Kurt Wagner had performed in Die Farzeit München Zircus, or "The Travelling Munich Circus", since he was 8 years old. His very first memory was of holding his father's hand as he carefully made his way across a wire no wider than a normal human thumb. It was strung only a foot above the ground, but it felt so frightening to him, as a child. He could balance on his own at age 5, take his first steps without his father's hand a few weeks later. The memory always made him smile. How proud, how ecstatic he had been to show his father he could make his way across the wire all by himself.
He had been on it thousands of times since then. The effort of walking across now was no greater than walking on pavement, but many times more dangerous, as pavement is usually not suspended dozens of feet into the air. No matter how many times he performed his act over the years, he was always full of nervous energy just before he made his entrance into the center ring.
He paced back and forth behind the circus tent erected in the middle of Central Park, his long, spaded tail flicking unconsciously behind him. He was in full costume, a black velvet robe with sequined gold trim and bodysuit printed with a gold pattern. His odd face certainly didn't match his outfit, besides his golden yellow eyes, which complimented the sequins nicely. His dark blue skin, pointed ears, and sharp teeth were his since birth; the black tribal tattoo pattern on his face, he had done himself.
It was painfully obvious to anyone who didn't live under a rock that he was a mutant. The average, TV news watching human would try as hard as they could to avoid direct contact with mutants, whom were demonized by the media as armed, dangerous psychopaths with no regard for human life. At least, Kurt imagined most people would think that way, as he didn't talk to humans outside of the ones in his circus family, and watched a lot of 24 hour news stations out of morbid curiosity.
He rubbed his three-fingered hands against the frigid December evening as large clouds of steam trailed from his nostrils. He was a bundle of nerves; perfectly normal, as he was about to perform his high wire act in front of an audience of hundreds of people in one of the largest cities on Earth.
He pulled back the flap of the tent to peek inside. His sister, Amanda, was near the end of her act, balancing on one foot on the back of her favorite dapple-grey show pony, Edel, as he galloped across the entire ring. She smiled her vaseline grin, she and Edel in perfect physical synchronicity, even wearing the same black and gold feathered headband. The audience roared with applause as she put her hand where her foot had been and shifted into a handstand. Edel never slowed; he knew the drill by heart, letting her dismount only as soon as he felt her feet come down again.
She headed towards the flap, smiling and waving to the audience, with Edel following behind. Kurt moved out of the way as she went through. She was still as tall and slender as she ever was, but dyed her hair a few shades too dark to hide the strands of grey beginning to show near her scalp. She gave him a small, wordless squeeze of the shoulder as she passed and led Edel towards the horse trailer. He smiled quickly at her. After so many years, there was no need for, "break a leg," or, "great show."
Sometimes Kurt felt as if she were the only person who truly cared whether he was alive or dead.
When mother had passed years ago, she took over the role to care for her adopted baby brother, Kurt, who was actually only a few years her junior. She constantly hovered over him except when she was busy with rehearsal. Even to this day, she made certain he wore a coat in cold weather, ate as much as she thought he should at dinnertime, and moved his stray black, curly hair back into place. He hated to be treated as a child at 33 years of age, but at the same time appreciated her constant attention. Without it, he felt he would be utterly alone.
The lights inside the tent dimmed and Kurt's other older sibling, Stephan, strode quickly and confidently into the spotlight in the center ring. He wore a short cropped, well fitted, golden tuxedo and black riding crops that nearly came to his knees.
He was the manager of the circus, as well as the ringleader. He took over after their father had retired and changed many things about his time honored routine in the process. For one, the "travelling" part of the circus's name was taken to the extreme. Instead of moving across Europe only during the spring and summer, they now travelled across North America as well up until midwinter, leaving them only two months of rest back in Germany.
Kurt hated to admit it, but Stephan was always right when it came to important management decisions. More people came to the shows in America now than Europe, because there was no competition during the fall and winter from other circuses. In New York City alone the seats had been packed to the brim every night. Thier father's beloved circus was making more money and fans than it ever had.
Stephan had recently changed Kurt's act, making it more popular than ever, much to Kurt's chagrin. Before, Kurt's act merely showcased his acrobatic and swordfighting talent. He felt there was no need to tell the story Stephan inserted... rather cruelly, in his opinion.
