All I Want for Christmas...
Part 1 – 'Twas the Fight Before Christmas
Note: All Russian/German words appear in italics and translated at end of each chapter. Happy holidays!
"Stop fussing; you are ruining it." Azazel gently swatted Kurt's hands away from the crumpled knot, making a tisk-tisk sound and pulled the tie off his son. The red mutant looped the fabric around his own neck and began reworking the knot. Kurt was standing in his father's bedroom, his tail lashing back and forth in frustration as he watched the older man expertly knot the tie with ease.
"Watch," Azazel motioned for Kurt to observe as he deftly flipped the fabric into shape. After a moment, Azazel loosened the tie and slipped it off, careful to protect the knot while he looped the fabric back over his son's head for Kurt to finish.
"There, khorosho! As new!" Taking a deep breath, Kurt carefully grabbed the knot with two fingers and began to gently tighten it to his throat. As soon as he touched it, the knot began to unravel. Kurt sighed loudly as his father scowled, stepping in to fix it for the third time.
"Over, under, over again. Kurt, are you watching? Is easy."
"Ja, easy for someone who has more than three fingers on each hand!"
"Do not blame me," Azazel slid the knot into place and stepped back, brushing the shoulders of Kurt's suit and smiling, admiring his work. "You get hands from mother's side of family…"
"Dad..."
"What?"
"Stop." Kurt rolled his eyes in annoyance and met his father's gaze. "You promised you'd be nice tonight." Azazel cocked his head and raised a challenging eyebrow at the teenager.
"I am not breaking promise, moy mal'chik," Azazel answered dismissively. "Am merely stating fact. Your mother is shape-shifter. Who knows if that is what she really looks like..."
"Dad!" Azazel stepped back, throwing his hands up in response to his son's pleading.
"Fine, I stop. Maybe I should nyet talk at all tonight?" Azazel crossed his arms and regarded his son, an amused smile now tugging his mouth lopsided. "So touchy. You worry your old man will embarrass you in front of your little devotcha, da?"
Kurt closed his eyes and held his face in his hands, groaning loudly as his father chuckled. He wasn't really worried that his father would embarrass him in front of Amanda. One thing Kurt had learned about his father is that despite the man's devilish appearance, he could be devastatingly charming when he wanted to be. The only thing that truly embarrassed Kurt about his father was his cooking. Russian food was just terrible, and Kurt remembered openly weeping at the kitchen table once when he was seven and his father wouldn't let him leave until he finished his entire bowl of okroshka, arguing that it was part of his culture and needed to respect his heritage. Years later when Kurt looked up word "okroshka" and discovered that it translated to "sour milk soup," he cried all over again. As soon as Kurt learned how to work the ancient iron stove in his father's house without burning it to the ground, he gladly took over kitchen duties. Despite his father's protests, their dinners quickly became American favorites such as pizza and mac'n'cheese (which Kurt was quick to point out that his father loved in spite of his complaints about "keeping tradition"). Honestly, at age 19 Kurt was still unsure how he hadn't starved to death in his childhood. His father was definitely one of the reasons why Saint Lawrence – the patron saint of cooking – was often invoked in Kurt's nightly prayers.
"I just want Amanda to meet everyone without getting pulled into World War Three." Azazel snorted at his son's dramatic comment while the young blue mutant began to comb his shaggy hair in the mirror for the hundredth time.
"It will be fine. Civil. Pleasant, even, if your mother..." Kurt shot another warning look at his father in the mirror. Azazel huffed and put his hands up in a surrender gesture. Behind them, there was a soft knocking at the door. Without turning, Azazel unlatched the door with this tail and swung it open. Standing in the doorway was a man not much older than Azazel. He was smiling warmly, wearing a long brown robe tied at his waist. In his arms he carried a small oak barrel and a large, wrapped bouquet of blood red poinsettias. Kurt's eyes lit-up in the mirror as he saw the man behind him.
"Dyadya Andrei!" Kurt disappeared in a cloud of shadow and reappeared in front of his uncle. He jumped on the man, hugging him enthusiastically and almost knocking him over in his joy. The monk laughed heartily and embraced his teenage nephew with the same happiness. When Kurt released him, Andrei handed the bouquet to Kurt who took it eagerly, beaming at the flowers.
