Sponge Away the Writing
Title: Sponge Away the Writing
Fandom: X-Men: First Class, X-Men movies
Pairings: Charles/Erik, a bit, but mostly gen
Length: About 40,700 words.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, for language and references to off-screen violence. It also contains references to sexism, racism, ableism, and homophobia, as well as a few slurs.
Summary: In which Charles finds himself haunted by a dead future version of himself, together they experiment with changing the course of history, and there is much hand-holding.
Notes: Written for xmenreversebang based on an art prompt by idhren24. Thanks so much to Idhren, who not only inspired me with her intriguing original piece but was also generous enough to beta read and to help with the story's geographical and historical accuracy. Any remaining errors you find in this are mine.
The voice crept in along with the cold winds that December, seeping in as inevitable and uncomfortable as the chilly drafts in Charles' study.
Charles, who had a keen memory in general but more specifically never forgot the first time that he heard a song or met a person or felt a particular emotion, could later pinpoint the first moment that he'd heard the voice, though at the time he had written it off as a stray thought he was too tired to process correctly.
He'd just levered himself out of the shower without cracking his head open on the tile which, sadly enough, was something of an accomplishment these days, and had settled himself in the sunny corner of the bathroom to shave. As he carefully held a hand mirror with one hand and scraped a bit of stubble off the underside of his jaw with the other, a voice said, low and wistful, *I'd forgotten how young I was.*
Charles paused for a moment. Hank, Sean, and Alex were all too young to be indulging in an old man's reflections on lost youth, so this was obviously coming from outside. His power had grown quite a bit during his weeks in the hospital--well, it had had to, hadn't it, to keep out the horror of the other patients' suffering, and to keep the CIA from having them thrown into a place where the sun never shone?--so he was quite accustomed at this point to picking up thoughts from fifty miles away, or even more, in the right frame of mind. Obviously, someone's nostalgia had gotten rather strong this morning.
It didn't feel like a stray thought, though. It scarcely felt like a thought at all, but like a vibration or a pulse, or an actual voice speaking very close to his ear, so close as to be inside his head. Charles paused again and looked at himself in the mirror. He lifted the razor to his chin once more. Nothing happened.
"Ridiculous," said Charles to himself, and he filed the thought away in the corner of his mind where he kept other foolish things--the times he thought, 'Oh, best run down to get the mail,' or the still frequent occasions when he lifted his head at a sound, expecting Raven to come into the room.
Founding a school truly was not for the faint of heart. The fact that Charles was interested in establishing a private institution helped somewhat, but honestly, he didn't want "school" to be a euphemism for "homeless shelter for mutant children." He wanted it to be an actual school, one whose diploma would be good enough to get its students into university after graduation. This meant that besides renovating the house to make it more navigable for Charles, he also needed to put in classrooms and dormitories and whatever else schools generally had. He hoped to be able to provide everything a public school did, and more besides, so he also felt obliged to do a great deal of research into the state's requirements with respect to curriculum and facilities.
Despite Alex and Sean's willingness to go to university and get teaching certificates, for the time being, Charles would also need to hire some instructors. Most likely, given the small proportion of the human population who had radical mutations and even smaller percentage who considered that to be a central enough pillar of their identity to uproot their lives to come to Westchester, he'd need some human instructors. Assuming, of course, that he could find some who didn't mind working with Hank--or Charles, for that matter--and would treat mutant students with the same dignity and kindness they would treat typical human students. And wasn't that a job. Besides all sorts of therapy, the ridiculously long time it took to get bathed and dressed, and doing his best to make himself useful around the house, Charles' daily routine now included hours spent in his study, corresponding extremely carefully with former colleagues at Harvard and Oxford in hopes that they might know of a suitable candidate.
He scanned quickly through a letter from Peter Taylor, an old classmate, recommending he get in touch with a Yasuo Takiguchi--he knew the name. If he recalled correctly--and he usually did-- the man actually specialized in robotics engineering, but according to Peter, he was excellent with undergraduates. As Charles scribbled the name on a list of potential teachers, the same familiar not-voice of a few mornings ago said *Lord, Yasuo. That was so long ago.*
Charles had many failings, but inordinate stupidity was not one of them. "Excuse me," he said, both aloud and with a pulsing menace in his mind, "but would you mind explaining just who--or, may I say, what you are?"
Utter silence. Charles felt a chill of nervousness run up his spine. Despite what his mother had thought all those years ago, Charles had never had any particular doubts as to his sanity; what his nurse had seen as demon possession and his mother had feared might be schizophrenia, he had known quite well to be a sense that simply went beyond the capacities of most to comprehend. But all that mess had simply been thoughts he'd picked up and hadn't had the foresight to conceal. This was...Charles had no idea what this was.
He suspected that he was the only one affected by it. Still, driven by the same impulse that had made him pick at scabs and pimples as a boy, that evening at supper he asked, "I don't suppose that any of you are hearing...a voice?"
Alex raised a confused eyebrow in his direction and Hank frowned. Sean said, "A voice?"
Charles nodded. "Mmm. It's an older man's voice, English accent, seems given to nostalgia?" Five years ago, Charles would have wholly written off the idea of a ghost, but these days, very little seemed outside the realm of possibility.
Sean shrugged. "Uh. Don't take this the wrong way, Professor, but don't you usually hear voices? I mean, the whole telepath thing?"
Irritated, Charles was half-tempted to ask Sean why on earth he thought Charles would ask about something if it were in fact a perfectly commonplace phenomenon for him. But Alex still looked baffled, and Hank was leaning over with a thoughtfully concerned expression, and Charles really didn't need to read their minds to know that no, they hadn't heard the voice. Since the last thing he needed was for them to think their professor had lost his mind as well as his legs, Charles said, "Right, of course. Probably a stray thought, then--it's a bit disconcerting how far away I seem to be picking them up."
Alex's expression cleared, and Hank leaned back again, expounding once again on his theory as to why Charles' range was increasing so dramatically. Charles listened with half an ear. With the rest of his senses, he grew very still, carefully tracing the boundaries where his mind ended and the world around him began. If there was an intruder--in his house or in his head--Charles would be prepared.
The next morning, while Charles was getting dressed, he stared very deliberately at his legs. It had only been a few months, and with any luck the stretches and whatnot he was doing would keep the muscles from completely atrophying, but they still looked like pale, sickly, skinny things to his eyes, almost as foreign to his sight as they were estranged from his sense of touch. Charles could remember quite clearly what they had looked like in the days when he ran laps with Raven and swam back and forth in the pool in the sun. If there were anything that would trigger the wistful nostalgia of his visitor, surely what remained of his legs would do the trick.
*I'm hardly a visitor, my dear boy,* said the voice. Charles's heart tightened painfully in his chest with surprise for a moment, but it took a great deal more than a melancholy disembodied voice to shake Charles F. Xavier for long.
I suppose not, he thought, since obviously the voice was privy to the workings of his mind. After all, visitors are generally invited.
*In my defense,* the voice said, sounding amused, *I didn't know you were aware of my presence until yesterday.*
That's no defense at all, thought Charles. There was something unsettlingly familiar about the voice, something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. State your business or leave.
There was something like a sigh, then, a sense of painfully sweet memory and a longing for things that were lost. Charles was intimately familiar with these emotions, both from within his own mind and from without, but this feeling seemed neither external nor internal to him, setting his nerves on edge. *If I could leave, I would,* said the voice. *I have no more desire to relive these days than you have to live them.*
To relive them? Several wild theories rose and burst like bubbles in the corner of Charles' mind devoted to scientific curiosity; his defenses still bristled with suspicion. Who are you? What are you?
*Good questions, both.* Then there was a weird sort of image projected in his mind. It wasn't really a mental picture--Charles was quite familiar with those--but more like the sort of pattern one saw on the inside of one's eyelids, where one could not name the colors or the shapes but had a definite sense of having seen something. It took a moment to decipher, but once Charles had got the feel of it, the image that emerged was of a man, neatly-dressed, completely bald and sitting calmly in a wheelchair. And it became abruptly, nauseatingly clear to Charles just why the voice had sounded familiar.
You're me. The thought resonated through Charles' consciousness, a kind of hesitant disbelief, the nervousness that came with touching the unfamiliar and inexplicable. How?
*I could just as easily say that you're me, couldn't I?*
A few possibilities presented themselves to Charles. One: somehow he had learned to project his consciousness back in time--a modified version of Cerebro, perhaps? Two: he had developed a secondary mutation allowing him mental communication with future and past versions of himself--dear Lord, feast yourself on that, H.G. Wells. Three: It was a trick devised by another telepath, possibly Miss Frost, although Charles really couldn't imagine what Erik and his group would gain by tricking Charles this way. Four--four--
*I'm afraid it's none of the above, Charles,* said the voice compassionately. *I hate to tell you this, but I believe my presence here is the result of a last-ditch effort on the part of my mind to preserve itself in the face of my body's destruction.*
You mean I'm dead. You're dead. We're dead. Perhaps it should have been frightening; at the moment, it simply struck him as absurd.
The voice--Older Charles, as it were--wasn't communicating with him telepathically in quite the same way that he himself could communicate with others, but Charles could still sense a warm rush of sympathy like something soft stroking his head from the inside. *I'm afraid so.*
How? Charles was beginning to feel like a scratched record. There were times, he thought, when something was so shocking to one's world that it trapped you in a long, blank moment you couldn't help but repeat. This was shaping up to be one of them.
Older Charles sighed again. *That, my dear boy, is a very long and complicated story. Suffice to say that it was the result of a number of bad decisions made by a number of people over many years--people including yourself.*
Speak for yourself, said Charles, knocked out of his stupor by an unexpected fit of pique. I'll bet you've made a lot more of those decisions than I have. And that's not much of an answer, anyway.
There was a long emptiness like silence then, long enough to make Charles think that old, dead, ghost Charles had vanished. He might have thought he'd imagined the whole thing if Older Charles hadn't finally said, *We must be very careful. What I tell you might affect the course of human history.*
Well, you're not full of yourself or anything, Charles wanted to say, but as strange as it was to think of it, he had already played a rather significant part during that whole business in Cuba, and if his plans for the school succeeded, he actually might be doing something significant for all mankind. And his mother had thought he'd never amount to anything. Ha. To Older Charles, he said, Well, you'd best tell me something good, then, if you don't want us to get stuck in a constant cycle of dying and haunting younger versions of us. Ourselves. Bugger, that's strange.
*Lift yourself up,* said Older Charles.
Charles blinked. What?
*From your chair. Lift yourself up for a moment. You've been sitting in that same position without shifting for almost half an hour. Trust me, you don't want to have to deal with pressure sores. They're most unpleasant.*
Oh, for Christ's sake. Surely you didn't come back from the dead to be my nursemaid. Still, Charles braced himself on his forearms and levered himself up from his seat for a good five seconds, setting himself back down a bit further back in the chair so as to shift the distribution of his weight. The ever-more perceptible presence in his head exuded a warm satisfaction.
Irritated, Charles said, Smug bastard and rearranged his legs just a bit. It was unsettling to think of himself as dead, his body lying lifeless in some cemetery plot in the future. He thought of asking Old Charles when he'd died, but he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know. The voice sounded quite a bit older than Charles was at the moment, so that was something at least. The question of how he'd died was...well, surely Old Charles would have to tell him sooner or later, seeing as how they were sharing the same head. But Charles thought he might leave that question alone for a bit. It was quite a lot to think of.
