y'know that parallel universe thing you did and i adored? could you do something with the kids meeting the nightcrawler from XM2??
Fair warning this is 14 pages long at my last count. I hope you like it, despite the wait!!
Sanctuary
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Kurt was teleporting faster than he ever had before. His feet would barely touch the ground before he was off again, his mind spiriting him away to the next place, and the next.
Yet, still the sentinels gained. He could feel the air at his back distort with the force of their movement, with the closeness of their grasp as mechanical fingers closed around empty air when Kurt teleported again.
He wasn't sure he'd be able to escape. It was okay, of course, he might have been the fastest messenger that the resistance had, but he was not, by a long shot, the only capable messenger in the field. He was not even the only one carrying this message back to the base, where his mother and the professor waited to break the code that the Anti-Mutant coalition was currently using. (His mother may have long since lost her abilities to shape shift, but that did not make her blind to injustice, or to the predicament her brethren faced.)
He continued to teleport, exhaustion bearing down upon him like a physical weight. It was true that his demise would not call for the end of the resistance, nor would it do more than impact the few people that he had left. They would grieve, but they had not stopped grieving since the first attacks. Kurt had not been himself since the sentinels took the twins from them, and now, as he teleported as fast as his limited ability would allow, he felt that it was a cruel irony almost that meant that the sentinel squadron that had taken Pietro from him would be the ones to take him down as well. After all, they were the only ones that would be fast enough to keep up with him.
And keeping up they were. Every time Kurt's feet touched the barren and scorched earth, he was convinced that it would be the last time. He wondered abstractly if he would see Pietro again when the sentinels got to him. The thought comforted him. He had missed so much about Pietro, from the glint of his hair as he ran to keep up with Kurt, to the gentle way his fingers would curl around the back of Kurt's neck absentmindedly. He missed it all. He'd loved it all, and it had been torn from him too soon. They were meant to die together or live to see the day the sentinels were defeated.
And now Kurt was alone and waiting to die at the same hands of those that had torn the love from his heart, even as they tore Pietro apart.
He teleported again, trying his best to keep going, even though all he wanted was for this to end. All he wanted was to see Pietro again. He teleported-
And something went wrong.
The world tilted as it always did, but when he resurfaced from his splintering pocket dimension, the sentinels were gone. He was alone.
Or, not really alone. He heard voices, a slight distance off.
And the ground beneath him had grass.
Grass.
There were trees to either side of him.
It was... Beautiful.
The charred barren wasteland that the sentinels left in their wake had left him empty. He'd forgotten what the color green looked like, and it was overwhelming his senses now. Part of him wondered, absentmindedly if he'd somehow teleported into one of the human sanctuaries.
Even by teleporting in, he would have set off motion sensors and blaring alarms immediately. Here, there was nothing. This area didn't even appear to have a guard tower or an electric fence surrounding the perimeter. Surely this couldn't be one of the oases, either? Those were just myths to give the mutant children hope and keep the human populace scared. A place where humans and mutants coexisted? The idea that the humans had been in the wrong while committing their mass genocide? That was a terrifying idea for everyone.
He was still attempting to discern the nature of where he had landed, when a martyr landed in front of him.
Warren Worthington III was known across the globe, but the stories people told about him didn't do the man justice. His wings were spread wide as he glided to the ground, their span bathing Kurt in shadow. And now, kneeling before him, his entire body humming with the force of his exhaustion, Kurt understood why they called him the "Angel." Posthumously, it was the only name he was known by, as the entire world knew that his father had championed the Cure, even going so far as to test it continuously on his mutant employees. No one with any respect for Angel called him by the name that man had given him.
This was the man who had looked a Cure in the eye and jumped to freedom- spreading his wings, presumably, for the first time.
Warren had gone back, allegedly, to destroy the Cure that had later been proven both temporary and fatal. No one else was ever "cured" and the humans quickly put the sentinel program into effect, declaring their genocide of the mutant populace publicly, this time, rather than disguising it as a cure, but after that night, Warren was never heard from again.
"What are you-" Angel's eyes widened at the sight of Kurt, lingering on the brand over his eye, the harsh burn that was in such stark contrast to his curling Enochian marks, "Kurt?"
Kurt wondered how Angel knew his name, but the exhaustion was beginning to seep into his vision, now spots were disrupting the idyllic image before him. Perhaps he was dead? This could certainly pass as heaven, he thought.
"Am I...?" he wondered aloud, "Did they catch me? Am I dead?" Angel's face went slack with shock and a vague horror.
"Holy shit." Angel muttered, instinctively reaching out a hand to Kurt. "Are you okay? Can you stand?" Kurt nodded and moved to his feet, but he stumbled, the full weight of his exhaustion hitting him suddenly and melting down to his core. His vision blurred and Kurt realized that he couldn't be dead. Despite Angel's appearance, there was no way he would still be experiencing the fatigue from his messenger run if he were truly dead.
