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Another Way - Kurt 'Nightcrawler' Wagner x Male Reader

Summary: You weren't about to let the deal with Eson be the last time you ever got to see Kurt.

CW: No use of y/n - Not canon - Slight X-men 97 spoilers - Hurt - Comfort - Angst - Mutant reader

Words: 4k

A/N: Oh boy my first Kurt fanfiction and its angst because X-men 97 hurt me dearly, but hey just think now we get Nightcrawler and eventually Morph on this blog. This didn't exactly turn out as planned, but I also got very distracted with other things while writing and worked with what I had. Last thing, requests are open again and the fandom list is slightly updated. Have fun, be respectful in my asks.

The phrase was a casual cruelty, tossed into the air by people who had never stood over a hole in the earth and watched the world keep spinning regardless.

If you love something, let it go.

An antiseptic lie. A tidy little aphorism meant to comfort the untouched, as if grief were a bird you could simply unhand from your wrist rather than a malignancy eating its way through your chest. To let go implied a choice. It implied an open palm and a horizon. But letting go of Kurt hadn't been a choice; it had been a violent, ragged amputation performed in the span of a heartbeat, leaving you to bleed out in the quiet aftermath while everyone else put on their Sunday best and pretended the floor hadn't dropped out from under them.

Every second spent drowning in the silence of his absence felt like a deliberate mocking of the truth. They told you to move on, to find peace in the noble sacrifice, as if the arithmetic of survival could ever balance the ledger of his loss. What was the worth of a tomorrow built on the ash of his laughter? What did it matter that the skies didn't fall entirely when the only part of the sky that had ever mattered to you had been snuffed out in the dark?

You still had his rosary—silver links grown heavy and cold against your palm, worn smooth by the calloused fingers of a man who had believed in a mercy the universe had ultimately denied him. You carried it in your pocket like a live coal, a jagged reminder of faith abandoned and prayers that had hit the ceiling and bounced back down like lead.

The mansion was too large, too loud, too obscenely alive. Down the hall, the quiet murmur of celebration—of survival—filtered through the walls. Anna Marie had her happy ending, a fragile, hard-won peace stitched together with the threads of everyone else's misery. You were expected to stand in the light, to offer up the polite, bloodless smile of a comrade who understood the cost.

Smile, because he did it for her. Smile, because the world turned on its axis. Smile, because at least you still had the cold metal of his beads to press into your palm until the metal bit deep enough to draw blood, grounding you in a pain that was at least real.

They called it noble. You called it a theft.

You stared at your reflection in the cracked glass of your bedroom window, the rain outside blurring the manicured lawns of Westchester into gray smears. Beneath your skin, your mutant power hummed—a restless, volatile energy that wanted to tear the walls down, to rip open the seams of the world and tear through realities until you found the exact coordinate where the blade had missed.

In another life, in some impossible branching of time that your mind obsessively mapped in the dark, there was a version of you that wasn't a coward. A version that had backed him against the library shelves late one night when the shadows were long and the world was quiet, and had simply confessed the truth before the silence could swallow it whole. You would have told him that he was the only sanctuary you had ever known. You would have told him that his faith wasn't the only thing worth dying for, that his heart was a country you would have fought an army to stay inside.

Instead, you had kept your mouth shut. You had swallowed the words down until they tasted like ash and copper, paralyzed by the terrified luxury of tomorrow.

Now, tomorrow was just a room that smelled like old leather and ozone, empty save for the phantom weight of a blue tail that wasn't going to wrap around your shoulder anymore, the ghost of a voice that had called you mein freund with a tenderness that deserved a better ending than the one the world had written for him.

You closed your fist around the rosary until the crucifix bit into your skin, drawing a single, dark bead of red.

"He would not want this," a voice spoke, quiet, broken—so unlike the man you'd grown to know as Charles Xavier.

You didn't look toward him. The sudden, heavy presence of his wheelchair beside you was enough; you could feel the psychic weight of him pressing against the raw edges of your mind like a thumb on a bruise.