"I can't believe you found them! Amanda is going to love these!" Andrei smiled and gestured to Kurt's suit and tie. It was a dramatic change from the youth's usual jeans and t-shirts.
"I see someone is ochen' vzvolnovan to see a special young lady tonight." Andrei winked at Kurt and the blue mutant cast his eyes to the ground sheepishly, biting his bottom lip in a smile as his cheeks blushed purple. Azazel shook his head at the exchange. The only time Kurt was ever at a loss for words was when Amanda was the subject of conversation.
"You look very nice as well," Andrei motioned to his brother's attire as the two men shook hands. "It's been a long time since I've seen you back in a suit, Gavrill" Now it was Azazel's turn to roll his eyes. Long ago he abandoned his human name, and his brother was the only one who still insisted on calling him by it. After Kurt was born, Azazel quickly found that wearing a suit was a ridiculous idea at best; the red mutant had been wholly unprepared for the types and volume of liquid that infants projected at any given time. He quickly shed his dapper clothing in favor of t-shirts and jeans (modified for a tail, of course), although he never gave-up his fondness for dark colors.
"Also as promised," Andrei held out the small barrel for his brother who took it gratefully. Inside the was several gallons the monastery's famous Riesling wine; always a request from the Xaviers at extended family gatherings.
"Are you sure you do not want to come with us? Charles would be happy to have you." Andrei shook his head.
"As much as I would like front row seats to see you and Mystique in the same room again," Andrei laughed while Kurt grimaced, "I am afraid I have to lead the Christmas Eve mass tonight. Give Charles, Moira and the children my regards?" Azazel nodded and bade his brother farewell. Before Kurt was born, Andrei had been the only real family the red mutant had. He didn't remember his own mother and father; they were killed by superstitious villagers in their backwards Russian hamlet when Azazel had just started learning to walk. Andrei was ten years old when their parents were murdered, all because of their acceptance of Azazel's demonic appearance. Andrei had somehow escaped with his little brother in tow and he had cared for Azazel until the red mutant could fend for himself. Even during his time with the Hellfire Club and later, the Brotherhood, Azazel and Andrei were close and the red mutant visited whenever time allowed.
"Malen'kiy siniy, are you ready?" Azazel held the small barrel under one arm and extended his free hand towards his son. Azazel would be taking them both from Germany to New York tonight. While Kurt also had the ability to teleport (much to Azazel's joy; more proof as far as he was concerned that there was more of him in his son than Kurt's mother), his abilities were much more limited than Azazel's. Kurt could make shorter jumps within his line of sight, but the young mutant also possessed an extraordinary level of acrobatic flexibility that Azazel never achieved. The red mutant knew that his son definitely inherited this flexibility from his mother, although as for how Azazel was so well acquainted with Mystique's flexibility...well, he felt that particular observation was best left undisclosed to Kurt.
"How do I look? Steht mir gut?" Kurt turned around and held his arms out wide to show off his attire. Kurt had the luck to be multilingual, moving easily between the German of his homeland to his father's native Russian, and the foreign English of his mother's side of the family. Because he spent his childhood in Germany, Kurt had a faint German accent when speaking English and Russian, and the blue boy would frequently pepper his speech with German words much like his father did with Russian. The black suit Kurt wore was an old one of Azazel's, altered to fit Kurt's lithe body. In the years that Azazel raised Kurt, the red mutant had by necessity become quite apt at using a sewing machine. Neither of the mutants could exactly could walk into a shop and have clothing tailored. The astuteness of the suit was softened Kurt's matching golden shirt and tie – gifts from Andrei – which complimented the youth's amber eyes and indigo skin.
"Handsome, mal'chik, as always," Azazel smiled and motioned to his own older, scarred face. "And that I will admit you get from me." Kurt rolled his eyes again, but this time he grinned as he took his father's outstretched hand. Outside of a few notable features – his mother's coloring, the gentle aquiline shape of his nose, and the loose curls in his hair – the young blue mutant was a carbon copy of his father, tail and all. It was a lucky break for Azazel; if Kurt had looked anymore like his mother, the red mutant wasn't sure how he would have been able to raise his son all these years.
