Disclamer: I own no one.... Not even me!
Rating: PG13 just to be safe
A/N... Takes place in the 1400's around the time of King Henry who in this story is Charles. Kurts given name is Demon... pronounced Day-mun... and Nyssa is his step mother... I havn't gotten to Mystique yet... so don't get mad!
Born in Disgrace
"Mom?" The little blue 12 year old boy said tugging on his moms skirt. He was looking at the little baby as the preist pulled him out of the holy water. Nyssa looked at him harshly. "Have I been baptised?" The little boy looked at his mom as the preist handed her the child.
"No lad, you have not been." His father answered.
"And why don't I have a name?" His father Eric was about to say something but Nyssa cut him off.
"Well since you are nothing but a smart mouthed brat the only thing that would sute you would be Kurt, since you will most likely be looked down apone the rest of your worthless life." Kurt looked at his mother and then down at his brother, who was now making a fuss, and got mad.
"At least its a name." Kurt told himself, as Nyssa,who had the baby, Eric and his three other younger brothers started walking away leaving Kurt to fallow behind. Kurt went to the place where the cart had been left and saw that it was not there. Kurt looked down and sighed. Why was he hated so much? He never did anything wrong. He ran a three fingered hand through his mignight black hair and started walking home.
When Kurt got home he walked into the livingroom.
"Mom." His little brother William said. "Are you going to get something for Kurt this year?"
"For what?" Kurt's step mother said. "I see no special occasion for anything."
"But mother," His other brother peter said, "Its his birthday tommorow." Nyssa scoffed at this.
"No reason for him to get anything of importance, what he should get is sent to his room without dinner, at least then he would be helping save food." He watched as his step mother took them into the kitchen and fallowed. His three borthers sat at the table as Nyssa put the baby in the chair that Kurt used to sit in and put a tray across the arm rests, turning it into a high chair.
"Mom?" Marti asked, "Where will Kurt sit?" Eric sat at the end of the table.
"He can sit over there." Eric said, pointing to the floor in the corner of the room. He really didn't hate the boy, its just that if he acted or told the boy he did, Nyssa would most likely leave him. And that is the last thing he wanted. Kurt looked over at the corner.
"Well," Nyssa said, "Don't just stand there like the worthless waist of space you are? Get the dinner ready!" Kurt looked at her and walked over to the counter and got supper ready. William, Peter and Mari watched sadly as Kurt got their supper ready. Marti and William got up to help him but Nyssa cammanded that they sit back down. Kurt took the five plates and put one in front of each of them, he took another smaller one and began to feed his new baby brother Josh. When he was done feeding him he put the plate in the sink and looked at his mother.
"Mother, May I have some?" Kurt asked politely. Nyssa looked at him scornfully.
"There is some old bread on the counter, and some stail water on the counter." She said, "You may have that." Kurt nodded hanging his head and took the bread and water and went to sit in the corner.
"I'm done Kurt, you can sit here." Marti said, Putting his plate in the sink. His mother looked at Marti sternly.
"No Marti, Kurt sits in the corner where he belongs." Kurt sat in the corner on the cold floor and at the bread silently.
2 years later.
"I'll make you a deal." A scruffy looking man with whitish grey hair and gotee said to Eric. "You sell me one of your sons so that I can trust that you won't mess with my people again, and I won't mess with yours." Eric saw the look of sheer panic in Nyssa's eyes as she wrapped her arms around William, Marti, Peter, and Josh. Eric knew that he could not do that. But he had to do something. He looked over at Kurt who was standing a few feet away from them.
"Fine you have a deal." He walked over to Kurt and hauled him over to the man known as William Stryker painfully by the arm. Stryker sized up the scroney boy.
"He's to skinney." Stryker said, "Give me that one!" Stryker pointed at Eric's youngest Josh. "He will grow to be a fine man."
"Take him or theres no deal." Stryker looked at the little mutant boy and sighed.
"Fine," Stryker said, handing Eric some money that wasn't even enough to give one person pass to a cheap inn. Stryker took the boy and put him into the cart. Kurt screamed for his father. He was scared of this man. "I'm sure he has his uses." Stryker said, as he got up into the cart and took the rains to the horse and flicked them to make the horse go. Kurt was still screaming so he turned around and back handed him. "Thats enough, from now on you will obay me and no one else, you want to eat, you do as I say. You don't you will not eat and you will sleep on the floor. You do as I say and you will eat well and sleep on a bed, If I have nothing for you to do to ern your food, you get none. Got it?" Kurt nodded.
