FIC: Forever Home - Epilogue
Title: Forever Home - Epilogue
Author: Shadowc44
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Kadam (Kurt Hummel/Adam Crawford)
Rating: R
Spoilers: AU. If you’ve seen Kurt and Adam interact, you’re good.
Summary: Adam is bored, and realizes he needs a companion. He decides to adopt a hybrid human/cat.
Warning: Mention of past abuse (non-sexual) from other canon Glee characters. This fic is not particularly kind to most canon Glee characters.
Length: About 2,500 words this chapter. About 461,000 words total. Completed.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Glee characters in this story; they're owned by Fox. Any non-Glee characters are my own invention.
Chapter 1
Chapter 100
EPILOGUE
It was 7:30 at night, meaning it was story time. At least, as long as the grandchildren were staying with them. Their parents told much shorter stories, so bedtime started later.
“Tell us again, Grandpa, how it used to be,” Teddy begged.
“Well, I think you’re almost old enough to read your great-great-grandfather’s books on the subject.”
Delighted screeches filled the room. Marie came in from the library to see what all the fuss was about.
“Honey, are you getting the children all excited before bed again?”
Her husband looked at her fondly. “No, sweetie. I was just going to tell them another family story. I just told them they might be old enough to read Great-Great-Grandpa Adam’s books.”
She considered this, hands on hips.
“Grandmama, please!”
“We’re smart enough now to read them!” Jenny insisted.
“It’s not a matter of being smart enough. But it’s one thing to hear your grandfather tell you stories, which I know for a fact he edits, and another for you to read how harsh things used to be.”
“Why don’t you sit with us for a while?” her husband invited. “You can make sure they don’t hear anything too gruesome, if you’re that worried.”
The children “oooohed” when they heard the enticing word ‘gruesome’.
“Now you’ve done it,” Marie complained, but she took a seat next to her husband.
“Where would you like me to start?”
“We want to hear what it was like when you were a kid!” Jenny insisted.
“No, start with when your mother was born!” Teddy corrected.
“No, when your grandpas were born!” Jenny was getting progressively more excited as she saw story time being extended.
“Well, that was a long time ago, but maybe I can remember how that story goes. Let’s see…”
The children waited, familiar with this ritual.
“Ah, now I remember! Okay, remember how I’ve told you, my grandparents couldn’t have children of their own.”
“’Course not! They were both boys.”
“Well, that wasn’t the only reason. Instead of their friend April carrying a child for them, as she was apparently quite willing to do, Adam and Kurt adopted a hybrid child of their own. It’s not too often that the really young ones can be adopted. Sometimes the government wanted to keep them and train them, and the pet stores would pay a higher price for them, because they could get a lot more money for a pet that had been trained since a really young age. But they heard about a hybrid they knew who had, as they said in those days, gotten herself in trouble. Even though there was no way she could have gotten herself pregnant. One of the other cat hybrids at the store was actually the father, though it took a while to figure out who, because she didn’t want to say. But eventually someone heard the daddy bragging about it.”
“Did they love each other?” Jenny asked.
He hesitated only a moment before answering, “No. Brittany had gone into heat. That means, her body wanted her to have a baby, whether she was actually ready for one or not. Now, at an earlier time, she’d tried to get your Great-Great-Grandfather Kurt to impregnate her, but he wasn’t interested.”
“No, ‘cause he liked boys,” Teddy confidently explained.
“Yes. And I don’t think he even really understood, at that time, what she wanted. Usually, the stores were pretty careful when the female hybrids went into heat to put them in a cage with another female and keep them there for a few days until they got over it, but somebody messed up. Brittany and Sam, one of the male hybrids, were left alone for a few minutes, and that’s all it took. When they learned she was pregnant, it caused quite a ruckus at the store. The store’s owners didn’t know what to do.
“Adam heard about it, and offered to adopt the baby when she was born, and was allowed to keep her for as long as he wanted, almost as if she had been his own child.”
“And that was Great-Grandma Liz!” Teddy announced.
“That’s right, that was my mother, Elizabeth Carole. Now, when she grew up, she eventually mated with another hybrid cat, who was the child of friends of Adam and Kurt’s. That was your Great-Grandpa Robert. What they did was very unusual, but not illegal. Their friends were devastated when they had to give him up at age 13.”
“What’s devastated mean?” Jenny asked.
