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- The unexplained event that left the world in several minutes of crippling pain on February 12th, nicknamed ‘the Brain Freeze’ by online commentators -
-The White House has released documents tying the Brain Freeze to the actions of Col. William Stryker, who is now missing and believed dead-
-These accounts link the Brain Freeze to the assassination attempt upon President McKenna just four days prior. The documents indicate that the would-be assassin, identified as German citizen Kurt Wagner, was not acting under his own volition, but was chemically coerced by Stryker’s team through manipulation of another mutant’s abilities –
Click, click, click. Brian Whitby kept blinking, glancing warily over at Kurt at every new channel, but each one seemed to show the same story. Old press photos of Stryker, thick-set and bullish in his military fatigues, set in against grainy security cam footage from the White House. Kurt barely felt like he was looking at himself. The blurred images were predatory. Vicious yellow eyes in a shadowed face, eyes that held no hint of the person he saw looking back at himself when he looked in the mirror.
“It’s alright, Brian,” Kurt assured him, and forced a smile. “I don’t mind. It is nice to see they are telling people I was not, eh, zurechnungsfähig– ” He waved a hand, casting about in air for the English term.
“Criminally culpable?” suggested Ororo, who sat between them, a blanket pulled up over black silk pajamas. In other circumstances, Kurt might have suggested they share that blanket, but the topic made him too anxious to attempt suavity, so instead he was balled up with his knees hugged to his chest, trying to keep his tail from lashing unhappily in front of the handful of children strewn about the Mansion rec room. He did not want them to know how afraid he was. They’d born so much without taking on his burdens too.
“Ja, something like that. I suppose we may as well see what they are saying about us.”
-Wagner, 29, is reported to have been taken into military custody while in Boston with the touring company of the Munich Circus-
“ ‘Taken into military custody’ seems a bit rich,” said Ororo. There was a protective fury in her voice. It warmed Kurt.
-Where he performed as the circus’s star aerialist and acrobat under the stage name ‘The Incredible Nightcrawler’. Analysts believe this background, coupled with his dramatic visible mutation and apparent ability to teleport past security personnel, made Wagner an ideal target for Stryker’s clandestine operation.
The view switched to a clip from an interview, some Yale professor of political sciences. “These men were looking for a one-man army, and one who’d make the absolute maximum splash,” he told the camera. “When you’re trying to demonize an entire group, what better way than to force a demon to be their spokesperson?”
A click and hiss announced Logan, as he popped the top off a beer with his claws. Kurt had not heard him come in. Normally, Ororo would have had words for him about drinking in the Mansion, but her eyes were riveted to the screen.
-We go now to Wagner’s adoptive mother and sister, who spoke with NNS news earlier today.
Kurt’s breath caught in his throat. Onscreen, Margali and Jimaine were both composed and dignified as a reporter held a microphone towards them. But their eyes were red.
“I was always knowing he could not really do this,” said Margali, in halting English. “It was impossible. Impossible. He would never. We are only - happy he is okay. And that everyone is finding out the truth.”
Kurt had spoken to them a few times since the incident, by phone and by video call, thanks to the many many people at the Mansion more tech-savvy than he was, but seeing their faces still hit like a punch in the gut. He could tell they were only barely keeping themselves from tears.
“Jesus,” muttered Logan. He looked at his freshly-opened beer, sighed, and handed it to Kurt. “Think you need this more than me, elf.”
“…Danke,” said Kurt, earnestly, and took a slug. Logan drank Canadian beer, which was only marginally better than U.S. beer, but it was a lot better than nothing.
Neither one of them had been able to sleep, the first night back. They’d stayed up patching bullet-holes in the oak panelling of the Mansion walls instead. Kurt, wary of the man’s burning grief, had not disturbed the silence between them, until, at around 2:30, Logan broke it at last, with a gruff, “So what’s the thing with you and Storm?”
“Thing?”
“Don’t play innocent, blue, she likes you.”