For the most part, Azazel and Kurt lived quiet lives. Andrei had taken holy vows when he was a young man and lived as a monk in a mountain priory in deep in the heart of Germany. Andrei kept a small cottage on the grounds that was essentially a secret, on-again, off-again home for Azazel long before he left to fight with the Hellfire Club and the Brotherhood. Azazel hadn't taken up permanent residence on the monastery grounds until after Kurt's birth; the secluded cottage proved to be the most logical place to safely raise a young child, especially one who had such visible mutations as Kurt.
For the first two years of Kurt's life, Mystique had also lived at the cottage. Kurt was too young to remember his mother's time there, but Azazel certainly did, and their brief existence together and the abrupt end to their relationship was a great source of resentment and bitter feuding between the former lovers.
From day one, Mystique hated life at the rustic cottage. She lamented that it was too quiet and too boring from her previous life at the Xavier mansion and her time with the Brotherhood. Azazel would often return home to find her crying, frustrated, and generally unhappy, even though the two had mutually agreed before Kurt's arrival that it made the most sense for her to stay home with their infant son while Azazel kept on with the Brotherhood. As time marched on, the two lovers fought escalating battles over trivial things, and too often they would start fighting all over again when their yelling caused Kurt to cry and be afraid of his parents arguments and loud words.
Kurt was a blessing, but very much an unplanned one. Neither of his parents ever fancied having children. In truth, the two mutants were just enjoying having each other in their lives; before they met in the Brotherhood, neither had ever met another mutant so afflicted by their physical appearances. This superficial novelty let them avoid learning more important things about each other, such as their differing personality traits, goals, hopes and dreams. Azazel and Mystique had been together for only five months when Mystique showed up at Azazel's bedroom door at the old headquarters, her amber eyes red and raw as she held up a positive pregnancy test confirming Kurt's existence. After his initial shock, Azazel was surprised to find himself thrilled at the idea of a child; he had never expected to have someone like Mystique in his life, let alone a family to replace for the one that had been to ruthlessly taken from him when he was a child. As Mystique's belly expanded, the blue woman warmed up to the idea of motherhood, and the couple experienced a rare state of bliss as they planned for Kurt's arrival.
But like so many things in their troubled worlds, their wistful dreams didn't quite match-up to their reality. Mystique struggled with their simple life at the German monastery, feeling like she had turned her back on her aspirations of fighting for mutant equality. She was still so young, and she had seen so little of the world before her entire world became trapped at the cottage with Kurt waiting for Azazel to come home each night. She was 22 when Kurt was born; Azazel had been 38, and his time in the Hellfire Club had already given him many adventures and taken him all over the world. When Kurt arrived, Azazel was ready for a more quiet, settled life in the countryside. His younger lover was not.
One night when Kurt was just about 2 years old, Azazel came home to find Mystique sobbing miserably at their kitchen table. Kurt was standing in his crib, unattended and wailing at the top of his tiny lungs. After calming their son, Azazel angrily confronted Mystique about ignoring the boy's crying. When he started in on her, Mystique angrily spun around and screamed that she was two weeks late for her period; a confirmation that another child might be on the way. In the end it turned out that she was not pregnant (her period had just been delayed by stress), but something in Azazel's heart broke when he realized that his partner, the mother of his son, had been utterly despondent at the thought of bringing a second child into the world with him.
Shortly after the pregnancy scare, Azazel returned home one night to find that Mystique was simply no longer there. He found Andrei frowning, holding both Kurt and a letter that Azazel promptly tore-up in his anger at Mystique for abandoning their son (and later, he would admit only to himself, for abandoning him). From that day forward, Azazel quit the Brotherhood and remained at the cottage, raising Kurt to the best of his ability as single parent. Azazel still took odd jobs, sometimes helping his fellow mutants on missions, but mostly just assisting the monks by keeping thieves and other riffraff away from the priory (it helped tremendously that Andrei spread a rumor that the priory was haunted, which Azazel was more than happy to provide a devilish appearance to scare away would-be trespassers). It wasn't as exciting as his years with the Hellfire Club or Brotherhood, but it kept Kurt safe and it kept a roof over their heads, which more than what Azazel and Andrei had when they were young.
