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The Circle And The Flame	By : KMac Category: X-men Comics > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 3163 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men comics, or any of the characters from it. I make no money from from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Kurt – Role Reversals. Act 1

Kurt slipped into the darkened
training room before the first class he and Kitty were to teach. He stopped beside the equipment table… and
shuddered. Here he was, and now he
was the trainer… Would what happened to
him, to them, be reflected onto these children? He crouched in the dimness and wrapped his knotted string rosary
around his trembling fist. He’d agreed
to this… yes, it made sense for them to pass on their combat knowledge to the
other teens, but… but…
…It sickened him to think of
himself in the role of Trainer.
His head shook emphatically in the shadows. Nein. He would
not… could not call himself ‘trainer’.
Teacher? Hmmm… no bad memories…
but no resonance, either.
Instructor. Ja… That had
a ring to it, and he could accept that title.
Please, Gott…
“Kurt?” His lady’s voice came from the doorway.
“By the table,” he called to her,
and looked to her to show the lambent glow of his eyes.
She felt her way along, coming to
him like an answered prayer. She knelt
before him and caressed his scarred cheeks of silky down. “What are you doing here in the dark?”
“Thinking. Praying.
Will you pray with me?” He took
her hands at her ready nod and held them with his.
“Dear Gott, your servants
call on you. We have been entrusted to
guide these young souls, and the only path we know is that of evil. Help us stand firm and lead by example, and
not by intimidation and fear. Let
compassion be the basis of our teachings.
Amen.”
“Amen.” Kitty leaned forward and kissed him. “I think you worry too much.”
His golden eyes widened, “Do
I? Could you call yourself a ‘trainer’,
without a qualm?” She flinched, and his
hands tightened on hers, and stroked up her arms to draw her closer to
him. “I’m sorry, Liebe.” He hugged her tightly, and then drew her to
her feet, because the others were approaching.
“I’m sure we’ll be alright,” she
said. She tucked her Star of David
necklace inside her suit collar and he put his sacred bit of string in his belt
pouch.
“Anybody home?” Mack called from the doorway.
“You know we are, Mack,” Kurt
said. The boy’s nose was almost as good
as his old man’s, according to what they’d been told.
“Yeah,” Mack said. “Shield your eyes, I’m gonna turn on the
lights.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Kitty
said, as she and Kurt squinted in the sudden brightness.
“I coulda just flipped the switch,
ya know.” His white toothy smile
contrasted with his mocha face. Warren
made faces behind his friend’s back.
“Is this the place?” Jimmy
asked. Becky looked past him in curiosity. All the children were taught basic defense
and physical education, but this was her first time in one of the Asteroid’s
combat rooms. It must have been a
disappointment, because her face fell as she lost the expectant look.
Kitty handed out manuals to the
class. “These books are on Combat
Anatomy. When you fight you need to
know where to hit an opponent in order to stun, to injure, or if necessary, to
kill.” There was a strained look on her
face, and Kurt remembered a book like this in Kitty’s trunk.
“You are responsible for this
information,” Kurt said, picking up a notebook. “Being a Raider, should you ever achieve that status, often means
going into combat, so you will be tested on this, both in examinations and in
practicals.” He handed them each a
sheet detailing their new workout regimes.
Ignoring the groans of complaint, he continued. “Be happy you are not Hounds, or those
schedules would be mandatory, and harder.
We will not enforce them; the only consequences for not keeping up on your
exercises are simply that you will not make the permanent team as soon as you
might, if ever. It’s up to you. Any questions?”
There weren’t any, and Kitty
nodded. “Let’s warm up. It’s crucial to prevent injury during your
work.” Kurt went into his limbering
routine, watching his liebe as she and the others went through their
own. He caught himself holding back on
reflex, and stopped abruptly. “Kurt?”
Kitty said with concern in her voice.
He smiled into her eyes. “I just realized… when we were forced to do
this, I would reserve as much effort as I could, even at the end when we were
together again. I didn’t want to give
them my best efforts. Now, I answer to
no-one but Gott, and I have no reason to hold back any more.” He leaped into his routine once more;
pushing and reaching for his utmost limits and struggling to surpass them. He was always a man who reveled in physical
activity, and this was as close to pure freedom as he had ever experienced,
except on the circus trapeze.