“Really, really sad. Heartbroken. So Adam petitioned to adopt the boy, and he and Kurt raised him like their own child. Mama and Dad had known each other most of their lives, had been friends, and played together, because of their parents being friends, and later being treated as siblings. It might have seemed kind of weird to some people, but they fell in love. So with two hybrid parents, and two hybrid grandparents, I had stronger cat traits than usual. So when I’m a cat, I don’t have as many human traits as either of you, or your mother. She was able to marry your dad, which was brand-new at the time, and he was fully human.
“Things were so different then. Adam and Kurt wanted to get married, and couldn’t. Just think, if you’d been born back in those days, when you turned 13, you would have been separated. You’d have been sent to different states, to be sold in pet stores there. They wouldn’t want you to find each other again, or your mother or me.”
“I still can’t believe we used to be sold!” Jenny scoffed. “That’s so horrible!”
“Or taken away from our families,” Teddy added. He might occasionally get annoyed with his sister, but he couldn’t imagine them being separated in a few years and never seeing each other again.
“Well, that’s what it was like for your Great-Great-Grandfather Kurt. That’s how he and Adam met. Adam bought Kurt at a pet store. Now, cruel as it may seem, I guess it was meant to be. Not only did they fall in love, real, true love, but they helped start the movement that changed our lives, gave us all the rights and privileges we have today.”
“But why did they ever treat us like animals?” Teddy asked.
“Why did they treat animals like that?” Jenny still didn’t see any sense in that.
“Good questions. For some reason, they didn’t know we weren’t animals. A lot of people thought we were cats who somehow learned how to become human, not the other way around. So they treated us pretty much the way they treated domestic house cats. Like companions, but ones they often forgot about when they weren’t in the same room.”
“I heard some of the boys talking at school,” Teddy announced excitedly. “They said we used to go to different schools, but just for a little while. And at the pet stores, they’d have trained us how to have sex with people. But, not like sex education, just how to please them, no matter what they wanted, or what we wanted. They said we used to have to do whatever we were told, and if we didn’t like sex, or didn’t like it with women, it didn’t matter, if a woman owned us and wanted that.”
“Is that true?” Jenny asked, horrified.
Marie tutted at her husband for upsetting the children, and hugged Jenny tightly to her. She answered the question.
“Yes, children, it used to be that way. But you don’t have to worry about that any more.”
“I wish I could have known them, Kurt and Adam.” Jenny said, not for the first time. Or the dozenth.
“Would you settle for seeing and hearing them?” Grandpa Jack asked.
“But how?”
“I was able to get everything restored from those ancient files Adam made. But that’s for another day. For now, let me show you what they called a movie. Let me set it up…” A few minutes later, the images were beamed onto the viewing screen which took up most of a wall in the living area. The children made themselves comfortable.
Jenny read the words on the screen. “Tails From A Hybrid’s Life - Kurt’s Story.”
“You probably won’t have heard the songs in here. They’re nothing like what you kids listen to, or sing, nowadays,” Grandpa Jack promised. “But I think you’ll like them.”
Grandma Marie explained, “Adam turned his book into a play, which some of his local friends put on. It was filmed, and shown in theaters, and won some awards. The recording was sold in different formats so people could watch it at home.”
“How come we haven’t seen that before?”
“Because we thought there were parts of it you might be too young to understand.”
“But we’re almost ten-and-a-half!” Teddy boasted. “Plenty old enough to understand.”
“You mean like the yucky sex stuff?” Jenny asked.
“It’s not yucky,” Marie corrected her, “and there’s no actual sex, nothing very explicit at all, in either the book or the play. But there are some things that might be hard to see and hear, words you’re not used to hearing, that Kurt sort of grew up with. Hurtful, insulting words.”
Jenny shrugged. “But they’re not saying them to us.”
“No, but to people like you. They’re saying them to Kurt.”
“Before you start, can you tell us again, what’s the difference between us and the hybrid companion animals some people have?” Teddy asked. He wanted to see the play, but he was still confused about some things.
“Well, that’s something Kurt thought about,” Grandpa explained. “I’ve told you about his friend Artie, another hybrid, who was in a wheelchair, and how Kurt built him a cart to get around in. Well, it got Kurt to thinking about people with other disabilities, as they called them back then. It was pretty common for people who were blind, for instance, to have a companion dog to help them get around, to warn them of danger they couldn’t see, things like that. And Kurt started wondering why they didn’t use hybrids instead. He figured they could be more easily trained, and could help people in different ways, in both forms. There were a fair number of hybrids that didn’t get adopted, for one reason or another. I think a lot of it had to do with how much they cost.
