The Sun From Both Sides, Chapter 3
Chapter 3!
Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it? --Henry David Thoreau
Kurt generally prided himself on having an unusually high threshold for pain. He could take slushies and locker slams without so much as a break in expression, let alone a yelp. So he dug down deep into himself, resisting the urge to scream in agony and attract the attention of the entire school. His vision was entirely whited out by a searing bright fire and he felt as though his skin had been ripped from his body, leaving him a bundle of exposed nerves. Scalding tears flooded from his eyes as an incandescent figure emerged from the glare, saying nothing but reaching for his face.
Instinctively Kurt shied away from the touch, somehow knowing this would hurt more than anything that had come before. There was a gentle shushing, like a parent to a frightened child and the massive shining hands engulfed his face, fingers covering his ears and thumbs brushing his cheekbones. Marking him, he realized, feeling the fire enter his skin. The fire dug deeper and deeper still, into his mind and Kurt could feel it changing him, shifting his patterns of thought and breaking away all that made his perceptions mortal, opening him permanently to the spectrum of the Divine.
It should have felt like a violation, but already the mental changes were taking root and Kurt could feel the comfort of the God’s presence around him. He understood that this had always been his path, that he had been guided toward it his entire life unknowing. He knew he had been watched and waited for by the other Oracles from the time of his birth, just as someday he would watch over the child born to replace him.
The hand cupped his face gently and he could feel affection, sympathy, and an almost paternal love. Apollo chose those that would serve him carefully and though lore portrayed him as a capricious God quick to anger, Kurt sensed that the God understood the sacrifices made by those he Called and repaid them in kind with protection and esteem.
One final wave of reassurance rolled over him and then the presence was gone. Replacing it was the uncanny sensation that he was alone and unprotected and he shouldn’t be. Like there was something he was missing, the urge to find what should be with him (and wasn’t) was a subtle but nagging feeling in his gut.
Kurt blinked his eyes open to find himself on the floor pressed against a bank of lockers. Rachel had her hands clenched around his wrists, pressing all her slight weight on them to keep them down. Kurt realized he must have been reaching for his face to claw the invisible hands away. She was clearly terrified, her face swollen with tears and her eyes screwed shut against the light that must have been visible to her, as well.
He cleared his throat, causing her to startle violently, but she bravely hung on to him even as she opened her eyes cautiously. Seeing him looking back at her with recognition in his eyes, she released his wrists, her hands flying to her mouth to stifle hysterical sobs.
“Oh my God, Kurt! Oh my God. It’s you! You were jerking back and forth and-and-and I was so scared and it was so bright and I knew you wouldn’t want anyone to see ‘cause you’re so private and oh my God it looked like it hurt so so much! Are you okay? Is it okay to hug you? I know you’re not supposed to touch an Oracle without permission but you were gonna scratch your face and I knew you’d never forgive me if I let you scar yourself and oh my God your dad I forgot!”
Breaking off from her hysteria, she lunged across the hall to snatch up Kurt’s phone from where it lay abandoned.
“Mr. Hummel? I’m so so sorry I dropped the phone but Kurt’s okay now-he’s the Oracle-are you sure you’re okay to be driving?-No, it’s over… but it was so terrible!” Rachel ignored Kurt’s hiss that she was going to give his father another heart attack and his demands to be handed the phone.
“Okay, I’ll stay with him, I promise… Yes sir, I will… He’s right here, hang on.”
Kurt finally snatched the phone from Rachel, glaring at her half-heartedly.
“Kiddo? Are you okay? I’m almost there.” The familiar rumble of his father’s gruff affection soothed Kurt’s shattered nerves.
“Dad, I-He-I saw Apollo and I-I think I might be-” Kurt realized he wasn’t making any sense but at that moment he couldn’t remember how to make sense. He’d also intended to assure his father he was fine but the idea of lying, even so well meaning and small a falsehood, seemed suddenly repugnant. When he opened his mouth again to try to lie, a violent wave of nausea rolled over him.
“It’s okay, kid. I thought something like this might happen. Just stick with Rachel and get yourself somewhere private until I get there. Don’t go off with anyone without me, okay? I don’t care who they are or what Temple they’re from. Don’t answer your phone for anyone but me; got it? I’ll be there in a few.”