Kurt waited patiently behind the flap as Stephan reminded the audience of the tale of Adam and Eve, Eve's temptation by the Devil, and the fall of mankind. The stagehands moved the props into place in the pitch dark surrounding his spotlight. Though he was already nervous, a pang of raw panic went down Kurt's spine and to the end of his tail. He tried to reassure himself, putting his hand into his coat pocket to feel the rosary beads he kept near him at all times. He muttered his Ave Maria's under his breath until his heartbeat returned to normal. It was only fatigue making him so anxious, like it always did at the end of a long season.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Stephan continued to orate in his booming baritone and slight German accent, "Hell's angel, Lucifer, and the guardian of Eden, Michael, have not yet had their final battle for man's soul… not until tonight!" The spotlight flicked off.
That was his cue. He instinctively made the sign of the cross across his chest, closed his eyes, and was gone in a puff of smoke.
Kurt never knew exactly what happened when he teleported. All time and sensation was lost, he could not speak or think. He knew only that he was moving very quickly towards the last place he'd looked, and that was hopefully where he would end up.
In another puff of smoke, he reappeared in the upper bleachers, between two startled children. Two spotlights made their way through the audience. One went to him, glittering in his black and gold coat as Lucifer, the other to his acrobat partner, Jonas, dressed as Michael in brilliant white and gold wings. They made their way quickly to the center ring as the audience clapped.
They pantomimed their respective roles, Jonas with his head held high and mighty, Kurt generally looking sneaky and disgusted by God's loathsome angel. Kurt actually liked Jonas very much. He never called him names behind his back and even talked to him and bought him fast food once in a while.
A large, smoking crater waited below the high wire ladders in the center ring. It was supposed to represent the mouth of hell. In reality, the middle was full of harmless foam in which either of the actors could fall safely, if they weren't too close to the platform. Jonas climbed one side of the ladder, while Kurt waited, miming boredom with a huge yawn and impatient swish of the tail. As he neared the top, Kurt simply snapped his fingers and teleported to the platform, to a peal of applause.
At the top of Kurt's ladder, a demon waited, wearing the same black and gold bodysuit and a real metal sword shoved down his throat. Kurt very carefully removed it. Jonas's female angel assistant produced a shining sword out of thin air and handed it to demon sword swallower and the angel magician each made their way down their ladder. Kurt and Jonas were on their own.
The audience watched with bated breath as the two drew nearer to the center of the wire, swords at the ready. Kurt had a much easier time balancing than Jonas, who had not been gifted, or cursed, with a tail to steady himself. At Kurt's signal, they fought, clashing metal against metal in a very convincing imitation of real swordplay.
The audience gasped as Michael nearly lost his balance and fell into the pit of hell below. It was all carefully choreographed, of course. He caught himself and fought Lucifer with renewed vigor, pushing him nearly to the edge of his platform. Lucifer took a few defensive thrusts, then disappeared again, only to teleport behind him. With Michael turned the wrong way, he placed the edge of his sword at the back of the angel's neck.
Suddenly, Kurt heard a minor scuffle behind him in the crowd below. "You're dead, mutie!" screamed an angry male voice. "Humanity forever!" cried another.
Before anyone had time to react, a gunshot exploded across the tent. Kurt felt a pain greater than anything he'd ever known slice across his back and shoulder. Time slowed to a standstill as he lost his sense of hearing, then sight, then his balance, toppling head over tail into the crater below.
He had no idea how much time had passed… minutes, hours, days? He vaguely remembered people screaming, Amanda crying, the wail of an ambulance. The pain was the first thing to return. Hot, searing, unbearable pain throbbed across his back with every heartbeat. It hurt just to breathe.
He realized he could barely move his arms or legs, like he was being pushed down by something flat and firm. It was pressed against his face, too, slowly suffocating him, squishing the air out of his chest. Just as he was about to panic, he opened his eyes and discovered he was lying face down on a bed, his nose pressed against his pillow. He would have laughed at himself if it weren't so damned painful.
"Kurt?" gently asked his sister's voice, full of tears.
"'manda?" he replied, half his mouth muffled by the pillow. He turned his head slightly. "Was ist passeirt?"
She moved to the other side of the bed to face him. Her brown hair caught the sunrise shining through the window of the circus's medic trailer.