“But instead of having them put to sleep, Kurt thought they could be re-trained to help people who really needed it. It turned out to be a great idea. It gave the hybrids a real sense of purpose, and it still seems to be pretty much bred into us to want to help others. And a lot of the disabled community loved the idea. Some weren’t that comfortable with dogs, for instance, but a hybrid dog was a different matter. And of course, they could train the hybrid cats, rabbits, etc., just as well. Now the rabbits, for instance, weren’t able to be as helpful in their animal form, in guiding people, but they were great as strictly companions, for people who were lonely or depressed, and wanted to be able to sit and hold a pet for hours, or have someone to just talk to.
“As you can imagine, at first the government wasn’t too happy about it. But with the help of some of his friends, they came up with a contract that made sense. They used phrases like “wasting valuable resources” to point out why euthanizing hybrids was a bad idea. Some anonymous donors put in a lot of money to start the program, which provided hybrids to disabled people who just couldn’t afford them. Some private institutions would buy several hybrids, and loan them out to students who needed to learn how to work with a hybrid, before getting one of their own. Sometimes they could buy the hybrid they’d worked with.”
“Were those hybrids used for sex, like some of the others?” Jenny asked hesitantly. The idea of not having a choice, but being told you had to do something like that, was just gross.
“Sometimes, but usually it was understood they were there to help the person cope with their disability. Although some people may have felt more comfortable having sex with their hybrid than trying to find someone to love them who could overlook their limitations. The hybrid would already know all about those. But from what I’ve heard and read, if there was any sex, it was consensual.”
“What’s that mean?” Teddy asked.
“It means the hybrid said yes, they were willing to have sex with their owner. If they weren’t, their wishes tended to be respected more often than with able-bodied owners, who might have had a better chance of finding somebody.”
“You mean, disabled people, like Great-Great-Uncle Artie?”
“Yes, except as a hybrid, he wouldn’t have been given a hybrid companion. However, his owner, Gabriel, had been thinking of this about the same time Kurt did. He’d married his lady friend, Julia, who owned Mandy. Artie and Mandy were more like siblings, more like you two, than lovers, though they did love each other very much. But Mandy was able to help Artie with some things, and he was a good friend to her, and helped her realize not all males were scary. They spent a lot of time together while their parents were at work, and kept each other company.”
“Yay!” Jenny yelled.
Teddy screwed up his face. “I don’t care about the romance stuff.”
“I do! And that wasn’t romance, not really, just a different kind of love story. Right, Grandmama?”
“That’s right, children. Now, it’s starting to get late. Unless you want to wait and watch the whole thing tomorrow, we’d better get started on this film so you can at least see some of it tonight.”
<><><><><><><><><><>
Watching their descendants below, Adam pulled Kurt into a tight hug. “Come on, let’s go see your mom for a bit before Burt and Carole get there. Or do you two want some time alone?”
Kurt shook his head, not caring that his hair was getting smushed in the tight hug. “We talked…earlier.” Time didn’t pass the same way here, so it was hard to keep track. But that didn’t matter. The important thing was that they were all together, everyone he’d ever cared about. And sometimes strangers, too, who wanted to meet him and tell him how he and Adam had changed their lives.
As they walked past fields of flowers and smelled the sweet air, they were politely stopped by an old gentleman.
“I just wanted to say, Kurt, I’m happy to admit I was wrong.”
“About what? And who are you, sir?” he asked, not recognizing him. Maybe someone from his childhood, whom he’d never seen as an old man?
“I was one of the many misguided ones who thought you had no soul, and didn’t belong here. If I still had the ego I had then, it would be embarrassing to admit how many things I was wrong about. I’m just very glad to see you, and so many others, here.”
“Thank you.” Kurt didn’t feel the smug satisfaction his earthly self would have, just gratitude that he himself had been wrong.
“Well, I won’t keep you.”
“It’s been a pleasure to meet you, sir.” Kurt shook his hand, then he and Adam continued on.
It was true. He no longer felt things like anger or shame. But pleasure, oh yes, that was still there.
He grinned at Adam, “When we get back home, I’ll show you something new I thought of.”
“A design?” Adam asked, squeezing his hand.
“No. Something fun. Involving the waterbed this time, I think.”
“Ah. I look forward to it!”
There were many advantages to having a home they could change at will, that would stay as it was until they needed something different. Even better to be able to look whatever age he wished. But as lovely as things were here, he couldn’t wait to tell his mother and father and stepmother about the changes back on Earth.