*Weren't you getting dressed?* asked Old Charles. *The boys are already seated for breakfast. If you wait any longer, Hank will come in to see if there's anything the matter. And you've skipped breakfast quite often enough. It's important to keep your strength up, you know.*
Charles bristled at the condescension. Tell you what, since I'm you and you're me, let's just assume that I know this sort of thing already. I'm perfectly capable of running my own life, thank you very much.
*I was just trying to be helpful,* said Old Charles, radiating patronizing paternalism like a beacon.
Good Lord, I hope you haven't been like this with our students over the years, Charles shot back. If I want to kill you now, I can't imagine how someone with much less reason to want you alive will react.
Charles waited for almost two minutes for Old Charles to respond before giving it up and wheeling himself out to breakfast. Not only smug but mysterious, then. Fantastic.
Everyone had woken up on the wrong side of the bed that morning, it seemed. Under Hank's concern at Charles's tardiness was irritation at Charles's tardiness, and underneath both of them, his seething anger and self-loathing seemed stronger than usual. Charles would seriously have considered mentally forcing Hank to talk to a psychologist if it weren't for the poor lad's current bestial appearance. Sean had gotten another phone call the previous evening from his parents, asking if he was ever going to get a real job and why he was still staying with that fruitcake in New York. This made him defensive on Charles' behalf (very nice) but also preemptively defensive of his family, whom he imagined Charles and Hank would think were a bunch of inbred morons, though neither of them had ever said anything of the kind or even met Sean's family. And Alex...well, Charles wasn't sure if Alex ever woke up on the right side of the bed. He certainly hadn't during the tenure of his acquaintance with Charles.
How tiresome. Charles had hoped perhaps breakfast would lift his spirits, after the baffling and rather unsatisfying encounter with himself earlier.
"Hank," he asked, "I've been meaning to ask you--on the heels of our discussion the other day about my range, do you suppose that thoughts can exist independently of a physical source of those thoughts?"
"What?" Hank blinked, looking something like a sleepy and confused lion. "Well, thoughts are really electrical impulses between nerves, so, absent a physical nervous system, I don't really know how thoughts could exist."
"Yes, but no physical nerves connect me to other people's minds, and yet I can receive and interpret these impulses. This connection of brains via the amplification of the brain's electromagnetic waves--isn't that the general idea you used to design Cerebro?"
Hank frowned, and Charles relaxed inwardly. Thus far, the most effective way he had found to minimize Hank's unhappiness was to distract him from it. Any successful distraction was, if not a permanent solution for anything, at least a temporary plaster over both his and Charles's sensitive points. "Of course, but both Cerebro--and your telepathy, as far as I understand it--operate on the idea that there must be something on the other end producing electrical impulses. There has to be something there for you to read, regardless of whether it's amplified or not. I suppose those impulses could be artificially produced, given quite a bit technological advancement from where we are now, but they have to be there. " He arched an eyebrow at Charles, peering suspiciously at him over his glasses. "This is all theoretical, right?"
Charles pondered for a moment whether or not to drop a hint as to the practical ramifications of the issue. Such a conversation would probably be more trouble than it was worth, though, so he dismissed both the idea and Hank's question with a scoff. "Honestly, Hank," he said, which didn't answer the question but seemed to embarrass Hank into subsiding.
Sean looked up from his oatmeal. "Hold on," he said. "Are you guys talking about, like, thoughts without a brain?"
"Precisely," said Charles, and he took a bite of his eggs. Overcooked, but then, none of them was exactly a chef, and it wasn't as if Charles contributed any more to the household's cooking than peeling vegetables, so he was hardly in a position to judge.
"Like, just random, floating thoughts?" Sean was intrigued despite himself. "Where would they come from if no one was thinking them?"
"Outer space?" said Alex scornfully. Underneath, he thought are there really aliens what if the professor can hear them maybe he's insane that's stupid aliens but why not if mutants are real why not aliens.... Charles personally thought that Alex ought to have saved his scorn for people who didn't know about his fondness for The Twilight Zone.
"Well," said Charles carefully. "Other forms of electromagnetic radiation, such as light, can continue on after the original source is gone. For instance--since you brought up outer space, Alex, many of the stars we see no longer exist; it simply takes their light a very long time to reach us."
"Oh, yeah," said Alex. "I think I heard that somewhere."
Three miles away, Eloise Preston Dugan, age 85, breathed her last. It was painless but cold, the sudden dousing of a light--the sort of death Charles would probably not even have felt before Cuba. Nothing of Eloise Preston Dugan remained, at least on this earthly plane. He wondered, if he had applied himself to learning the shape of her mind, the pattern of her thoughts, could he have retained an impression of Mrs. Dugan in his mind that approached sentience? The closest he had come to such devoted study of another's mind had been the brief but shining moments he had thrown himself wholly into Erik's, and look how that had turned out. If Mrs. Dugan herself had been a telepath, might she have sent herself outwards, catching her soul on whatever minds were capable of receiving it?
Pointless speculation, at this particular moment anyway. Charles sipped his orange juice and returned his focus to Hank, Sean, and Alex.
Hank nodded and pushed his glasses up higher on his nose. He'd tried to adjust his previous pair to fit the new shape of his face, but Charles thought he would probably have to scrap everything but the lenses and start from scratch. "Sure," he said. "But light has a measurable speed. I'm not sure how we'd go about measuring the speed of thought. It's not like we have a large sample group of telepaths to work with."
"I rather think there are more than we know," said Charles. "I saw quite a few during those first few sessions in Cerebro. You're right, of course, that it would be quite difficult to design an experiment to test this hypothesis. Still, I don't think it's all that unreasonable to compare thought to light, or some other form of radiation. Radioactivity, perhaps. Radioactivity has a tangible results on the things and people with whom it comes into contact. Maybe thought does, too--well, tangible to those capable of perceiving such things, anyway. Psycho-material combination, if you will."
Of course, neither Sean nor Alex understood the reference, but Hank huffed in displeasure and said, "Buchanan? That's not science, Professor!"
Charles could only laugh at that. He'd certainly heard such things about some of the things he read to develop a basic theoretical understanding of his telepathy, though never by anyone who knew his own psychic abilities to be genuine. (Well. Except for some teasing by Raven.) "No, perhaps not. Although given what we have already discovered, I think the boundaries of what is considered to be science will soon expand quite rapidly."
"Ugh, why?" interrupted Sean. "It is way too early for this much science."
Charles laughed. Sean actually quite liked science; what he didn't like was Charles and Hank talking over his head at the breakfast table, which was a fair enough objection. "My apologies, Sean. I had an idea in my head and needed to get it out."
"Yeah, well, I've got an idea, too--how about you help me prepare for the Albany interview? I don't do real well with this whole public speaking thing."
"I don't know that I'd really consider a college interview to be 'public speaking,'" Hank pointed out.
Sean shrugged. "Might as well be." He pushed his chair back from the table, picked up his plate, and gave Alex an overly casual look. "You in, dude?"
For a moment, it looked as if Alex hadn't heard. He had, but he was taking a moment, as he so often did, to process his emotions, which in this case consisted of a lot of nervousness about the interview and overwhelming doubts about his ability to teach anyone, or even to be around people without causing damage. Charles rather thought that success in this area would do more to allay his fears than anything Charles could say, and Charles was willing to do quite a lot to ensure success.
Finally, Alex gave Sean a quick look over his shoulder and said, "Sure, whatever. Just let me finish my bacon."
"Oh, that's fine," said Charles. "Don't even wait for my answer before you start scheduling things for me."
He obviously hadn't succeeded at the light tone he was aiming for, because Hank, Alex, and Sean's minds were all suddenly arrested with uncertainty. Lord. If he was good for nothing else, Old Charles might have given Charles some words of advice about how to be an authority figure before scarpering off to wherever the hell ghostly voices disappeared to when they got sick of talking to their younger selves. Apparently, he was on his own. He smiled and said, "Oh, as if I weren't going to help, given that this whole college thing was my idea anyway. But you're not the only one who likes bacon, Alex. In fact...." He reached across the table to steal a piece off Alex's plate. "That'll be a one-bacon surcharge for the benefits of my wisdom."
"Benefits my ass," snorted Alex, but he was smiling. If Charles had really dedicated some attention to it, he could have imagined that it was Raven sat across from him, kicking him under the table and reading the comics page to him. But this wasn't the time to get wrapped up in the past, nor was it the time to get overly involved in a future, decades away, that might or might not come to pass. Tomorrow was enough of a challenge. And he liked to think that he was needed today.
**
Charles didn't know what, exactly, a dead future version of himself found to keep himself busy, but whatever it was, Old Charles didn't make a reappearance for weeks. In the meanwhile, he successfully got Alex and Sean through their interviews, engaged in rather friendly correspondence with Yasuo Takiguchi and a high school guidance counselor from Connecticut called Alicia Downing, and practiced his morning routine enough to be able to get himself bathed, shaved, and dressed in under an hour. He certainly had enough to keep himself busy without the intrusive emotions and questions that Old Charles's mysterious appearances had caused.
Therefore, Charles was rather less pleased than surprised and suspicious when, finally, that strangely familiar voice came to him as he was sketching out the beginnings of a biology curriculum. It said, *We haven't begun recruiting students yet, then.*
Is that a question, or a criticism? said Charles, who was determined not to give Old Charles the satisfaction of surrendering to his surprise. In the spirit of strict honesty, one might say that I have already recruited two students in the persons of Alex and Sean. Neither of them had any idea of going to college before we met, much less becoming teachers.
*It's simply an observation,* said Old Charles. *And you know quite well to what I was referring.*
He was silent for a long moment, long enough for Charles to wonder if he'd left again. It was a curious sensation, to know that a mind was so close to his as to be literally inside it, but not to know anything about what it contained or how it worked or what it was doing. He tried to project a sense of gentle questioning into his own mind, but he wasn't sure whether or not it worked. Surely you didn't pop in just to tell me something I already knew, did you?
*No, I didn't. As a matter of fact, I came to...offer some advice, if you will.*
As baffling and irritating as the whole matter was, Charles couldn't help feeling relieved that his future self hadn't abandoned him so quickly. Oh, so you're not worrying about changing the course of human history anymore?
*I am. But....* It was the strangest sensation, as if someone within his head was poking at him, directing his eyes towards the calendar on his desk. Charles wondered if this was how it felt when he pushed someone mentally. *I believe my presence has already altered the path of events, for better or for worse. You already know things that I did not when I was in your place, with what results I cannot say. I've taken some time to think the matter over, and I think....*
Another pause. You think what? asked Charles, feeling unaccountably frustrated. Being unable to read Old Charles's mind--which was his mind too, damn it all!--was like having an itch in his brain that he couldn't scratch.
*I think that, since I'm here and already causing changes to your time, I might as well try my best to change things for the better.*
Really? Now that they were really discussing it, Charles thought he could let himself get excited about the possibilities. The idea was like time travel, really--Charles had read the novel and seen the Rod Taylor film, and the whole notion had intrigued him. Not so much the idea of travelling into the future, although that of course would be interesting as well, but the idea of travelling back to a specific point in time to change a particular event or set of events. Could it really be done for the better, without wholly disrupting the workings of time and space?
*I'm not doing this to save our life,* said Old Charles, sounding unfairly stern about it. *In the grand scheme of things, my death is the least of the things I'd like to change.*
Speak for yourself, said Charles. Oh, wait, I guess you are.
Old Charles didn't seem to find that very amusing.
Oh, well. At any rate, if some of the mistakes leading to Old Charles's death were as grievous as his grimness seemed to imply, perhaps preventing that death might be a side benefit. What is it that you want to change? he asked.