“…I like her,” Kurt replied, after a moment’s thought. “I think I would have to be very stupid not to. But it seems – a very bad time.”
“You mean ‘cuz you’re internationally wanted for attempted murder?”
Kurt had actually been thinking about Dr. Gray, but it seemed cruel to remind Logan of that fresh wound, so he shrugged. “Ja, something like that. There is only so far the whole bad-boy thing goes,” he said instead, and grinned. “I should know.”
That got a tiny trace of a mirroring grin out of Logan. “Yeah,” he said, and then his face changed, and he returned to the work with a grunt. Thinking about Dr. Gray again, despite Kurt’s best efforts. There was no more conversation.
Even so, Kurt had felt it was a tiny victory.
Ororo shook her head at the two of them, but she was smiling, so evidently the rules would be bent this one time. Logan padded off to get himself a replacement beer, and the footage of Margali and Jimaine Szardos changed to another image of Kurt – this one not from the endless footage of ‘The White House Assassin’, but from his days at the Circus. It was one of the promotional images they’d gotten done a few years back, crisp and richly-coloured to the graininess of the security cam footage. In it, Kurt wore his spangled black trench over an all-black pirate outfit, a look calculated to be devilishly debonaire, but the smile on his face was more earnestly excited than wickedly piratical. Kurt remembered that particular shot. The decision to use it in the back of the program, while a more typically villainous shot made the promo posters, as a hint of the people behind the greasepaint. Letting the audience behind the curtain a little.
He tilted his head, puzzled, yet struck by odd hope. The choice of that image could not have been an accident. Something in the narrative was changing.
-The manhunt for Wagner was suspended yesterday afternoon, just hours before the release of the Stryker documents. The White House now faces pressure from mutant rights groups and humanitarian organizations to pardon Mr. Wagner of all culpability in the White House attack so that he can safely return to his family. For NNS news, I’m Mara Mattis.
The program changed to a commercial, loud and tinny and empty, and Kurt exhaled, releasing tension he had not realized he had been holding. Ororo laid a hand on his arm. There was a moment of silence around the room – as if, amazingly, they’d all been holding their breath for him, too.
“Hey. New guy.” Scott Summers stuck his head around the doorframe. “Professor wants to see you.”
Kurt wondered if it was just the ever-present sunglasses that made him seem like a little bit of a douchebag, or the grief, or if that was just what he was like. “Now?”
“Ten minutes.” Summers paused a moment, looking at Kurt with his always-unreadable expression, and then said, “White House called. You’re getting your pardon. But there’s strings attached.”
Only that last ominous sentence kept the room from bursting into cheers. Even so, Kurt felt a squeeze from Ororo, a strange elated shift in the energy of the room. They were all due for some good news.
-
“I’m sorry about the chair,” said Xavier. “I’ll have Bobby bring a stool down from the attic tomorrow.”
Kurt shook his head, a negating gesture, and crouched on the edge of the wing-backed armchair that faced Xavier’s desk to give his tail a bit of space. He hadn’t been close to Professor Xavier since he and Storm had helped him onto the jet four days ago. The man hardly looked any less weary now than he had then. He looked up at the Professor, trying not to let himself hope too hard.
“I’m equally sorry I haven’t had time to speak one-on-one with you until now,” said Xavier. “We, all of us, owe you our thanks for your help.”
Kurt smiled at the desktop. “I only did once what you all do every day. If you had not found me– ” He realized he did not have an ending for that sentence. He lapsed into silence, hunching his shoulders against dread.
“I consider it a great stroke of fortune for us all that we did find you,” Xavier assured him. And it was an assurance. There was a calm, a kindness that radiated from this man like warmth from a candle. “And, in case this has not been made amply clear to you, I invite you to stay as long as you please.”
“I might need to think about this…”
“Your family, and the circus act. I understand. But I encourage you to consider it. You could do great things here – ah, but I won’t pressure you further.” Xavier smiled, and folded his hands on the desk, leaning in. “I just received a call from the White House chief of staff,” he explained, as casually as if it had been the local post office instead of the most powerful governmental seat in the world. “They intend to pardon you. Tomorrow.”