Angel looped an arm beneath his shoulders, hoisting him to his aching feet, and Kurt leaned against him, grateful for the support.
Kurt knew that he had to be slipping in and out of consciousness, because most of the walk was fragmented in his memory, shots of the grass, the gazes of worried mutants, only a few of whom would meet his eyes, a large oak door that haunted his dreams. And things solidified for a moment, only a moment, when a pair of wide, dark eyes met his. The ring that hung around his neck burned against his skin. He knew that it was in his head, that something was wrong, that this must be the final gift that his mind was giving him. And still, his knees buckled, dull pain lancing through him as he hit the floor, his eyes never once leaving the other man's, even as darkness raced in to cloud his vision, his mind finally incapable of keeping up.
"Pietro?" His voice was small, but it echoed in his ears as the darkness finally wiped out the image of his dead husband.
Kurt dreamed, as he always did, of the twins. He dreamed of volunteering to go as their third, instead of letting them leave as a pair. He dreamed that he hadn't trusted their abilities to fight as much as he had and insisted that they bring someone along for backup. He dreamed of fixing it, of the moment Pietro died and Wanda was sent into a grief so strong she pulled the entire city down with her. He dreamed, as he always would, of dying with them.
Not once had he ever really given any thought to what life would have been like if the twins had survived. Too much would be different. Too much of it would just be painful to imagine. He just thought about what he should have done.
He regained his consciousness slowly, voices filtering in through his ears before he even registered the fact that he was lying in a bed far more comfortable than anything he'd been in recently, or even the past fifteen years.
"What do you mean 'your real name'?" He heard a harsh whisper sound from somewhere to his left.
"I meant my birth name! Obviously 'Peter' is a real name, and since I've been using it for over twenty years, I'd definitely say it's my name, but it's... anglicized? I think that's the right term." Came the answering hiss. It was a voice that Kurt would know in death, years younger, full of frustration but undeniably alive. It made something deep inside of him ache. He wanted that voice to be closer, he wanted that voice to be his.
"Why would you go by a name that isn't really yours?" the first voice asked, and if Kurt wasn't wrong, it sounded as though the owner really cared about the answer.
"Listen, I go by "Peter," my baby sister was never taught Sinti, and we don't brag about being different. The town I grew up in wasn't exactly a bastion of acceptance!" Something inside of Kurt knew that the voice wasn't his, and that it never would be.
"He's crying." came Pietro's voice again, and it was so close, so incredibly similar, that if he wanted to, he could let himself be fooled. "Should we wake him up?"
"No need. He's already awake."
Kurt figured that there was no point in denying the truth. He cracked his eyes open and turned straight to the Pietro that wasn't Pietro.
There were clear differences, Kurt could see that now. This Pietro's hair was longer, though it still had the silver sheen that Kurt knew so well. He was definitely younger, lacking the lines around his eyes or the visible scars that his Pietro wore like medals. But perhaps the most striking difference of all was that this Pietro looked like he still remembered how to smile.
He was seated in a chair next to the bed Kurt was lying in and leaning forward, toward Kurt with his elbows resting lightly on the knees of his ripped jeans. He looked like he had a question on the tip of his tongue and was holding it back by its ears.
That Kurt recognized.
Next to Pietro, unquestionably, was his father.
That had Kurt confused. Why wouldn't Erik already know Pietro's birth name? And where was Wanda?
The distinction was clear. His Pietro had grown up in a world on the edge of a war, this one hadn't.
Kurt tried to smile. He wasn't sure how it turned out, but Pietro didn't flinch or run away, so Kurt counted it as a good sign.
"Ask." was all that Kurt said. It was all that he had the energy to say. He tried to make it sound encouraging, but he was almost certain that he fell short of the mark.
"How long have I been dead?" Erik turned toward his son sharply, clearly expecting that question as much as Kurt had been.
"Almost three years, the last time I checked." He replied, keeping his voice low to keep it even.
"And Wanda?" Kurt hesitated.
"She... ensured that no one made it out."
"She went berserker?" Pietro snorted. "I keep trying to tell her that her emotions are going to be what get her killed." Kurt blinked, surprised again, but Pietro barreled on. "What about the twins?"
"The twins?" As far as Kurt was aware, Pietro and Wanda were the only twins that he knew. Pietro must have seen the blank confusion on his face because he hesitated before elaborating.
"Billy and Tommy? My nephews?"