4 years later
Outremer
Kurt crept along the bushes and heard the sound of laughter carrying on the wind. The sound was so rare that he took a moment to hear it. It was one of the few mistakes he has made in the past couple of years.
"Whats the hold up magot? Go!" Parely 18 years of age Kurt had spent the last 4 years of his life under the harsh treatment and torture of his trainers sulpting him to there liking.
At long last he had become the animal they call him. There was nothing left inside him. No pain, no past.
Nothing but the emptyness so vast that he wondered if anything could make him feel again.
He was death, in every sence of the word.
Stryker handed him the long curved dagger.
"You know what to do."
Aye, he did. Kurt took the dagger and stared at it. His hand was one of a youth just barely entering his manhood, and yet had commited sins and crimes that had aged him to be ancient.
Stryker urged him forward. "Finish quickly and tonight you will eat well and have a bed for your comfort." Kurt looked back at Stryker as his stomach rumbled from hunger. Day to day, they fed him only enough to keep him barely alive. He had to kill for anything more than a crust of rotten bread and stale water. They knew he would do anythng for a decent meal to lessen the hunger cramps in his belly. Anything for a night free of torture and pain.
From the shadows, Kurt watched the English knights in the camp laughing and singing marrelly. He scowled at them. Never had he experianced such a thing. He put the dagger into the pocket of his ripped pants and crept up to the back of the tent. Inside he knew what he would find. His victum for tonight. He lifted the back of the tent and entered. Inside the tent was a bed that would have made him stop and stare at for a while, had he cared. He was beyond caring. He looked at the object that the bed contained, and pulled out his knife. The object in question was a man who had no idea his life was about to end. He went up to the man lying in the bed.
The man woke up as he felt a hand cover his mouth and a sharp blade press up to his throat.
"One word and you die." Kurt said, harshly. The man looked at him.
"What do you want?" Charles asked.
"Freedom."
He frowned at the child and the peculiar, think accent he spoke in.
"Freedom?"
The boy nodded, his eyes burning eerily in the darkness. Those eyes didn't belong to a child. They belonged to a demon who had seen hell first hand.
One half of the boys face was swolen and blackened from a beating and his lips were split and cracked. His neck was raw and bleeding, though it was hard to tell on the indigo blue color of the boys skin, as if he normally wore a steel coller around it that he fought against. Charles looked down to see similar injuries on both of his wrists and his blue spaded tail. Aye, someone had made a habit of chaining this child like an animal. And the boy had made a habit of fighting his manacles.
When the child spoke, his words stunned him even more than the boys ragged demonic appearance.
"If you will give me my freedom, I will give you my loyalty until the day I die."
If those words had come from anyone else, Charles would have laughed. But there was somthing about this child that let him know gaining this boys loyalty was quite a feat and that, once given, it was truly valuable.
"If I say no?"
"I will kill you."
"My gaurd will capture you if you do and they will kill you." The boy shook his head slowly.
"They will not capture me."
Charles didn't doubt that in the least, It had been quite a feat for the child to get this far already.
He looked at the boys long black hair and yellow eyes. Still, his sun-blistered skin was an odd shade of blue fairer than most of those born to this region.
"Are you a Saracen?"
"I am..." He paused. The sharpness faded from his eyes and revealed a pain so profound that it made Charles ache from the intensity of it. "I am not a Saracen. I was a squire to an English knight, who sold me to the Saracens so that he could buy passage home."
Charles lay stunned at the news. Now he understood the poor shape of the boy, There was no telling what abuse and depravity the Saracens had heaped on him. What kind of monster would sell a child into the hands of an enemy? The cruelty of it overwhelmed him.
"I will see you free." The boy narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
"This had better not be a trick."
"Its not." The boy released him and moved away from the bed.
Henery watched as the child went to squat by a wall with one hand on the canvas, no doubt ready to flee should Charles make a sudden move. Slowly, so as to not frighten him, Charles got up and left the bed. The boy looked about nervously.
"They will be comming for me."
"Who will?"
"My masters. They always find me when I escape. They find me and they..." Charles saw the horror on the boy's face, as if he were reliving what they had done to him. The boy began to pant in panic. "I have to kill you." He said raising to his feet. He drew his dagger again and moved toward Charles. "If I don't they will come for me." Charles grabed the boys hand before he could sink the dagger into his chest.
"I can protect you from them."
"No one protects me. I only have myself." They wrestled for the dagger. Someone drew back the tent flap.