Kurt exhaled, swallowed. “Herr Summers mentioned strings…?”
“The Oval Office sees this, as they see all things, as an opportunity to make political hay. President McKenna chose to declassify a selection of the Stryker documents – carefully chosen, I grant you, but the meat of the truth – because he recognized that he needed a scapegoat for that brief headache I gave everybody.”
“They are calling it the Brain Freeze,” Kurt offered, catching the professor’s small moment of levity.
“Apt.” He smiled. “But in making Stryker the scapegoat, he must make you the innocent victim. He must be publicly seen to offer you the handshake of friendship, to distance himself from Stryker’s actions. You see?”
“…Because…” Kurt thought of the news report, the Yale professor. “I am the White House assassin, but I am also representing all mutants in people’s minds?”
A grave nod. “It is not fair that you have been thrust to the head of this particular parade, Kurt, but at the moment, you are the mutant they’re watching. The mutant of mutants, so to speak.”
“I understand, professor.” Kurt was quiet a moment, considering his own hands on the desktop before him, the thick digits and fibrous nails. “What do they need for me?”
“Tomorrow morning, Scott will fly you to an airbase in D.C., and from there, you will be escorted to the Oval Office for a televised audience with the president and his staff. You’ll have the opportunity to speak to the Secret Service men, and your pardon will be granted in person. There will be a great many cameras, and a great many more security personnel.”
Kurts first absurd thought was but I was going to make waffles tomorrow. He mentally shoved it back into the trunk of nonsense from whence it had come, and made a face. “I suppose I cannot blame them there.”
“It is a lot to ask of you. But this is an unique opportunity to turn public sympathy to our cause. A better bargain will not come our way.”
“I will go,” said Kurt. “I am willing. But, professor – only - Stryker chose me for a reason… Do you really want for the face of mutantkind in America a man who looks so very much like a demon?”
Xavier gave him a long, steady look. Seeing him, in full, in every part. “Kurt, believe me when I say there is no-one on my team better suited to this task. I have total faith in you.”
His tone brooked no more self-pity. “I will go,” Kurt repeated, trying to sound more assured, though he had more questions now than answers.
“Storm can help you find something suitable to wear. We are very well equipped for custom tailoring here. Tell me, do circus performers also say ‘Break a leg’?”
“We say toi toi toi.” Reflexively, he finished the gesture by miming spitting over one shoulder.
To his surprise, the professor repeated the phrase, accent-perfect, and spat a genuine, visible gob of spit over one shoulder. Kurt couldn’t help it. He giggled.
“Now, try to get some sleep,” said the professor.
Kurt rose to go, then remembered something. “Ah, Professor - Will you apologize to the children for me?” A sheepish smile. “I told them I would make waffles.”
“I will offer your most sincere waffle-related regret.”
-
By morning, the whole school somehow knew about it.
Ororo had helped him use the school’s highly sophisticated computerized manufacturing tool – “Hank installed it, he always was a little bit of a dandy when we could get him to actually wear clothes,” she reminisced – and by the time he awoke from his fitful sleep there was a sharp gray suit waiting for him on the chair beside the bed, with a neatly-made slit at the right height for his tail. It looked a little odd without shoes, but apparently some things not even Hank’s computers could figure out.
The whole team was in the breakfast room when he came down, even Scott, who’d been mostly in his room since Alkali Lake. He felt the eyes of multiple X-Men all checking him over for imperfections. The weight of what had been entrusted to him. The world would be watching. Kurt reminded himself to stand straight.
“Nice duds, elf,” Logan snorted. “No stripes, no rhinestones, what is this, a job interview?”
Not an unkind snort. More like he was amused by the ridiculousness of anyone needing a suit in the first place. Kurt had a well-honed sense of the difference between laughing at and laughing with, and this was the kinder sort.