Kurt was sweating freely and
panting when he finished, but he was grinning so hard his face hurt. Kitty applauded, impressed, and he bowed
deeply. “Wunderbar! That felt so good. Your turn, Liebe.
Do it like you mean it.” He was
partly aware of their audience, but this moment of realization was for them,
first and foremost.
She danced like a dervish. At times Kitty’s hands were open and empty,
and at other times razor edges glinted in her grasp. Her blades were a part of her now. Without them, he knew, she felt helpless and vulnerable… a weak
slip of a girl up against ravening monsters.
But with them, she could go toe to toe with the baddest monster of them
all, the Wolverine, and nearly take him down.
She was a deadly as she was beautiful, and now she was as free. They both were.
“Whoa…” Warren’s breathless tone
seemed to sum it up for all of them.
Kitty stood still, breathing hard
when she finished, tears flowing freely down her tattooed face. Kurt went to her, arms stretched to embrace
her. She moved to come into his arms,
and then flinched when he hesitated at the sight of the blades she still held
in her hands. “Kurt… I’m a killer… I
didn’t know they were still out…” She
fumbled to put them away, crying all the harder. She dropped one, but caught it before it reached the ground in a
move that would have made Pete Maximoff proud.
When it was safely stowed he gathered her close in his arms. “Nein K�tzchen, you are a warrior,
and sometimes warriors have to kill.
But they will regret giving you those weapons, because cats are
notorious for turning their claws back on their masters.”
She giggled faintly against his
chest. “But what about you?”
He smiled into her hair, “It is
well known that Dark Elven princes do not take well to slavery, Liebe.” He let her go with a kiss on the cheek, and
turned back to their curious students.
“Have you ever killed, Kurt?” Mack
asked.
“No. That wasn’t what they trained me for. I had the training in theory, but I was primarily an infiltration
specialist… but enough about us!” He
referred to his notes to busy his shaking hands. “Warren, you have been reported to have uncontrolled telekinesis,
and flashes of insight into people that could only come from a kind of
mind-reading. Herr Leader thinks
you will focus more on the Kinesis side, due to the red-glow you manifest when
it’s operating. He speculates you will
not be quite as dexterous as your mother, and without quite the punch of your
father. However, that compromise means
you can do things that neither of them could.”
“Wait, Dad’s not a teke,” Warren
said.
Kurt shook his head. “Cyclop’s force beams are undeniably kinetic
in nature. Perhaps he can’t manipulate
things with them like Psion, but they both share an ability to move objects at
a distance, without heat.”
Jimmy looked off, his face shining
with the eerie gleam of his spiritual abilities. “Charles says that sounds about right, Warren. Your late Uncle Alex also had kinetic
powers… a blast of concentric rings, but fully controlled…” His green eyes snapped open. “I didn’t know Herr Summers had brain damage.”
“He does not!” Warren said hotly.
“Warren…” Mack said.
The redhead glared at him, then
sighed. “Yeah, I know, but he didn’t
have to make it sound like that.”
“All I meant,” Jimmy said mildly,
“was that he cannot turn off his powers.
Herr Professor knew this, and traced it to an accident when your
father was a boy. It was the
Professor’s efforts that discovered the ruby quartz lenses that enable him not
to endanger people.”
Kurt looked at Kitty, “When we did
we lose control?”
She smiled a little. “You mean we ever had it?”
She perched on the table next to Becky.
“You, Mack, show a sensitivity to electrical fields along with a
considerable immunity to its effects.
Jon thinks you could be struck by a full lightning bolt and scarcely
notice. However, your mother has been
understandably reluctant to allow that to be put to the test.” Mack returned her smile, and shrugged.
“You’re also a skilled
bare-knuckled brawler,” she continued.
“You might yet manifest a set of claws, and you are to report any
soreness of your forearms.”
Watching him absently rub along his
forearms, Kurt took a guess. “Or at
least tell us how long they’ve been sore…”
The gray haired boy stopped mid-rub. “Um, a couple of months now, but I also get
sore all over.” He shrugged again. “It feels better when I’m near Ilyana.” His dusky face reddened at this admission,
and his best friend elbowed him in the side, grinning. “Shut up, Warren.” He faked an elbow back, and Warren dodged, rubbing his ribs.
Jimmy looked thoughtful. “Something, mein buder?” Kurt
inquired.