"I was so afraid," she said in German. "When I saw you in the safety pit, I thought you were dead." Grimacing, she sniffed and wiped tears from her eyes with her sleeve. Kurt never noticed before that she had crow's feet forming at the corners of her eyes.
"Was I shot?" he asked groggily.
She nodded, gently moving a lock of sweaty hair away from his eyes. "The doctor stitched you up last night and gave you painkillers so you could sleep." She went slightly pale, even illuminated by brilliant sunlight. "It was the Friends of Humanity," she said in a grave whisper, as though they were waiting outside the door to drag him away.
For all he knew, they might be.
He closed his eyes. He'd seen horrendous pictures in newspapers of mutants accused of petty crimes, or nothing at all, shot, beaten to death, set on fire by the Friends of Humanity. He had seen footage online of people's cars burnt to a crisp, bombed by the organization for the crime of being a mutant sympathizer. In the news, they marched in front of government buildings wearing camouflage jackets and proudly brandishing rifles, protesting the "mutant threat."
He prayed to God every night he'd never run into one of them while touring in America. God wasn't checking His voicemail, apparently.
"How do you know it was them?"
"Someone in the audience told the police the shooter had a black eagle tattooed on his arm." She looked away and shook her head. The black eagle was their insignia, which they seemed to wear with vicious, misplaced pride. It looked too much like the Deutschland coat of arms for the comfort of any sane German.
"Some people choose not to learn from history's mistakes," croaked Kurt. It was hard to be righteous when your back had been ripped open by a maniac's bullet, but he managed.
She looked back at him and tried to smile. "It really is a miracle the bullet only grazed you. If he'd hit you just one centimeter closer…" Her smile quivered and failed, "Christ, Kurt, you'd be dead. You'd be gone." She sobbed pitifully and laid her head on his pillow.
He put his hand on her hair and pressed her forehead against his. It wasn't often he needed to comfort her; it was usually the other way around.
"It's all right. I'm not gone yet." He smiled weakly at her. He basked in the glow of the morning sun and the warmth of her breath, and the searing pain of his wounds didn't seem so terrible.
A sudden pounding at the door startled both of them nearly out of their wits. Amanda got up and moved cautiously to the door, out of Kurt's line of sight.
"Who is it?" she asked in English, just to be safe.
"Amanda, I need to talk to you," came Stephan's resonant reply in German. He must have been about to explode, Kurt surmised, by how loudly and deeply his voice echoed through the trailer walls.
She gave a small sigh of relief and went outside to speak with him, leaving Kurt alone in the trailer. Kurt strained to listen. All he could hear were Stephan's muttered, bassundo syllables. He heard the name "Jonas" repeated more than a few times.
Jonas! He forgot he'd been up there with him… was he ok? He wasn't in the medic's trailer. Had the ambulance been for him or Kurt? He was still so disoriented he couldn't remember.
Things got very quiet for a minute, Stephan's voice as low as it could possibly be, though still audible as an indecipherable rumble. To his surprise, he heard Amanda cry out, "You can't! You can't do that to him!"
Another rumbling pause as Stephan spoke again. Amanda simply repeated, "You can't!"
Kurt's heart pounded in his chest, making his wounds throb in pain.
He heard the trailer door open with a cold rush of air. Stephan's wide steps made their way to his bedside. Amanda's quieter footfalls trailed behind. Stephan sat next to his bed and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his broad shoulders obvious even underneath his winter jacket. His gaze was sharp as a razor, severe, as it usually was, though Kurt could tell he was trying to unfurrow his brow.
Stephan had always felt more like his boss than his brother, long before he took over the circus, being older and not nearly as kind as his sister. It was hard for him to look Stephan in the eye when he stared at him like that, with intensity that could burn a hole through glass.
"Do you remember anything from last night?" he asked.
Kurt tried to shake his head, but found it easier to say, "No."
Stephan paused, and his gaze genuinely softened. He interlocked his fingers as Amanda paced worriedly behind him. "Jonas… Jonas fell on the edge of the pit. On the ridge, you know…" he mimed the shape with his hand, running over the imaginary rounded edge. "They took him to the hospital." He let out a breath. "His back's broken. The doctors don't think he'll walk again."