He offered up a sheepish smile. “I feel like I am cosplaying as somebody who works in a bank. Bonds. Interest rates. Dividends. Other money things.”
Ororo straightened his tie, ignoring a wolf-whistle from Logan. “Well you look great. Are you nervous?”
“Nein, not at all. I have only been sick three times this morning. Did I do the buttons right? They’re very tiny and I have pterodactyl hands-”
“All you have to do is be yourself.”
“Ororo… you know that this is terrible advice to give a performer?”
“I mean it.” She met his eyes, sobering his panicky attempts at humour, for a moment. Such large, warm brown eyes. Calm lay in those eyes, if he could find it. “The attack on the president wasn’t you. I saw that in two minutes. They will too.”
Kurt felt that what they were more likely to see was the spade-tailed demon from the security footage. Even in the circus he had been typecast as a villain. Stryker had chosen him with care. But Ororo was looking at him with such seriousness, and she was just one of many. It didn’t matter if somebody else might have been a better choice; he was the White House assassin, and nobody could do it for him. So he’d do it.
He exhaled, long and slow, and gathered his resolve. Every lesson in working through stage fright that he’d ever received at Margali’s knee. Just do it. On the trapeze, your muscle memory will take over. You’ll fly, and never know how you’re doing it.
-
Ororo, Bobby and Marie were camped out on the rec room sofa along with a few of the younger students. Logan had claimed he didn’t need to see it, but he kept wandering in, watching the screen from a standing position for a few minutes at the stretch before wandering out again. Ororo suspected he was pretending not to care.
Logan didn’t do much admitting to being attached to anybody, but she could see he’d gotten rather fond of Kurt since their slightly rocky first impression. The students, too. Bobby idolized him almost as much as he did Logan, Marie had adopted him as some kind of beloved weird older brother, and the younger ones begged him for circus stories - reaching out, perhaps, to the only person in the Mansion not so crippled by Jean’s death as to lose their sense of humour.
Kurt probably wouldn’t have lost his sense of humour if the world was ending. He was at once the most serious and the most silly man she had ever met.
Bobbly and Marie had been chatting. Ororo hushed them.
-Live from the Oval Office, where the man known as the White House Assassin has returned to make amends. This comes just after the release of documents revealing Kurt Wagner was the victim of a chemical coercion scheme aimed at making mutants appear more dangerous to the public. Prior to his capture and coercion, Wagner was an acrobat and aerialist with the Munich Circus. At 2PM on February 8th he infiltrated White House security, incapacitating multiple Secret Service personnel and pinning the President with a knife before being shot in the arm and fleeing the scene.
The broadcaster’s narration was accompanied by a handheld camera view of Kurt, trim and oddly normal-looking in his new suit, making his way through the halls of the White House. He was flanked by secret service and security personnel, big burly men who made him look small by comparison.
One of them rapped on a large, recognizable door, and there was a brief pause. As they waited for the door to open, Kurt looked directly at the camera for a moment, as if catching the viewer’s eyes, and made a face – a nervous here-goes-nothing grin that was so immediately relatable that Ororo heard Logan snort from the back of the room.
An aide answered the door, and invited him inside the Oval Office. Immediately within, he was met by yet another row of Secret Service personnel – and introduced to each of them. Though the footage was almost soundless, voiced over by the news broadcaster providing details about the incident, Ororo realized quickly that these were the agents he had taken down.
The interactions each started somber, his usual puppy-eyed Catholic contrition, but Kurt seemed to be making sure to take a few moments with each of them, and after the handshake he’d make a comment, ask a question, find some grounds for a short conversation. He made one of them crack up. Another seemed to be asking him some technical questions about his acrobatics, which he answered with illustrative gestures. The tension in their shoulders faded. One by one, they relaxed, and so did he.
Then the aide nudged him further into the room – interrupting what looked like it could have been a long and mutually rewarding conversation with the most enthusiastic of the Servicemen – and the sound quality sharpened. The President stepped into view.