"You don't have nephews, Pietro." Pietro stayed frozen for half of a second that must have been an eternity for him until, in a streak of silver, Pietro shot to his feet, immediately pacing and muttering fast enough that Kurt was almost comforted by the humming noise his words made. This was something that his Pietro had done often, to think through a problem at hand, or strategize the best way out of a situation. Absently, Kurt began to fiddle with the chain around his neck, closing his eyes and letting the familiarity soothe his rattled nerves.
"-Was there to stop her from running away, so in that universe she decided against keeping them, and she never had the twins," Pietro concluded, slowing down, much to the relief of his father, who had been clearly startled even as Kurt was soothed by the motions. "which means that I never...." Pietro trailed off, his eyes wide, staring down at Erik. "I never went after you, because the Professor never came to me." He turned his blazing eyes on Kurt, who leaned forward, searching for differences again. They were much harder to find, with Pietro like this. "You're from the future with the sentinels." Pietro flicked his gaze toward Erik, who was narrowing his eyes at his son. "Which I know nothing about because I absolutely didn't eavesdrop on Hank and Logan and absolutely didn't ask Logan anything about it."
Silence reigned again, and Pietro didn't try to break it. Instead, after a moment, Erik spoke.
"I'll.... go get Charles."
"Yeah, go get Charles." Pietro parroted absently.
"Peter?" Erik asked. Pietro wasn't looking away from Kurt, and Kurt wasn't about to stop looking at Pietro, whether it was his Pietro or not. His eyes had left Kurt's, though, and had drifted down to his neck. Kurt followed his gaze to the ring he refused to get rid of.
"I have one more question I need to ask." Pietro turned to look at his father. "Don't worry, I won't do anything reckless."
Erik seemed to find this answer satisfactory, as he turned and walked out. He didn't give the awkward silence any time to fester or grow, jumping into his question the moment the door clicked shut.
"So." Pietro began, "How long were we married before I went and screwed things up by dying?" There was no point in lying, Kurt decided.
"Five years, but I'm rounding up. It took a lot of convincing for you to get through to me."
"I wasn't like, creepy obsessive about being in love with you, was I?" Kurt laughed, the words were almost exactly the ones his own Pietro had asked when Kurt had agreed to date him.
"You were fine, I just had a lot of reservations about..." Kurt hesitated. He'd grown up inside of a church, thinking that two distinct parts of himself were inherently sinful: being a mutant, and being gay. The Enochian marks could only do so much to alleviate those feelings. "Dating in general. Years of basically being a monk made the transition difficult for me."
Pietro slumped down into a chair.
"Well, that's a relief. I've been known to fixate." He picked at a loose thread on his jeans with a frown. "It figures though, that there's actually a future where you and I are together, and I had an active hand in preventing it."
Kurt blinked, nonplussed.
"You mean we're not...?"
"You barely know who I am, dude. But it's cool, I mean clearly it doesn't end well, and you deserve better than that. " His tone suggested a second meaning to the sentence that Kurt was all too quick to comprehend.
"Better than you." Kurt finished, half livid at the very suggestion. Pietro ran his tongue over his lower lip, clearly trying to figure out how to deny it without outright lying.
"Yeah," he conceded at last, and before Kurt could respond, or tell Pietro off for being so massively ridiculous, the door opened and Professor Xavier wheeled in, Erik hot on his heels.
Once again, the Professor was unmistakable, but ages younger than Kurt had ever had the pleasure of knowing him. Without the context that Pietro and the mansion provided, Kurt would have had no reason to recognize the Professor, no matter how obvious it seemed with what he knew.
"Incredible," the Professor breathed, and Kurt knew that he wasn't going to get another moment alone with Pietro for a while.
The next several hours involved the Professor picking his brain, both literally as well as figuratively. By the time he'd gotten through as many questions as he could think of, and Pietro had called for a break twice so that Kurt didn't find himself in the awkward position of beheading a telepath he looked up to in front of an alternate version of the man he loved, Kurt was exhausted once more. Pietro, Erik, and the Professor left him alone with the swirling thoughts in his thoroughly picked brain, and all he could think of was that this was the universe that he wasn't in love with Pietro.
Of all of the universes he could have landed in, this was, by far, the bleakest.
But when the familiar sound that Kurt knew accompanied his teleportation (something that he was nowhere near able to manage in his current exhausted state) sounded in the corner of the room, he was neither shocked nor surprised.
He'd be curious too if he heard that there was another version of himself locked in the room down the hall. And if the similarities between his Pietro and this one were anything to go by, then he wouldn't have been able to hide anything from someone he loved.
Kurt kept waiting for this other version to make a move, to say something, to demand answers, but nothing came. He seemed content to simply sit there and watch Kurt breathe.
"I hope you don't think I have no idea you're there." He stage whispered, amused. There was a startled movement from the corner the familiar noise had emanated from.
"Ah, no?" The other version of himself squeaked, stepping forward to where Kurt could see him.