*Small things, relatively speaking,* said Old Charles. *The best of intentions will not prevent us from doing grave harm if we try to do too much at once. But I've...overlooked...too many things in the name of the greater good over the years, and I'm not about to do it again now. If I have the chance to prevent the suffering of a child, then by God I'm not going to---*
Charles cut him off. Wait, he said, feeling as if his whole self had been sharpened like a knife to a keen edge. What child is suffering?
Instead of answering, Old Charles said, *Has Alex ever told you about his brother?*
Yes, Scott, said Charles, irritated at Old Charles's circumlocution. Is he all right? Alex had, on occasion, made brief reference to Scott, but he'd seemed to think the boy was safer with his foster parents than he was being around a brother who shot destructive rays of energy out of his gut, which was a fair point. Charles, who wasn't at all confident about his ability to be sensitive to a friend's feelings after the whole business with Erik and Raven, hadn't pushed. Maybe he ought to have.
Another strange picture was projected onto the inside of Charles's eyelids: a small boy, maybe five or six, curled up with his knees pulled close to his chest. His eyes were taped shut; tears were leaking out from under the tape and slowly dripping down the boy's cheeks. Voices like echoes scattered around: What are we going to do with him He's not safe If he did that to a wall imagine what he could do to a person Freak Freak Freak--
Charles swallowed. Worse things happened to children every day--Charles's own childhood had been nothing to write home about--but the thought that Alex's little brother sat alone, crying, afraid of the world and of himself while those around him treated him like a monster, hit him like a blow to the chest. Scott, I presume? he asked, walling his emotions away until such time as they could be of use.
*Yes.* Old Charles removed the picture from Charles's mind and replaced it with that of a young man in red-tinted spectacles. *I didn't meet him until he was sixteen. By then, his powers had ceased to come in random bursts. What he did could no longer be explained away.*
What does he do?
*He's not unlike Alex--he shoots beams of energy, but from his eyes rather than his chest. Like Alex, he's always suffered a lack of control over it; the beams come out whenever he opens his eyes. Or, rather, they did when I last saw him. He told me when he was young that they came out at unexpected times, often when he was angry or frightened.*
A small fraction of Charles's mind filed this away as useful information. Though his own power had appeared so early in life that it was difficult to connect it to any particular event, Erik's, Raven's, Alex's, and Armando's all seemed to have miraculously appeared in times of emotional distress, or times of real danger--a sort of latent evolutionary defense, triggered only when needed. The matter was worth investigating, though of course he'd need to talk to many more mutants before coming to any conclusions. The rest of Charles's mind sifted through various reasons why Scott Summers might be so angry and frightened as to shoot energy out of his eyes, and it didn't like any of the possibilities.
I suppose you--we had some good reason for leaving him in such a situation for ten years? It was unfair of Charles to be angry at his older self, he knew it, but the anger under his skin had to be directed somewhere, and it wasn't as if he could dispel it with a good run as he might have done in the past.
Old Charles's voice was damnably calm as he answered, *Because as far as Alex knew, his brother was living an idyllic suburban life, and as you well know, you've been setting up your school to educate teenagers, not six-year-olds. We had no reason to think that, even if Scott were a mutant--which, genetics being what it is, was no guarantee--he would benefit from being removed from his current foster home.*
All true enough, if still unsatisfying. Well. We'll clearly have to change all that.
*I think so,* said Old Charles, sounding just the tiniest bit unsure. *I've given the matter a great deal of thought, and...well, there is that old canard, 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger,' and certainly Scott's past gave him a certain strength, but...*
Are you joking? I don't care if it makes the boy bloody Hercules. A memory of Erik, talking about Shaw as his 'creator,' flicked into Charles' mind. No. No. There were other ways to find strength, and to knowingly let a child suffer to make him 'stronger' was horrifying. Nothing Kurt had ever done had made Cain stronger, just angrier, and if Charles had gotten better at psychically manipulating people, well, that was certainly a power that was at times more of a headache than it was worth. If Charles could have gone back in time to spare Erik even a moment of pain, he would have done it. He couldn't do it for Erik, but he could do it for Scott. No. Scott's coming here. We can send him to a local school, for now anyway, but he's coming to live in this house.
*Excellent,* said Old Charles, regaining whatever certainty he had lost earlier. *Of course, the first step will be to talk to Alex. I don't think you'll need me for that part, will you? I haven't spoken to the man in years, so I wouldn't be much help.*
Wait, what? asked Charles. Why haven't you spoken to Alex in years? Is it to do with Scott?
There was no answer. Charles tried again, more 'loudly' in a psychical sense. From somewhere upstairs, Sean yelled, "Hey, you okay, Professor?"
Charles sighed. Evidently, Old Charles seemed to think he'd done his part for the day and taken his leave. Christ, Charles was really going to have to take a good hard look at his life, if he was this annoying as an old man. I'm fine, he told Sean, and to Alex, he said, Alex, could you come here for a moment?
Confusion and concern rose like a sickly haze around the edges of Alex's mind, but he said, clear as day,Sure. He was a great deal better at projecting thoughts than he thought he was.
He appeared in Charles's study a minute later, his expression an exercise in casual disinterest. "What's up?" he asked.
Charles wheeled himself around the desk. Alex, almost unthinking, sat in the old leather armchair on the other side of the desk, so as not to loom over Charles's head. Charles didn't know whether to be irked or touched at the consideration; he decided on ignoring it altogether. "Alex," he said. "This is an issue of rather a personal nature; do you mind?"
Charles received, in quick succession, a mental image of Alex helping Charles use the bathroom last month, Alex trying to get Charles into a pair of trousers without actually looking at him, and Alex sitting through an excruciating conversation with Hank and Sean about sexual function for paraplegics, on the off-chance that Charles should ask about it. How thoughtful. Visibly bracing himself, Alex said, "No problem."
A laugh bubbled up, against Charles's will, and it came out like a kind of high-pitched croak. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean personal for me. I meant personal for you. I'd actually like to talk about your brother."
Alex's expression turned instantly defensive, his mind suddenly like a spiky fortress. "What about him?" It was hardly a question that invited an answer.
Charles pondered laying a calming hand on Alex's shoulder or something, but ultimately he decided against it. He certainly wasn't trying to hit on Alex, which was generally the impression people got whenever he tried making physical contact, for reasons as of yet mysterious and unknown. "Only, when was the last time you spoke to him?"
Even as Alex leaned forward to say roughly, "Three years ago," Charles could see how it had been, a younger Alex trying to explain to Scott, still practically a toddler, why he couldn't stay with Alex, that leaving Scott at the home didn't mean Alex didn't love him.
Charles couldn't help his sympathy, but he pressed it down, under and away from the edges where his mind sometimes leaked into others'. If Alex felt it, experience said he would take it as pity, which would not be appreciated. He said, trying for a calm but not overly cool or distant tone, "So, you haven't had recent information from him?"
Alex's head shot up, his expression vaguely betrayed. "I couldn't," was all he said, while underneath was a rushing current of thoughts that could be summed up: I wanted to, but I didn't want to mess up his life. It wasn't my fault. It doesn't mean I don't love him. It was all my fault. How can you ask me this?
"Of course," said Charles softly. "I only ask because I have reason to believe that he might be better off here than in his current foster care situation."
"The hell are you talking about?" His voice was harsh with worry. "What reason? He's in fucking Nebraska, there's no way you could have picked anything up telepathically." The last was almost a question--which was fair enough, given how much Charles's range had expanded in the last few months.
"No," said Charles. "I...someone told me."
"Who?" Alex stood up, looking about ready to blast Charles through the wall if he didn't like the answer. "Have you been asking about him? If he's hurt--if you fucked things up with his foster parents--"
"Nothing like that," Charles said before Alex could finish the threat. "It's...." He hesitated. He had several options. First, he could psychically calm Alex down, make him forget the last few moments, and then try beginning the conversation again. Perhaps he'd do a better job the next time around. Second, he could come up with a lie and persuade Alex that it was true--hell, he could explain the situation in truth and use a touch of power to persuade Alex that it was true. Honestly, though, he didn't really like any of those options. Trust was such a fragile and precious commodity, and Alex had been very good to him; Charles hardly wanted to squander his friendship now. So really, his variety of options boiled down to one: tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they might. "This is going to sound a bit strange," he began.
Alex clenched his fists. "What is?"
"There's a voice in my head, and it's me from the future. Apparently I know Scott then--he's a mutant like you, and he's having a rough time of it."
There was a long silence in which Alex blinked slowly at Charles, his fists slowly unclenching and his mind too stunned to form a coherent thought. "What?"
Charles sighed. "I told you, it's very strange. Apparently, some years in the future, I'm going to die--well, obviously, everyone dies, but what I mean to say is that, when I die, I'm going to--send my mind back in time or something, because right now, this me from the future is hanging about in my head offering me advice. And before you say I'm insane--" (Because a thought of that sort was beginning to spread throughout Alex's mind) "--Do consider that many of the things you and I have seen or done would have been considered science fiction forty years ago. There is absolutely no reason, according to the laws of physics as they are currently understood, that you should be able to create and project energy the way that you do. Our comprehension of the science behind my telepathy is extremely limited, and at this point I'd be very hesitant to rule out anything as impossible."
Disbelief warred with giddy amazement in Alex's mind until both collapsed into acceptance, and Alex himself collapsed back into his chair. "Damn," he said, resting his chin on his hands. True to character, he didn't stay dazed for long; after a few moments, his confused emotions had hardened into a sharp, focused point. "So, wait, future you told you--what kind of rough time? Where is Scott, is he okay?"
"I had no direct psychic contact with Scott, so I only know what my future self told and showed me. According to him, Scott's fine, physically, but...well, perhaps I'd better show you." Charles gathered up the memory of the image Old Charles had given him and pushed it into Alex's head. It was only when tears began to run down the boy's face that Charles thought maybe he ought to have asked his permission.
Alex hid his face in his hands and moaned, "Oh, God," and Charles thought that even a non-telepath could have felt the self-recrimination radiating from him.
"Don't," he said, perhaps a bit more sharply than necessary in an effort to get his point across. "No part of this is your fault. We'll go to that home in Nebraska, and we'll take Scott from those people and bring him here, and everything will be fine."
"But his eyes," said Alex in anguished tones. He looked up, and his own eyes were wet and bloodshot.
It was a pickle, for certain--if Charles had understood his older self correctly, Scott's energy blasts were intermittent now but would become constant later (and Lord, where did he get all that energy?). Thus far they had managed to focus Alex's blasts, but not to disperse them harmlessly, and since the plates Hank had devised weren't transparent and thus couldn't be modified for use as glasses, Charles wasn't sure how they'd even be able to contain Scott's ability. But he honestly didn't think hopeless realism would do anyone any good at this point, so he said firmly, "Hank will figure something out. And you know, the rest of us aren't exactly slouches intellectually, either."
Alex snorted. "You mean you aren't."
That was, actually, what Charles had meant, although he hoped not in a disparaging way. Sean and Alex were hardly idiots, and they'd already proven themselves to be very helpful when it came to carrying out some of Charles and Hank's more hands-on ideas. Alex in particular would have to be an active participant in any effort to help Scott harness his ability, so Charles said, "Alex, we can't possibly find a way for Scott to control these energy blasts without your assistance. As far as I can tell, you two may be the only people on the face of the earth who can do this sort of thing, and we'll need your experience--your ideas--to set up experiments so they might actually be useful to Scott."