“Ilyana has an incoherent magical
field around her. Charles Xavier says
sometimes it happens that magic and mutation will manifest in the same person,
as I know from personal experience,” Jimmy put a hand on his chest. “Dr. Stephen Strange wonders how Mack would
respond to a fully formed magical aura.”
Kitty raised an eyebrow, and jotted
a note. “Something to look into, but
not right now. Jimmy, we know your
powers let you talk to the dead and manifest their powers. Besides that you’re trained a
sorcerer.” She turned to Becky, “You
have your limited shape changing, and a good measure of your father’s physical
adaptations and fighting abilities.”
She looked at Kurt.
He picked up his cue. “Our job is to train what you have, and help
you manifest what you have in potential.
As such, we will be pushing you beyond what you thought your limits
were, because it is only when you are stretched that you will grow. So, here are your assignments,” He handed
out pages to each of their friends and merely grinned when they groaned in
complaint.”
“I’m not an acrobat, brother,’
Jimmy complained.
“Perhaps not,” Kurt answered, “But
we are soldiers in this war, and that requires a level of conditioning that
life with the gypsies couldn’t give you.
I know that I was more conditioned than you when I was taken, and I was
pushed far beyond my boundaries by means that often terrified me. You only need do what you wish, Jimmy. I won’t be threatening you with any harm.”
“Harm? Brother, are you joking?”
Kurt just looked at him, his face completely serious.
Kitty shook her head. “’Terror’ is the correct word for their
training methods.” She went over to
Kurt. “So what do you have for us?”
“I was thinking of this,” he said,
handing her a slip.
She skimmed it, and looked at him
sternly. “Sadist.”
“No pain, no gain, Liebe!”
he said, smiling.
She snorted, and went into the
workout with him. He kept an eye on
their students, who looked less than enthused at the work ahead of them. His enhanced hearing did pick up some
comments that if the instructors were working so hard, they might as well see
what they could do.
Kurt and Kitty finished their work,
and stretched again, cooling down. Then
they sat and observed the others, making comments on their performances. “Careful Warren, you almost messed up your
hair,” Kitty said. She mimed an
arrogant hair flip.
“You’re perilously close to
breaking a sweat, brother,” Kurt teased.
“So why aren’t you over here,
yelling at us instead of making snide comments?” Becky snapped. “That’s what drill instructors are supposed
to do.”
“Ah, but that’s exactly the point,”
Kurt said. “Drill instructors work with
people who are committed to being soldiers.
The four of you have merely indicated you might be interested in
being Raiders. You can leave any time
you like. There’s the door.”
“What about you?” Mack asked. “Why are you doing this?”
Kitty looked down. “To keep innocent kids like you from being
treated like we were. Whether we like
it or not, we have to be in this war.
Neither of us will rest until we’ve fallen or won.”
“She speaks for you?” Warren asked
Kurt.
Kurt nodded. “Win or die? Yes. We are in this until
mutants can be free to live how they wish.
Until mutants will no longer be treated as we were, like animals. They called us ‘Hounds’ for a reason.”
Warren leaned against the wall, and
shook his head skeptically. “How bad
could it have been?”
Kurt felt ice trickle through his
veins… “How bad…?” He stared at the
redhead.
Chunk! A lock of fiery hair fluttered to the floor,
and Warren put a hand up to a fine slice on his cheek, where a drop of blood
started to bead. Kitty stalked over to
him and reached past Warren to yank the dirk out of the wall. Furious brown eyes stared up into shocked
green. “You don’t have a clue,
Summers! How dare you?” she
hissed. “We were tortured… and…
raped! And yet you stand there and say,
‘How bad could it be?’ Bastard.” She stormed out of the room, slotting the
blade back into her wrist sheath.
“The bitch cut me!” Before Warren could blink, Kurt’s fists
slammed info the wall on either side of his face.
He snarled at Warren, yellow eyes
blazing. “You will never, ever
refer to my wife in such a manner again!
You want to know how bad it was?
Fine. The four of you will
report here tomorrow, this same time.
No excuses! We will tell and
show you exactly what we went through.”
He went after his lady, the fine fur on the back of his neck still
bristling. He found her in a nearby
storeroom, stewing silently. “Shhh, Liebe,”
he said, pulling her against him. “We
will show them what really happened, tomorrow.”
She laid her face on his
chest. “I can’t. I can’t… live through all that again,” she
whispered dully.
“You can and you will, mein
schatz. They deserve to know the
truth of the world they live in, outside this sheltered refuge.”