Kurt had expected it, the sight of himself, blue and covered in Enochian marks, but it was one thing to expect it, and another entirely to see it. For starters he expected something closer to what he saw in the mirror, and that had not involved….
The Kurt he'd expected had been like him, world worn and older than his days or his face revealed. The Kurt that stood before him looked young, scared, and too small to have the volume of visible marks on his face. It very nearly broke his heart.
Kurt pushed himself upright, very obviously clearing a space for his younger counterpart, who gingerly climbed into the space provided.
"So you're… me?"
"Pietro seems to think that I'm a version of you that is from a future that doesn't exist."
"What did you say to him?" The other Kurt asked, sounding even smaller than he looked. "Peter was in here for hours and now he won't even look at me." That must have seemed very strange to this Kurt, who had been getting besotted gazes from Pietro, or Peter, as he seemed to want to be called in this timeline, likely since they had met. Of course, now Peter was operating under the impression that he had stopped the course of events that got himself and Kurt together, and that would hurt him enough that looking at his Kurt would be nearly unbearable.
"I told him about the world that I came from. The one that he helped to erase." Kurt slumped forward, trying his best not to visibly pout. Something about the expression rang as familiar with Kurt. He kept talking, wondering if maybe, just maybe, Peter was slightly unreliable in his ideas of how this Kurt felt about him. "He said you barely knew him in this world." Kurt said nonchalantly. "Why would you mind if he didn't look at you?" Kurt shifted, his face falling again.
"I thought that maybe... he at least considered me his friend."
"I know he does. There are just parts of my past that he wasn't expecting to discuss. He just needs time to think."
"In your future, were you and Peter friends?" Kurt considered, for a moment, concealing the truth, but the idea that Peter had, that there were versions of themselves that weren't meant to be together….
He didn't like it. He didn't agree, because there couldn’t be a version of this timeline where Kurt wasn't in love with Pietro. He closed his eyes and forced himself to stop before he told this version of Kurt that they were meant to be together forever. If Peter felt that he'd given up his feelings to this Kurt, he'd never forgive Kurt.
"Yes, we were. We were very good friends."
"Oh." He seemed almost disappointed by Kurt's answer.
"Would you have rather I said we were enemies?" Kurt asked, raising one eyebrow slightly, already half certain he knew what this other version of himself was going to say.
Sure enough, the other Kurt's eyes bugged, his spine going ramrod straight.
"No, no of course not! I'm glad to hear it, it's just-"
"You want to have hope that he returns your feelings, don't you?" Kurt asked quietly, knowing, beyond any reasonable doubt that he was right. There might have been a universe out there where the two of them didn't belong together, but Kurt wasn't about to let this one be it. Panic stole over the face of his younger counterpart, and before Kurt could get out any words of comfort, he was gone, as though he'd never been there in the first place. Kurt scowled at the empty air in front of him, before coming to the conclusion that clearly they wouldn't get together without a fight.
Well, he thought, it was a damn good thing that he'd trained with the best fighters in the mutant resistance camps.
"I teleported into a live war zone with a nuclear bomb strapped to my back." he grumbled into the darkness. "This should be easy."
It was not easy. Getting out of the room was one thing, he'd spent enough time in the mansion before the sentinels took over to know the layout, but once he was out, he had to avoid everyone.
Beast had questions. The Professor had questions. Magneto had... a seemingly endless supply of glares.
Kurt didn't want to know what that was about. At least this version of Erik wasn't afraid to look him in the eye.
The only people he didn't seem to see were the ones he was looking for.
The third time he escaped his room, he made it as far as the end of the hallway before he ran into someone.
"Are you trying to escape?" Kurt looked down at the girl who had spoken. She was seated just below an open window, her legs curled beneath her on top of a bright yellow jacket. Her hair was pulled into pigtails, and she was smiling at Kurt like she didn't have a care in the world.
"Um-"
"'Cause if you are, I'm going to have to call for the Professor." Kurt blanched.
"No, no I'm definitely not escaping. I just needed out of that room." The girl was not a telepath, and as such she had no reason to believe he wasn't telling the truth. She beamed, an expression dazzling enough that it was like concentrated light. If Kurt looked at her too long, he was afraid he might get a headache.
"Good!" She chirped as she maneuvered herself so that she was still in the strongest patch of sunlight, but now there was a space next to her where Kurt could sit. He did so, curling up small enough that she had more room if she wanted it. He had barely hit the floor when she was off again. "Now, I know you're probably sick of questions, but can I ask you one teeny tiny question?" Kurt resisted the urge to tell her that she just had. He nodded instead, not wishing to alienate any of the friends his other self had made. "Why did Peter say you 'were a Maximoff' when he was vouching for you, and are you going to be getting in the way of my eight step plan to get Peter and the elf together?"