"Could you say the same for Erik?" You whispered, your voice hoarse with unshed tears, tasting the salt and copper of a throat torn raw by silence.

Charles didn't answer right away. He turned to face the rain-streaked glass of the window, his hand coming to rest over yours, skin cool and papery against your knuckles. He leaned back in his chair, his free hand curling tightly into the purple fabric draped across his lap, bunching the silk until his knuckles whitened.

"Does anyone ever truly want this?" He asked, the academic detachment in his voice fracturing, leaving behind only the exhausted weight of a patriarch who had buried too many children. "The world takes, and we keep giving. Blood, tears, lives... the ones we love." He squeezed your hand, a quiet, binding anchor.

You shook your head, a violent, desperate motion, tears finally spilling over your lashes to burn hot down your cheeks. A ragged sob choked in the back of your throat, tearing its way up as you tried to force the words past your lips, tried to give shape to the jagged fury eating you alive from the inside out. But how could you say what you truly wanted to say? How could you tear open the polite, martyred silence of the X-Men and lay the blame where it actually belonged?

How could you tell him that you blamed Rogue for her reckless, grief-blinded stupidity? That he should blame Erik for his ruthless, burning arrogance—for his desperate attempt to use her pain as a weapon, for the catastrophic domino effect of everything the two of them had unleashed, for the blood-soaked calculus of a war that had demanded Kurt as collateral? How could you say that every noble speech, every grand ideal of coexistence felt like a sick joke when the only person who had ever looked at your jagged edges and stayed was currently dust beneath a ruined sky?

You wanted to scream at him that you could fix it. That you could rip open the seams of reality, that you could march back to the edge of space and bargain with Eson the Searcher—that you could beg, bleed, or trade your own soul to make the Celestial take back the deal that had torn Genosha apart and unmade the blue-skinned angel standing beside you.

You didn't need to say it.

Charles knew. The telepathic barricades you usually kept raised were pulverized by your grief, wide open and bleeding your resentment directly into the air between you. He felt the venomous ache of your anger toward Rogue. He felt the cold, calculating hatred you harbored for Magneto's grand designs. He felt the terrifying, impossible desperation of your bargain with cosmic gods.

He didn't flinch. He only tightened his grip on your hand, his own mind heavy with the phantom ash of a dying world and the haunting, hollow echo of a friend who had chosen vengeance over salvation.

Outside, the gray sky pressed down on the Westchester lawns, a relentless downpour washing away the blood of a war they all pretended was over, leaving you stranded in the quiet wreckage of a tomorrow Kurt never got to see.

Charles didn't pull away. He didn't offer the platitudes of a headmaster or the hollow comfort of a dream yet to be built. He sat in the gray gloom with you, absorbing the jagged shrapnel of your thoughts without a single word of reprimand, because he knew as well as you did that forgiveness was a luxury reserved for the living.

"You carry a heavy burden, my friend," Charles finally murmured, his voice barely audible over the drumming of the rain against the pane. "And heavier still because you believe you bear it alone."

"I am alone," you choked out, the words tasting like iron and salt. "He's gone, Charles. There is no tomorrow with him. There's just... this."

You looked down at your hand beneath his. The silver crucifix of Kurt’s rosary had carved a crescent-shaped indentation into your palm, the skin swollen and weeping a tiny drop of crimson where the metal had broken through. It was the only thing left of him that wasn't a memory, a cruel physical proof that he had once existed, that he had once breathed, that he had once looked at you with those wide, golden-amber eyes and made you forget every scar you carried.

Downstairs, the floorboards groaned under the weight of people trying to rebuild. You could hear the faint, muffled hum of machinery, the low murmur of voices trying to piece together a shattered school and a shattered species. They were planning for a future. They were talking about peace, about picking up the pieces of Genosha's ghost and marching forward into whatever new nightmare awaited them on the horizon.

It made you sick.