Kurt sniffled a little, his Dad’s tone brisk with his clear need to be at his son’s side as soon as possible. “I will, Dad, I promise. I-I really love you. I-I just-need to- I love you.”
Rachel hiccupped and starting sobbing again, making Kurt hope wasn’t ugly crying like she was at the moment because she really did look awful. His Dad sounded a little like he might be ugly crying, too, when he replied.
“I love you, too, Kurt. So, so much. We’re gonna figure this thing out when I get there, I promise.”
Kurt’s whispered, “Okay, bye,” was probably even more heartbreaking than his broken declaration of love had been, if Rachel’s sobbing was any indication. She pulled herself together after a moment, wiping her eyes on the sleeves of her hideous sweater and looking at Kurt with that glint of determination in her eye that usual preceded a demonstration of her nearly supernatural ability to bend reality to her will.
Sure enough, she hauled him bodily off the floor by the lapel of his jacket and started dragging him down the hallway. Before Kurt even had the chance to ask where they were going, she all but tossed him into the choir room and slammed the door behind him. Kurt rolled his eyes, sitting wearily on the nearest chair. Of course she’d chosen the choir room to hole up in, if only because the auditorium was much farther away. The choir room was Rachel’s safe place, the one domain in McKinley she could more or less control.
Hurrying across the room, Rachel locked the other door and slumped against it. Her frantic energy seemed to drain from her and she pulled a chair up next to him. Kurt tried to ignore the murmur of voices only he could hear, slowly rising in volume as the shock of his Calling wore off.
“So,” he wavered, attempting his usual tone of condescension, “What’s the plan, here?”
Her sheepish smile was answer enough, but she rallied to her own defense, as always. “What, you don’t already know, Oracle Hummel?”
It was such an utterly tactless, inappropriate remark, that the sheer Rachel-ness of it warmed Kurt to a feeling of almost normalcy. Still, he couldn’t let it pass unanswered.
“Too soon, Berry. Too soon. I can’t get over how someone could be raised by two perfectly respectable gay men and yet somehow acquire no social graces what-so-ever.”
She sniffed, superior. “I promised your Dad I’d stay with you until he got here.”
“I don’t think he meant you should barricade us in the choir room like some crazy right wing Olympian Fundamentalist,” Kurt returned sarcastically. “Are we going to stay locked in here until they agree to put Zeus and Hera back in the Pledge of Allegiance?”
“Given your present situation you could probably get that done. Of course, you really should be lobbying for Apollo to be in the Pledge at this point,” Rachel volleyed back as good as she got, always.
“Oh, bite me Berry.” It wasn’t his best reply ever, but Kurt felt he could be forgiven for being off his game a little, all things considered.
Rachel sighed so heavily her bangs fluffed out from the force of it. “I can’t believe you’re going to be famous before me,” she huffed, and then straightened as something seemed to occur to her. “Hey, you have to let me play myself when they make a lush, Oscar -worthy biopic about your early life! No actress could embody my complexity and extraordinary talent the way that I could.”
Kurt was saved from having to think up a reply to that pearl of Rachel-centrism by a sardonic voice from the door.
“Complexity? Is that what we’re calling ‘crazy’ these days? Berry, I bet you thought your elementary school teachers were complimenting you when they said things like ‘unique’ and ‘enthusiastic’ when what they really meant was ‘Oh, sweet Athena, sit down and shut up you hyperactive little freak.’”
Rachel leapt in front of Kurt in a rather stunning display of protective instinct, turning to see Santana and Brittany standing on the doorway.
“How did you two get in here? I locked the door!” Rachel shrilled, stomping her foot in frustration.
Santana seemed as amused as ever by Rachel’s anger. “It’s the choir room in a high school, not Alcatraz. All I had to was jiggle the knob a little and boom! Open. Actually, your circus freak boyfriend’s knob operates much the same way, but you don’t have to jiggle it quite as long.”
Ignoring the bickering girls, Brittany gasped and hurried towards Kurt, checking her movement just before she could throw herself over him in a smothering hug. A faint feeling of disappointment stole over Kurt, he hadn’t thought the people not touching him thing would start so quickly or hurt quite so much. Mostly, though, one of Britt’s hugs would have felt wonderful right then, but she’d stopped herself and Kurt had never been one to know how to ask for such things.