"Uh," Kurt said again, "Who?"
"Well, I can't call him Kurt around you, because you're Kurt too, and that would be confusing, and you've both got the elf ears, but he thought it was funny the first time I called him an elf, so I'm going to call him that." Kurt brushed off his lingering confusion.
"Eight step plan?" He asked instead.
"The elf and Peter have feelings for each other. They aren't going to do anything about said feelings, so I am going to force them to acknowledge that they feel the same way about each other. Your turn."
"I don't know why Peter would call me a Maximoff-" Kurt began, but another voice cut him off.
"Liar." The voice was delicately accented and the bright pigtailed girl beamed when she saw the speaker.
"Ororo!" Kurt turned and froze.
He couldn't help it, he was suddenly overcome, for the first time since he'd arrived, with a feeling akin to homesickness.
He hadn't seen Storm since her mission in Wakanda had separated the resistance into divisions. She'd gone with Logan, the Professor, and Magneto (who hadn't even been able to look at Kurt after the funeral, never mind that he'd been thrown into the same situation Erik had. They'd both lost the twins, but the difference was that they both blamed Erik). Kurt had joined his mother, Illyana, and Kevin to try and discover the plans of the Anti-Mutant groups and to find a way to disable the Sentinel Program permanently.
He would never see Storm again.
His future was dead, doomed, and for all he knew, she hadn't made it much further than he had. He tried to stop looking shell-shocked as she leaned down and pressed a kiss to the other girl's cheek.
"Hello, my little lightning bug." She turned back to Kurt, a wary look melting into a sympathetic smile as she took in the look on his own face. "I take it you know who I am?" Kurt's lips twitched.
"In my world, you and Jean Grey stopped me from assassinating the President. I'd hope I knew who you were." She stared at him, as if trying to separate the truth from the joke, and seemed to give up after a moment, settling into the space he'd left, curling the other girl into her arms. At least, it seemed, in this world she wasn't going to let herself waste away pining for a man who didn't deserve her.
"I'm sure we had a good reason."
"You did." He assured her. "The two of you saved me. I just wish I'd had a chance to return the favor." The girls looked at each other, worried. Ororo turned back to Kurt slowly.
"I... died in that other universe?"
"No, Jean did. And she took about half of San Francisco with her. Unless you believe the Professor."
"What does he say?"
"He says that Jean Grey died at Alkalai Lake, and the girl who came back was the physical embodiment of Jean's Phoenix energy. The side of her powers that she couldn't control." Kurt hesitated before continuing. "I like his version better. I didn't know Jean long, but I know that she wouldn't kill Scott. Or, I'd like to believe that."
"Right. No, she wouldn't. She wouldn't, she loves him!" The bright girl stated, bolstering herself. Kurt stopped himself before he could say that sometimes love was the only motive behind a murder. Storm looked at the girl and then back to Kurt, steeling herself.
"Now, you were lying to Jubilee about Peter when I walked up. Please tell her the truth." The girl, Jubilee, leaned forward, an expectant look on her face and Kurt sighed, reaching up and tugging the necklace his wedding ring was attached to out from where it had been hidden beneath his shirt.
"In my universe, we were married. Peter likely views me as part of the family because of it." Ororo's eyes went wide, and yet another grin spread across Jubilee's face. "You mentioned an eight step plan? If I promise I won't get in the way, will you let me help?"
"You solemnly swear that you don't want to steal Peter for yourself?"
"My Pietro is long buried. I no more want to steal this one away from my other self than I'd want to face my father in law."
"Solid." Jubilee said. "I'll take it."
Jubilee's plan was either genius or the work of some kind of god.
Still, Kurt was able to help her revise it significantly, so that it went from an eight step plan to a two step plan.
Jubilee admitted that it was very heavily influenced by the play "Much Ado About Nothing." All they had to do was get one or the other, or, preferably, both of them to confess their feelings for each other within earshot. Eight steps had been rendered unnecessary when Kurt had appeared, because at least four of the original steps involved getting a telepath on their side.
All Kurt had to do now was find his younger counterpart and make him angry enough to talk about Pietro.
This fell to him because of all people, Kurt knew which buttons to press to get himself riled up and angry to the point of yelling his feelings to the heavens.
There was only one problem.
He couldn't do it.
He couldn't sit there and make this younger, better version of him get angry and confess in a fit of rage. There would be too much loathing in the words for the little one to believe that there was any hope.
And the half terrified glare that he received when his younger self opened the door was more than enough encouragement for Kurt to abandon the plan. Instead he reached out and wrapped him in a hug tight enough that Illyana would have been uncomfortable, and was greatly relieved when it only took a few moments for the little elf to hug him back. When he felt comfortable enough to speak, he did so quietly, hoping that Kurt could hear the honesty in his words.