When Kurt turned 3 years old, the child caught a nasty cold and in desperation, Azazel took a chance and appeared unannounced at the Xavier Institute. He had no idea how they would be received; he wasn't even sure Mystique had even told her adopted brother that she had a child in the years since she left his side. After a brief moment of panic – because he had stayed up all night caring for Kurt, an exhausted Azazel misjudged the teleport and appeared standing on the dinning room table with one foot in a gravy bowl and the other firmly in the middle of Alex Summer's dinner plate – the X-Men backed down from where they had cornered Azazel only when they heard the small bundle in his arms crying. Charles came forward and read Azazel's mind before holding his arms out and unconditionally accepting Kurt as his own nephew. It took years for Azazel's occasional presence to be accepted by the X-Men team (and he was quite sure Alex never forgave him for ruining his dinner), but thankfully, the team had accepted Kurt wholeheartedly and Azazel began to take his son to visit the Institute on a regular basis. Mystique be dammed; Azazel made sure Kurt knew he was loved and accepted by an extended mutant family.
As Kurt grew older and in need of a proper education (homeschooling wasn't going to cut it, especially since Azazel found algebra as charming as sitting in poison ivy), Charles generously offered for Kurt to study at the Institute and for Azazel to teach Russian literature and language as well as sword work a few days a week. Before Azazel joined forces with Shaw, Andrei had attended the Leningrad State University. As a teenager and hidden away in his brother's cramped flat, Azazel read the same books and helped his brother with his studies. Azazel had basically earned the same degree alongside his brother (not that the university would ever accept a mutant as a student or grant him a degree), and to this day Azazel rarely traveled without a book in his possession. He often lamented that the real tragedy of the fight at Cuba was that in the submarine crash, he lost his first edition copy of Nikolay Chernychevsky's What is to be Done?, the very book that inspired him to fight for mutant freedom in the first place (and was absolutely required reading over Christmas break despite his students rolled eyes). The position worked out well since Azazel had started dropping Kurt off at the institute on Mondays and picking him up on Fridays after classes. Now he could see his son a few times during the week as well; their cottage in Germany had started to feel a bit empty without his son around to liven things up.
Then, just as suddenly as Mystique vanished, she reappeared one afternoon at the Xavier Institute, seeking to atone for her sin of leaving her now 12 year old son behind so many years before. Azazel was furious at his former lover's audacity in contacting Charles to see Kurt; the first time he saw Mystique at the Institute, he immediately teleported home only to return seconds later with both his swords drawn and a look of murder on his face. It took Charles weeks to convince Azazel that Kurt deserved to know both of his parents. After 10 years, Mystique was more mature, quieter and less wild, now living with her partner Irene Adler. Together the women had even adopted a young mutant named Marie who was Kurt's age; Kurt had taken an instant liking to his adopted sister, excited at the concept of having an actual sibling. After a few months of visits under Charles's supervision and at Kurt's incessant begging, Azazel finally relented and agreed to let the boy spend two summer weeks and one weekend every month with his mother in their American home. The two blue mutants grew close in spite of Azazel and Mystique continuing hostility towards each other.
Azazel firmly believed that he did a fine job (thank you very much) of raising Kurt on his own for ten years. Mystique, on the other hand, immediately spoiled their son upon her return. She quickly established herself as the "fun" parent, and Azazel's displeasure with her existence only grew when Kurt started with the "but mom lets me…!" when home at the cottage. Azazel was livid when she sneaked Kurt into an R-rated movie when he was only 13. Not only did it take two days to scrub all the beige make-up out of Kurt's fur, but it took Kurt two weeks to stop having nightmares about the movie he saw. When at Mystique's home, Marie and Kurt could stay up late and eat as much candy as they wanted; although Azazel and Kurt played often and had fun, Azazel was much stricter with Kurt, and for the boy's own good. Charles finally intervened when Azazel and Mystique were fighting with each other over their parenting styles; Azazel was trying to be stable and reliable while Mystique was trying to make up for all her years of neglect. Kurt was a good boy who just needed balance. Charles pointed out that Mystique and Azazel would have to find a way to work together to achieve that balance for their son. They did find a way to work together, and that, ironically, was through Irene.
