Call Me by Name

The wind tears Night’s shroud as they wrap their arms around the falling mutant. The sharp tang of adrenaline sweat cuts through the green wet smell of the dappled mutant’s skin. They suck in a breath as the hole where his memories should be aches. Their shroud has held up through fire and bullets. For it to tear now, dissolving as they press their face to sweat damp hair slicked against a cool temple, doesn’t make sense.

"Even some jumps are out of your depth, mein freund." They whisper, words leaving them before they can consider their meaning. The mutant in their arms gasps, a near silent intake of breath Night feels in the rise and fall of their ribs before they port, whisking them both through the journey of elsewhere-nowhere-rooftop. They fight the urge to press closer as they land, to feel that cool neck against their cheek. To linger. 

A chunk of the burning building crumbles down. The screeching crash calls Night to their unfinished work. They port away, trying to ignore the way black glassy eyes in a dappled face haunts him.

The dance comes over them like a flood, the way it always does. Months of finding himself standing in someone’s den, in a basement, a warehouse, a barn, of answering questions or fulfilling dreams only to be let loose for one turn of the clock on this planet that feels like a dream of someone else’s childhood home. Each time their contract with a summoner finishes, the voices call to them, draw them across cities and fields, over oil slick rivers, and gulfs muddy with silt. 

Sometimes, it’s to celebration, to bodies whirling together, as strange and varied as their own, under glittering sun and pulsing sound, or hidden between strobing lights and grinding speakers. In those places, they dance together, become an amplifier of the world, of the wishes around them. Lose themselves in a joy so shimmering and deep they forget the ache of all they do not know, of all they’ve forgotten.

Then there are the times like tonight, where his chest nearly splits open with the aching pressure of a pain they cannot name, the cries of souls denied their humanity. These times Night becomes a tide, roaring and depthless, rushing towards places of sterile lights and plexiglass cages, of people who have decided they are gods beyond consequences or compassion. This is a dance of retribution for those whose last wishes have sunk into the ground of this place, of liberation for those with wishes for the sun on their face, for chances to have more wishes beyond freedom from places where agony rings their necks while ordinary men laugh. 

Night always frees the trapped ones first. They reach inside themself to open the doorway within them, standing guard as mutants, old, young, inbetween, scramble through the portal, eyes wide as they try to see their ferryman’s face through the shroud of red they wear. The portals always manage to open to sanctuary, to enclaves led by mutants that may eye Night with suspicion when they appear after a hunt to check in on the travelers, but never hesitate to fill bellies, cut away collars and offer food, ways home, or a new home to those with none to return to. 

Once the living have been given safe passage, the dance begins for the dead.

The dead seem to realize this, the way their voices fall to a hush as Night plunges facilities into darkness, locks guards out of cell blocks and lets the doors all fly open. He doesn’t know if the mutants who flee see the way the shadows reach out to them, hear the low crooning goodbyes as spectral hands touch shoulders, steadying shaking bodies as they stumble to freedom. Night hopes so, hopes the whispers of “thank you” are not just for them as wide eyes glance over bruised shoulders, looking back once at the empty space that should hold the people who will be missed forever, and seeing only a place that deserves to be forgotten.

Then the portal closes, and the hum becomes a chorus, a choir, a funerary wailing.

The soundtrack to Night’s choreography.

He wonders sometimes if this was part of their powers before hell. Before that bastard scrubbed them of his memories and the witch twisted his veins like a cat’s cradle.

He doesn’t know. As his body fills with the sound, their care for these answers fades. Everything fades, except the deep overpowering grief. The sorrow. The fury. The endless beating of his heart that cries “Never again, Never Again, not Here, not Anywhere, No More, End it, End it.”

Night whirls and twists. Arms and legs, tail and cloak, moving in tempo to the cries around them. Transmuting emotion into motion comes to them like breathing, like stretching as morning light first wakes him. Distantly, a part of him aches to understand why his muscles know this so well. 