"It took me five years to come to terms with how I felt about Pietro. Your world might not be in the middle of the biggest war Mutants have ever seen, but I don't want you to have to be missing those five years when you think back on how long you’ve been together. If I'd been willing to believe that those feelings were real, that they were as pure as any love could be from the very beginning... I'm not sure what would be different, but I know I would be happier with the time we did get."
"It just-" He trailed off, but Kurt knew what he was trying to say.
"Everything we were taught was wrong. I know it's hard to believe right now, but the people who care about you? They aren't the ones who are going to be telling you that your salvation is at the wrong end of a knife."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because the last person to tell me that they thought I was a demon and the world needed to be cleansed of people like me, branded this into my face," he ran a finger over the grotesque "M" that the Anti-Mutant group he'd been captured by had branded on all of them, "and then they said the exact same thing to the four-year-old boy next to me." The other Kurt flinched and Kurt could tell that he'd gotten through to him.
"What if you're wrong?"
"Then God is a lot crueler than he has any right to be." The little one winced again, and Kurt knew that it was because it hurt to hear those words, in such a stark violation of what he'd grown up believing, and coming from himself, it must have been harder to hear. Hopefully, however, hearing it from himself would make it easier to believe. "And Pietro? What do you feel when you think of him?"
Kurt watched as the boy beside him fought down a smile.
"I feel a lot of things. But mostly I feel happy. He makes me happy." Well, Kurt thought, it was a start. "I think, what you said the other day was right."
"Oh?" Kurt asked, wishing he were a telepath so that he would know for certain that Jubilee had Pietro in position.
"I did want to have some sort of hope that he returned my feelings, but..." Kurt hesitated. "But you are a completely different person than I am, and the version of Peter that you had must have been a different person, too, so it wouldn't have mattered if you two were together in your universe, because it wouldn't mean anything. If my Peter loves me the way that I love him, then it's because it's how he feels, not because some other version of us claimed that we were meant to be together." Kurt found that he was pleasantly surprised by this answer, and he knew that this version of himself would become everything he'd never gotten the chance to be.
“Maybe you should tell him that.” He replied with a smile, and the other Kurt narrowed his eyes, suddenly suspicious.
“Why? What do you know?”
“It was just a suggestion.” Kurt replied, doing his best to placate the young man before him.
“I don't know...” He murmured, still clearly suspicious.
“Just think about it.” Kurt stepped away, toward the door and had it halfway open before the other Kurt spoke again.
“Thank you.”
“I'd say ‘anytime’ but I'd prefer we have different discussions in the future.” He quipped, letting the door fall shut behind him.
Jubilee and Peter, as it turned out, were not in position. When Peter had realized how close they were getting to the younger Kurt’s room, he panicked and bolted.
Allegedly, on his part.
Kurt found him sulking in the room that he’d commandeered, sitting cross-legged on the bed. He glared at Kurt when he entered the room, but it was slightly undermined by the fact that he was still pouting.
“What did you do?” Peter asked, zipping to the door and making sure it was closed as Kurt forced his weary bones to not collapse on the floor, and take him to the bed instead. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Kurt muttered into a pillow, wishing for nothing more than to sleep his troubles away. He knew the likelihood of said troubles being gone when he awoke were slim to zero, but he also knew that he was one and a half minutes away from shoving Peter and the little elf into a closet and forcing them to talk about their feelings.
“Don’t lie to me.” Peter sighed, flopping back on the bed. Kurt had forgotten the seemingly genetic dramatics that Pietro and his family tended to engage in, which should have been impossible, considering his family consisted of Wanda Maximoff, a literal witch with a flair for the dramatic, and Erik Lensherr, who once escaped prison by having Kurt’s mother inject a guard with pure iron and spent a few extra moments gloating with his witty one-liners.
“He came here and accused me of stealing you away from him because you seem to be avoiding him,” Kurt paused to look pointedly at Peter, who now refused to look at him. “Are you avoiding him?”
“Not on purpose. It’s just every time I look at him, I think about what you said, about how, in your future, I died and ruined everything. I can’t let myself do that to him, because he deserves to be happy, you know? Well, obviously you know, but if he can be happy without me, then who am I to try and keep that from him?”
“That is quite possibly the worst excuse for avoiding a relationship that I’ve ever heard.”
“What?”
“And I spent five years married to you. Well, a version of you. He tried to pull this shit once, too. Notice how I only said ‘once’ because believe me, if he’d tried it again, he would have died much sooner than he had.”
“I- what?”
“I’m saying that ‘what’ this is is bullshit. You love him, don’t you?”
