"Hey… Hey!" Anna tapped Kitty on the shoulder.
She jerked around pulling one of the headphones out of her ears. "Jeez! What the heck?"
"You've seen Kurt?"
Kitty faced forward, her eyes scanning over the scattered school supplies and open backpacks on the dining room table. With the afternoon's sun shining through the window at her back, Anna could see all the little doodles on Kitty's math homework in even greater detail than normal.
Kitty bit the button end of her pen and then pointed it at the chair perpendicular to hers. "He was there. I was helping him with his Chemistry homework till Jean came in and said Xavier wanted to talk to him."
"Xavier?"
"Yeah." Kitty set her pen down and turned in her chair to face Anna better. "Why? Is Kurt in some sort of trouble?"
"No." Anna bared down on her bottom lip. "Damn it, I wanted him to hear it from anyone else but fucking Xavier."
"Hear what? Anna?"
Kitty made to stand but Anna was already rushing out of the archway and down the hall toward Xavier's office. It was then Anna caught sight of the back door open far enough to let in a wind that tousled the gauzy white curtains.
She grabbed the doorknob and pulled the door out of the way to find Kurt sitting at the edge of the pool. Even from that distance she could spot his blue skin and pointed ears. She gently closed the door behind her and stepped towards him. "Kurt?"
The boy spun around, clocking her immediately with his slitted yellow eyes and a wide toothy grin. "Hi, Anna! How are you?"
"I'm good. Um -" She felt her shoulders roll inward and her hands clasped together before her chest. "Would you… like some company?"
"Company? Yeah sure! More the merrier!" Kurt gestured with a flourish to the spot next to him with his long three-fingered hand before once again facing forward to presumably stare into the water.
Anna slowly closed the gap and eased herself into the spot next to him. A gust of air threw their hair back, and when Anna looked at the profile of Kurt's face, she could see little scales giving texture to his otherwise smooth skin.
Kurt nodded. "So, uh, how are you?"
Anna flashed a low-watt smile. "You already asked me that, Kurt. I'm good."
"Oh right! Right. Sorry." A hallow little chuckle sputtered from his mouth and he leaned back on the palms of his hands.
"It's not often I get to see you without the camo on. You look good!"
"Thanks!" He leaned forward, rubbed his narrow hands together, and stared at them. "You know, just felt like doing something different today!"
Anna pursed her lips. "Kitty told me that you went to go see the professor."
Kurt nodded long and hard enough that the whole upper part of his torso moved with him. "Yeah, I sure did! Yeah."
"He told you about what my dream meant then."
To this, Kurt only smiled and looked at her. His eyes were wild and puffy looking. "It's cool, you know. I always wondered where I came from. The stories I got told as a kid seemed a little far-fetched so… it's cool! It's cool to finally know now, you know? What am I saying, you already know! You were, like, the first to know because you were the one to have the dream. Or the memory. Or the whatever?" He gave another strange-sounding laugh and stared straight ahead.
Anna crossed her arms and leaned forward. "I was thinking of how to tell you all day. I wanted you to know. It just didn't feel right to dump it on you at school. Then when we got home… I still didn't really know how to say it…" When she looked at Kurt's face next, he was still staring forward with that same strange crooked smile stretched across his face.
She looked down and found his hands resting at odd angles in his lap. She gingerly reached down and wrapped her gloved hand around one of his. Together they sat till eventually she felt shaking coming from the hand. She looked up again and saw tears streaming down Kurt's face. Anna got on her knees, pulled him in close, and embraced him in a tight hug. There she felt his whole body tremble and her ears filled with the sounds of loud, uncensored, all-encompassing sobs.
"I was picked up at this orphanage in Austria," Kurt told Anna a while later once they were safely inside and tucked away in their attic hideaway. They each and a blanket over them, Anna with Evan's fuzzy red and black dinosaur print blanket, and Kurt with his green and black blanket with little UFOs on it.
Kurt sipped his cup of hot cocoa and adjusted his legs on the couch. "I don't remember a lot of it, thankfully. I can only imagine what an orphanage in rural Austria must have been like." He set his drink down on the spool table and wrapped his blanket tighter around him.