But the dead are here. All their final terrors transformed into fury, into resolve.

The dead cannot be restrained by any collar.

Powers, writhing vines, surges of color made solid, blistering heat, dripping venom, rolling waves that unmake the cement beneath his feet. A hundred clattering, clashing gifts. The very things that this place sought to siphon from their veins and bottle for weapons, for selfish gain. They pour from every corner, every shadow.

The guards, the scientists, the people who’ve tricked themselves into believing they're just doing a job, into believing this work is for the betterment of the world, run. They scream and scurry from the siren call heralding the consequences of their violence.

Most of them will be sent screeching into the night, bones jangling with their own guilt given power. They flee knowing if they dare return to this work, the invisible hands of the lives they stole will drag them to the places their nightmares grow. This fear will keep them away, but with time, some may genuinely change, may know regret, may grow. Or so Night hopes. 

Then there are others. 

The ones who have no illusions about bettering the world. The dance does not leave anything of them behind, most times. 

He feels their deaths. The rattle of their final breaths. The ways bodies jerk, resisting before giving way. The way body becomes corpse. It does not make Night happy. It does not please the dead, either. 

The last one left this time is a scientist, or she fancies herself one. Night can read the endless hours of pain she’s caused all over her skin as neatly as if they were skimming the reports she keeps on an encrypted computer at her desk. A computer he knows the mutant he left on that rooftop has now liberated. 

She snarls at them, pulling the trigger of the gun she just emptied at Night several times. Kchik, kchik, kchik. Night takes a swift series of steps in tune to the sound, arms sweeping the air. The shadows are alive with power around them. She stares. Her face red and her blue eyes burning cold. The woman lunges for Night and they catch her. She’s strong from barre classes she shows up to every Thursday, a break from her stressful job she tells her classmates. Night catches her fist, pulling, keeping the momentum she moved with. They flip her with ease, sending her tumbling across the concrete floor. 

“I’ll remember this when I have you strapped to a table,” She says, whipping around to look back at Night.

Night tilts his head, staring her directly in the eyes as the shadows close in tight around her, “I don’t think you will.”

She hisses, a long, angry rattle. Night holds her eyes until there is no one looking back at them anymore. The shadows murmur. When the only breath left in the room is Night’s, silence falls like a shroud. 

What other choice was there, but this?

There is always another choice, but we have taken this one. May it lead to peace. Night thinks, in a voice that may be theirs, from another time, another place.

He wonders if the person they were would object to this. Dust drifts in the shafts of moonlight peeking through the gaping hole left by the earlier building collapse. Night creeps forward, hesitates at the edge of the light. It won’t burn them. Their cousin–a cousin who they did not know when they knew all of themselves–laughed the first time Night asked if they needed to avoid the sun, the light when summoned. “We are not vampires, little shadow. Whatever your earth told you of hell is half the dreams of frightened men clutching straws of power in their fists. The light is still yours to be kissed by,” she’d said.

Night thrusts their arm into the moonlight. Their eyes catch on the scars that lace under his fur. What put them there? Who put them there and what became of them? Perhaps they were the one who started the fights that led to these. Perhaps this violence has always been a part of him, there, in the shadows. Perhaps this thought should haunt their dreams more than the cries of frantic souls strapped to tables. Perhaps Night is no better than the ones wielding hot irons, scalpels, night sticks. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

He shakes himself, lets their red cloak slide back into place. He can ponder whether they’re a monster or not later. There is still one last passage to grant.

“Give me your names, please. So the ones you leave behind will know you have gone,” Night asks, holding out his hands, letting a portal open once more before them. He doesn’t know where this one leads. It comes on instinct, ever since the first time they did this. The first time voices called him for relief. 

They do. One by one, slipping through the gateway, their names hanging in the air in a long line. Until only a handful are left, hesitating, arms around themselves as if to shield from the biting wind. 