She nodded against him, and he
settled down to hold her until her composure returned.

* * *

The next day Kurt and Kitty arrived
at the combat room. The kids were
waiting for them, including a sulking Warren, who rubbed at a small bandage on
his cheek. The redhead gave Kitty a poisonous
look, which she ignored.
“I can’t believe my folks made me
come here,” Warren muttered.
Mack gave him a quelling look, “You
were outta line, and they agreed.”
Kurt cleared his throat. “After the Carrier attacked the Asteroid,
Cyclops went on a mission to raid their computer files while the vessel was
close. Among the data copied were our
Hound records. We will begin with
pictures of us before we were… processed.”
A screen had been set up on the wall, and Kitty’s Eighth grade
graduation photo, Valedictorian, was displayed. She looked gangly and underdeveloped, her eyes almost too large
for her face. “Katzchen, at age
13.” The next photo was new to both of
them; her freshman year photos were delivered after her arrest. She was a little more developed in this
picture, her long hair in another style.
“At age 14.”
The next picture showed Kitty in
heavy shackles at the school assembly, her loose brown curls shorn to stubble,
and baggy coveralls hanging on her slumped frame. “That was two weeks later,” he said. “And this was the next day.”
Kitty looked away from the next one.
The post-marking photo wasn’t flattering. Her face was swollen and lumpy, even bruised in some areas, the
ink driven deep into the raw flesh.
“Just after the tattoo, I was given
a tubal ligation. I was given minimal
anesthesia, because it’s internal surgery.
Sterilization is the first thing they do when you get to the Carrier,”
Kitty said flatly.
“Now for me,” Kurt said. The next image was a hand drawn
advertisement for the Circus, showing an exaggerated drawing of Kurt. “This is all that Shield had of me; Mama
provided the photos.” A picture
appeared of Kurt and Jimmy with their arms about each other’s shoulders,
wearing similar clothes, and identical grins and gold hoop earrings. The next was a close up of their happy
expressions, showing the unscarred lines of Kurt’s face. “I was 15.”
The next photo showed Kurt, his
hair clipped short, unconscious, and quite nude. His genitals were blurred, but the extreme bondage and
humiliating position was very clear. He
still appeared unclothed in the post-scarring picture, his bare chest revealed
to the camera along with the oozing cuts on his face. “Just after that photo was taken, “ Kurt said in a flat voice,
“they swabbed my scrotum with alcohol and gave me a vasectomy. With no anesthesia; luckily I fainted
half-way through.” The three other male
teens squirmed in their seats, and Becky winced.
“And now it is movie time,” Kurt
said. “They filmed our practice
sessions, no doubt to evaluate our progress.”
There were clips of Kurt kneeling, reciting the Shield oath to the image
of the Eagle. “They made us do that,
pounding it into our brains. The only
thing that preserved me is the fact the church got there first. I learned to say those things with my lips,
while reciting prayers in German in my heart.
They thought they had me, but what was in my heart was deeper and truer
than they could reach.”
Kitty spoke over scenes of her
learning the oath. “One thing they
emphasized was that just being discovered to be an active mutant was a death
sentence. We didn’t have to have done
anything wrong; we existed and that was enough. The only thing that kept us alive from day to day was doing
everything they said. If at anytime we
failed their expectations… we’d be killed.
We were in the Carrier. Kurt’s
powers and mine could let us escape, but to where? Usually we were thousands of feet up… although some days that
seemed like the most attractive way to stop the pain.”
“I was trained to fight, but not
specifically to kill,” Kurt said. “I
was to get in and out of places. They
had arbitrary goals set for my powers, and they used any means they saw fit to
ensure I reached them.” Clips showed
Kurt being threatened if he didn’t perform to expectations, of the trainers
firing rubber, and then real bullets as motivations. Images were shown of Kurt puking his guts out, of blood pouring
from his nose, and of him shaking so badly after a session he couldn’t stand.
“Me, they wanted to learn to kill,”
Kitty said with her teeth clenched.
“Anatomy lessons and target practice were all well and good, but they
wanted to give me the actual experience.”
The screen showed the entire session with Ox, from the very real threat
of her molestation by the big mutant, to her attempted murder of him after she
got him down. “That’s where it all came
together for me,” she said bitterly. “I
learned I could use what they gave me to protect myself, but they weren’t ready
for me to kill yet…”
“Understand,” Kurt said, “that
Hounds also work in the Carrier. We do
things like cleaning, laundry, and garbage, for five hours a day each weekday,
and ten hours each on Saturday and Sunday.
