Chapter 1
The darkness is moving. No, he’s moving through the darkness. Like speeding through a starless sky, surrounded by a thick mist or a black smoke.
His body feels numb and his mind feels heavy.
He desperately wants to move but he can’t. Just like in a bad dream.
Maybe that’s it? Maybe he’s dreaming right now and is going to wake up soon?
He hopes so, because this dream seems to last ages.
The darkness, the mist and the black smoke.
He can’t wake up.
***
'Warren!'
Little flashes are starting to appear in the darkness. Like something was trying to reach out to him from outside of the smoke, together with this voice he can hear.
The voice is familiar but not in a good way.
'Warren!'
His heart starts pounding faster and faster and a knot is tying in his throat.
Suddenly he wants the black smoke to come back, to cover him completely and hide him from this voice.
'Warren!'
The voice grows angrier and more impatient with every calling and he knows with growing panic that he won’t be able to escape it.
The flashes are getting brighter and longer and he can see images, like the leather oxford shoes visible from under his bed where he’s lying in the futile attempt to hide.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry…
Like the strong hand grabbing him by the arm and the steel blue eyes that look at him coldly before he winces anticipating the pain.
'Warren, come here, my son!'
***
‘The pulse is weak but still… However I would be cautious with any diagnose so far.’
A silent low grunt as a response.
‘I guess the incoming night will be crucial.’
***
The black smoke again, to which he keeps waking up from the deep, dark unconsciousness.
He still can’t move.
It lasts too long to be a dream.
Maybe he’s dead and this is hell?
Suddenly the flashes start to appear again and with every bright blink he can feel his fear rising.
He can hear a voice again and the relief that it’s not the same as before lasts no longer than another flash.
Because he knows this one as well.
‘Herzlich willkomen, meine Damen und Herren!’ 1
No, not again, he escaped, why?!
The flashes surrounding him are now buzzing with electricity.
'Hier kommt unser Held, unser >>Bad Boy<<, unsere schöne Todesmachine…'2
The voltage seems to be running through his veins too, his heart is pumping liquid anger to which he succumbs with bitter resignation. He doesn’t have a choice anyway.
'Der Engel!!!'
***
‘A miracle then…’
Silence, interrupted only by monotonous beeping of some electrical device and then the same low grunt.
‘I’d rather say science. Will take another sample...’
***
The black smoke seems now to be more permanent than the dark unconsciousness.
The numbness of his body persists however interrupted by the rare but sudden waves of pain overcoming it occasionally.
He hears the mechanical beeping all the time now but although annoying, it’s still better than the voices trying to reach out to him.
It’s a vicious circle – usually after the wave of pain there comes relief but this relief soon brings with itself the flashes and voices, so he feels locked in the cage of pain and fear, running from one into another.
If this is hell then it looks too much like his own life…
He starts to miss the darkness to hide in it safely, to not to feel, not to think, not to remember.
But all he can do is to grit his teeth in helplessness when all those things attack his mind, like a powerful fist gripping his brain.
Just like when…
He shudders at the inevitable.
The dark warehouse attic, the vision blurred by alcohol, the weird, alien light and then this menacing silhouette.
A hand reached out towards him and though this time it’s not his father pulling him out from under the bed, he hears the voice.
'Yes, my son!'
The voice, this voice, assaulting his head, breaking into his soul and into his body.
The excruciating pain.
Something tearing out his skin and muscle and his wings and although it’s coming out from the inside of him, it’s not his own, it’s so foreign, and scary and disgusting and…
He wants to scream but he can’t.
He screamed then, but this voice was still louder.
'Rise, my angel!'
***
‘Vater unser im Himmel,
geheiligt werde Dein Name,
Dein Reich komme,
dein Wille geschehe
wie im Himmel, so auf Erden... ‘ 3
Silent, kind of hectic whisper . The beeiping of the machine.
***
The black smoke is growing grey.
The beeping is growing louder.
***
‘Vater unser im Himmel,
geheiligt werde Dein Name,
Dein Reich komme…’
The whisper is getting calmer .
***
He opens his eyes to a white room.
~~~
He’s almost sure that he heard the knocking a few minutes earlier as well, only a little fainter. Apparently the one who knocked only waited patiently and decided to try again. What a pity.
Warren mutters a curse and ponders for a moment to further ignore this sound. Sometimes it works. Sometimes doesn’t – usually when it’s McCoy ready to take him for another round to the medical. And to be honest, Warren goes with him willingly – or at least was doing so before, because lately he’s been feeling more and more frustrated and disappointed, not getting any news about the only thing that mattered to him. Yeah, he’s healing surprisingly fast, his progress is miraculous, that must’ve been the effect of his special blood, blah blah blah…
He doesn’t give a shit neither about his blood, nor about his healing wounds. He already knows by heart the pattern of his scars, old and new, the progress they have made from the red, raw and inflamed to gradually paler and cleaner as he keeps studying his image in the mirror every day.