Author: Shadowc44
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Kadam (Kurt Hummel/Adam Crawford)
Rating: R
Spoilers: AU. If you’ve seen Kurt and Adam interact, you’re good.
Summary: Adam is bored, and realizes he needs a companion. He decides to adopt a hybrid human/cat.
Warning: Mention of past abuse (non-sexual) from other canon Glee characters. This fic is not particularly kind to most canon Glee characters.
Length: About 2,500 words this chapter. About 461,000 words total. Completed.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Glee characters in this story; they're owned by Fox. Any non-Glee characters are my own invention.
Chapter 1
Chapter 100
EPILOGUE
It was 7:30 at night, meaning it was story time. At least, as long as the grandchildren were staying with them. Their parents told much shorter stories, so bedtime started later.
“Tell us again, Grandpa, how it used to be,” Teddy begged.
“Well, I think you’re almost old enough to read your great-great-grandfather’s books on the subject.”
Delighted screeches filled the room. Marie came in from the library to see what all the fuss was about.
“Honey, are you getting the children all excited before bed again?”
Her husband looked at her fondly. “No, sweetie. I was just going to tell them another family story. I just told them they might be old enough to read Great-Great-Grandpa Adam’s books.”
She considered this, hands on hips.
“Grandmama, please!”
“We’re smart enough now to read them!” Jenny insisted.
“It’s not a matter of being smart enough. But it’s one thing to hear your grandfather tell you stories, which I know for a fact he edits, and another for you to read how harsh things used to be.”
“Why don’t you sit with us for a while?” her husband invited. “You can make sure they don’t hear anything too gruesome, if you’re that worried.”
The children “oooohed” when they heard the enticing word ‘gruesome’.
“Now you’ve done it,” Marie complained, but she took a seat next to her husband.
“Where would you like me to start?”
“We want to hear what it was like when you were a kid!” Jenny insisted.
“No, start with when your mother was born!” Teddy corrected.
“No, when your grandpas were born!” Jenny was getting progressively more excited as she saw story time being extended.
“Well, that was a long time ago, but maybe I can remember how that story goes. Let’s see…”
The children waited, familiar with this ritual.
“Ah, now I remember! Okay, remember how I’ve told you, my grandparents couldn’t have children of their own.”
“’Course not! They were both boys.”
“Well, that wasn’t the only reason. Instead of their friend April carrying a child for them, as she was apparently quite willing to do, Adam and Kurt adopted a hybrid child of their own. It’s not too often that the really young ones can be adopted. Sometimes the government wanted to keep them and train them, and the pet stores would pay a higher price for them, because they could get a lot more money for a pet that had been trained since a really young age. But they heard about a hybrid they knew who had, as they said in those days, gotten herself in trouble. Even though there was no way she could have gotten herself pregnant. One of the other cat hybrids at the store was actually the father, though it took a while to figure out who, because she didn’t want to say. But eventually someone heard the daddy bragging about it.”
“Did they love each other?” Jenny asked.
He hesitated only a moment before answering, “No. Brittany had gone into heat. That means, her body wanted her to have a baby, whether she was actually ready for one or not. Now, at an earlier time, she’d tried to get your Great-Great-Grandfather Kurt to impregnate her, but he wasn’t interested.”
“No, ‘cause he liked boys,” Teddy confidently explained.
“Yes. And I don’t think he even really understood, at that time, what she wanted. Usually, the stores were pretty careful when the female hybrids went into heat to put them in a cage with another female and keep them there for a few days until they got over it, but somebody messed up. Brittany and Sam, one of the male hybrids, were left alone for a few minutes, and that’s all it took. When they learned she was pregnant, it caused quite a ruckus at the store. The store’s owners didn’t know what to do.
“Adam heard about it, and offered to adopt the baby when she was born, and was allowed to keep her for as long as he wanted, almost as if she had been his own child.”
“And that was Great-Grandma Liz!” Teddy announced.
“That’s right, that was my mother, Elizabeth Carole. Now, when she grew up, she eventually mated with another hybrid cat, who was the child of friends of Adam and Kurt’s. That was your Great-Grandpa Robert. What they did was very unusual, but not illegal. Their friends were devastated when they had to give him up at age 13.”
“What’s devastated mean?” Jenny asked.