"Majesty, we found--" zthe gaurd's voice died as he cought sight of the struggle. The gaurd sgouted for reinforcments. The boy let go of the dagger as gaurds swarmed into the tent. Charles watched in awe as the scrawny child fought like a cornered lion. If the boy possesed any strenghth on his starved bones, he would have easly defeated the twelve men. But as it was, they brought him down hard on the floor. Still the boy fought so furiousky that it took five gaurds to keep him there.
"Release him."
All twelve gaurds looked at him as if he were crazed.
"Majesty?" His captain asked hesitantly.
"Do it." It wasn't untill they let go that Charles realized the boys arm had been broken during the fight. His nose was bleeding and he had a smal cut on his fohead. Still the child made no sound as he pushed himself to his feet. He merely held the broken arm to his side while he watched them warely as if expecting the absolute worst from them. The child neither begged nor pleaded, and that told Charles much about the horrors the boy must have lived through. He stood strong and defiant before all of them. His gaurds regained their feet and the captain came forward to address Charles, but he still kept a jaundiced eye on the youth. "We found two saracens on the edge of camp sire. I'm sure he's one of them.
"We are sure as well," Charles said. "Boy, what is your name?"
The youth dropped his gaze to the floor. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible. "My masters call me Kurt."
Charles frowned at the foreighn term he'd learned the first few weeks they had been in this land. It was used to mean either maggot or worm.
"What is yor Christian name?"
"When I served the Earl of Ravenswood, I was called Demon." (Day-mun)
Charles's breath caught at the name, for he knew who this child was.
"Your the McAllisters son?"
Again the emptyness returned to the boys eyes.
"I am no man's son."
Indeed. When Charles had offered to return thus boy home to his father in scotland, the old laird had said as much. Demon was the only one of the scottish boys whose father had refused to have him.
Not knowing what to do about the matter and having little time to deal with it, Charles had left the boy in Harold of Ravenswood's custody.
Obviously that had been a mistake
It wasn't often that Charles felt guilt. But he felt it now. It gripped his heart with unfamiliar pain and burned into his soul. This poor, unwanted boy had been his ward and he had left him to a fate no child should ever know.
"Fetch a surgeon," Charles said to his captain. "And bring food and wine for the boy."
Demon looked up in shock at the order. Part of him still expected the kking to hang him. At the very least beat him. That was all he was fit for. That and killing.
"Don't look so surprised, boy," Charles said. "Come the morrow, we shall see you home."
Home. The vague, elusive dream of that world had haunted him all his life. It was all he'd ever wanted. A home where he could be welcomed, a people who would accept him.
His father had thrown him out of scotland, where no one had ever wanted him, and the Saracens had spurned him in Outremer, but maybe this time, when he went to England, the people there would want him.
Maybe this time, he would at last find the home he ached for.
Aye, in England he would find peace.
12 years later
"I'd rather kill myself. Drunk. Slowly. With a dull knife." Kurt said to Charles who was sitting on his thrown watching Kurt over his clasped fingers, his elbows proped up on the arm rests.
"Its not that bad Kurt." Charles said plainly.
"Why do you want me to do this?" Kurt said raising an eyebrow.
"Kurt, we have been friends for 12 years, I would like to see you wed. All your life you have lived with one foot already in the grave."
"And you think that merage will bring me back over the threshold?"
"Precisly."
"I'll remind you of that the next time you complain about Eleanor." Charles laughed at Kurt's remark.
"I'm asking you as a friend. The reward would be great."
"I need no money or rewards."
"I know that, thats why I trust you so much. Look, I need someone to go over to Scotland and make an aliance with them. If I were to send anyone else they would most likely cut their throat and send me back their head."
"And they wouldn't do that to me why?"
"Kurt, I don't think the Archangel Micheal would be able to cut your throat without your consent." Kurt laughed. "I could comand you to do it."
"Then why don't you?"
"I know you better than that Kurt. You would just laugh at me and head for the door." Charles said, "I didn't earn this thrown by being a fool!"
"Does this woman know what you have planed?"
"God no, She has no knowlege of you. But that is not her consern. If she refuses I shall have her exicuted." Kurt had no doubt that he would.
"I'll tell you what." Kurt said smiling. "If you can find a preist who will sanction it. Then I will." Kurt smiled, knowing that Charles would have a heack of a time finding a preist who would even look at Kurt never mind sanction a Merriage.
"You think you have me don't you Kurt? You have yourself a deal, and if I were you I'd make sure I'd live up to my word."
"If you were me... I'd be ugly." Kurt said laughing and walked out the door. Normaly people would cower before the king. But Charles was smart enough to know that Kurt wasn't one to cower.
Chapter 2
"Are we going to escape this time Ororo?" The little boy asked as Storm took his hand and looked carefully around the corner at the end of the long coridor.