"If I open the door," you whispered, staring blankly at the rain-streaked glass, "if I let my mind go—really let it go—I can still feel the echo of him. Just a flicker. Like static on a dead channel."

Charles turned his head slowly, his blue eyes searching your profile with a deep, sorrowful comprehension. "Be careful," he warned softly. "The ghosts we summon in the dark have a way of demanding our lives in exchange for theirs."

"Let them," you spat, the bitter edge of your mutant power surging just beneath your skin, a restless, violet hum that made the hairs on your arms stand on end. "Let them take it. What is there left to keep?"

You pulled your hand free from his, ignoring the sudden, hollow coldness it left behind, and turned your back on the window. The room was dark, swallowed by the early evening shadows and the relentless storm outside. You didn't turn on the light. You didn't want to see the dust motes dancing in the air, didn't want to look at the empty space beside your bed where he would never sit again, laughing softly at some silly joke, his tail twitching lazily against the floorboards.

You sank down onto the edge of the mattress, pulling your knees to your chest, pressing the bloody rosary so hard against your forehead that the metal bit deep.

The silence closed back in, heavy and suffocating. But beneath the patter of the rain, in the quiet, bruised spaces of your own mind, you didn't let him go. You never would.

You weren't sure how long had passed. Time had dissolved into a thick, stagnant mire, hours bleeding into days until your body felt hollowed out, lighter, as though you were no longer entirely of the living.

When your eyes drifted open, there was only darkness. Not the harsh, sterile black of a sleepless night in the mansion, but a deep, velvet obscurity—the comforting, hushed darkness of an old stone church after the candles had burned down to wax. An innate sense of relief washed over you, sudden and grounding, wrapping around your bruised nerves like a cool compress. You weren't hurting anymore. The crushing weight on your chest had lifted, replaced by a strange, numb tranquility.

Then, a voice cut through the stillness, warm, low, and laced with that familiar, easy cadence that had lived rent-free in your mind for years.

"You really think I would leave you that easily, mein freund?"

Your breath caught. You couldn't see him clearly, not fully beneath the heavy folds of the black shroud he wore, but there was no mistaking the silhouette—or the dark, flexible tip of a tail poking lazily through the hem of the fabric, twitching with a rhythm you would know anywhere.

A tremor rolled through your chest, half-terror, half-agony. You shook your head, taking a hesitant, shuffling step forward into the shadows. "This is a dream," you whispered, the words trembling against your lips. "Just a manifestation of grief. My mind breaking because it couldn't handle the quiet."

The silver rosary wrapped loosely around your wrist shifted, the tiny metal cross dangling from your palm catching a light that wasn't there, chiming softly against your skin. You wanted to reach out, to grab him by the collar of his robe and demand to know why he had left you behind in the wreckage, but the closer you forced your legs to move, the more the floor beneath your feet began to dissolve.

The velvet dark didn't fade—it fractured.

The comforting shadows tore apart with the sound of cracking glass, and a blinding, ethereal luminescence bled into the space, burning white and hot against your retinas. You threw an arm up to shield your eyes, stumbling backward. When you lowered your arm, the old church was gone. Kurt was gone.

In his place, towering in the endless expanse of the cosmic abyss, stood Eson the Searcher.

The Celestial's colossal, armored form blotted out whatever stars existed in this forgotten pocket of reality. He looked down at you, a speck of dust standing on nothingness, his monolithic presence vibrating through the marrow of your bones.

"A life for a life," Eson spoke, the sound rolling through the void like tectonic plates shifting in the deep earth. "That was the deal."

You stood frozen, your mouth hanging slightly open as you sucked in a sharp, dry breath that tasted of ozone and dead worlds. The sheer impossibility of it pressed down on your shoulders, buckling your knees. You stared up at the towering god, your voice a cracked, disbelieving whisper.

"Is this real?" you choked out, your hands trembling at your sides. "Or is this just some sick joke my own brain is playing on me?"