Alex swallowed wetly and scrubbed tears from his face. "Yeah, okay, you need a test subject. Whatever. Let's get Scott out of there."
"Agreed," said Charles firmly. "I actually do know somebody in the Children's Bureau in New York. She can help us get in contact with the right people in Nebraska to gain at least temporary custody of Scott." ('Know' was maybe an overstatement, as Charles hadn't talked to Dolores Kempe since he was twelve years old, but she'd probably help him nonetheless. She'd had a soft spot for Charles and Raven back in the day.)
There was a brief flicker of curiosity in Alex's mind as to who Charles knew in the Children's Bureau and how, but it was quickly smothered by a more pressing question. "So, we'd get you to be Scott's foster father, then? Would you adopt him?"
This seemed like dangerous emotional territory to Charles. One thing he'd never quite been able to explain to Raven was that sometimes the knowledge of someone's entire past, their hopes and their desires and their mundane quotidian thoughts, wasn't enough to know what answer they truly wanted when they asked a question. "I don't know," said Charles carefully. "I probably could, if we felt it was necessary. You might have an easier time of it, given your relationship to Scott."
Alex started shaking his head before Charles had even finished his sentence. "No. No way," he said. "That's not a good idea." Under the smooth surface layer of calm Alex had managed to reclaim, hurt and anger and uncertainty festered like old, unhealed wounds. It hurt Charles to share the feelings, and he carefully separated himself from them with layers of white noise. He concentrated on the steady in and out of his breath as Alex said, "Maybe you better--look, you're a rich college professor who lives in a castle, I'm a dropout with a criminal record. You and me both know how that's gonna look. Plus, Scott probably hates me, and I don't blame him. I wouldn't have a lot of time for a big brother who ditched me, either. I can help you with your experiments, but...I could go stay in the city while you go get him. And then I can go off to college--if I get in--and we can...." Alex trailed off, obviously unable to think of a way to help Charles run the school while simultaneously never allowing his brother to lay eyes on him again.
Charles knew what it was like to blame oneself, both for those things that were his own fault and those that were not. Raven had often jollied him out of a self-hating (or perhaps self-pitying) mood, but as Raven never seemed to blame herself for much despite her insecurity, Charles had very little experience being on the other side of the equation. "Alex," he said finally, "I was utterly incompetent at dealing with six-year-olds when I was a six-year-old, and your brother doesn't know me from Adam."
"Since when has that stopped you?" asked Alex. His tone was biting, but the tight line of his mouth had softened, an almost-imperceptible relaxation that Charles would have missed had he not been looking for it.
It was true. Charles never really had minded strangers--given his talents, no one really remained a stranger for long. But it was easy to tell people about drink orders and genetics and why Gideon vs. Wainwright was such a revolutionary ruling. It was very difficult to tell people that you wanted a perfect world for them but that you also wanted to protect them in this one, or that you cared about them but didn't understand them at all. Children needed more than biology lectures and some cheery ass blithering "Well done!" at them. Charles wasn't sure what it was that they did need, but he knew that much.
"Listen," he said, trying a new tactic. "I really need your help. You know of course I'm willing to take care of Scott, but I'm really not doing an excellent job taking care of myself at the moment. I know I sometimes get a bit...stubborn about accepting help--" Right, stubborn, thought Alex with a snort. "--but honestly, I can't take care of a six-year-old on my own. I know Sean's got younger siblings as well, but Scott doesn't know Sean, either. We need you. Please."
Alex teetered for a moment between discomfort at the idea of someone relying on him (and the reminder of Charles's own vulnerability) and a kind of warm, pleased, affectionate sensation. Being Alex, he quickly caught his mental balance and landed, as usual, at amused disdain. "Whatever," he said. "I already said I was gonna stick around."
"Thanks," said Charles, trying not to be too effusive. People tended to find him a little creepy when he was overly grateful.
They sat in awkward but not wholly unpleasant silence for a long moment, Charles squirming in his chair a bit at the soreness in his back and Alex tapping his fingers on his leg, unable to meet Charles's eyes. After a moment, the dark clouds of his thoughts coalesced into a question, so it wasn't actually surprising when he said, "So. You can hear some dead ghost you from the future?"
After the emotional upheaval of the last few minutes, all his initial skepticism seemed to have been wiped away. Charles drudged up a smile. "Yes. I can."
Alex shook his head, but less in disbelief than in wry acceptance of how strange his life was. "Hank's gonna have kittens."
And Charles would never have a free moment to himself ever again. Or at least until they found a new project for Hank to fix his considerable focus on. "Well, probably," he said, trying to put a positive spin on it, "but it's all in the interests of scientific advancement, I suppose."
"Yeah, have fun being Bozo's guinea pig," said Alex. "At least it'll distract him from me for a while." Charles should have chided Alex for mocking Hank, but it was more reflexive than malicious; the actual tenor of Alex's thoughts stretched in a more inquisitive direction. "What's it like?" he said after a moment of silent thought. "Having another you in your head? I mean, what do you talk about? Are you totally on the same wave-length all the time, or...." He trailed off with a shrug.
"Oh, no," said Charles. "He's a rather annoying bastard, actually. All cryptic advice and popping off to God knows where whenever you have a question."
Alex smirked a bit. "No offense, Professor, but that's not that surprising."
"Oh, I hardly think I'm in the habit of dashing off when you fellows need me." Neither of them really needed to say that 'dashing off' required more mobility and spontaneity than Charles actually had these days.
The mocking lines of Alex's face hardened into something more serious, and he said, "No. You're not." A ghostly memory, buried like a lump of coal, said, We can avenge him, and a remembered, now disdained version of Alex burned in admiration, yearning desperately for whatever hidden machinery drove Erik Lehnsherr. Out loud, Alex said, "So, when does it happen? You dying, I mean. We'll stop it."
There was something very touching about Alex's determination. "Oh, not for a long while, I shouldn't think. He sounds a great deal older than me. For all I know, I'm going to die quietly in my sleep."
It wasn't true, of course, but it seemed to calm Alex a bit. "So, what happens in the future? With the school and mutants and everything? Does it all turn out okay?"
His first instinct was to tell Alex that yes, it all turned out all right, that their school flourished, and mutants achieved some sort of legally protected status and in the end, Erik and Raven came back. (Although that last was probably more Charles's idea of a happy ending than Alex's.) But he couldn't do it. He didn't have it in him to feign an optimism he just didn't feel. He had no idea what the future held for him, for any of them, save that whatever it was probably wouldn't be easy. "I don't know," he said at last. "I suppose we'll all find out."
It wasn't until late, late at night, after Charles had explained the situations both with Scott and with Old Charles to Hank and Sean, had an extremely awkward but ultimately productive conversation with Dolores, and worked out some of the day's emotional tensions on the weight machines in the exercise room, that Old Charles returned like smoke under a doorway, his voice a distant whisper: *Good job.*
Charles paused, partway through the onerous task of wrestling himself into his pajama pants. Thanks. That means a lot, coming from someone who was no help whatsoever.
Around the county, people were falling asleep, the conscious drive of their thoughts growing distracted and dreamy. A few were enjoying rather more active pleasures in the bedroom, a few were enduring a sleepless night for one reason or another, but the overall tone of the thoughts was calm and contented enough that Old Charles's jagged regrets stuck out like a splinter in a smooth wooden desk. *I'm sorry,* he said. *I know how difficult that sort of personal conversation is for you.*
And who would know better? I suppose you had some terribly good reason for leaving me, then.
*Honestly, I think you did better on your own than you would have done with my assistance. As I've mentioned...Alex and I really haven't talked in years.*
It really didn't surprise Charles that somewhere down the line he managed to fuck up his friendship with Alex. He considered himself lucky he hadn't done it that very afternoon. So instead of asking how he'd managed to estrange himself from Alex and what he could do in the future to avoid it, he said, Fine, whatever you say. All's well that ends well and all that. But, given that you and Alex are the only ones who've ever met Scott, I certainly hope you'll be willing to help us with him. Or isn't he talking to you either?
Old Charles fell into a mournful silence again before saying, *Of course I'll help. Scott and I were very close.*
Charles considered asking why he'd said "were" instead of "are," but decided it probably wasn't worth the effort. Excellent, he said. While I'm on the subject of Scott, do we help the boy control his power at some point? I certainly don't want to keep the boy's eyes taped shut, but it's going to be difficult for all of us to live here if he blasts the place to smithereens.
*Ah,* said Old Charles, sounding as professorial as Charles had ever heard him. *As you've witnessed with Alex, it's a difficult ability to control consciously. I believe in both cases the problem lies not with the brain, which has in fact developed strategies for keeping the blasts in check, but in the body, which has yet to develop the more specialized organs needed for more fine control. Where the body lacks, technology must step in--you'll find that ruby quartz, properly shaped, can prove both transparent and able to absorb Scott's blasts. In fact, later we're able to build a visor allowing him to shoot blasts of various strengths--very useful in combat situations.*
Combat situations. Really. Charles had a sneaking suspicion Old Charles wasn't simply talking about the Army. I see, he said.
*But to be honest, I'm not sure whether technology has yet advanced to that point. I know Hank's a genius, but he's certainly not the only one having revolutionary ideas around this time, and I wouldn't want to rob anyone else of their achievements by giving you technological breakthroughs before they're meant to be discovered.*
Of course not, said Charles, who was beginning to get a headache from all this. There was a flask of bourbon in his desk drawer for just such situations, but he felt oddly self-conscious about drinking from it with Old Charles still hanging about.
*I've probably interfered with scientific progress enough for one day,* Old Charles mused. *It's difficult to say what Hank will make of the knowledge that psychic energy can be sent back in time. His focus for the near future might be you and the telepathic energy, but the man's a genius--the implications for time travel are going to catch his attention sooner or later.*
Charles was a man of science, true enough, but having already rhapsodized about the theoretical possibilities for three fucking hours with Hank, and that on top of his headache, he was in no frame of mind to sit through Old Charles's lectures for much longer. So, when you're not talking to me, do you just sit in my head and eavesdrop on all my conversations?
*Well, it's not as if I have much else to do,* said Old Charles, sounding vaguely piqued at the subject change. *Try as I might, I seem to have no access to my telepathy in this form.*
Charles tried to imagine such a thing and failed. Lord, that would be a far greater loss than that of his legs. It was with all the sympathy he could muster that he said, I'm sorry. I suppose--without your physical body--
*Yes, yes,* Old Charles interrupted testily. *And I suppose I should consider myself lucky that get the sort of second-hand version of it from you that I do.*
How does that work, exactly?
*I suppose it's like the difference between watching Richard III on stage and watching Laurence Olivier playing it in the films. It's not at all the same.* He sent Charles another of his funny afterimage-impressions, of weird overheard thoughts and feelings, like a thick pane of glass between Old Charles and the world. Of course, in this case, the glass was actually Charles.
I suppose if you don't like it, you could always go to the afterlife. I'm certainly not keeping you here.
That seemed to jolt Old Charles out of his sour grapes. *I beg your pardon,* he said. *I don't mean to complain.*
Of course he did, which wasn't to say that Charles blamed him. I'd complain, too, he said, feeling guilty for his snide remark.
*Believe me, if I knew some way out of your head, I'd take it, and damn the consequences. I've the most terrible fear that I'll do more harm than good, telling you what's to come.*
Bit late to regret it now, seeing as how I'm about to become the proud foster father of a six-year old who shoots energy beams out of his eyes, Charles pointed out. So come on. What else? Any other children who need rescuing, wrongs that need righting, that sort of thing?
