Disclaimer: Give me a chance, this is the first time I've done X-Men. But I've had this floating about in my mind for a little while. I've read some of the books, but this is mostly based after the movies, about a year or two post X2. "Hit the Road, Jack" done by Ray Charles.

"Hit the road, Jack,

And don't you come back

No more, no more, no more, no more;

Hit the road, Jack,

And don't you come back no more."

Kurt Wagner--otherwise known as The Amazing Nightcrawler--sang happily but quietly along with the radio in the empty kitchen of the Xavier mansion. The students were in bed, as were most of the teachers, but he was inexplicably hungry, so he had prowled down to the kitchen for a midnight snack. With a sandwich in one hand, he took a coke from the fridge, twisting the top off with his tail. He straightened up and turned around, closing the fridge with a bump of his hip. "Oh voman, oh voman---"

He stopped completely. Standing there in front of him was the mutant Wolverine, an eyebrow raised. Kurt flushed, trying to remember the man's real name. What was it? He hated to call him Wolverine; the "w"s in his English still gave him trouble, even after all these years. "I like zhe American oldies," he said with a shrug indicating the radio. When Wolverine's eyes went to the coke in his hand, he asked, "Vould you like one?"

"No beer?" The man's voice was low, rough and edged with cynicism.

Kurt shook his head. "I do not drink. But zhere is none anyway. Ve are in a school."

"So Chuck keeps on reminding me." Wolverine watched in interest as Kurt's tail opened the fridge and tossed him a coke. "A useful appendage," he said, nodding at the tail.

Smiling, Kurt took up a crouching position in a chair opposite Wolverine at the table. Did the man ever speak in full sentences? "Yes, I have become very used to it. I don't know how some people can not have zhem."

A slight smile was the other man's response. "We manage." He opened his coke and took a drink as Kurt bit into his sandwich. After a pause, Wolverine opened his mouth, and then shut it again. Finally, he asked, "Have you always looked like that?" At Kurt's nod, his eyes darkened with some unrecognizable emotion. "Was it hard?"

Kurt chewed as he thought this over. Wolverine's question held a lot of different levels. This man was as complex as the others had mentioned. Finally he put the sandwich down on the plate in front of him and looked Wolverine in the eyes. "Ja. It vas hard at times," he said slowly. "Zhe normals, zhe not-mutants, zhey do not understand vhat it is like to be me. Nor do most of zhe mutants I meet. Zhat is zhe big problem: not understanding. I pray for zhem to understand me someday. I hope it vill come. But I have also known many who do not care about my mutation. It gives me hope for zhe others. And zhe mutants zhat do not care are not as many, but still friendly. I pray zhat God vill open zhe others' hearts someday."

A flash of cynicism crossed Wolverine's face, but he nodded and said nothing. There was a lengthy pause between them, as Kurt picked up his sandwich and began eating again. He watched as Wolverine shifted, and looked out the window.

"Nice weather," Wolverine said shortly after a while. "Chuck said that the weather patterns have become sensitive to Storm's moods after her living here so long. She must be feeling real nice tonight."

To his embarrassment, Kurt had just taken a big gulp of coke, and he choked and sputtered. Wolverine turned around sharply. "Are you alright?" Then his eyes narrowed. "Is that a blush?"

Kurt tried to cover up his reaction with coughing, but apparently Wolverine would not be put off. He glanced outside at the soft rain, and then again back at Kurt, whose face become even hotter. "Did you.... Are you..."

He felt his face stretch slightly in a small grin. Licking his lips nervously, he nodded. What would this man think, he thought to himself. He's very protective. Would he---

To his relief Wolverine chuckled quietly and wagged a finger at him. "It's about time," he said laughing. "It's almost been a year. We were wondering when you two would finally get it figured out. But you'd better be careful: you've both got students now. Don't go creeping into each other's rooms when the kids can hear you."

"Ve're, ah, working on it," Kurt managed as a wave of relief washed over him. Thank God. This man was one of Ororo's friends; his acceptance and the implied acceptance of the others was one of the things that he had worried about. Some concern that had been removed from his back right now: not only did her friends approve, but she was pleased herself. It was nice to have a lover (he almost blushed again at the thought) who was easy to "read". Now he only had one question to ask her...

"To working on it," Wolverine said, clinking bottles with him. "It's a good thing, too. Some of the students were beginning to think they should take steps. Who'd have thought you would have been such a ladies' man? Have you always had this many, uh, admirers?"