Eson's towering form shifted slightly, the ambient light of the cosmos rippling across his armor. "It is entirely real, mutant. And I believe you have an offer for me."

An offer. The word echoed in the empty expanse, cold and calculating.

Your gaze dropped instinctively to your hand. The silver beads of Kurt’s rosary bit into your palm, a tangible anchor to a grief you had tried to drown in. A deal. A bargain struck in the dark when the world was ending. But at what cost? Your life in exchange for Kurt’s? For Anna Marie’s, too, after everything she had broken and tried to fix? Was your life even worth that kind of arithmetic? You were just a ghost waiting for permission to fade.

You clenched your jaw, the fear burning away into a bitter, defiant resolve.

"Mine for his," you spoke, stepping forward into the blinding light, lifting your chin to meet the judgment of a god. "Mine for theirs. Take me instead."

Eson went still. The cosmic energy swirling around his colossal shoulders seemed to pause, the silence stretching out heavy and absolute as the Celestial weighed the currency of your soul.

Then, slowly, the deep rumble of his voice vibrated through the void. Rejected.

A life is not what you truly wish to give, despite your desperate demands for one in return.

You staggered back, a frown pulling at your brows as total confusion seized you. "What are you talking about?" you demanded, your voice cracking with frustration. "That’s your deal! A life for a life! That’s the rule you laid down, and now you won't accept it?"

"Stop pretending," Eson's voice boomed, indifferent to your panic. "You offer your flesh, your breath, your pulse—things you are already eager to abandon. That is not a sacrifice. Convince me that he deserves to stand in the light with you. Convince me he belongs back among the living, and the debt is erased."

Convince me.

The words weren't a question; they were a demand for a soul to articulate its own worth through the proxy of another. You stared up at the towering, armored monolith of Eson, the sheer scale of him making your physical body feel like a fading sketch drawn in pencil on wet paper. Your breath hitched, the residual phantom air of the mortal world catching in your throat as the totality of what was being asked settled over your shoulders.

You looked down at your hands. The silver rosary was still there, woven through your fingers like a chain of ice. The metal cross pressed so hard into your palm that the skin felt hot, a localized pain anchoring you to a reality that suddenly felt impossibly distant.

How do you summarize a miracle to a machine built of starlight and finality? How do you explain to a cosmic arbiter that the universe is mathematically, fundamentally broken without a blue-skinned mutant who smelled like ozone and old church incense?

"You don't understand," you whispered, your voice small, swallowed instantly by the vast, humming silence of the void, yet carrying an absolute, desperate gravity. You took a step closer to the edge of the platform of nothingness beneath your feet, lifting your chin. "You think he’s just a casualty. A piece on a board that can be swept away because the game ended. But you don't know what it cost him just to be good in a world that only ever wanted to put him in a cage."

Eson did not move. The swirling nebulae and dying stars reflected in the polished plating of his mask remained static, cold, and listening.

"He carried the weight of a faith everyone else abandoned," you pressed on, the words tumbling faster now, driven by a raw, bleeding panic that if you stopped, the illusion—or the reality, gods help you, the reality—would vanish and leave you in that dark, empty room in Westchester forever. "He took every curse, every stone, every burning look of hatred people threw at his face, and he turned them into forgiveness. Not because it was easy, but because he believed humanity was worth the blood it took to keep them from destroying themselves."

Your voice cracked, a sharp, ugly sound in the quiet. The image of Kurt flashed behind your eyelids—not the corpse, never the corpse, but him laughing in the kitchen, the lazy sweep of his tail catching the edge of a chair, those wide, golden-amber eyes crinkling at the corners as he looked at you like you were the only real thing in a world full of ghosts.

"I'm bitter," you confessed, the confession tearing out of your chest like shrapnel. "I hate them. I hate what they did, I hate what Erik broke, I hate that Anna Marie gets to live in the light she fought for while he is buried in the dark. I am filled with rot and venom, and if you let me trade places with him, I wouldn't spend a single second trying to save them. I’d let the universe burn down to ash if it meant he got to walk out of here."