“Mr. Wagner, I’m William McKenna. I’m glad to be meeting you under better circumstances than last time. For both of us.” He extended a hand.
The camera focused on Kurt’s odd fingers as he shook the President’s hand, but the handshake itself had no awkwardness to it. “I am very glad I did not have the chance to harm you, Mr. President,” said Kurt, earnestly.
A single stool had been placed on the carpet in front of the Resolute Desk, across from the President’s seat. He took his own seat, and gestured for Kurt to take the stool.
“A stool? That’s kinda cold,” said Logan. “I thought they were supposed to be making nice.”
Ororo shook her head. “Kurt doesn’t like chairs with backs. There’s nowhere for his tail to go. It’s a courtesy.”
And indeed, Kurt bobbed his head in thanks to the President – then to his aide, who no doubt had been the one to arrange that detail – and hopped up onto it in one motion, letting his bare toes curl round the edges while his tail coiled in the air behind him. Natural, with all his usual odd grace, making no effort to hide himself. Camera bulbs flashed in the background. It had also, she realized, been a calculated way to give curious audiences a really good look at him.
“You’re much less scary in this light,” said McKenna, in a moment of apparent honesty that could have been a well-rehearsed effort to be down-to-earth, and could have been entirely the real thing.
“I thought about filing down the fangs,” Kurt answered, as if total honesty had been surprised out of him in turn. “But perhaps I am in enough soup without also angering my dentist.”
McKenna smiled. “How is your arm?”
“Mostly recovered. It is kind of you to ask.”
“It’s a testament to the men and women who protect me that no-one else was significantly hurt. Mr. Wagner, I was shocked and disturbed to discover that your actions against this office were the result of a plot to make mutants appear threatening to the public, of which you yourself were a victim. I must admit I fell victim to that sentiment myself, before I learned the truth. The men behind this plot did not care if you or I lived or died in the attack, only that it gained notoriety.”
Distancing himself from Stryker forcefully – stressing that he couldn’t have known, because people had tried to kill him. McKenna might be a snake, but you couldn’t call him stupid.
Kurt nodded. “I was not under my own power. Another mutant’s abilities had been – manipulated against me. Even so I am sorry for my part in this. For the pieces of my life that he turned into weapons against you, Mr. President.” Ororo knew he’d thought carefully about this speech, because of the correctness of his English and because she knew Kurt, but it didn’t sound rehearsed. Just painfully truthful. “I am not a violent man. I am a circus performer, I entertain people. That is all I have ever wanted to do.”
“He’s not doin’ half bad,” grunted Logan. “At least he cut out that ‘zhe incredibul nightcrawler’ shit.”
“Yeah, ‘cause nobody ever let him finish,” muttered Marie.
“You’re not really gonna bust my ass for bein’ mean to the elf mid-mission.”
“Look at his little face!”
Ororo cleared her throat, pointedly. They piped down.
“Would you return to the circus, if this can all be resolved?”
“I cannot perform until my arm has fully recovered – but I may perhaps teach.”
And did that mean what she thought it meant?
McKenna’s voice took on a more measured cadence, a tone made for a sound byte. “I’d like to do what I can to make that possible for you. On behalf of the U.S. government, Mr. Wagner, I deeply regret that this was allowed to take place on my watch – and that William Stryker escaped justice for his actions.”
Distancing again. But it was closer to a real apology than she’d honestly expected mutantkind to get.
“This office recognizes your apology,” McKenna continued, “as well as the circumstances surrounding your actions that absolve you of true moral culpability.” He cheated outward, looking to the cameras, making sure they got their shot. He produced a pen. Only then did Ororo notice the document on the desk before him. “I, President William McKenna, do hereby grant full and unconditional pardon to Kurt Wagner for the deeds against the United States laid out herein.”
A signature, a smile for the camera, and he shook Kurt’s hand again. “Danke,” mumbled Kurt, knuckling at his eyes. “Gott danke. Thank you, Mr. President.”