“Really, really sad. Heartbroken. So Adam petitioned to adopt the boy, and he and Kurt raised him like their own child. Mama and Dad had known each other most of their lives, had been friends, and played together, because of their parents being friends, and later being treated as siblings. It might have seemed kind of weird to some people, but they fell in love. So with two hybrid parents, and two hybrid grandparents, I had stronger cat traits than usual. So when I’m a cat, I don’t have as many human traits as either of you, or your mother. She was able to marry your dad, which was brand-new at the time, and he was fully human.
“Things were so different then. Adam and Kurt wanted to get married, and couldn’t. Just think, if you’d been born back in those days, when you turned 13, you would have been separated. You’d have been sent to different states, to be sold in pet stores there. They wouldn’t want you to find each other again, or your mother or me.”
“I still can’t believe we used to be sold!” Jenny scoffed. “That’s so horrible!”
“Or taken away from our families,” Teddy added. He might occasionally get annoyed with his sister, but he couldn’t imagine them being separated in a few years and never seeing each other again.
“Well, that’s what it was like for your Great-Great-Grandfather Kurt. That’s how he and Adam met. Adam bought Kurt at a pet store. Now, cruel as it may seem, I guess it was meant to be. Not only did they fall in love, real, true love, but they helped start the movement that changed our lives, gave us all the rights and privileges we have today.”
“But why did they ever treat us like animals?” Teddy asked.
“Why did they treat animals like that?” Jenny still didn’t see any sense in that.
“Good questions. For some reason, they didn’t know we weren’t animals. A lot of people thought we were cats who somehow learned how to become human, not the other way around. So they treated us pretty much the way they treated domestic house cats. Like companions, but ones they often forgot about when they weren’t in the same room.”
“I heard some of the boys talking at school,” Teddy announced excitedly. “They said we used to go to different schools, but just for a little while. And at the pet stores, they’d have trained us how to have sex with people. But, not like sex education, just how to please them, no matter what they wanted, or what we wanted. They said we used to have to do whatever we were told, and if we didn’t like sex, or didn’t like it with women, it didn’t matter, if a woman owned us and wanted that.”
“Is that true?” Jenny asked, horrified.
Marie tutted at her husband for upsetting the children, and hugged Jenny tightly to her. She answered the question.
“Yes, children, it used to be that way. But you don’t have to worry about that any more.”
“I wish I could have known them, Kurt and Adam.” Jenny said, not for the first time. Or the dozenth.
“Would you settle for seeing and hearing them?” Grandpa Jack asked.
“But how?”
“I was able to get everything restored from those ancient files Adam made. But that’s for another day. For now, let me show you what they called a movie. Let me set it up…” A few minutes later, the images were beamed onto the viewing screen which took up most of a wall in the living area. The children made themselves comfortable.
Jenny read the words on the screen. “Tails From A Hybrid’s Life - Kurt’s Story.”
“You probably won’t have heard the songs in here. They’re nothing like what you kids listen to, or sing, nowadays,” Grandpa Jack promised. “But I think you’ll like them.”
Grandma Marie explained, “Adam turned his book into a play, which some of his local friends put on. It was filmed, and shown in theaters, and won some awards. The recording was sold in different formats so people could watch it at home.”
“How come we haven’t seen that before?”
“Because we thought there were parts of it you might be too young to understand.”
“But we’re almost ten-and-a-half!” Teddy boasted. “Plenty old enough to understand.”
“You mean like the yucky sex stuff?” Jenny asked.
“It’s not yucky,” Marie corrected her, “and there’s no actual sex, nothing very explicit at all, in either the book or the play. But there are some things that might be hard to see and hear, words you’re not used to hearing, that Kurt sort of grew up with. Hurtful, insulting words.”
Jenny shrugged. “But they’re not saying them to us.”
“No, but to people like you. They’re saying them to Kurt.”
“Before you start, can you tell us again, what’s the difference between us and the hybrid companion animals some people have?” Teddy asked. He wanted to see the play, but he was still confused about some things.
“Well, that’s something Kurt thought about,” Grandpa explained. “I’ve told you about his friend Artie, another hybrid, who was in a wheelchair, and how Kurt built him a cart to get around in. Well, it got Kurt to thinking about people with other disabilities, as they called them back then. It was pretty common for people who were blind, for instance, to have a companion dog to help them get around, to warn them of danger they couldn’t see, things like that. And Kurt started wondering why they didn’t use hybrids instead. He figured they could be more easily trained, and could help people in different ways, in both forms. There were a fair number of hybrids that didn’t get adopted, for one reason or another. I think a lot of it had to do with how much they cost.