Resigned amusement flooded Charles's mind. *I'll see what I can do.*
Part 2
Fandom: X-Men: First Class, X-Men movies
Pairings: Charles/Erik, a bit, but mostly gen
Length: About 40,700 words.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, for language and references to off-screen violence. It also contains references to sexism, racism, ableism, and homophobia, as well as a few slurs.
Summary: In which Charles finds himself haunted by a dead future version of himself, together they experiment with changing the course of history, and there is much hand-holding.
Notes: Written for xmenreversebang based on an art prompt by idhren24. Thanks so much to Idhren, who not only inspired me with her intriguing original piece but was also generous enough to beta read and to help with the story's geographical and historical accuracy. Any remaining errors you find in this are mine.
The voice crept in along with the cold winds that December, seeping in as inevitable and uncomfortable as the chilly drafts in Charles' study.
Charles, who had a keen memory in general but more specifically never forgot the first time that he heard a song or met a person or felt a particular emotion, could later pinpoint the first moment that he'd heard the voice, though at the time he had written it off as a stray thought he was too tired to process correctly.
He'd just levered himself out of the shower without cracking his head open on the tile which, sadly enough, was something of an accomplishment these days, and had settled himself in the sunny corner of the bathroom to shave. As he carefully held a hand mirror with one hand and scraped a bit of stubble off the underside of his jaw with the other, a voice said, low and wistful, *I'd forgotten how young I was.*
Charles paused for a moment. Hank, Sean, and Alex were all too young to be indulging in an old man's reflections on lost youth, so this was obviously coming from outside. His power had grown quite a bit during his weeks in the hospital--well, it had had to, hadn't it, to keep out the horror of the other patients' suffering, and to keep the CIA from having them thrown into a place where the sun never shone?--so he was quite accustomed at this point to picking up thoughts from fifty miles away, or even more, in the right frame of mind. Obviously, someone's nostalgia had gotten rather strong this morning.
It didn't feel like a stray thought, though. It scarcely felt like a thought at all, but like a vibration or a pulse, or an actual voice speaking very close to his ear, so close as to be inside his head. Charles paused again and looked at himself in the mirror. He lifted the razor to his chin once more. Nothing happened.
"Ridiculous," said Charles to himself, and he filed the thought away in the corner of his mind where he kept other foolish things--the times he thought, 'Oh, best run down to get the mail,' or the still frequent occasions when he lifted his head at a sound, expecting Raven to come into the room.
Founding a school truly was not for the faint of heart. The fact that Charles was interested in establishing a private institution helped somewhat, but honestly, he didn't want "school" to be a euphemism for "homeless shelter for mutant children." He wanted it to be an actual school, one whose diploma would be good enough to get its students into university after graduation. This meant that besides renovating the house to make it more navigable for Charles, he also needed to put in classrooms and dormitories and whatever else schools generally had. He hoped to be able to provide everything a public school did, and more besides, so he also felt obliged to do a great deal of research into the state's requirements with respect to curriculum and facilities.
Despite Alex and Sean's willingness to go to university and get teaching certificates, for the time being, Charles would also need to hire some instructors. Most likely, given the small proportion of the human population who had radical mutations and even smaller percentage who considered that to be a central enough pillar of their identity to uproot their lives to come to Westchester, he'd need some human instructors. Assuming, of course, that he could find some who didn't mind working with Hank--or Charles, for that matter--and would treat mutant students with the same dignity and kindness they would treat typical human students. And wasn't that a job. Besides all sorts of therapy, the ridiculously long time it took to get bathed and dressed, and doing his best to make himself useful around the house, Charles' daily routine now included hours spent in his study, corresponding extremely carefully with former colleagues at Harvard and Oxford in hopes that they might know of a suitable candidate.
He scanned quickly through a letter from Peter Taylor, an old classmate, recommending he get in touch with a Yasuo Takiguchi--he knew the name. If he recalled correctly--and he usually did-- the man actually specialized in robotics engineering, but according to Peter, he was excellent with undergraduates. As Charles scribbled the name on a list of potential teachers, the same familiar not-voice of a few mornings ago said *Lord, Yasuo. That was so long ago.*
Charles had many failings, but inordinate stupidity was not one of them. "Excuse me," he said, both aloud and with a pulsing menace in his mind, "but would you mind explaining just who--or, may I say, what you are?"
Utter silence. Charles felt a chill of nervousness run up his spine. Despite what his mother had thought all those years ago, Charles had never had any particular doubts as to his sanity; what his nurse had seen as demon possession and his mother had feared might be schizophrenia, he had known quite well to be a sense that simply went beyond the capacities of most to comprehend. But all that mess had simply been thoughts he'd picked up and hadn't had the foresight to conceal. This was...Charles had no idea what this was.
He suspected that he was the only one affected by it. Still, driven by the same impulse that had made him pick at scabs and pimples as a boy, that evening at supper he asked, "I don't suppose that any of you are hearing...a voice?"
Alex raised a confused eyebrow in his direction and Hank frowned. Sean said, "A voice?"
Charles nodded. "Mmm. It's an older man's voice, English accent, seems given to nostalgia?" Five years ago, Charles would have wholly written off the idea of a ghost, but these days, very little seemed outside the realm of possibility.
Sean shrugged. "Uh. Don't take this the wrong way, Professor, but don't you usually hear voices? I mean, the whole telepath thing?"
Irritated, Charles was half-tempted to ask Sean why on earth he thought Charles would ask about something if it were in fact a perfectly commonplace phenomenon for him. But Alex still looked baffled, and Hank was leaning over with a thoughtfully concerned expression, and Charles really didn't need to read their minds to know that no, they hadn't heard the voice. Since the last thing he needed was for them to think their professor had lost his mind as well as his legs, Charles said, "Right, of course. Probably a stray thought, then--it's a bit disconcerting how far away I seem to be picking them up."
Alex's expression cleared, and Hank leaned back again, expounding once again on his theory as to why Charles' range was increasing so dramatically. Charles listened with half an ear. With the rest of his senses, he grew very still, carefully tracing the boundaries where his mind ended and the world around him began. If there was an intruder--in his house or in his head--Charles would be prepared.
The next morning, while Charles was getting dressed, he stared very deliberately at his legs. It had only been a few months, and with any luck the stretches and whatnot he was doing would keep the muscles from completely atrophying, but they still looked like pale, sickly, skinny things to his eyes, almost as foreign to his sight as they were estranged from his sense of touch. Charles could remember quite clearly what they had looked like in the days when he ran laps with Raven and swam back and forth in the pool in the sun. If there were anything that would trigger the wistful nostalgia of his visitor, surely what remained of his legs would do the trick.
*I'm hardly a visitor, my dear boy,* said the voice. Charles's heart tightened painfully in his chest with surprise for a moment, but it took a great deal more than a melancholy disembodied voice to shake Charles F. Xavier for long.
I suppose not, he thought, since obviously the voice was privy to the workings of his mind. After all, visitors are generally invited.
*In my defense,* the voice said, sounding amused, *I didn't know you were aware of my presence until yesterday.*
That's no defense at all, thought Charles. There was something unsettlingly familiar about the voice, something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. State your business or leave.
There was something like a sigh, then, a sense of painfully sweet memory and a longing for things that were lost. Charles was intimately familiar with these emotions, both from within his own mind and from without, but this feeling seemed neither external nor internal to him, setting his nerves on edge. *If I could leave, I would,* said the voice. *I have no more desire to relive these days than you have to live them.*
To relive them? Several wild theories rose and burst like bubbles in the corner of Charles' mind devoted to scientific curiosity; his defenses still bristled with suspicion. Who are you? What are you?
*Good questions, both.* Then there was a weird sort of image projected in his mind. It wasn't really a mental picture--Charles was quite familiar with those--but more like the sort of pattern one saw on the inside of one's eyelids, where one could not name the colors or the shapes but had a definite sense of having seen something. It took a moment to decipher, but once Charles had got the feel of it, the image that emerged was of a man, neatly-dressed, completely bald and sitting calmly in a wheelchair. And it became abruptly, nauseatingly clear to Charles just why the voice had sounded familiar.
You're me. The thought resonated through Charles' consciousness, a kind of hesitant disbelief, the nervousness that came with touching the unfamiliar and inexplicable. How?
*I could just as easily say that you're me, couldn't I?*
A few possibilities presented themselves to Charles. One: somehow he had learned to project his consciousness back in time--a modified version of Cerebro, perhaps? Two: he had developed a secondary mutation allowing him mental communication with future and past versions of himself--dear Lord, feast yourself on that, H.G. Wells. Three: It was a trick devised by another telepath, possibly Miss Frost, although Charles really couldn't imagine what Erik and his group would gain by tricking Charles this way. Four--four--
*I'm afraid it's none of the above, Charles,* said the voice compassionately. *I hate to tell you this, but I believe my presence here is the result of a last-ditch effort on the part of my mind to preserve itself in the face of my body's destruction.*
You mean I'm dead. You're dead. We're dead. Perhaps it should have been frightening; at the moment, it simply struck him as absurd.
The voice--Older Charles, as it were--wasn't communicating with him telepathically in quite the same way that he himself could communicate with others, but Charles could still sense a warm rush of sympathy like something soft stroking his head from the inside. *I'm afraid so.*
How? Charles was beginning to feel like a scratched record. There were times, he thought, when something was so shocking to one's world that it trapped you in a long, blank moment you couldn't help but repeat. This was shaping up to be one of them.
Older Charles sighed again. *That, my dear boy, is a very long and complicated story. Suffice to say that it was the result of a number of bad decisions made by a number of people over many years--people including yourself.*
Speak for yourself, said Charles, knocked out of his stupor by an unexpected fit of pique. I'll bet you've made a lot more of those decisions than I have. And that's not much of an answer, anyway.
There was a long emptiness like silence then, long enough to make Charles think that old, dead, ghost Charles had vanished. He might have thought he'd imagined the whole thing if Older Charles hadn't finally said, *We must be very careful. What I tell you might affect the course of human history.*
Well, you're not full of yourself or anything, Charles wanted to say, but as strange as it was to think of it, he had already played a rather significant part during that whole business in Cuba, and if his plans for the school succeeded, he actually might be doing something significant for all mankind. And his mother had thought he'd never amount to anything. Ha. To Older Charles, he said, Well, you'd best tell me something good, then, if you don't want us to get stuck in a constant cycle of dying and haunting younger versions of us. Ourselves. Bugger, that's strange.
*Lift yourself up,* said Older Charles.
Charles blinked. What?
*From your chair. Lift yourself up for a moment. You've been sitting in that same position without shifting for almost half an hour. Trust me, you don't want to have to deal with pressure sores. They're most unpleasant.*
Oh, for Christ's sake. Surely you didn't come back from the dead to be my nursemaid. Still, Charles braced himself on his forearms and levered himself up from his seat for a good five seconds, setting himself back down a bit further back in the chair so as to shift the distribution of his weight. The ever-more perceptible presence in his head exuded a warm satisfaction.
Irritated, Charles said, Smug bastard and rearranged his legs just a bit. It was unsettling to think of himself as dead, his body lying lifeless in some cemetery plot in the future. He thought of asking Old Charles when he'd died, but he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know. The voice sounded quite a bit older than Charles was at the moment, so that was something at least. The question of how he'd died was...well, surely Old Charles would have to tell him sooner or later, seeing as how they were sharing the same head. But Charles thought he might leave that question alone for a bit. It was quite a lot to think of.