"You have to be quiet, Evan." Storm whispered. "You don't want to get cought again do you?" Evan shook his head. Storm lead him down the stairs as quietly as posable. Not watching where she was going she ran right into something. Or rather, someone. She looked up wide eyed and looked atraight into a pair of yellow eyes. The man's face was hidden by his hood. She expected him to grab her and Evan and hall them back up to their room... their prison. When he did nothing but look at her, she carfully slid past him and headed to the servants back door that one of them had left unlocked for them and headed off into the night. Just as they got onto the lawn she saw about four gaurds by the gate. She hopped that with their hoods the gaurds wouldn't recognise them and let them pass. They had no such luck.
"He look at this boys," One of the gaurds said, as he pulled off her hood. One grabbed Evan and held a knife to his neck.
"Let him go." Storm yelled.
"Now why would I wan't to do that?" Storm saced the one holding Evan and turned and grabed the sword of the gaurd that had pulled off her hood. The gaurds laughed as she held it up to her hiding Evan behind her.
"Now what's a pretty thing like you going to do with a sword." The gaurd asked.
"Don't underestimate me." Storm said, "My father tought me much about how to use a swored." All of a sudden the man with the yellow eyes came up to them with his hood covering his face so the gaurds didn't know who he was. He came up to her and took her arm in a death grip. He started to haul her toward the castle when one of the gaurds came up and put the tip of his sword to his coth covered neck. The man froze for a second, but not out of fear. He looked toward the man, but still did not revwal his face.
"Do you really want to do that?" The man said, menacingly.
"Demon!" The word was said as a statement not as a question. Demon looked at the gaurd and took his hood down. Storm gasped as she saw the mans blue skin and yellow eyes that seemed to glow in the dark. She noticed his pointed ears and the many scars that mared his face, that looked like they were battle wounds turned into a design to cover them. "I'm sorry, I didn't know it was you I swear." Demon glared at him for a moment then looked at Storm. She took the sword and pointed it at him. Demon looked down at the swored blankly then looked back up at her.
"Don't test me." Demon said, and pushed the swored down. She held it back up again. He looked at her and then sighed.
"Let me pass." Demon looked at her and raised and questioning eyebrow. "You heard me, let me pass."
"You forgot the 'or else'" Demon said with a small smirk.
"I thought I would leave it to the imagination." Storm thrusted the sword toward Demon, but he had grabed the blade in between his flattened palms and twisted it out of her grip making it fly out of her hands and right into his. He then swung the sword and stabed it into the growned. She looked at it wide eyed. No one had ever beaten her. And he hadn't even pulled out his sword. She looked at him and knew she wasn't going to win. She picked up Evan, gave a little humph and stomped off to their prison.
"Did you see what he did?" Evan asked, as they walked away.
"Oh come on we were just havin a bit of fun." One of the gaurds complained.
"My idea of fun is disembowaling people who contradict and annoy me. What say you that you and I have a bit of fun?" The gaurds eyes widened as he stared at Demon. "Thats what I thought."
Later that night
Demon sat in his room looking at the cuts on his palms caused from the blades of Storms blade when he heard a noise from outside his room. He stepped out and saw two gaurds trying to pry Evan out of Storm's arms.
"Aye, What goes here?" Demon asked, The gaurds looked at him.
"By the king's orders, were to seperate the boy from his sister."
"Tell the king that they will stay together by my orders."
"And if they escape."
"Tell him that I will take full resposability." The gaurd shook his head and left. Storm ushered Evan back in the room.
"Thank you." Storm looked down at his hands and saw the blood dripping down them. "I hurt you." Storm said, Kurt looked at his hands.
"They'll heal." Kurt said flatly and walked into his room. Storm watched him close the door and walked into her room, only to come back out with a basket of sorts and knocked on his door.
"Are you desent?" Storm asked. Kurt snorted.
"There are many, milady, who say I havn't a decent bone in my body."
"And there are many who say its drafty out here in the hallway. What I wanted to know was are you dressed?"
"I'm as dressed as the last time you saw me." Kurt said, Storm opened the door and stepped in. She looked around the room for a moment and saw Kurt sitting on the bed. She walked up to him and took his hands. He jerked back and turned his back on her.
"I hurt you and then you helped me." Storm said plainly.
"And you think you owe me for the favour?" Kurt said, turning back to her. She nodded. "I'm fine, you really want to do me a favour you can go back to your room and tend to your brother."
"Your just arguing for the hell of it. Now give me your hands." Kurt gave up and let her tend to his wounds.
TBC....