Training time is an extra five hours every day during the week.”
“Male and female Hounds are
segregated,” Kitty said. “The lower
ranked Hounds only get one chance a month to even see a mutant of the opposite
sex. They call these opportunities
‘Socials’. If you’ve been a good Hound,
they provide food, drink, and music… and opportunities for sex. I first met a Kurt at a Social.” She gave her husband a thin smile.
“Is that where you two… got
together?” Mack said, his expression hinting he meant intimacy.
Identical expressions of outrage
and anger were turned on him. “Nein!” Kurt snapped. “We just talked, and danced, away from the rest of them. I had my own rooms, instead of the gang
dorms, because my bunkmates liked to beat me.”
His tail thrashed in the air as his fangs showed briefly.
Kitty continued. “The next time we met was right after my run
in with Ox. I was pretty out of it, and
he brought me back with a kiss.”
“A moment, Liebe.” Kurt paused to kiss her. Catching his breath, he went on. “The next month, at our third meeting, it
was I who needed the comforting. I had
just participated in the mission that orphaned young Melanie, and I was heart
sick at the thought that I was partly responsible for her death.”
Mack leaned forward. “I was on the shuttle for that one. Storm… my Mom made the weather foggy. Warren’s folks found her inside the condo,
while Dad and I kept an eye on the Shield team on the other building. We didn’t know they had a Hound with them.”
“That explains much to me,” Kurt
said. “I sensed that the weather
alteration was odd… and I saw a red light moving in the fog.” He smiled faintly. “Very like the one that shows behind your father’s goggles,
Warren.” He shook his head. “If I had known the Raiders were so
close… But it wouldn’t have mattered, I
could not have left Kitty to them, even then.”
Kitty leaned her head on his arm,
briefly, then kissed over the scar of his bullet crease. “When he felt better, we… indulged in a
little petting. It was then that things
changed for us. We fell asleep
together, and missed our work shifts the next morning.” The screen showed two separate pictures of
them both in an examination room, obviously terrified.
“Mein Gott, Kurt! What did they do to you?” Jimmy said.
Kurt gave him a crooked smile. “It seemed that ultimately their biggest
problem was that we’d only petted each other.
So they bid us to have intercourse for them.” At their gasps, his smile turned bitter. “We didn’t know that they filmed it… and
before you ask, we’re not showing it to you.
It is enough to know it’s a nice pornographic film of two mutant teens
and their respective first times… in
front of an audience of Shield officers.”
Kitty’s voice turned icy. “But they were thoughtful enough to solve
the problem of how I’d explain Kurt to my folks by sending them a copy of the
event. Nothing like the first sign they
have of their daughter in months be a film of her having sex with a fuzzy blue
elf and screaming his name in ecstasy.”
Jimmy raised an eyebrow at Kurt,
who was torn between masculine pride, and sympathy for his lady’s pain. Becky nudged Kitty, who sighed. “Not that you should care, sis, but
yes, he’s just that good.”
“Katzchen!” He flushed in embarrassment, but he saw a
wicked little glint in her brown eyes.
The others were giving him odd looks, but there were worse things than
having a reputation as a love god.
“Anyway,” his Katzchen
continued, “after that we were allowed to live together in his quarters. The only thing that enabled us to get
through being forced to be together like that was that he proposed to me.” She held up her left hand, with the bit of
twine on her ring finger. “But though
we were okay together, some of our trainers started approaching us sexually.”
“Hounds are not allowed to say
‘no’, to anything,” Kurt told them.
“Looming death is a Hound’s constant companion, and in our case, our
failures would be taken out on the other.
We could refuse nothing they chose to do, even our rapes… always being
conscious that a single failure would be the end of us.”
“And don’t think that it would be a
clean end,” Kitty said matter-of-fact, the hint of humor fleeing from her
again. “They… research mutants up
there. Trying to figure out what makes
us tick, I guess. They experiment on
washed out Hounds, and they prefer not to wait for them to be dead first,
either. Kurt and I… we had a mutual
friend. He’d gone to the Social before
the one where we met, and talked with her awhile. She was also my Bunkie, and set us up for our ‘date’.” She closed her eyes and made a visible
effort to calm the trembling in her voice.