Her eyes were huge as she took in his face, lingering on the Oracle markings he hadn’t even seen yet. Kurt tuned out the continuing argument between Rachel and Santana to give Aphrodite’s dancer a brittle smile.
“I guess I’ve learned a lesson about listening to you, huh, Britt?” He joked weakly.
Brittany’s bottom lip was trembling and Kurt was overwhelmed suddenly by the realization that she was the only one who got it. Of all people, only Brittany understood what he felt right now.
“She told me to help. She came out of the water and told me to help but She didn’t tell me how!” The blond all but wailed the last words, tears starting to run down her cheeks.
As if her tears had given him permission, Kurt felt his throat tighten and his eyes start to burn. His whole life, his entire future was gone. He’d never be married, never have children, never sing on Broadway, never go to college. All of it taken from him. He heard the girls fall silent as he buried his face in his hands, the light-headed feeling of hysteria beginning to creep over him again. His voice cracked as he told Brittany the only thing that would help him right now.
“I want my Dad.”
The sound of the door banging open was like an answer to a prayer, and further proof that the locks on those doors really were crap.
Burt was across the room before they even fully registered his presence, pulling Kurt into his arms and burying his face in his hair. The older man seemed content to just breathe him in for a moment, before pulling back and cupping Kurt’s face gently between his rough hands.
“Oh, Kurt,” was all he said.
Leaning forward, Kurt pressed his face into his Dad’s shoulder and wept.
The only word for Blaine’s current situation was awkward. He was sitting in the back of a limo, with Oracle Madeiros and her Guardian sitting across from him. The Guardian, Juan Cortez, was eyeing Blaine like a dog warning off a local stray. Strangely, Blaine felt somewhat similar, oddly possessive like the older man was encroaching into his territory uninvited.
Only Blaine couldn’t figure out just what he was feeling possessive of, he just knew he didn’t want or need the other man anywhere near it… near them.
The atmosphere remained tense. Blaine was trying to subtly observe the pair, attempting gage their relationship and discern what might lay in his future. They were subdued, the Oracle’s eyes red rimmed and the Guardian attentive but not at all subservient. They rather reminded him of some of his friends' more happily married parents, supporting each other with silent communication.
What really struck Blaine was the sense of intimacy he got from the pair, even though they weren’t touching at all. His parents had been like that, once, before time and disinterest had cooled their marriage.
Oracle Madeiros heaved an annoyed sigh as she read a text message, handing the phone off to her Guardian when she was done. Blaine could already feel new instincts stirring in his gut, signaled by a sense of wrongness and a drive to help an upset Oracle in his territory. Simultaneously, he was put off by a feeling of unfamiliarity about the woman, like grabbing a jacket and putting it on, only to realize as you do so that it isn’t yours.
He recognized the symptoms from his training. He knew that as a Guardian he would feel a pull to help any Oracle in distress, even as he would only ever truly connect to his Oracle. So as much as he felt the tug of Madeiros’ need, he knew in his soul she wasn’t his and he had nothing to give her.
“The press has gotten a video of your Oracle being Called,” her lilting accent made even her annoyance sound exotic. “It’s appalling. Never has so intimate and sacred a sight been-been splattered across the media for all to see. Never. To be Chosen by Apollo is sacrosanct and private, not to be twittered about like some celebrity caught nude with a satyr.”
Blaine felt a twinge of sympathy. He remembered waking up surrounded by police and paramedics who had witnessed his Calling, remembered his parents had seen it and still hadn’t understood. Maybe he and his Oracle were starting out with more in common than he’d hoped.
A vibration in his pocket alerted him to a new text and he pulled out his own phone to see a message from Wes. Opening it, he couldn’t stifle his gasp when he saw the photo attachment.
It was a school photo of a boy his age, unusually fair with striking sea colored eyes. Blaine didn’t need to read the message to know this was his Oracle, this boy with the sad smile. Wes must have gotten the photo off the news.
Meeting the eyes of Guardian Cortez across the limo, Blaine was unsurprised at the man’s nod of approval.
Finally he knew what that possessive, protective feeling was for. This beautiful boy’s life and sanity were now solely in Blaine’s hands.