-
Ororo had wanted to be there when Kurt got back, but she found she wasn’t alone; most of the X-Men were waiting when the jet landed, signalling his and Scott’s return. “Went well,” Scott admitted.
“I do wish I had not cried on network television, but it could have been worse,” said Kurt, but there was an elated relief in his voice. “The Secret Service fellows were really very nice. Antony says he would like to practice fencing with me the next time I am in D.C.”
“Uh, Kurt? You gotta see this.” Kitty Pryde had just phased through a wall, brandishing a laptop. Kurt stared at it, frowned, then took it very gingerly and set it down on the nearest table. Ororo knew his ignorance of computers was only because of the shape of his fingers, and not his upbringing, but she could not help feeling that Kurt seemed like a man out of time, plucked from some Germanic Medieval folk tale.
It was a twitter posting of a video of the press event that had aired earlier that day. The view counter on it was in the millions – and below that, pages and pages of comments. Kitty scrolled through them, slow enough that a half-dozen nosy X-Men could get a look.
@poboy_2000
What?? He’s ADORABLE??
@AEW_tonistorm
hard to believe this guy merced a whole room of secret service
@mrdavidnelson
Agreed, it’s super impressive he had the ability but he does not seem to have the will
@softboygetup
Let this sweet blue man live his GD life
@biologyisdestinyy
Honestly POTUS should be apologizing to him not the other way around. If you read the leaked files they tortued him. All this press against mutants just smoke and mirrors making people look the wrong place. It was never the mutants it was the government
@CJcregggg
Okay but why he kinda…
@h7n9d
the FANGS omg
@numb3rs You are so real
Kitty clicked one of the string of hashtags under the video, bringing them to a twitter feed. More short clips, little highlights from the interview. A lot of photos. The most common still looked like it had been taken after the televised portion, and showed Kurt perched on the stool they’d given him, relaxed, smiling a little. They had lit the Oval Office well for the cameras; under those studio lights no sinister shadows hung about him. His distinctive features were clear – not just the ornate scars and tail, but the strong roman nose, the expressive eyes, the dramatic arched brows and the fangs just slightly too big for his mouth.
Somebody in the White House Press Corps understands the female gaze, thought Ororo.
@mvkenterprises
So this whole thing was a setup? Manipulating us into fearing people like this guy. They literally kidnapped some goofy circus acrobat and we all believed he was a trained killer. #WhiteHouseAssassin
@thecakeisalie
Developing a massive crush on the #WhiteHouseAssassin was not on my 2003 bingo card. #EnoughSoup
@TherealAllisonDavies
you can invade my oval office anytime mr. wagner #WhiteHouseAssassin
@LoisBujold
Protect him at all costs. #WhiteHouseAssassin
@tayanna_the_great
What that tail do #WhiteHouseAssassin
@SamReich
Love that the guy some military asshole specifically picked out to make all mutants look bad is now going viral for being too sincere and lovable #WhiteHouseAssassin #EnoughSoup
@tuesdayaddams
the monsterfucker girlies are eating GOOD tonight #WhiteHouseAssassin
It went on. After a moment, Kurt pushed the laptop away. He was grinning. “Danke, Kätzchen, I get the gist.”
“It’s all over twitter. You got fangirls.”
“Based on this, I would say they want to be called fang-girls,” said Kurt. “How was that? I am working on my English puns.”
Logan frowned. “No bashful religious act, huh.”
Kurt shrugged. “Was? It is not my first time with the fangirls.”
Ororo blinked, glancing around at the others. From their expressions, they hadn’t expected this either from the frightened gargoyle she and Jean had plucked from the rafters of an abandoned church in Boston.
“Being a Catholic does not make me a monk,” Kurt teased, seeming to delight in their confusion. “Many circus performers develop followings. Mine tended to be… a little odd, but very sincere.”
“Huh,” said Logan, looking quietly amused, enlightened. Then he remembered to be grumpy, and wandered off with a grunt.