He looked up and the multicolored lights above twinkled in his eye. "Mah and Dah picked me up as a spur-of-the-moment thing while they were backpacking the EU. They always wanted kids but Dah couldn't have any. They picked me because they knew I wouldn't have much of a chance otherwise looking the way I did."
"Mah and Dah were both immigrants from East Germany after the wall fell a while back. They didn't talk too much about living back home other than it was 'hard.' Other than being blue and living with parents who had English as a second language, life as a kid was pretty good. We had Christmas' and birthdays and normal stuff like that. I was home-schooled for obvious reasons."
Kurt wiped at his nose with the length of his finger till Anna offered him a tissue, which he took with thanks. "It was when I got older I got stupid. I never got to leave the house so I started sneaking out. It was okay at first. I learned to only go out at night, and how to keep out of the light, and stuff like that. Then," he shrugged and sighed, "what happened to all of us happened to me. Powers kicked in and I started teleporting around without any control. Into stores, into houses, into busy streets. Well, after that the cat was kinda out of the bag. People started to follow me after incidents and put together where I lived."
Kurt pressed his fist against his forehead. "Mah and Dah were great and they did all they could… they never blamed me…" Kurt paused. "Eventually people started harassing my folks and attacking the house. They painted nasty stuff on the car and burned our yard. Cops got called on everything we did. It was a nightmare. It was around then Xavier found us and offered me a place here."
Anna watched the steam rise from her cup of cocoa. "Have you heard from your parents since being here?"
He nodded. "They moved away. Some place in Colorado where no one knew them." Kurt picked up his cocoa and took another sip. "Well, at least knowing now Mystique is my mom, I know where the blue comes from. Explains the scar too."
"The scar?"
Kurt put his drink back down and then raised his shirt, exposing his left flank. There a deep black mark roughly the size and shape of Anna's palm was deeply sunk into Kurt's scaly blue flesh. "Always thought it was a funky birthmark. Even leave it in the hologram to, you know, give the ladies something to think about if they ever see me shirtless." He lowered his shirt. "It makes a little more sense that maybe I got it from that fall from that memory. Not that I'm complaining. Sounds like it's a miracle I'm even alive."
Anna swallowed and found her throat dry.
Kurt dawned on his blanket. "Do you think she even knows that I made it?"
"I don't think so. She, um, never mentioned having a son."
He sniffed and lowered his head. "Right."
"When I was in her head, in that memory… I felt her emotions. I felt her fear, her pain, and her love. Kurt, she loved you so much. She really was willing to fight everyone on the bridge to keep you safe." Anna crossed her arms over her stomach. "I don't really know who my mother is anymore, but I can tell you that she loves you with all of her heart. If she had known you made it, she would have fought hell and high water for you, Kurt."
Kurt smiled, his eyes glistening with stale tears. "Oh, angry assassin, Mom." He paused and looked into Anna's eyes. "Oh - oh wow - I didn't even think about this."
"About what?"
He took hold of her hands. "You and I are brother and sister."
Anna grinned and nodded. "Yeah, we are."
"Whose the older one?"
"Well, my birthday is next month."
"Your birthday is next month! How old are you going to be?"
"17"
"Dang, it! I was hoping I was older."
"You're still an underclassman, you doof."
"Well, sure, but I was hoping somehow -" Kurt sat up on his knees. "So, as my older sister, when are you going to teach me to shave and open up a savings account?"
Anna snorted. "Isn't that stuff a parent is supposed to teach you?"
"In this house, kids rule, Anna."
"Like Chuck E. Cheese? And do you really not know how to shave?"
"I don't really grow enough hair to try. Pretty sure you need a razor and soap."
"Shaving cream. Not soap."
Kurt raised his arms in the air. "See! You're already doing a good job teaching your younger bro!"
Anna shoved him and he fell back on his rear. "Fine! Finish your drink, and I'll teach you to shave."
"Thanks," He raised his eyebrows. "Big sis."
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