Chapter 4
Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it? --Henry David Thoreau
Kurt generally prided himself on having an unusually high threshold for pain. He could take slushies and locker slams without so much as a break in expression, let alone a yelp. So he dug down deep into himself, resisting the urge to scream in agony and attract the attention of the entire school. His vision was entirely whited out by a searing bright fire and he felt as though his skin had been ripped from his body, leaving him a bundle of exposed nerves. Scalding tears flooded from his eyes as an incandescent figure emerged from the glare, saying nothing but reaching for his face.
Instinctively Kurt shied away from the touch, somehow knowing this would hurt more than anything that had come before. There was a gentle shushing, like a parent to a frightened child and the massive shining hands engulfed his face, fingers covering his ears and thumbs brushing his cheekbones. Marking him, he realized, feeling the fire enter his skin. The fire dug deeper and deeper still, into his mind and Kurt could feel it changing him, shifting his patterns of thought and breaking away all that made his perceptions mortal, opening him permanently to the spectrum of the Divine.
It should have felt like a violation, but already the mental changes were taking root and Kurt could feel the comfort of the God’s presence around him. He understood that this had always been his path, that he had been guided toward it his entire life unknowing. He knew he had been watched and waited for by the other Oracles from the time of his birth, just as someday he would watch over the child born to replace him.
The hand cupped his face gently and he could feel affection, sympathy, and an almost paternal love. Apollo chose those that would serve him carefully and though lore portrayed him as a capricious God quick to anger, Kurt sensed that the God understood the sacrifices made by those he Called and repaid them in kind with protection and esteem.
One final wave of reassurance rolled over him and then the presence was gone. Replacing it was the uncanny sensation that he was alone and unprotected and he shouldn’t be. Like there was something he was missing, the urge to find what should be with him (and wasn’t) was a subtle but nagging feeling in his gut.
Kurt blinked his eyes open to find himself on the floor pressed against a bank of lockers. Rachel had her hands clenched around his wrists, pressing all her slight weight on them to keep them down. Kurt realized he must have been reaching for his face to claw the invisible hands away. She was clearly terrified, her face swollen with tears and her eyes screwed shut against the light that must have been visible to her, as well.
He cleared his throat, causing her to startle violently, but she bravely hung on to him even as she opened her eyes cautiously. Seeing him looking back at her with recognition in his eyes, she released his wrists, her hands flying to her mouth to stifle hysterical sobs.
“Oh my God, Kurt! Oh my God. It’s you! You were jerking back and forth and-and-and I was so scared and it was so bright and I knew you wouldn’t want anyone to see ‘cause you’re so private and oh my God it looked like it hurt so so much! Are you okay? Is it okay to hug you? I know you’re not supposed to touch an Oracle without permission but you were gonna scratch your face and I knew you’d never forgive me if I let you scar yourself and oh my God your dad I forgot!”
Breaking off from her hysteria, she lunged across the hall to snatch up Kurt’s phone from where it lay abandoned.
“Mr. Hummel? I’m so so sorry I dropped the phone but Kurt’s okay now-he’s the Oracle-are you sure you’re okay to be driving?-No, it’s over… but it was so terrible!” Rachel ignored Kurt’s hiss that she was going to give his father another heart attack and his demands to be handed the phone.
“Okay, I’ll stay with him, I promise… Yes sir, I will… He’s right here, hang on.”
Kurt finally snatched the phone from Rachel, glaring at her half-heartedly.
“Kiddo? Are you okay? I’m almost there.” The familiar rumble of his father’s gruff affection soothed Kurt’s shattered nerves.
“Dad, I-He-I saw Apollo and I-I think I might be-” Kurt realized he wasn’t making any sense but at that moment he couldn’t remember how to make sense. He’d also intended to assure his father he was fine but the idea of lying, even so well meaning and small a falsehood, seemed suddenly repugnant. When he opened his mouth again to try to lie, a violent wave of nausea rolled over him.
“It’s okay, kid. I thought something like this might happen. Just stick with Rachel and get yourself somewhere private until I get there. Don’t go off with anyone without me, okay? I don’t care who they are or what Temple they’re from. Don’t answer your phone for anyone but me; got it? I’ll be there in a few.”