“Well-”
“It’s a yes or no question, Peter Maximoff.” Kurt snarled, and Kurt could see the second that Peter realized that he was angry. Angry because this version of the man he loved was willing to give up everything they had on the off chance that he would die too soon. Angry because, yes, Kurt’s Pietro was dead, and he was never coming back, but this version of himself was being deprived of a happiness that Kurt never would have thought to dream of in his war-torn world because this version of the man he’d spent years adoring didn’t want to take a chance.
Silence filled the room, a heavy third presence that Peter was clearly finding difficult to interrupt.
“Yes.” He choked out, and it occurred to Kurt that this was the first time Peter had let himself say it aloud. The thought sobered him slightly, smoothing down the rough edges of his anger at the despondent man before him. “I love him.”
“Then tell him that. No, better yet, show him that.”
“But-”
“You died in my universe, yes, but that future is long gone. You are not him, and you never will be, because you’re entirely different people. You can’t be afraid of a ghost that never existed to begin with, and you can’t let a war that will never be fought hold you back. The little elf deserves to be happy, yes. But so do you, Peter.” Peter was quiet for a moment, which Kurt knew must have been the show of more than one hours’ worth of restraint.
“So what do I do?”
“I happen to know that Jubilee has some ideas.”
Now they were getting somewhere.
Kurt didn’t expect to run into his mother. He wasn’t sure why, but he still hadn’t put together the fact that everyone he knew in his world existed in some incarnation, living or dead, in this one, but on his way to meet with Jubilee, Ororo, and Peter to discuss what he needed to do next in the Grand Plan to woo the other Kurt, he ran into a petite blonde girl with Hank.
It took him an extra minute or so to place why she looked so familiar. And why she seemed slightly scared. When it clicked for him, he couldn’t stop himself from blurting the one thing that had kept him so confused.
“Why are you so short?” He asked, placing his hand flat out from the bridge of his nose to the few inches of empty air between where his mother currently stood, and where she should be. “And why are you blonde?”
“Excuse me?” She asked, her confusion turning quickly to bewilderment.
Jubilee appeared in the doorway to the living room and waved to him. He squinted down at his mother, and he quickly realized what he had been missing.
Everything had changed from what he knew.
“Of course.” He dragged a hand across his face. He was still exhausted. He suspected he always would be. “You still have your abilities. Es tut mir leid, mutter.” He said, patting her on the shoulder as he walked past her. He heard her squeak, and Hank sputter indignantly for a moment as he followed Jubilee into the next room.
“What did he just call you?!”
Jubilee’s ideas seemed to range from the “hopelessly romantic” to the “borderline ridiculous.” He realized as the four of them began to discuss what Peter should do next. Kurt insisted that just talking to the elf was going to be the best course of action, instead of, as Jubilee kept suggesting, blasting music from a boom-box like that scene from Say Anything.
Peter became increasingly hard to read as the discussion went on. Kurt couldn’t quite put his finger on what was wrong, but he knew that something was, and it wasn’t until Peter spoke up again, that Kurt realized just how uncertain Peter was about all of this.
He still didn’t believe that the Kurt in this universe could possibly be in love with him.
“I think, maybe, that Blue is right?” Peter and the others had also taken to calling him “Blue” instead of Kurt, because, to them, Kurt meant the little elf. Given the fact that he was the one outside of his regular universe, Kurt couldn't complain. He actually didn't mind it, as it was probably the tamest of the nicknames he'd been given throughout his life.
“I should just talk to him, right? Like that seems like it'd be the best plan. As much as I believe that music could probably bring about world peace and all, I don't think it's the best course of action here.”
Not to mention, Kurt didn't say, he could back out if it looked like things weren't going his way.
He couldn't claim that he didn't understand why Peter was scared, but it didn't much help the situation when Kurt knew he was right. Instead, it was just sort of frustrating.
“Peter,” Jubilee began, clearly sharing Kurt’s skepticism.
“I want to tell him. I’ve spent so much of my life facing other people’s problems, I think it’s about time that I handled one of my own.”
“I don’t know that I would call this a problem-”
“Oh, believe me. If you’re a Maximoff, feelings aren’t just a problem, they’re the problem. My twin sister spent three years in love with an AI that we stole and gave a body, and now she’s pining after some alien, I think. My nephews only exist because she didn’t listen to reason and ran away when she realized she was pregnant, and my mother fell for Magneto after three days. That’s not even going into my relationship history. Feelings equal problems. Pretty sure that that’s the family motto.”
“No it isn’t.” Kurt snorted, and he could tell that Peter was about to keep going and try to prove him wrong when there was a clang! From just outside of the room. The group looked at each other warily before getting up and wandering to the hallway. Outside, the other Kurt was struggling against the weight of what appeared to be four trash bags layered together. Kurt had a slight suspicion that he knew what was in the bags.