"Admirers?" he repeated, feeling amused now that the tension was over. "Nein. I have had one other, ah, girlfriend, I zhink you say. She vould be happy vith me right now: she knew zhe professor, and even suggested zhat I visit here if I vas ever in the United States."

"Figures. Chuck knows everyone on the planet," Wolverine joked. He took another drink gave him a curious look. "But your ex girlfriend wouldn't mind you with another woman?"

Kurt shook his head. "Ve vere never really in love vith each other. She vas more like a really close friend. Besides, she vas in love vith someone else. But she taught me English, just in case I should ever come to zhe US."

"She was English?" the other man asked, leaning forward.

He nodded. Kurt actually found himself enjoying Wolverine's company. It was a kind of camaraderie between guys that he had never experienced before. Living with the X-Men, he thought to himself with a small smile, was a learning experience altogether. "She vas American. I met her in Germany, quite a few years ago. The circus was in town..."

"Presenting... the Amazing Nightcrawler!"

The small group watched the young acrobat swing from the top of the small, cheap circus tent. His long blue tail grasped the trapeze like the appendage was another one of his strangely-shaped clawed hands. One of the teenagers glanced at another. The girl nodded back, sliding her eyes down to her hands. The others caught it and for a moment, all three were focused on her right hand. She held it away from her body, but turned it over and over. The other hand clenched a stone strung on a string around her neck. Instead of the human hand that had been there before, the fingers had formed into two fat ones, with claws on the end. The thumb likewise had a claw on it. The entire hand was covered in a soft blue skin that suddenly stopped at the wrist, as if it had been cut off. The skin was normal from that point on. The younger boy looked up at the girl, and she nodded. "It's not a costume. He's really a mutant."

The girl to her right suddenly gasped, and bit her lip, eyes tightly closed. "What is it, Sybil?" asked the first girl. "What do you see?"

The girl's eyes popped open, her emerald-green eyes (from corner to corner) looking startlingly bright in her chocolate colored skin. "Him." Her eyes fixed on the mutant on the trapeze. "We have to keep an eye on him. Something bad's going to happen. Tonight." The boy placed a hand on her shoulder, trying to calm her down. The elder girl scanned the crowd.

"Can you get a closer reading than that?" she asked, in a hushed voice. Her left hand relaxed on the stone around her neck, and her right suddenly became a pink-skinned hand again.

The Sybil shot her an annoyed glance. It was disconcerting, especially when her eyeballs themselves were indistinguishable from the 'whites' of her eyes. "Not without touching him. Do you want to explain why I should be up there on the trapeze? It's just that... if we don't do something, by nine tonight he'll be dead."

"I think that's close enough," said the boy, settling his arm on the Sybil's shoulder. He shot a glance at the older girl.

"It still doesn't tell us how, Distort," the redhead said, her eyes slightly narrowed as she kept scanning the crowd. "And that's-that's... wait. Hold on." She focused on a small knot of people on the other side of the tent, which were not paying attention to the young man up in the sky. "Can you get us a closer look at them?" she asked, nodding at the group.

"Sure," the boy known as Distort shrugged. "Of course." He moved his hands slightly, and a smaller version of the group formed in the cup of his hands. There was one man who appeared to be with the circus gypsies, and four more that looked like they were from the small, rural town.

"Can you read their lips?" the girl asked.

"Me?" Distort looked up at her. "Why can't you read their minds, Laurel?"

"They're across a crowded tent. I don't know what you're thinking: my telepathy isn't that strong. Or that focused. What are they saying?"

"I can't get it all. I don't speak German that well, remember? It's... that looks like 'devil', and that's 'tonight', there's 'outside' and 'mutant'." They all knew the translations of mutant in other languages.

"That's 'fake' or 'trick'," Sybil put in.

Laurel DuCrais---otherwise known as Xerox, Mimic, and Magpie---pursed her lips as she looked at the single member of the circus group. He had a ratty, shifty little gaze on him she didn't trust, and he glared up at the man at the top every so often as if he had a personal grudge. He probably did. "I think we should follow him," she said slowly. "Something tells me that the blue guy's going to be rather hard to follow, but this one'll take us right to him."

Distort sighed. "By 'we' you mean 'me', don't you?" he said. As the two girls grinned at him, he sighed again and stood up. He turned a little, and there was a sudden circular motion of the air around him, like a small localized tornado. Then he disappeared