Okay, his own appearance was somehow shocking to him at first, the bald head and patched up, battered body, but he quickly stopped caring about all of this. He has been coming back to his reflection only for one thing, with one hope, weaker and fainter with every day.
Because all what he can see on his back are still only the scars…
The knocking repeats again. Still silent, still patient, maybe even a little shy but stubborn with stubbornness of a kindly donkey.
It’s nothing like McCoy.
Warren decides to peak out from under the blanket. He regrets that he decided to turn off the music, which usually worked perfectly as a scare off, but this was one of these days when even his favourite songs were not bringing the usual distraction and the friendly background noise started to wear him out. One of these damned days, when every place was wrong, every position uncomfortable, every thought hostile. One of these days, when he was missing the black unconsciousness...
He sighs and crawls out from the bed, determined to scare away the intruder if not with his current look, then with his usual amount of hospitality.
He opens the door violently.
A slim, blue figure standing behind them jumps a little with a quiet yip.
Oh. Right. That’s him.
Nightcrawler, they call him. His ‘arch enemy’, Warren calls him, more as a bitter joke, than anything more serious.
‘What?’, he grunts wearily.
The yellow eyes blink nervously.
‘I… Sorry. I just… Um…’
Jesus, he doesn’t have time for this.
He turns away, deciding to simply close the door right on the intruder’s face but before it hits the frame he hears a surprisingly loud ‘Wait!’, followed by a characteristic puffing sound.
The blue creature reappears in front of him in a cloud of smoke.
‘I just wanted to ask if you want something for dinner!’, he gasps out in a strangely desperate way.
Warren furrows his brows and then he realizes that the teleporter is holding a tray with some food and two cups.
‘Well, whatever…’ he is so surprised, that apparently forgets to decline, which would be his default response.
And before he starts to regret it, the Nightcrawler’s face brightens up in a ridiculously wide grin, which could look somehow unsettling, considering his sharp fangs if not for the obvious joy, radiating from this smile.
‘Oh! Oh, wunderbar! I wasn’t sure, if you prefer tea or coffee, so I brought both!’, he mumbels with this weird accent of him.
He looks around eagerly and a little nervously and Warren doesn’t need to follow his eyes to know, that finding a clean, uncluttered spot in his room is not an easy task.
He has been barely leaving the place after all – grounded without his wings he felt like in a prison or a cage. And trapped creatures usually choose one corner for themselves, staying there and trying not to drag too much attention. This room was his corner.
‘Just put it on the bed…’
The blue boy proceeds enthusiastically, almost knocking down the pile of CDs with his tail.
With his hands now free, he turns to Warren again and just stands there, apparently still not ready to leave him the fuck alone.
It has become a sort of habit for them. Nightcrawler approaching Warren in his ‘cage’, with random, mostly stupid things like bringing him meds from McCoy or offering to show him around. His presence being something irritating and confusing to slowly become still irritating and confusing but with a hint of amuse. The blue freak was close to killing him a good few times and now behaves like a good Samaritan or something like that. What the fuck even?!
A yellow eye peeps at him from under the long fringe.
‘Yeah?’
The boy swallows.
‘I just wanted to…’, he interrupts and frowns, shaking his head slightly as if fighting with his own thoughts. When he finally speaks, Warren cannot shake the feeling it wasn’t what the blue one originally wanted to say, yet it’s still surprising.
‘What is your name?’
What?
He knows that Xavier properly checked his background and was more than sure that everyone around already knows his name, origin and shoe size, but apparently the place was less fond of gossips than he suspected. Or maybe he was less of an interesting topic for gossips.
‘Why you ask?’, he snarls in a more hostile way than he intended.
Nightcrawler seems to not be taken aback.
‘I just wanted to know how I should call you, Engel’, the yellow eyes are smiling to him.
‘It’s Warren…’
‘Oh. Toll.’4
‘Mir egal…’5
The yellow eyes sprinkle excitingly.
‘Sprichst du Deutch?’6
Warren shrugs.
‘Lived in Berlin for some time before… this shit.’
Nightcrawler cringes visibly, getting back to his earlier uneasiness.
‘Ich bin aus München’7, he murmurs under his nose. ‘Well… Please, enjoy your meal! And my name is Kurt! Kurt Wagner!’
And then he disappears in a cloud of blue smoke, leaving Warren confused, irritated and slightly amused.
‘No one asked’, he mutters to himself, stuffing his face with a sandwich.