“What’cha got there?” Peter asked, clearly surprised at the sight before him. The younger Kurt’s eyes flicked to Kurt, who smiled and nodded at his counterpart supportively.
“Just... stuff. When I got my things back from the circus, there were a few items that I realized I no longer needed.” Kurt poked Peter in the side before the silence that followed the other Kurt’s words could grow.
“Looks heavy. Do you need help?”
“That would be wonderful!” The little elf proclaimed brightly. “I’m just taking it to the incinerator.”
“We have an incinerator?” Jubilee whispered, and Ororo shrugged. “Well, you two enjoy that.” She grabbed Ororo’s arm and nudged Kurt backwards with her shoulders as she spoke again, louder, “We’re going back to our scrabble tournament. You should join us when you come back.”
“We will, I’m sure!” the little elf said, still looking positively ecstatic. Kurt wasn’t sure if it was due to the fact that he was getting rid of the items that had caused him such pain and turmoil in the past, or because Peter was paying attention to him again, or some combination of the two, but Kurt felt impossibly happy for him. The trio retreated into the room again, and waited an impossible few moments before they unanimously decided to get back up and follow their friends.
“Looks like we do have an incinerator.” Jubilee whispered as they stood outside the door to the device in question, hardly daring to peer inside as they eavesdropped.
The bag rested on the ground between the two, and Peter was awash with light from the incinerator. Kurt could see the half-awed, half terrified expression on his younger self’s face and knew that whatever Peter said next needed to include a confession, or else they both might just lose their nerve.
“There’s not a body in this bag, is there?” Peter joked, and Kurt and the girls watched, enraptured as the little elf laughed and shook his head, pulling open the incinerator door.
“No, the equipment I had can get a bit heavy.” Kurt said vaguely, drawing his eyes over Peter as the speedster bent over and picked up the trash bag. “I’ll tell you about it later. The others-”
“Are busy playing scrabble.” Peter finished for him, “They won’t notice if we’re gone a few more moments. But,” Peter hesitated, disguising the hesitation well as distraction from throwing the bag inside of the machine, instead. “I needed to tell you something. And I swear we can pretend this never happened, I’m actually really good at pretending things never happened,”
Kurt had to watch the exchange through his fingers, certain that Peter would change his mind at any moment, but the little elf kept looking at Peter encouragingly, and something told Kurt that Peter was going to make this work no matter what.
“Peter,” The little elf murmured, and that was all it took to get Peter back on track.
“Sorry, I’m a little nervous. Um,” Peter went red, his right hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck. He maintained eye contact with Kurt, though, clearly trying to show Kurt his sincerity, despite his faltering words. Peter took a step closer to Kurt, and the trio in the doorway leaned closer to catch his words. “Listen, Kurt, I have feelings for you. Like, more than friendship feelings. More than friendship feelings of the ‘I want to date you’ way.” Before Kurt had a chance to respond, Peter put his hands up in front of himself in the ‘I surrender’ position, “And if you don’t feel the same way, no big deal, we never have to talk about this again. Heck, we never have to talk again, I just-” He lowered his hands, seeming to realize that the stunned look on Kurt’s face was still blindingly happy, and that Kurt hadn’t teleported or run out of the room yet. “I really wanted you to know. The other version of you that came here, he helped me realize that there isn’t enough time for any of us to worry about whether or not things are going to go our way. There wasn’t enough time for me to be afraid, and I could die tomorrow for all I know, but I realized that dying without telling you how I felt about you would be doing you a disservice. I mean, sure there’s the slightest possibility that you feel the same way, which would be awesome-”
“I do.” Kurt blurted, cutting off Peter’s increasingly verbose speech.
“Huh?”
“I do feel the same way. I want to date you, too. But I would prefer it if you didn’t die tomorrow, if it’s all the same to you.”
Kurt got to see as the smile crossed Peter’s face, matching the elf’s in intensity, but that was all before a strong grip on his arm began to drag him away from the doorway.
“They did it, now we need to let them have their moment!” Jubilee hissed when they were far enough away. She held Ororo in a similar grip, but the other girl wasn’t being dragged, instead she seemed to be letting herself get pulled along, humoring her girlfriend with a contented smile on her face.
“Well,” Kurt said, only half teasing. “It looks like my work here is done. The universe can swallow me up now and solve the paradox.” Storm snorted at his words.
“Not a chance. Like Peter said, you’re a Maximoff. You’re stuck with us, now.” She said, breaking Jubilee’s grip and moving to Kurt’s other side, dragging them both away from their abandoned scrabble board and towards the kitchen.
Compared to sentinels on his tail, and the possibility that his friends and family would die at any moment, Kurt would take a million abandoned scrabble games. Being stuck here couldn’t be considered a bad thing in the slightest.