Epilogues and Prologues
Everything is cold.
Cold, cold, cold as Kurt Waggoner feels his life draining out of him. He detachedly notices the fur along his hands, connecting him to the mechanical monstrosity, has fallen out in clumps.
He knew he’d die. But that didn’t make a difference as hot tears trailed down his face. He’s scared, Terrified, even. No amount of dimensional travel or fighting evil Xaviers could have prepared him for it all ending like this.
His vision tunnels. The smog of Apocalypse’s failed world is a blur in his descent. He’s done his job- much better than any of the grown adults that had tried to fight this monster, his mind adds.
He falls, falls, falls, and somewhere along the way, it’s only his body that is still falling.
———-
Kurt Wagner squints out into the storm clouds swirling around the paradise he’s found himself in. Such a perfect place, he thinks, could only be changed if there’s horrible danger. His ghostly stomach churns to match the storm enveloping Heaven. The X-Men are no doubt in the middle of whatever this could be, and despite how much he misses them, he desperately hopes he will not meet his teammates yet.
A bolt of lightning, one that would’ve been way too close for comfort if he was alive, strikes into the woods behind him. Because it’s heaven, he knows that the forest will remain pristine, but his instincts drive him to follow the flash of light.
Kurt has never figured out how you enter heaven- he hadn’t really been conscious for his own, and he’d long since wandered away from where most everybody enters. Nevertheless, he’s still a little shocked when he traces the path and finds somebody huddled in its wake.
The figure shudders with sobs. The heavy robe that every spirit in heaven seems to wear is already draped over their small body. Kurt’s tail lashes anxiously as he watches them from the treeline, brows furrowed. As they double over once again, their cries becoming even louder, Kurt can’t help but shyly step out from the darkness of the forest.
“Guten tag.”
The hood immediately snaps up. Their face obscured in shadow and lanternlike eyes that mirror his own greet him. As he jumps back in surprise at his mirror image, they turn back away. Their cries have died down to faint hiccups, the kind that were hardly noticeable, but his ears are able to pick up on the suppressed emotion.
He crouches down to the eye level of the robed stranger, and his eyebrow quirks when he notices their similar bow-legged posture. He shakes his head slightly, unfocusing from the uncanny similarities between the person in front of him and himself, and turns his attention back to the huddle of robes.
“Are you.. Alright?” Kurt asks softly, leaning in. It’s obvious they’re not- given that they’re freshly dead and sitting in an unfamiliar place- but he figures it’s a good enough conversation starter that they can choose to speak or not.
Once again, the hood snaps up. Their eyes are glowing brighter now, illuminating an eerily familiar face.
Boyishly wide eyes, unruly curls hanging around their face, the slightest bits of baby fat softening otherwise defined features- this boy is a spitting image of a younger Kurt, down to the blue fur. He’s the replica of the boy Kurt used to be, which only serves to unsettle him even more.
“Darkholme?” The kid whispers. There’s no distinct accent backing up his speech.
Him or not, Kurt can’t help but be a little offended. He had never wanted to use his biological mother’s name, and he worries for a fraction of a second that that’s who he’s remembered as. “Not quite,” he offers a gentle smile, and pulls back the hood. “I much prefer the name Wagner, ja?
—------
This could very well be the creepiest thing Kurt has ever experienced. Counting the aftermath of vivisections done by killer robots. As personal as that experience was, he shudders, being greeted by what may or may not be your older self after dying might take the cake.
He opts for the may not be him idea- as far as he remembers, the pictures he’d seen on Earth 616 match the man in front of him. He almost wants to let out a sigh at the cross-dimensional implications of being in the afterlife with himself.
The… afterlife? With himself?
Kurt chooses to ignore the second part of that idea and focus on the whole afterlife thing.
He’s dead. No coming back. Never seeing one of Ms. Blaire’s light shows that always followed her music, never listening to one of Howlett’s true-or-not-true anecdotes about settling Canada, never being hugged and held tight against the people he’d started to think of as family, listening to their heartbeats thump in time with his home.
His face starts to heat up. He starts to breathe heavily- had he actually breathed since he’d gotten here? As tears slip down his cheeks, he takes a finger and presses it to his neck, the way Cyclops had taught him when he learned first aid.
Nothing.