“She… washed out. I don’t know
how, exactly. The important thing is,
they framed Wolverine for her failure in a bid to bring me fully under their
control. It came perilously close to
working, because I started to hate him for that.”
“My dad?” Mack said. “I mean, it’s something he would do, but he
hasn’t fought a Hound that I know of.”
“I know that, now,” Kitty
said. “But they let me think he was
responsible, so I would really try to kill him.”
“As if,” Warren said
disbelievingly.
Mack turned to face his
friend. “Warren, that knife that nicked
your cheek? She buried one just like it
in Dad’s gut. Only the fact that your
parents were bouncing half the storage bay off her head kept her from giving
him a serious problem, and he said as much.
Dad was impressed, even if he wasn’t too happy about the way Kurt beat
my mom.”
“I did apologize,” Kurt said.
Warren stood, “They did what? And they’re being allowed to stay here?”
Becky sneered at him. “Boy, you are so thick. Haven’t you been listening? Seeing this? That wasn’t a summer camp they were at. And don’t you think that both your mom and Jon have mentally
examined them? Shield mind-fucked them
something fierce.”
Jimmy raised his eyebrows at the
obscenity, and Kurt frowned in disapproval.
“He’s not thick,” Kitty said
tiredly. “Just really sheltered. So… Karla washed out, like I said, and I was
given the option to give her a clean end, as opposed to letting her get…
experimented to death. Once they had
shown me proof, I accepted.”
“No! I won’t listen to you anymore!”
Warren turned to leave, and nearly walked into his mother.
“Warren, sit down and shut up. We don’t run away from difficult truths,”
Jean said.
“Mom?” Warren said, disbelief on
his face.
Jean pushed him back to his
chair. “Let them finish. You need to hear this.”
Kitty waved at the screen, and
selected mutant research sequences were shown, pre and post mortem. Then Kitty’s qualification session began
playing. It showed her walking the room
where Karla was strapped up like a sacrifice, her hands running over her
complement of blades, and quivering with tension. Showing Karla’s wounds, they could hear the conversation between
the Hounds, as Karla asked her to make it quick. Kitty told her to close her eyes, so she wouldn’t flinch. Shadowcat squared off, and threw her pattern
cleanly; heart, left eye, right eye, and throat. She was as white as a ghost afterwards, but she kept her
composure, at least while she was on camera, even while retrieving and cleaning
her knives.
His liebe shuddered in
reaction, and Kurt gathered her close.
“They let us stay together, as a couple, for most of a year,” he
said. “Then a shift of personnel caused
everything to change again. We were
kept apart for three months. See what
that time did to us.”
Clips of their training for the
months they were parted showed on the screen.
Week by week, the pair looked increasingly haunted and gaunt. It was clear that they were losing it, and
the way they flinched away from their trainer’s touch was very telling. “Our trainers were allowed to do as they
wished to us during this time. At the
end, I think I was cracking up, and Katzchen had a bad case of ulcers. Just what every well-trained assassin
needs… When we were given the Georgia
Compound mission, we barely recognized each other.” Film showed of them preparing for the mission, stealing desperate
glances at each other when they thought they could.
He squeezed his lady and kissed her
hair. “They put us back together after
that, preparing us for the mission against the Asteroid. I suppose they thought they had broken us completely,
and that we’d be grateful… but they were wrong. We were more determined to be free than ever.”
Kitty straightened up, her brown
eyes so cold they were almost black.
“The only other person I’ve killed was a mutant called the Culler, a
sick bastard who was roasting school kids.
You’ve seen my marksmanship, Summers.
Believe me, I could have done much
more than give you a haircut and draw a few drops of blood.” She nodded at Kurt, and left the room along
with Jean.
Kurt stood. “All these records are available for you to
see for yourselves, except the sexual material. At least you can keep that much of your innocence. But think on this Warren, now how bad do you
think it was?”
As he turned to follow the woman he
loved, Kurt saw a look of dawning comprehension and horror come over Warren’s
face, as the reality what the former Hounds had suffered shredded his
complacency. He smiled as the door
closed behind him. The boy just had a
rude awakening, but Kurt thought Warren would come around nicely. He’d make a good Raider, someday.

Many, MANY thanks to akchristen for the persistent nudging,
story ideas, and patient beta-read.
This was much better with her assistance.
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The Circle And The Flame