“But instead of having them put to sleep, Kurt thought they could be re-trained to help people who really needed it. It turned out to be a great idea. It gave the hybrids a real sense of purpose, and it still seems to be pretty much bred into us to want to help others. And a lot of the disabled community loved the idea. Some weren’t that comfortable with dogs, for instance, but a hybrid dog was a different matter. And of course, they could train the hybrid cats, rabbits, etc., just as well. Now the rabbits, for instance, weren’t able to be as helpful in their animal form, in guiding people, but they were great as strictly companions, for people who were lonely or depressed, and wanted to be able to sit and hold a pet for hours, or have someone to just talk to.
“As you can imagine, at first the government wasn’t too happy about it. But with the help of some of his friends, they came up with a contract that made sense. They used phrases like “wasting valuable resources” to point out why euthanizing hybrids was a bad idea. Some anonymous donors put in a lot of money to start the program, which provided hybrids to disabled people who just couldn’t afford them. Some private institutions would buy several hybrids, and loan them out to students who needed to learn how to work with a hybrid, before getting one of their own. Sometimes they could buy the hybrid they’d worked with.”
“Were those hybrids used for sex, like some of the others?” Jenny asked hesitantly. The idea of not having a choice, but being told you had to do something like that, was just gross.
“Sometimes, but usually it was understood they were there to help the person cope with their disability. Although some people may have felt more comfortable having sex with their hybrid than trying to find someone to love them who could overlook their limitations. The hybrid would already know all about those. But from what I’ve heard and read, if there was any sex, it was consensual.”
“What’s that mean?” Teddy asked.
“It means the hybrid said yes, they were willing to have sex with their owner. If they weren’t, their wishes tended to be respected more often than with able-bodied owners, who might have had a better chance of finding somebody.”
“You mean, disabled people, like Great-Great-Uncle Artie?”
“Yes, except as a hybrid, he wouldn’t have been given a hybrid companion. However, his owner, Gabriel, had been thinking of this about the same time Kurt did. He’d married his lady friend, Julia, who owned Mandy. Artie and Mandy were more like siblings, more like you two, than lovers, though they did love each other very much. But Mandy was able to help Artie with some things, and he was a good friend to her, and helped her realize not all males were scary. They spent a lot of time together while their parents were at work, and kept each other company.”
“Yay!” Jenny yelled.
Teddy screwed up his face. “I don’t care about the romance stuff.”
“I do! And that wasn’t romance, not really, just a different kind of love story. Right, Grandmama?”
“That’s right, children. Now, it’s starting to get late. Unless you want to wait and watch the whole thing tomorrow, we’d better get started on this film so you can at least see some of it tonight.”
<><><><><><><><><><>
Watching their descendants below, Adam pulled Kurt into a tight hug. “Come on, let’s go see your mom for a bit before Burt and Carole get there. Or do you two want some time alone?”
Kurt shook his head, not caring that his hair was getting smushed in the tight hug. “We talked…earlier.” Time didn’t pass the same way here, so it was hard to keep track. But that didn’t matter. The important thing was that they were all together, everyone he’d ever cared about. And sometimes strangers, too, who wanted to meet him and tell him how he and Adam had changed their lives.
As they walked past fields of flowers and smelled the sweet air, they were politely stopped by an old gentleman.
“I just wanted to say, Kurt, I’m happy to admit I was wrong.”
“About what? And who are you, sir?” he asked, not recognizing him. Maybe someone from his childhood, whom he’d never seen as an old man?
“I was one of the many misguided ones who thought you had no soul, and didn’t belong here. If I still had the ego I had then, it would be embarrassing to admit how many things I was wrong about. I’m just very glad to see you, and so many others, here.”
“Thank you.” Kurt didn’t feel the smug satisfaction his earthly self would have, just gratitude that he himself had been wrong.
“Well, I won’t keep you.”
“It’s been a pleasure to meet you, sir.” Kurt shook his hand, then he and Adam continued on.
It was true. He no longer felt things like anger or shame. But pleasure, oh yes, that was still there.
He grinned at Adam, “When we get back home, I’ll show you something new I thought of.”
“A design?” Adam asked, squeezing his hand.
“No. Something fun. Involving the waterbed this time, I think.”
“Ah. I look forward to it!”
There were many advantages to having a home they could change at will, that would stay as it was until they needed something different. Even better to be able to look whatever age he wished. But as lovely as things were here, he couldn’t wait to tell his mother and father and stepmother about the changes back on Earth.