His fingers tangle in the curls floating around his head, and he starts to yank. The robes feel like a prison now. Too, too hot, too loose, too trapping, too everything. His tail wraps around his leg, tight, and now there’s tears pouring down his face as he wails again, so full of grief and fury because he’ll never have anything, nothing has ever stuck around long enough, and he’s tired of losing, losing, losing.
The pain in his scalp is sharp until large three-fingered hands gently untangle his own smaller ones, brushing the hood back. He’s squeezed in a gentle hold, and is held in the way he’d just been missing. This time, though, it’s not a heartbeat that helps unravel the knot of emotions in Kurt’s chest- it’s low, accented hums that fade into purrs that shake his entire body.
As his body untenses, he practically sinks into the hold he’s been put in. Even if the arms around him are this new and strange to him, they’re also the most familiar he’s felt with anybody his entire life. Maybe, he thinks, eyes fluttering shut, the purrs still emanating through his chest, he hasn’t just lost everything today.
—----------
At some point, they sit and talk. The younger Kurt is incredibly curious, especially after finding out about the life his doppelganger had lived before joining the X-Men- swashbuckling, acrobatics, the star of a circus at one point. It’s so alien to his own life, which had been unextraordinary for the larger part. Wagner’s, however, teems with adventure and danger from almost the moment he was born. Which isn’t an exaggeration, he finds. Literally moments from being born, he’d faced death.
While he listens to the few stories Wagner is willing to tell him, he’s particularly entranced by the seemingly universal truth of every Nightcrawler wielding swords. (Except for himself, he considers bitterly) Darkholme had been a lethal force of nature, but this Kurt's insistence on not killing makes him wonder just how practical swords could’ve been for him.
If anything, this only backs up why Earth-616’s people had been so shy and sullen around him and Darkholme. Wagner practically radiates warmth and kindness- Waggoner had been complimented on his empathy and courage up until the end, but he understands now. Wagner is at an entirely different level of this, and he’s been nothing but supportive as Kurt gets used to being dead and all.
It’s a good thing, it proves, that he was lucky enough to find a version of himself that offers support through thick and thin when he decides to share how he’d died. And fill Wagner in as much as possible, given that he had people incredibly important to him on Earth. He can’t offer an ending though, and the realization that he doesn’t know what happens makes his insides knot.
“If the multiverse had collapsed, though,” Wagner says in a low voice as he studies the horizon, “Then it is likely Heaven would have followed. And because we are here, decidedly in Heaven, then I believe you succeeded.” With that, Kurt is given a million-watt smile before Wagner ruffles his hair and somersaults away, offering to teach him some acrobatics.
When he finally lands his first couple flips from a tree, Wagner whoops in pride and scoops him up, tail lashing in excitement, and forces Kurt to dance around with him in excitement. It’s annoying and a little embarrassing to any 14-year-old, but Kurt can’t help but feel alive again. Even if it’s because of an older, incredibly eccentric version of himself, he feels peaceful in a way he hasn’t since the robot uprising on his homeworld- back when his parents were still around.
Loss runs in the Nightcrawler destiny, Kurt ruminates one day, thinking of Darkholme once again. He doesn’t know what this Kurt has lost, but he does know it’s something, because he sometimes catches the same melancholy in his eyes as he did in Darkholme. For all his standoffishness, he was an obviously tortured soul, and Kurt can’t help but hope that he’s found some kind of peace. Even if his own moping shows that that isn’t the case.
“I told him once, you know, that I thought I was the only me in the universe.” Waggoner starts. The other Kurt turns to look at him head on, ears perked in confusion. “I hadn’t met a single Nightcrawler when we hunted down those evil Xaviers, and it made me think I really was a freak. Not because I was a mutant- I already knew that- but because I shouldn’t have existed. It was lonely because everyone else had seen at least one different version of themselves, but I was so scared I was the only Kurt, y’know?”
Wagner studies him for a moment, and sighs. “Ach, it’s nature to want to fit in with others. Even if it is with one of us from a different world. I can’t imagine you were in Germany often, nein? Perhaps we had stayed there in most universes.” He offers a sly smile. “Besides, you have found me, and I have not yet formulated an escape plan.”
Kurt swats at him for that, but Wagner simply grabs his hand with his tail and shakes it around. He’s forgotten about Kurt’s tail, though, and it creeps up to smack the side of his head. He yelps in protest, and pretends to jump at Kurt, but there’s not a single trace of anger in sparkling eyes.
And it was good.