“You don’t have to stay, anymore,” Night says, tail flicking softly behind him. The specters share glances.

“There is no one to care,” Speaks one shade, one eye covered by the long curtain of her red hair. Night stares, for a moment seeing one face, then another cover the girl in front of him. Pressure leans hard and cold against his temple like the butt of a knife. Night blinks, the girl has only one translucent face again. He shakes his head slightly and the pain passes. 

The stragglers stare at him, eyes reflecting white in the moonlight.

This happens each time. The small cluster left with no one to remember them, no one watching by the window with their heart in knots, suspecting the worst and praying for the best. He was speechless the first time, cold panic ‘is there no one who remembers me? Is it worse if there is?’ tangling with the horror at the certainty in the faces before them. It had taken him several endless minutes to answer them. Now the answer comes easily.

“I care,” they say, “I did not know you in life, but you are kindred. We are mutants. Hated for the circumstances of our flesh and denied our souls. No one deserves the pain you had. There is no such thing as a good death, but there is such a thing as a cruel one. You deserve better. I will remember you. Your last act, from beyond the valley of death, was to call for a rescue first. I could not save you," Night's voice wavers, they pause, swallow, continue, " I could not save you, but I will honor you, by continuing to fight, by seeking peace.”  

The shades look at each other. Pause. Night is quiet. They’ve learned this is a place for waiting. The moon watches overhead, a parent casting a last lingering look at a child who's been soothed back to sleep after a nightmare. Night couldn’t prevent this terror, but they hope they can end it. Every ghost has chosen the portal so far. Though they have stood til the last minutes of their summons waiting for some to make the passage. He doesn’t know what he will do the day one doesn’t.

The smallest among the group goes first. Night's heart jolts in their chest at the gap toothed smile they flash at the others before they go. They trip over their flip flops and Night’s tail darts out to catch them. The child laughs, half sinking through Night’s tail as they grab it. Their hand is barely big enough to close around the middle. The memory of someone’s hand passing through their arm, a stab of fondness, flashes through Night’s mind. A burst of pain. Night blinks and the memory dissolves. 

The child gives their name as Night sets them on their feet. They turn towards the others, “I’ll eat all the ice cream if you take too long!” They don’t see the stricken looks on the faces of the adults left behind in their little huddle. Night does. He holds their eyes.

One of the eldest, a man whose locs were going grey at the roots, salt and pepper beard framing the brown of his face like the sea brushing the shore, takes the fin of the other young child, “C’mon, time to see what we see.” He turns and holds his elbow out to the other remaining child. That arm ends just above the wrist in a bandage Night knows would not have been enough to care for an amputation like that.

The first child chirps at the elder, black eyes shining. They glance back at the remaining three, and they wave the trio on. The other child, limbs too long in that way that speaks to a growth spurt that hasn’t caught up to the rest of them, keeps their eyes trained on the portal. Their face is wet, chest heaving with a breath that doesn’t come.

They pass through, one at a time, youngest to oldest. The greying man claps Night on the shoulder as he goes, smiling as a crown of light flares around him warm as the afternoon sun, “Good work.” 

Night manages to whisper "Thank you," a moment too late. 

The other two come forward one right behind the other. A middle aged woman whose skin glints like knapped flint, she gives Night a smile that turns her face into a river of laugh lines before stepping through. She whispers her name like she's letting him in on the secret ingredient in her cobbler. The next person is stout and short, dark hair unevenly shorn close around their head. They give Night a short nod and grunt their name in a way that makes his chest ache. 

And then there was one.

The red haired girl is older than Night realized. Maybe a year or two different than however old they're meant to be. She glides forward with a smoothness Night bets did not come to her in death. 

"Do you suppose what's next is better?" She asks, running a hand through her hair as she looks through the gap between Night's shoulder and the portal.