*Weren't you getting dressed?* asked Old Charles. *The boys are already seated for breakfast. If you wait any longer, Hank will come in to see if there's anything the matter. And you've skipped breakfast quite often enough. It's important to keep your strength up, you know.*
Charles bristled at the condescension. Tell you what, since I'm you and you're me, let's just assume that I know this sort of thing already. I'm perfectly capable of running my own life, thank you very much.
*I was just trying to be helpful,* said Old Charles, radiating patronizing paternalism like a beacon.
Good Lord, I hope you haven't been like this with our students over the years, Charles shot back. If I want to kill you now, I can't imagine how someone with much less reason to want you alive will react.
Charles waited for almost two minutes for Old Charles to respond before giving it up and wheeling himself out to breakfast. Not only smug but mysterious, then. Fantastic.
Everyone had woken up on the wrong side of the bed that morning, it seemed. Under Hank's concern at Charles's tardiness was irritation at Charles's tardiness, and underneath both of them, his seething anger and self-loathing seemed stronger than usual. Charles would seriously have considered mentally forcing Hank to talk to a psychologist if it weren't for the poor lad's current bestial appearance. Sean had gotten another phone call the previous evening from his parents, asking if he was ever going to get a real job and why he was still staying with that fruitcake in New York. This made him defensive on Charles' behalf (very nice) but also preemptively defensive of his family, whom he imagined Charles and Hank would think were a bunch of inbred morons, though neither of them had ever said anything of the kind or even met Sean's family. And Alex...well, Charles wasn't sure if Alex ever woke up on the right side of the bed. He certainly hadn't during the tenure of his acquaintance with Charles.
How tiresome. Charles had hoped perhaps breakfast would lift his spirits, after the baffling and rather unsatisfying encounter with himself earlier.
"Hank," he asked, "I've been meaning to ask you--on the heels of our discussion the other day about my range, do you suppose that thoughts can exist independently of a physical source of those thoughts?"
"What?" Hank blinked, looking something like a sleepy and confused lion. "Well, thoughts are really electrical impulses between nerves, so, absent a physical nervous system, I don't really know how thoughts could exist."
"Yes, but no physical nerves connect me to other people's minds, and yet I can receive and interpret these impulses. This connection of brains via the amplification of the brain's electromagnetic waves--isn't that the general idea you used to design Cerebro?"
Hank frowned, and Charles relaxed inwardly. Thus far, the most effective way he had found to minimize Hank's unhappiness was to distract him from it. Any successful distraction was, if not a permanent solution for anything, at least a temporary plaster over both his and Charles's sensitive points. "Of course, but both Cerebro--and your telepathy, as far as I understand it--operate on the idea that there must be something on the other end producing electrical impulses. There has to be something there for you to read, regardless of whether it's amplified or not. I suppose those impulses could be artificially produced, given quite a bit technological advancement from where we are now, but they have to be there. " He arched an eyebrow at Charles, peering suspiciously at him over his glasses. "This is all theoretical, right?"
Charles pondered for a moment whether or not to drop a hint as to the practical ramifications of the issue. Such a conversation would probably be more trouble than it was worth, though, so he dismissed both the idea and Hank's question with a scoff. "Honestly, Hank," he said, which didn't answer the question but seemed to embarrass Hank into subsiding.
Sean looked up from his oatmeal. "Hold on," he said. "Are you guys talking about, like, thoughts without a brain?"
"Precisely," said Charles, and he took a bite of his eggs. Overcooked, but then, none of them was exactly a chef, and it wasn't as if Charles contributed any more to the household's cooking than peeling vegetables, so he was hardly in a position to judge.
"Like, just random, floating thoughts?" Sean was intrigued despite himself. "Where would they come from if no one was thinking them?"
"Outer space?" said Alex scornfully. Underneath, he thought are there really aliens what if the professor can hear them maybe he's insane that's stupid aliens but why not if mutants are real why not aliens.... Charles personally thought that Alex ought to have saved his scorn for people who didn't know about his fondness for The Twilight Zone.
"Well," said Charles carefully. "Other forms of electromagnetic radiation, such as light, can continue on after the original source is gone. For instance--since you brought up outer space, Alex, many of the stars we see no longer exist; it simply takes their light a very long time to reach us."
"Oh, yeah," said Alex. "I think I heard that somewhere."
Three miles away, Eloise Preston Dugan, age 85, breathed her last. It was painless but cold, the sudden dousing of a light--the sort of death Charles would probably not even have felt before Cuba. Nothing of Eloise Preston Dugan remained, at least on this earthly plane. He wondered, if he had applied himself to learning the shape of her mind, the pattern of her thoughts, could he have retained an impression of Mrs. Dugan in his mind that approached sentience? The closest he had come to such devoted study of another's mind had been the brief but shining moments he had thrown himself wholly into Erik's, and look how that had turned out. If Mrs. Dugan herself had been a telepath, might she have sent herself outwards, catching her soul on whatever minds were capable of receiving it?
Pointless speculation, at this particular moment anyway. Charles sipped his orange juice and returned his focus to Hank, Sean, and Alex.
Hank nodded and pushed his glasses up higher on his nose. He'd tried to adjust his previous pair to fit the new shape of his face, but Charles thought he would probably have to scrap everything but the lenses and start from scratch. "Sure," he said. "But light has a measurable speed. I'm not sure how we'd go about measuring the speed of thought. It's not like we have a large sample group of telepaths to work with."
"I rather think there are more than we know," said Charles. "I saw quite a few during those first few sessions in Cerebro. You're right, of course, that it would be quite difficult to design an experiment to test this hypothesis. Still, I don't think it's all that unreasonable to compare thought to light, or some other form of radiation. Radioactivity, perhaps. Radioactivity has a tangible results on the things and people with whom it comes into contact. Maybe thought does, too--well, tangible to those capable of perceiving such things, anyway. Psycho-material combination, if you will."
Of course, neither Sean nor Alex understood the reference, but Hank huffed in displeasure and said, "Buchanan? That's not science, Professor!"
Charles could only laugh at that. He'd certainly heard such things about some of the things he read to develop a basic theoretical understanding of his telepathy, though never by anyone who knew his own psychic abilities to be genuine. (Well. Except for some teasing by Raven.) "No, perhaps not. Although given what we have already discovered, I think the boundaries of what is considered to be science will soon expand quite rapidly."
"Ugh, why?" interrupted Sean. "It is way too early for this much science."
Charles laughed. Sean actually quite liked science; what he didn't like was Charles and Hank talking over his head at the breakfast table, which was a fair enough objection. "My apologies, Sean. I had an idea in my head and needed to get it out."
"Yeah, well, I've got an idea, too--how about you help me prepare for the Albany interview? I don't do real well with this whole public speaking thing."
"I don't know that I'd really consider a college interview to be 'public speaking,'" Hank pointed out.
Sean shrugged. "Might as well be." He pushed his chair back from the table, picked up his plate, and gave Alex an overly casual look. "You in, dude?"
For a moment, it looked as if Alex hadn't heard. He had, but he was taking a moment, as he so often did, to process his emotions, which in this case consisted of a lot of nervousness about the interview and overwhelming doubts about his ability to teach anyone, or even to be around people without causing damage. Charles rather thought that success in this area would do more to allay his fears than anything Charles could say, and Charles was willing to do quite a lot to ensure success.
Finally, Alex gave Sean a quick look over his shoulder and said, "Sure, whatever. Just let me finish my bacon."
"Oh, that's fine," said Charles. "Don't even wait for my answer before you start scheduling things for me."
He obviously hadn't succeeded at the light tone he was aiming for, because Hank, Alex, and Sean's minds were all suddenly arrested with uncertainty. Lord. If he was good for nothing else, Old Charles might have given Charles some words of advice about how to be an authority figure before scarpering off to wherever the hell ghostly voices disappeared to when they got sick of talking to their younger selves. Apparently, he was on his own. He smiled and said, "Oh, as if I weren't going to help, given that this whole college thing was my idea anyway. But you're not the only one who likes bacon, Alex. In fact...." He reached across the table to steal a piece off Alex's plate. "That'll be a one-bacon surcharge for the benefits of my wisdom."
"Benefits my ass," snorted Alex, but he was smiling. If Charles had really dedicated some attention to it, he could have imagined that it was Raven sat across from him, kicking him under the table and reading the comics page to him. But this wasn't the time to get wrapped up in the past, nor was it the time to get overly involved in a future, decades away, that might or might not come to pass. Tomorrow was enough of a challenge. And he liked to think that he was needed today.
**
Charles didn't know what, exactly, a dead future version of himself found to keep himself busy, but whatever it was, Old Charles didn't make a reappearance for weeks. In the meanwhile, he successfully got Alex and Sean through their interviews, engaged in rather friendly correspondence with Yasuo Takiguchi and a high school guidance counselor from Connecticut called Alicia Downing, and practiced his morning routine enough to be able to get himself bathed, shaved, and dressed in under an hour. He certainly had enough to keep himself busy without the intrusive emotions and questions that Old Charles's mysterious appearances had caused.
Therefore, Charles was rather less pleased than surprised and suspicious when, finally, that strangely familiar voice came to him as he was sketching out the beginnings of a biology curriculum. It said, *We haven't begun recruiting students yet, then.*
Is that a question, or a criticism? said Charles, who was determined not to give Old Charles the satisfaction of surrendering to his surprise. In the spirit of strict honesty, one might say that I have already recruited two students in the persons of Alex and Sean. Neither of them had any idea of going to college before we met, much less becoming teachers.
*It's simply an observation,* said Old Charles. *And you know quite well to what I was referring.*
He was silent for a long moment, long enough for Charles to wonder if he'd left again. It was a curious sensation, to know that a mind was so close to his as to be literally inside it, but not to know anything about what it contained or how it worked or what it was doing. He tried to project a sense of gentle questioning into his own mind, but he wasn't sure whether or not it worked. Surely you didn't pop in just to tell me something I already knew, did you?
*No, I didn't. As a matter of fact, I came to...offer some advice, if you will.*
As baffling and irritating as the whole matter was, Charles couldn't help feeling relieved that his future self hadn't abandoned him so quickly. Oh, so you're not worrying about changing the course of human history anymore?
*I am. But....* It was the strangest sensation, as if someone within his head was poking at him, directing his eyes towards the calendar on his desk. Charles wondered if this was how it felt when he pushed someone mentally. *I believe my presence has already altered the path of events, for better or for worse. You already know things that I did not when I was in your place, with what results I cannot say. I've taken some time to think the matter over, and I think....*
Another pause. You think what? asked Charles, feeling unaccountably frustrated. Being unable to read Old Charles's mind--which was his mind too, damn it all!--was like having an itch in his brain that he couldn't scratch.
*I think that, since I'm here and already causing changes to your time, I might as well try my best to change things for the better.*
Really? Now that they were really discussing it, Charles thought he could let himself get excited about the possibilities. The idea was like time travel, really--Charles had read the novel and seen the Rod Taylor film, and the whole notion had intrigued him. Not so much the idea of travelling into the future, although that of course would be interesting as well, but the idea of travelling back to a specific point in time to change a particular event or set of events. Could it really be done for the better, without wholly disrupting the workings of time and space?
*I'm not doing this to save our life,* said Old Charles, sounding unfairly stern about it. *In the grand scheme of things, my death is the least of the things I'd like to change.*
Speak for yourself, said Charles. Oh, wait, I guess you are.
Old Charles didn't seem to find that very amusing.
Oh, well. At any rate, if some of the mistakes leading to Old Charles's death were as grievous as his grimness seemed to imply, perhaps preventing that death might be a side benefit. What is it that you want to change? he asked.