You gripped the rosary tighter, your knuckles turning white.

"That’s why you won't take my life," you breathed, a bitter, self-loathing smile pulling at the corner of your mouth. "Because my life is a weapon pointed at the ground. It’s heavy with spite. But Kurt... Kurt is the glue holding the moral weight of this entire pathetic timeline together. If you want a life that actually matters, a life that justifies the continued existence of every breathing coward down there in the mud, you take him back. Because without him, there is nothing left worth saving."

The silence that followed was absolute. It stretched out across seconds that felt like centuries, the cosmic pressure around you shifting, the ambient light of the abyss bending and rippling as if the very fabric of the dimension was holding its breath.

Eson’s towering form loomed over you, the monolithic faceplate expressionless, impenetrable. For a terrifying heartbeat, you thought you had pushed too far, that your venom had damned him forever, that your anger had sealed the vault.

You thought the gods only understood leverage, trade, and spite. But the silence didn't break with a laugh, and the void didn't shatter. Eson remained frozen, an unmoving mountain of starlight, waiting.

More.

The realization hit you like a physical blow. The anger was easy—anger was armor. But armor doesn't bargain for a soul. If you wanted him back, you had to strip away the venom and lay bare the raw, bleeding nerve of everything you had hidden in the dark.

The defiance drained out of you, leaving you shaking, small, and utterly exposed before the cosmic judge.

"I was scared," you whispered, the bravado shattering into a quiet, humiliating crack. You dropped your gaze, staring down at the glowing expanse beneath your feet. "I was terrified. Every single day he was here, every time he looked at me or laughed or caught me staring, I was terrified he would see right through me. I thought if I told him the truth—if I actually said the words out loud—it would change everything. I thought I'd ruin what we had."

Your voice broke, a ragged, pathetic sound echoing into the endless dark.

"I loved him," you confessed, the confession tearing out of your chest with a desperate, agonizing finality that had nothing to do with gods or debts. "Not because he was a hero, not because he carried the weight of the world, but because he was him. Because he looked at a broken, cynical bastard like me and treated me like I mattered. I spent every second waiting for a tomorrow that I assumed would always be there to finally be brave enough to tell him. And now there is no tomorrow. There is just this."

Tears streamed hot down your cheeks, unchecked and unashamed. You weren't a warrior standing defiant against the heavens anymore; you were just a terrified man baring his soul to a machine, offering up the one thing you had guarded more fiercely than your own life—the truth of your heart.

"If you want a life in exchange," you choked out, your hands trembling as you clutched the silver rosary to your chest, "take mine. Let him have the light. Let him live the life I was too cowardly to share with him. Just... give him back."

The silence stretched on, heavy with the weight of absolute vulnerability. For a long moment, nothing moved.

Then, very slowly, Eson the Searcher nodded.

It was a minimal, almost imperceptible shift of the colossal armored head, but the air in the void rushed outward like a collapsing star. A blinding flash of white light swallowed your vision, ripping the ground from beneath your feet.

Your eyes shot open, gasping for air as your back hit the mattress of your bed.

The room was real. The smell of ozone and wet Westchester rain flooded your lungs. The gray, weeping sky pressed against the glass. You scrambled backward, heart hammering against your ribs, chest heaving as you frantically searched the shadows.

And then you saw him.

He wasn't in the bed. He wasn't a ghost of the mind.

Kurt stood near your bedroom window, his back to you, the heavy, familiar drape of his clothes shifting as he stared out at the gray lawns of the mansion. The dark, flexible tip of his tail twitched once, twice, against the floorboards, perfectly real, perfectly alive.

He didn't turn around right away. He just lifted a hand, pressing his palm flat against the rain-streaked glass, watching the world outside.

"You know, mein freund," Kurt murmured, his voice soft, rich, and carrying a quiet, knowing smile as he finally turned his golden-amber eyes back toward you, "next time, you don't have to bargain with a god to tell me."

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