Night supposes they ought to answer yes, pull something from texts they remember so clearly with no memory of reading. But the truth is even those scriptures were fuzzy on the details and he did not like to rely on man's interpretation of the divine anyway. Especially now, with all the knowledge and wonder of hell in his heart. 

Night shrugs, "I haven't been, so I can't say."

The woman looks at him, startled, and throws her head back laughing, "You're something else, ain't you, critter?" 

The nickname burns through Night's ears. They lose track of everything but the portal and their breath, willing it to stay open as "critter" rings through them like breaking glass. 

They breathe in on count of four. Out on seven. In. Out. In. Out.

A cool hand is on his wrist.

"Shit, you alright?" The redhead asks.

Night blinks, focusing on her hazel eyes, wondering why they expect green. The woman has three faces again, one with long hair, one short and streaked. Night blinks. She has hazel eyes and hair just past her ears.

"You reminded me of someone, I think, it startled me," Night says, a smile trembling on their face. 

The woman watches him a long moment, reading his face. Her smile is worn at the edges.

"I hope you see them again soon," she says, squeezing their hand before stepping through the portal with her name on her lips.

And then there was one.

Night does not linger where it smells of blood and gunpowder. 

They port to the trees just beyond the facility, turn their face to the woods and walk. A song comes to their lips, sometimes a hymn, sometimes something that reminds them of hot cars and radio static. The sound carries the names of the dead with it. 

Tonight, many will dream the answers they've longed for, and find a dread peace in the knowledge. 

Dawn has given way to day and the afternoon grows long by the time they stop. This summons is nearly through.

They have one more stop. 

Evan's barely had a moment to sit down today, since the portal opened and three dozen mutants came pouring into the Morlock's main chamber. This is the third time it's happened in as many months and he still can't decide what to make of the trend. 

The event isn't finished though. Not without a visit from the stranger in red. The Morlocks couldn't decide on a name for the shrouded figure who followed up after a portal full of refugees came exploding into one of the Morlock's hideaways. Crimson Reaper. Red Death. Mutant Messiah. Evan found them all a bit ridiculous, especially given the stranger made corny jokes as distractions whenever Evan or any of the other Morlocks tried to get them to spill about who they were. Not that many of the others besides him tried. 

Callisto put her foot down on prying much as it was, saying everyone deserved their privacy, and most of the others who weren't scared of the stranger abided that. But part of Evan's charm was nosing around in things regardless of propriety and he wasn't planning to stop now. Not to mention, there was something achingly familiar about the way the stranger teleported, the sound and color almost-not-quite the signature haze of a missing friend. 

Evan didn't hold out any delusions that the stranger and Kurt could be connected. The blue mutant had disappeared three months back and the stranger only showed up two months ago, entire body hidden in that long red shroud they wore. But even with the little quips, Evan would know Kurt's voice, the way he talked with his hands and rolled his walk on two legs.

Still, Evan never goes to bed before the stranger appears. 

"They ought to be around soon," Callisto says, shoving a canteen of water in Evan's hand without asking whether he's thirsty, "we're almost to the twenty four hour mark." 

Evan grunts, keeping one eye on the corner of the gathering area where the portal appeared earlier today. 

"Ev, wanna play cards?" Hump asks, waving a weathered deck in his large green hand, "Nothing left to do settling in the new folks anyhow."

Callisto says yes for him, giving him a shove towards the group of younger Morlocks. Evan sulks at her. He goes.

They're on round three of Slap when there's the telltale rumble of thunder behind Evan. 

He goes to turn but Cell stops him with a hand on his shoulder.

"You may want to take a breath dude," the purple mutant says, eyes wide as he looks at the stranger. 

Evan knows his friends well enough by now to go with it without question. He sucks in a breath and turns. 

He forgets to exhale.

The stranger's shroud is half torn around their face. Evan would know that shade of blue, that mop of hair and glowing gold eye anywhere. 

"Kurt," he breathes.