*Small things, relatively speaking,* said Old Charles. *The best of intentions will not prevent us from doing grave harm if we try to do too much at once. But I've...overlooked...too many things in the name of the greater good over the years, and I'm not about to do it again now. If I have the chance to prevent the suffering of a child, then by God I'm not going to---*
Charles cut him off. Wait, he said, feeling as if his whole self had been sharpened like a knife to a keen edge. What child is suffering?
Instead of answering, Old Charles said, *Has Alex ever told you about his brother?*
Yes, Scott, said Charles, irritated at Old Charles's circumlocution. Is he all right? Alex had, on occasion, made brief reference to Scott, but he'd seemed to think the boy was safer with his foster parents than he was being around a brother who shot destructive rays of energy out of his gut, which was a fair point. Charles, who wasn't at all confident about his ability to be sensitive to a friend's feelings after the whole business with Erik and Raven, hadn't pushed. Maybe he ought to have.
Another strange picture was projected onto the inside of Charles's eyelids: a small boy, maybe five or six, curled up with his knees pulled close to his chest. His eyes were taped shut; tears were leaking out from under the tape and slowly dripping down the boy's cheeks. Voices like echoes scattered around: What are we going to do with him He's not safe If he did that to a wall imagine what he could do to a person Freak Freak Freak--
Charles swallowed. Worse things happened to children every day--Charles's own childhood had been nothing to write home about--but the thought that Alex's little brother sat alone, crying, afraid of the world and of himself while those around him treated him like a monster, hit him like a blow to the chest. Scott, I presume? he asked, walling his emotions away until such time as they could be of use.
*Yes.* Old Charles removed the picture from Charles's mind and replaced it with that of a young man in red-tinted spectacles. *I didn't meet him until he was sixteen. By then, his powers had ceased to come in random bursts. What he did could no longer be explained away.*
What does he do?
*He's not unlike Alex--he shoots beams of energy, but from his eyes rather than his chest. Like Alex, he's always suffered a lack of control over it; the beams come out whenever he opens his eyes. Or, rather, they did when I last saw him. He told me when he was young that they came out at unexpected times, often when he was angry or frightened.*
A small fraction of Charles's mind filed this away as useful information. Though his own power had appeared so early in life that it was difficult to connect it to any particular event, Erik's, Raven's, Alex's, and Armando's all seemed to have miraculously appeared in times of emotional distress, or times of real danger--a sort of latent evolutionary defense, triggered only when needed. The matter was worth investigating, though of course he'd need to talk to many more mutants before coming to any conclusions. The rest of Charles's mind sifted through various reasons why Scott Summers might be so angry and frightened as to shoot energy out of his eyes, and it didn't like any of the possibilities.
I suppose you--we had some good reason for leaving him in such a situation for ten years? It was unfair of Charles to be angry at his older self, he knew it, but the anger under his skin had to be directed somewhere, and it wasn't as if he could dispel it with a good run as he might have done in the past.
Old Charles's voice was damnably calm as he answered, *Because as far as Alex knew, his brother was living an idyllic suburban life, and as you well know, you've been setting up your school to educate teenagers, not six-year-olds. We had no reason to think that, even if Scott were a mutant--which, genetics being what it is, was no guarantee--he would benefit from being removed from his current foster home.*
All true enough, if still unsatisfying. Well. We'll clearly have to change all that.
*I think so,* said Old Charles, sounding just the tiniest bit unsure. *I've given the matter a great deal of thought, and...well, there is that old canard, 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger,' and certainly Scott's past gave him a certain strength, but...*
Are you joking? I don't care if it makes the boy bloody Hercules. A memory of Erik, talking about Shaw as his 'creator,' flicked into Charles' mind. No. No. There were other ways to find strength, and to knowingly let a child suffer to make him 'stronger' was horrifying. Nothing Kurt had ever done had made Cain stronger, just angrier, and if Charles had gotten better at psychically manipulating people, well, that was certainly a power that was at times more of a headache than it was worth. If Charles could have gone back in time to spare Erik even a moment of pain, he would have done it. He couldn't do it for Erik, but he could do it for Scott. No. Scott's coming here. We can send him to a local school, for now anyway, but he's coming to live in this house.
*Excellent,* said Old Charles, regaining whatever certainty he had lost earlier. *Of course, the first step will be to talk to Alex. I don't think you'll need me for that part, will you? I haven't spoken to the man in years, so I wouldn't be much help.*
Wait, what? asked Charles. Why haven't you spoken to Alex in years? Is it to do with Scott?
There was no answer. Charles tried again, more 'loudly' in a psychical sense. From somewhere upstairs, Sean yelled, "Hey, you okay, Professor?"
Charles sighed. Evidently, Old Charles seemed to think he'd done his part for the day and taken his leave. Christ, Charles was really going to have to take a good hard look at his life, if he was this annoying as an old man. I'm fine, he told Sean, and to Alex, he said, Alex, could you come here for a moment?
Confusion and concern rose like a sickly haze around the edges of Alex's mind, but he said, clear as day,Sure. He was a great deal better at projecting thoughts than he thought he was.
He appeared in Charles's study a minute later, his expression an exercise in casual disinterest. "What's up?" he asked.
Charles wheeled himself around the desk. Alex, almost unthinking, sat in the old leather armchair on the other side of the desk, so as not to loom over Charles's head. Charles didn't know whether to be irked or touched at the consideration; he decided on ignoring it altogether. "Alex," he said. "This is an issue of rather a personal nature; do you mind?"
Charles received, in quick succession, a mental image of Alex helping Charles use the bathroom last month, Alex trying to get Charles into a pair of trousers without actually looking at him, and Alex sitting through an excruciating conversation with Hank and Sean about sexual function for paraplegics, on the off-chance that Charles should ask about it. How thoughtful. Visibly bracing himself, Alex said, "No problem."
A laugh bubbled up, against Charles's will, and it came out like a kind of high-pitched croak. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean personal for me. I meant personal for you. I'd actually like to talk about your brother."
Alex's expression turned instantly defensive, his mind suddenly like a spiky fortress. "What about him?" It was hardly a question that invited an answer.
Charles pondered laying a calming hand on Alex's shoulder or something, but ultimately he decided against it. He certainly wasn't trying to hit on Alex, which was generally the impression people got whenever he tried making physical contact, for reasons as of yet mysterious and unknown. "Only, when was the last time you spoke to him?"
Even as Alex leaned forward to say roughly, "Three years ago," Charles could see how it had been, a younger Alex trying to explain to Scott, still practically a toddler, why he couldn't stay with Alex, that leaving Scott at the home didn't mean Alex didn't love him.
Charles couldn't help his sympathy, but he pressed it down, under and away from the edges where his mind sometimes leaked into others'. If Alex felt it, experience said he would take it as pity, which would not be appreciated. He said, trying for a calm but not overly cool or distant tone, "So, you haven't had recent information from him?"
Alex's head shot up, his expression vaguely betrayed. "I couldn't," was all he said, while underneath was a rushing current of thoughts that could be summed up: I wanted to, but I didn't want to mess up his life. It wasn't my fault. It doesn't mean I don't love him. It was all my fault. How can you ask me this?
"Of course," said Charles softly. "I only ask because I have reason to believe that he might be better off here than in his current foster care situation."
"The hell are you talking about?" His voice was harsh with worry. "What reason? He's in fucking Nebraska, there's no way you could have picked anything up telepathically." The last was almost a question--which was fair enough, given how much Charles's range had expanded in the last few months.
"No," said Charles. "I...someone told me."
"Who?" Alex stood up, looking about ready to blast Charles through the wall if he didn't like the answer. "Have you been asking about him? If he's hurt--if you fucked things up with his foster parents--"
"Nothing like that," Charles said before Alex could finish the threat. "It's...." He hesitated. He had several options. First, he could psychically calm Alex down, make him forget the last few moments, and then try beginning the conversation again. Perhaps he'd do a better job the next time around. Second, he could come up with a lie and persuade Alex that it was true--hell, he could explain the situation in truth and use a touch of power to persuade Alex that it was true. Honestly, though, he didn't really like any of those options. Trust was such a fragile and precious commodity, and Alex had been very good to him; Charles hardly wanted to squander his friendship now. So really, his variety of options boiled down to one: tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they might. "This is going to sound a bit strange," he began.
Alex clenched his fists. "What is?"
"There's a voice in my head, and it's me from the future. Apparently I know Scott then--he's a mutant like you, and he's having a rough time of it."
There was a long silence in which Alex blinked slowly at Charles, his fists slowly unclenching and his mind too stunned to form a coherent thought. "What?"
Charles sighed. "I told you, it's very strange. Apparently, some years in the future, I'm going to die--well, obviously, everyone dies, but what I mean to say is that, when I die, I'm going to--send my mind back in time or something, because right now, this me from the future is hanging about in my head offering me advice. And before you say I'm insane--" (Because a thought of that sort was beginning to spread throughout Alex's mind) "--Do consider that many of the things you and I have seen or done would have been considered science fiction forty years ago. There is absolutely no reason, according to the laws of physics as they are currently understood, that you should be able to create and project energy the way that you do. Our comprehension of the science behind my telepathy is extremely limited, and at this point I'd be very hesitant to rule out anything as impossible."
Disbelief warred with giddy amazement in Alex's mind until both collapsed into acceptance, and Alex himself collapsed back into his chair. "Damn," he said, resting his chin on his hands. True to character, he didn't stay dazed for long; after a few moments, his confused emotions had hardened into a sharp, focused point. "So, wait, future you told you--what kind of rough time? Where is Scott, is he okay?"
"I had no direct psychic contact with Scott, so I only know what my future self told and showed me. According to him, Scott's fine, physically, but...well, perhaps I'd better show you." Charles gathered up the memory of the image Old Charles had given him and pushed it into Alex's head. It was only when tears began to run down the boy's face that Charles thought maybe he ought to have asked his permission.
Alex hid his face in his hands and moaned, "Oh, God," and Charles thought that even a non-telepath could have felt the self-recrimination radiating from him.
"Don't," he said, perhaps a bit more sharply than necessary in an effort to get his point across. "No part of this is your fault. We'll go to that home in Nebraska, and we'll take Scott from those people and bring him here, and everything will be fine."
"But his eyes," said Alex in anguished tones. He looked up, and his own eyes were wet and bloodshot.
It was a pickle, for certain--if Charles had understood his older self correctly, Scott's energy blasts were intermittent now but would become constant later (and Lord, where did he get all that energy?). Thus far they had managed to focus Alex's blasts, but not to disperse them harmlessly, and since the plates Hank had devised weren't transparent and thus couldn't be modified for use as glasses, Charles wasn't sure how they'd even be able to contain Scott's ability. But he honestly didn't think hopeless realism would do anyone any good at this point, so he said firmly, "Hank will figure something out. And you know, the rest of us aren't exactly slouches intellectually, either."
Alex snorted. "You mean you aren't."
That was, actually, what Charles had meant, although he hoped not in a disparaging way. Sean and Alex were hardly idiots, and they'd already proven themselves to be very helpful when it came to carrying out some of Charles and Hank's more hands-on ideas. Alex in particular would have to be an active participant in any effort to help Scott harness his ability, so Charles said, "Alex, we can't possibly find a way for Scott to control these energy blasts without your assistance. As far as I can tell, you two may be the only people on the face of the earth who can do this sort of thing, and we'll need your experience--your ideas--to set up experiments so they might actually be useful to Scott."
Alex swallowed wetly and scrubbed tears from his face. "Yeah, okay, you need a test subject. Whatever. Let's get Scott out of there."