Kurt sniffled a little, his Dad’s tone brisk with his clear need to be at his son’s side as soon as possible. “I will, Dad, I promise. I-I really love you. I-I just-need to- I love you.”
Rachel hiccupped and starting sobbing again, making Kurt hope wasn’t ugly crying like she was at the moment because she really did look awful. His Dad sounded a little like he might be ugly crying, too, when he replied.
“I love you, too, Kurt. So, so much. We’re gonna figure this thing out when I get there, I promise.”
Kurt’s whispered, “Okay, bye,” was probably even more heartbreaking than his broken declaration of love had been, if Rachel’s sobbing was any indication. She pulled herself together after a moment, wiping her eyes on the sleeves of her hideous sweater and looking at Kurt with that glint of determination in her eye that usual preceded a demonstration of her nearly supernatural ability to bend reality to her will.
Sure enough, she hauled him bodily off the floor by the lapel of his jacket and started dragging him down the hallway. Before Kurt even had the chance to ask where they were going, she all but tossed him into the choir room and slammed the door behind him. Kurt rolled his eyes, sitting wearily on the nearest chair. Of course she’d chosen the choir room to hole up in, if only because the auditorium was much farther away. The choir room was Rachel’s safe place, the one domain in McKinley she could more or less control.
Hurrying across the room, Rachel locked the other door and slumped against it. Her frantic energy seemed to drain from her and she pulled a chair up next to him. Kurt tried to ignore the murmur of voices only he could hear, slowly rising in volume as the shock of his Calling wore off.
“So,” he wavered, attempting his usual tone of condescension, “What’s the plan, here?”
Her sheepish smile was answer enough, but she rallied to her own defense, as always. “What, you don’t already know, Oracle Hummel?”
It was such an utterly tactless, inappropriate remark, that the sheer Rachel-ness of it warmed Kurt to a feeling of almost normalcy. Still, he couldn’t let it pass unanswered.
“Too soon, Berry. Too soon. I can’t get over how someone could be raised by two perfectly respectable gay men and yet somehow acquire no social graces what-so-ever.”
She sniffed, superior. “I promised your Dad I’d stay with you until he got here.”
“I don’t think he meant you should barricade us in the choir room like some crazy right wing Olympian Fundamentalist,” Kurt returned sarcastically. “Are we going to stay locked in here until they agree to put Zeus and Hera back in the Pledge of Allegiance?”
“Given your present situation you could probably get that done. Of course, you really should be lobbying for Apollo to be in the Pledge at this point,” Rachel volleyed back as good as she got, always.
“Oh, bite me Berry.” It wasn’t his best reply ever, but Kurt felt he could be forgiven for being off his game a little, all things considered.
Rachel sighed so heavily her bangs fluffed out from the force of it. “I can’t believe you’re going to be famous before me,” she huffed, and then straightened as something seemed to occur to her. “Hey, you have to let me play myself when they make a lush, Oscar -worthy biopic about your early life! No actress could embody my complexity and extraordinary talent the way that I could.”
Kurt was saved from having to think up a reply to that pearl of Rachel-centrism by a sardonic voice from the door.
“Complexity? Is that what we’re calling ‘crazy’ these days? Berry, I bet you thought your elementary school teachers were complimenting you when they said things like ‘unique’ and ‘enthusiastic’ when what they really meant was ‘Oh, sweet Athena, sit down and shut up you hyperactive little freak.’”
Rachel leapt in front of Kurt in a rather stunning display of protective instinct, turning to see Santana and Brittany standing on the doorway.
“How did you two get in here? I locked the door!” Rachel shrilled, stomping her foot in frustration.
Santana seemed as amused as ever by Rachel’s anger. “It’s the choir room in a high school, not Alcatraz. All I had to was jiggle the knob a little and boom! Open. Actually, your circus freak boyfriend’s knob operates much the same way, but you don’t have to jiggle it quite as long.”
Ignoring the bickering girls, Brittany gasped and hurried towards Kurt, checking her movement just before she could throw herself over him in a smothering hug. A faint feeling of disappointment stole over Kurt, he hadn’t thought the people not touching him thing would start so quickly or hurt quite so much. Mostly, though, one of Britt’s hugs would have felt wonderful right then, but she’d stopped herself and Kurt had never been one to know how to ask for such things.