Kurt couldn't speak. He was too shocked even to cry or scream, though he desperately wanted to.
Stephan broke the silence, "It's a miracle he's alive, I suppose." The last words came as a mumble. Amanda stopped pacing and looked at him expectantly.
"This kind of thing is a tragedy," he began again, his voice heavy with importance. "You've had hecklers before, Kurt, but this… this isn't something anyone can deal with. It can't happen again."
"Of course it can't." Kurt felt warm anger rise to his neck. Why did Stephan sound like he was accusing him, as if it was his fault he was nearly killed, like he broke Jonas' back on purpose?
"You don't understand." Stephan gave him a cold stare, void of sympathy. "I can't let you perform anymore."
Kurt went completely numb.
"What?"
"For your own safety. For everyone else's safety," he indicated Amanda, biting her nails behind him, unable to look at either of them. "I can't let you go in the ring. It will happen again if you perform. Those people want you execute you as publicly as possible."
"It's the only thing I know how to do." The whispered words came surprisingly easy to his lips, even though his mind was crumbling as he spoke.
"It's not as if I'm kicking you out," he rationalized, empathy finally showing in his voice. He shrugged. "You could do something else."
"Like what?"
"Be a stagehand."
Kurt could practically feel Amanda's heavy, angry breathing from across the room. There was nothing wrong with being a stagehand, per say, but to make a skilled, trained acrobat take a stagehand job was like telling a famous Hollywood actor he could only work as a personal assistant for the rest of his life.
Stephan knew it, too.
He put a hand on Kurt's shoulder. "You have to understand. You're like family to us, Kurt, but-"
"He IS family to us!" Amanda exploded. "He's your brother, and you treat him like-" she sputtered for words, "-like a piece of trash, like an inconvenience!"
"And you treat him like a baby!" roared Stephan, springing to his feet. "I treat him the way anyone else would!"
They stared daggers at each other, daring the other to say something. Still numb and hurt, Kurt wanted to scream at both of them. He knew better than to get in the middle of a fight between his two older siblings.
"You're just afraid no one will buy tickets because of this," snapped Amanda.
"It's my job to worry about people buying tickets," he rumbled. "It's my job to bandage everything up when things go wrong." He sat, still glaring at Amanda. "You know that," he nearly spat.
She leaned against the wall of the trailer and hugged herself across the chest. He was right, and it was pointless to argue with him, anyway.
"It's ok, Amanda," Kurt piped up, much to her surprise. He tried to keep the quiver of anger and pain out of his voice. With all the strength he had, he rolled over and pulled himself up onto one elbow. It felt like knives cutting new, gaping wounds into his skin, but he didn't flinch. He couldn't show weakness to either of them right now. "Maybe I could help you with the horses. That way…" he felt his mind about to snap, but continued anyway, "...that way no one in the audience would have to see me."
Amanda bit her lip and looked down at the floor. Stephan nodded, either oblivious or uncaring of the fact that his brother's sanity was about to flutter away at any moment.
"It'll be fine, Kurt," he said, as he had when he'd insisted Kurt play the Devil in his own act. "I mean, we can still change the posters."
It seemed even Stephan realized that was a step too far. He looked uncomfortably down at his hands, waiting for the chastisement he deserved from Amanda. She only wiped new tears from her eyes as she leaned against the wall.
Kurt stared through the trailer at nothing.
Stephan carefully patted his shoulder and left. Amanda came towards him and knelt at the edge of his bed.
"Oh, God, Kurt…" she leaned in to hug him, but he firmly, gently, placed his hand on her collarbone to stop her.
"Leave," he said simply, still staring into oblivion.
"What?" He had never refused her affection before. Ever.
"Leave." His normally warm, amber eyes looked into hers, now shining like unnatural, inhumanly yellow gemstones.
For the first time in his life, he was genuinely trying to scare someone.
She hesitated a moment, then did as he asked. As soon as she closed the door, he began to hyperventilate, breathing like his lungs had forgotten he was alive. He lowered himself down on the bed, buried his face into his pillow, and screamed. He screamed like a child throwing a tantrum, like a grown man with his purpose taken away, like an animal terrified of everything trying to kill kim.
He screamed until his consciousness left him, but even then, it didn't feel like sleep.