“Well,” said Kitty, “Horny fans or no, you still owe us waffles.”
“I do! Waffles you shall have!”
It took a few minutes to get a moment alone with him, away from adults trying to decant political details and children trying to decant waffles, but she finally managed to catch him alone in the kitchen halfway through making the batter. “Kurt. Did you mean what you said about… teaching?”
He paused. The gaze that met hers was almost guilty. “I have not been sure,” he admitted. “I want to be here, and I want to be there. I am – between.”
She thought about how much they needed his help without Jean. She thought about how much she needed him. She thought about his troupe back in Germany, the circus that was missing a star acrobat and those two dignified Romany women she’d seen in the interview that were missing a brother and son. She thought about kissing him on the mouth and hoping it’d make him stay.
None of that would have been fair to him. So she squeezed his wrist, and went to tend to her garden, hoping it would clear her head. Pulling weeds was as good as a cold shower.
-
The wave of internet enthusiasm that Kitty dubbed ‘Kurtomania’ had mostly receded after a few days. But it left in its wake a sense that something had shifted. Hating mutants was subtly out of favour. The Stryker conspiracy had painted mutants in America as victims. The White House interview had made them interesting. And, for average mutants in America, things improved.
Perhaps the most noticeable symptom was that Kurt could be in public without causing alarm. And he was testing the waters in typically dramatic fashion – by escorting the children, along with the Professor, who was a longstanding theatre buff, and, of all people, Logan, to a Broadway production of Sweeney Todd.
“I have always wanted to see a Broadway show,” Kurt burbled, as they settled into their seats. Getting through Times Square had been a bit stressful, but not for the reason he had expected – nobody had looked twice at him amid the Mickeys and Minnies, the street preachers and the people in all manner of strange getups. He’d quickly realized the real danger was of losing one of the kids. But between Xavier’s psychic handholding, his own ability to fetch stragglers quickly, and Logan simply putting the fear of God into them, they’d all made it to their seats with fifteen minutes to spare.
“The reviews have been cautiously generous,” said Xavier, flipping through his program. “Understandably, critics are somewhat protective of Sondheim’s greatest work, but I gather they’ve done it justice here. I remember seeing it in 1979, with Angela Lansbury– ”
“I love Angela Lansbury.”
“I just wanna see people get stabbed onstage,” said Logan.
“Logan, one day I will make you admit that in your secret soul you like a musical.”
“Dream on, elf.”
The family in the row ahead of them turned, glanced over at Kurt for the second or third time. Their little boy whispered something to his mother. Ah wunderbar, thought Kurt, resigned to unsettled stares all night – but then, the little boy met his gaze, eyes full of recognition, and flashed him a thumbs up.
Quietly, Kurt started to laugh. And the laugh turned into the edge of a sob.
Neither of his companions said anything, blessings be upon them. When he felt like he was less likely to break down, he glanced at the Professor – who had to know everything he was thinking, who was only pretending to read his playbill to allow Kurt a bit of dignity – and dared a question.
“Professor… Did you know that this was going to happen?”
“Did I know putting you in the spotlight would work in all our favour?” Xavier smiled. “When William Stryker chose you as his weapon of terror, Kurt, he made a critical tactical error. He failed to appreciate that you are deeply likeable.”
Kurt caught himself trying to think of an argument, and slapped the thought down. Instead, he smiled. “I find it is easy to be liked by people you like also.”
“I hate to mention it again. But this trip has reminded me that the school is sadly without a drama teacher.”
Sly, Professor. Kurt thought about how he was in an auditorium full of people, and, for the first time in his life, he was in the crowd. He thought about the adrenaline rush of the spotlight, the hushed crowd with their eyes all on him, and he thought about the peace of being one of many for an evening instead. He thought about teaching drama. He thought about Ororo, and being able to go out for coffee someplace with her in New York, like a normal man. He settled back into his seat.
His tail wound its way through the gap between the cushions, and twitched in time as the music began.