Her eyes were huge as she took in his face, lingering on the Oracle markings he hadn’t even seen yet. Kurt tuned out the continuing argument between Rachel and Santana to give Aphrodite’s dancer a brittle smile.
“I guess I’ve learned a lesson about listening to you, huh, Britt?” He joked weakly.
Brittany’s bottom lip was trembling and Kurt was overwhelmed suddenly by the realization that she was the only one who got it. Of all people, only Brittany understood what he felt right now.
“She told me to help. She came out of the water and told me to help but She didn’t tell me how!” The blond all but wailed the last words, tears starting to run down her cheeks.
As if her tears had given him permission, Kurt felt his throat tighten and his eyes start to burn. His whole life, his entire future was gone. He’d never be married, never have children, never sing on Broadway, never go to college. All of it taken from him. He heard the girls fall silent as he buried his face in his hands, the light-headed feeling of hysteria beginning to creep over him again. His voice cracked as he told Brittany the only thing that would help him right now.
“I want my Dad.”
The sound of the door banging open was like an answer to a prayer, and further proof that the locks on those doors really were crap.
Burt was across the room before they even fully registered his presence, pulling Kurt into his arms and burying his face in his hair. The older man seemed content to just breathe him in for a moment, before pulling back and cupping Kurt’s face gently between his rough hands.
“Oh, Kurt,” was all he said.
Leaning forward, Kurt pressed his face into his Dad’s shoulder and wept.
The only word for Blaine’s current situation was awkward. He was sitting in the back of a limo, with Oracle Madeiros and her Guardian sitting across from him. The Guardian, Juan Cortez, was eyeing Blaine like a dog warning off a local stray. Strangely, Blaine felt somewhat similar, oddly possessive like the older man was encroaching into his territory uninvited.
Only Blaine couldn’t figure out just what he was feeling possessive of, he just knew he didn’t want or need the other man anywhere near it… near them.
The atmosphere remained tense. Blaine was trying to subtly observe the pair, attempting gage their relationship and discern what might lay in his future. They were subdued, the Oracle’s eyes red rimmed and the Guardian attentive but not at all subservient. They rather reminded him of some of his friends' more happily married parents, supporting each other with silent communication.
What really struck Blaine was the sense of intimacy he got from the pair, even though they weren’t touching at all. His parents had been like that, once, before time and disinterest had cooled their marriage.
Oracle Madeiros heaved an annoyed sigh as she read a text message, handing the phone off to her Guardian when she was done. Blaine could already feel new instincts stirring in his gut, signaled by a sense of wrongness and a drive to help an upset Oracle in his territory. Simultaneously, he was put off by a feeling of unfamiliarity about the woman, like grabbing a jacket and putting it on, only to realize as you do so that it isn’t yours.
He recognized the symptoms from his training. He knew that as a Guardian he would feel a pull to help any Oracle in distress, even as he would only ever truly connect to his Oracle. So as much as he felt the tug of Madeiros’ need, he knew in his soul she wasn’t his and he had nothing to give her.
“The press has gotten a video of your Oracle being Called,” her lilting accent made even her annoyance sound exotic. “It’s appalling. Never has so intimate and sacred a sight been-been splattered across the media for all to see. Never. To be Chosen by Apollo is sacrosanct and private, not to be twittered about like some celebrity caught nude with a satyr.”
Blaine felt a twinge of sympathy. He remembered waking up surrounded by police and paramedics who had witnessed his Calling, remembered his parents had seen it and still hadn’t understood. Maybe he and his Oracle were starting out with more in common than he’d hoped.
A vibration in his pocket alerted him to a new text and he pulled out his own phone to see a message from Wes. Opening it, he couldn’t stifle his gasp when he saw the photo attachment.
It was a school photo of a boy his age, unusually fair with striking sea colored eyes. Blaine didn’t need to read the message to know this was his Oracle, this boy with the sad smile. Wes must have gotten the photo off the news.
Meeting the eyes of Guardian Cortez across the limo, Blaine was unsurprised at the man’s nod of approval.
Finally he knew what that possessive, protective feeling was for. This beautiful boy’s life and sanity were now solely in Blaine’s hands.
Chapter 4