The red and blue mutants continued to avoid each other at all costs, opting to trade Kurt back and forth at predetermined locations through Irene. Azazel found that in spite of his anger with Mystique, he gradually grew to enjoy Irene's company. The blind mutant was warm and friendly, and she possessed a sharp wit and dry sense of humor that mirrored his own (Azazel also secretly liked that it drove Mystique absolutely mad that he and Irene got along so well). He also developed a fondness for the soft-spoken Marie, even inviting her occasionally to stay for a week with he and Kurt at their German home during summer breaks. The few times Azazel and Mystique had to interact directly, it often escalated into fighting and dredging up the past while Kurt stood between them like a white flag of truce. Before this Christmas, the last time Kurt convinced his parents to be together for an extended period of time in the same room, the night ended in several broken dinner plates and Marie's tears as her famous Creole casserole dripped down the walls of the dining room. No never ever admitted to throwing the first plate (although both Kurt and Marie agreed it was Azazel), and Kurt refused to speak to either of his parents for two full weeks after that particular fiasco.
As the two mutants materialized in front of the Xavier Institute, Kurt felt like he had eaten an entire jar of butterflies. He quickly checked his watch; he would be picking up Amanda in just over an hour from the local train station. It was the first time in four years that his parents would interact for an extended period of time. He had already spent the last few weeks begging both of them to be on their best behavior for his sake, and he hoped their assurances of "we'll be civil tonight, we promise" would ring true. All Kurt wanted for Christmas was for this one evening to good smoothly and maybe, just maybe for his parents to be in the same room without trying to kill one another...
As Kurt turned to his father, squealing brakes and twin headlights came careening wildly towards them. Azazel quickly shoved Kurt out of the car's path at the last second and the two (and the barrel) landed hard in a snow bank. The car screeched to a halt mere inches from where the teleporters had appeared. Kurt groaned as he sat up and saw that the combined weight of he and his father landing in the snow had utterly destroyed the delicate flowers Kurt had been holding. The car's drivers side window rolled down and the familiar voice rang out.
"What kind of fucking idiot teleports into the middle of the driveway during a holiday party?" Mystique's glare shot daggers at Azazel, still sitting in the snow bank were he landed. "You almost just got our son killed!"
"We were on side of driveway!" Azazel hissed back, jabbing a finger at Mystique. "What pridurok gave you driver's license?!"
"Hi Mom!" Kurt brushed the snow off his suit as he jumped up and stood in between his feuding parents. He glanced once at the ruined bouquet and frowned before deciding to leave the flowers in the snow. Kurt took a step towards the car and bent down, waving at Irene and Marie inside. Both women offered Kurt pained smiles in light of the already brewing fight between his parents. "Um, Merry Christmas? We'll see you at the house!" Before anyone could respond, Kurt grabbed his father's arm and teleported them both directly to the front door.
It was going to be a long night, indeed.
A/N: I always wanted to write a short exploring Kurt being raised by both Azazel & Mystique under "bitter divorced parents" circumstance. Part 2 will post in about two weeks (I'm going out of town for the holidays, but I wanted to get something since this is a Christmas-themed story). Thanks as always for reading! If you enjoyed, please take a moment and review :D
A shout out to a loyal reader Nokawolf for lending me the names Andrei (Andrew) and Gravill (Gabriel) from their story "Red Beginnings."
Russian, as it appears:
khorosho = perfect
moy mal'chik = my boy/son (affectionate)
nyet = no
devotchka = girl (affectionate)
da = yes
dyadya = uncle
ochen' vzvolnovan = very excited (playful teasing)
malen'kiy siniy = little blue (affectionate)
pridurok = moron/idiot
German, as it appears:
Ja = yes
Steht mir gut? = Does (this/do I) look good?