"Agreed," said Charles firmly. "I actually do know somebody in the Children's Bureau in New York. She can help us get in contact with the right people in Nebraska to gain at least temporary custody of Scott." ('Know' was maybe an overstatement, as Charles hadn't talked to Dolores Kempe since he was twelve years old, but she'd probably help him nonetheless. She'd had a soft spot for Charles and Raven back in the day.)
There was a brief flicker of curiosity in Alex's mind as to who Charles knew in the Children's Bureau and how, but it was quickly smothered by a more pressing question. "So, we'd get you to be Scott's foster father, then? Would you adopt him?"
This seemed like dangerous emotional territory to Charles. One thing he'd never quite been able to explain to Raven was that sometimes the knowledge of someone's entire past, their hopes and their desires and their mundane quotidian thoughts, wasn't enough to know what answer they truly wanted when they asked a question. "I don't know," said Charles carefully. "I probably could, if we felt it was necessary. You might have an easier time of it, given your relationship to Scott."
Alex started shaking his head before Charles had even finished his sentence. "No. No way," he said. "That's not a good idea." Under the smooth surface layer of calm Alex had managed to reclaim, hurt and anger and uncertainty festered like old, unhealed wounds. It hurt Charles to share the feelings, and he carefully separated himself from them with layers of white noise. He concentrated on the steady in and out of his breath as Alex said, "Maybe you better--look, you're a rich college professor who lives in a castle, I'm a dropout with a criminal record. You and me both know how that's gonna look. Plus, Scott probably hates me, and I don't blame him. I wouldn't have a lot of time for a big brother who ditched me, either. I can help you with your experiments, but...I could go stay in the city while you go get him. And then I can go off to college--if I get in--and we can...." Alex trailed off, obviously unable to think of a way to help Charles run the school while simultaneously never allowing his brother to lay eyes on him again.
Charles knew what it was like to blame oneself, both for those things that were his own fault and those that were not. Raven had often jollied him out of a self-hating (or perhaps self-pitying) mood, but as Raven never seemed to blame herself for much despite her insecurity, Charles had very little experience being on the other side of the equation. "Alex," he said finally, "I was utterly incompetent at dealing with six-year-olds when I was a six-year-old, and your brother doesn't know me from Adam."
"Since when has that stopped you?" asked Alex. His tone was biting, but the tight line of his mouth had softened, an almost-imperceptible relaxation that Charles would have missed had he not been looking for it.
It was true. Charles never really had minded strangers--given his talents, no one really remained a stranger for long. But it was easy to tell people about drink orders and genetics and why Gideon vs. Wainwright was such a revolutionary ruling. It was very difficult to tell people that you wanted a perfect world for them but that you also wanted to protect them in this one, or that you cared about them but didn't understand them at all. Children needed more than biology lectures and some cheery ass blithering "Well done!" at them. Charles wasn't sure what it was that they did need, but he knew that much.
"Listen," he said, trying a new tactic. "I really need your help. You know of course I'm willing to take care of Scott, but I'm really not doing an excellent job taking care of myself at the moment. I know I sometimes get a bit...stubborn about accepting help--" Right, stubborn, thought Alex with a snort. "--but honestly, I can't take care of a six-year-old on my own. I know Sean's got younger siblings as well, but Scott doesn't know Sean, either. We need you. Please."
Alex teetered for a moment between discomfort at the idea of someone relying on him (and the reminder of Charles's own vulnerability) and a kind of warm, pleased, affectionate sensation. Being Alex, he quickly caught his mental balance and landed, as usual, at amused disdain. "Whatever," he said. "I already said I was gonna stick around."
"Thanks," said Charles, trying not to be too effusive. People tended to find him a little creepy when he was overly grateful.
They sat in awkward but not wholly unpleasant silence for a long moment, Charles squirming in his chair a bit at the soreness in his back and Alex tapping his fingers on his leg, unable to meet Charles's eyes. After a moment, the dark clouds of his thoughts coalesced into a question, so it wasn't actually surprising when he said, "So. You can hear some dead ghost you from the future?"
After the emotional upheaval of the last few minutes, all his initial skepticism seemed to have been wiped away. Charles drudged up a smile. "Yes. I can."
Alex shook his head, but less in disbelief than in wry acceptance of how strange his life was. "Hank's gonna have kittens."
And Charles would never have a free moment to himself ever again. Or at least until they found a new project for Hank to fix his considerable focus on. "Well, probably," he said, trying to put a positive spin on it, "but it's all in the interests of scientific advancement, I suppose."
"Yeah, have fun being Bozo's guinea pig," said Alex. "At least it'll distract him from me for a while." Charles should have chided Alex for mocking Hank, but it was more reflexive than malicious; the actual tenor of Alex's thoughts stretched in a more inquisitive direction. "What's it like?" he said after a moment of silent thought. "Having another you in your head? I mean, what do you talk about? Are you totally on the same wave-length all the time, or...." He trailed off with a shrug.
"Oh, no," said Charles. "He's a rather annoying bastard, actually. All cryptic advice and popping off to God knows where whenever you have a question."
Alex smirked a bit. "No offense, Professor, but that's not that surprising."
"Oh, I hardly think I'm in the habit of dashing off when you fellows need me." Neither of them really needed to say that 'dashing off' required more mobility and spontaneity than Charles actually had these days.
The mocking lines of Alex's face hardened into something more serious, and he said, "No. You're not." A ghostly memory, buried like a lump of coal, said, We can avenge him, and a remembered, now disdained version of Alex burned in admiration, yearning desperately for whatever hidden machinery drove Erik Lehnsherr. Out loud, Alex said, "So, when does it happen? You dying, I mean. We'll stop it."
There was something very touching about Alex's determination. "Oh, not for a long while, I shouldn't think. He sounds a great deal older than me. For all I know, I'm going to die quietly in my sleep."
It wasn't true, of course, but it seemed to calm Alex a bit. "So, what happens in the future? With the school and mutants and everything? Does it all turn out okay?"
His first instinct was to tell Alex that yes, it all turned out all right, that their school flourished, and mutants achieved some sort of legally protected status and in the end, Erik and Raven came back. (Although that last was probably more Charles's idea of a happy ending than Alex's.) But he couldn't do it. He didn't have it in him to feign an optimism he just didn't feel. He had no idea what the future held for him, for any of them, save that whatever it was probably wouldn't be easy. "I don't know," he said at last. "I suppose we'll all find out."
It wasn't until late, late at night, after Charles had explained the situations both with Scott and with Old Charles to Hank and Sean, had an extremely awkward but ultimately productive conversation with Dolores, and worked out some of the day's emotional tensions on the weight machines in the exercise room, that Old Charles returned like smoke under a doorway, his voice a distant whisper: *Good job.*
Charles paused, partway through the onerous task of wrestling himself into his pajama pants. Thanks. That means a lot, coming from someone who was no help whatsoever.
Around the county, people were falling asleep, the conscious drive of their thoughts growing distracted and dreamy. A few were enjoying rather more active pleasures in the bedroom, a few were enduring a sleepless night for one reason or another, but the overall tone of the thoughts was calm and contented enough that Old Charles's jagged regrets stuck out like a splinter in a smooth wooden desk. *I'm sorry,* he said. *I know how difficult that sort of personal conversation is for you.*
And who would know better? I suppose you had some terribly good reason for leaving me, then.
*Honestly, I think you did better on your own than you would have done with my assistance. As I've mentioned...Alex and I really haven't talked in years.*
It really didn't surprise Charles that somewhere down the line he managed to fuck up his friendship with Alex. He considered himself lucky he hadn't done it that very afternoon. So instead of asking how he'd managed to estrange himself from Alex and what he could do in the future to avoid it, he said, Fine, whatever you say. All's well that ends well and all that. But, given that you and Alex are the only ones who've ever met Scott, I certainly hope you'll be willing to help us with him. Or isn't he talking to you either?
Old Charles fell into a mournful silence again before saying, *Of course I'll help. Scott and I were very close.*
Charles considered asking why he'd said "were" instead of "are," but decided it probably wasn't worth the effort. Excellent, he said. While I'm on the subject of Scott, do we help the boy control his power at some point? I certainly don't want to keep the boy's eyes taped shut, but it's going to be difficult for all of us to live here if he blasts the place to smithereens.
*Ah,* said Old Charles, sounding as professorial as Charles had ever heard him. *As you've witnessed with Alex, it's a difficult ability to control consciously. I believe in both cases the problem lies not with the brain, which has in fact developed strategies for keeping the blasts in check, but in the body, which has yet to develop the more specialized organs needed for more fine control. Where the body lacks, technology must step in--you'll find that ruby quartz, properly shaped, can prove both transparent and able to absorb Scott's blasts. In fact, later we're able to build a visor allowing him to shoot blasts of various strengths--very useful in combat situations.*
Combat situations. Really. Charles had a sneaking suspicion Old Charles wasn't simply talking about the Army. I see, he said.
*But to be honest, I'm not sure whether technology has yet advanced to that point. I know Hank's a genius, but he's certainly not the only one having revolutionary ideas around this time, and I wouldn't want to rob anyone else of their achievements by giving you technological breakthroughs before they're meant to be discovered.*
Of course not, said Charles, who was beginning to get a headache from all this. There was a flask of bourbon in his desk drawer for just such situations, but he felt oddly self-conscious about drinking from it with Old Charles still hanging about.
*I've probably interfered with scientific progress enough for one day,* Old Charles mused. *It's difficult to say what Hank will make of the knowledge that psychic energy can be sent back in time. His focus for the near future might be you and the telepathic energy, but the man's a genius--the implications for time travel are going to catch his attention sooner or later.*
Charles was a man of science, true enough, but having already rhapsodized about the theoretical possibilities for three fucking hours with Hank, and that on top of his headache, he was in no frame of mind to sit through Old Charles's lectures for much longer. So, when you're not talking to me, do you just sit in my head and eavesdrop on all my conversations?
*Well, it's not as if I have much else to do,* said Old Charles, sounding vaguely piqued at the subject change. *Try as I might, I seem to have no access to my telepathy in this form.*
Charles tried to imagine such a thing and failed. Lord, that would be a far greater loss than that of his legs. It was with all the sympathy he could muster that he said, I'm sorry. I suppose--without your physical body--
*Yes, yes,* Old Charles interrupted testily. *And I suppose I should consider myself lucky that get the sort of second-hand version of it from you that I do.*
How does that work, exactly?
*I suppose it's like the difference between watching Richard III on stage and watching Laurence Olivier playing it in the films. It's not at all the same.* He sent Charles another of his funny afterimage-impressions, of weird overheard thoughts and feelings, like a thick pane of glass between Old Charles and the world. Of course, in this case, the glass was actually Charles.
I suppose if you don't like it, you could always go to the afterlife. I'm certainly not keeping you here.
That seemed to jolt Old Charles out of his sour grapes. *I beg your pardon,* he said. *I don't mean to complain.*
Of course he did, which wasn't to say that Charles blamed him. I'd complain, too, he said, feeling guilty for his snide remark.
*Believe me, if I knew some way out of your head, I'd take it, and damn the consequences. I've the most terrible fear that I'll do more harm than good, telling you what's to come.*
Bit late to regret it now, seeing as how I'm about to become the proud foster father of a six-year old who shoots energy beams out of his eyes, Charles pointed out. So come on. What else? Any other children who need rescuing, wrongs that need righting, that sort of thing?
Resigned amusement flooded Charles's mind. *I'll see what I can do.*
Part 2