and body.

"We'll explain it too him together," Margali said.

"Okay," said Kurt, feeling uncomfortable already. Father Dietrich didn't know about any of this, Azazel, his ability to teleport, none of it.

"Here you go," Margali said as she handed Kurt a small parcel wrapped in brown paper.

Kurt took it and slid a nail through the tape to open it. He unwrapped the paper. Inside were his bible and his rosary. It was like seeing two dear old friends walking through the door and Kurt couldn't help but smile. On a small note card Father Dietrich at written, "I thought you might be missing these." Strange how a few minutes ago, he hadn't been.

"It's perfect," Kurt said. He closed his eyes. His blind teleporting stunt that had nearly gotten him killed had been a wasted effort indeed. He pulled the rosary out first, feeling its comforting weight in the palm of his hand as he gazed at the once faceted beads worn smooth from use before he tucked it in his pocket.

"Why did you leave those with Father Dietrich?" Margali asked as Kurt lifted the bible out.

"I was afraid to bring them," Kurt said. "I thought that if I had to follow Azazel…" Kurt let his voice trail off, shivering unconsciously as he remembered the bone chilling cold as he passed through Azazel's realm. Margali gave his shoulder a squeeze but said nothing.

Kurt opened the bible and looked inside the cover at its familiar inscription.

"Never forget that your uniqueness is God's gift to you. However you chose to use it is how you will love and serve Him best. – Your friend, Hans Dietrich"

It was strange how those words had guided him almost as much as the words of the book itself; both a call to arms and a reminder that even during the darkest times it was the choices he made that were important, even if the results didn't always turn out the way he expected. Kurt stared down at his hands, so different than everyone else's. It had taken him so long to realize that he didn't belong here. But he didn't belong with Azazel either.

So Kurt had made his choice, regardless of the cost, regardless of the risk he chose to break contact with Azazel. He would forever be a stranger among men just as he'd always been. Long after the cuts on his face and body healed and they were just another aspect of his appearance that set him apart from everybody else, it would be his choice that made him human. And that's what God would see.

And, he hoped, there would be others too, those willing to look past his demonic appearance, past the scars, past the tail and see who he truly was. That they would see that God loved him because as everyone knows demons are angels and that even angels have scars.

_**The End**_


End file.
