Do I Look Like Him?

Before he was ever introduced to the bottle, he was first introduced to restrains. An extensive list of dos and don'ts were things he heard before any lullaby was sung to him. The shackles of his prison only grew tighter as he aged. He had to learn to dance before he ever learnt to crawl, to sing before he ever cooed, but, most importantly, he had to know how to keep a secret.

Secrets stretched in large strings across his life, so many stories omitted from friends, so many feelings bottled away. Quickly, he had been caught in a web of his own lies, cuffed to it, glued there, despite the desperate struggle to be freed, to make meaningful connections, to tell someone what was truly going on.

He could read people's thoughts before his powers ever manifested. He had to, in order to survive. As a toddler, he could tell by the weight of a footstep just how the person was feeling, before they even came into the room. He could tell by where their eyes wandered exactly what they were here for. He could tell by the amount of hesitancy exactly what they were going to do to him.

You don't need to be special to be of use to Brian Xavier. All you needed to be was a warm body, willing and able to follow directions. And Charles followed them like gospel, every word that man said, Charles clung to and heeded it - he was always his father's favourite. His one and only, the child that survived and would keep on surviving. Father must have thought Charles immortal.

Mentors don't die, no matter how many bullets you shoot at them. If they died, who would take care of the children? Therefore, mentors cannot die.

Before Charles was truly ready to be released from the hospital, he went back home to the mansion, with his three remaining students. Everything had been harder - one doesn't realise how much they rely on their legs until that feature is taken from them. Getting to the mansion was easy, all he had to do was sit in the passenger's seat of the car while Moira drove, but the second they were parked, he became aware of his situation.

For the next few days, he needed to rely heavily on his students to get around, especially considering his own room was on the forsaken second floor. Hank promised to incorporate elevators into the school, and Charles assured them he could survive a few weeks or months sleeping on the couch in his study.

As everyone had begun falling asleep in their own rooms, Charles had trouble adjusting to the couch. It was uncomfortable and cramped, and the only thing he could see when he opened his eyes was the edge of his father's portrait poking behind thick books on the top shelf.

Before the seven of them migrated to Charles' estate, the study actually belonged to his father, who would spend more time there than outside. Raven always wondered what was so interesting in the study, but Charles didn't have the heart to tell her. He was taught not to. In truth, all that was interesting in his father's study were papers, books and binders. And the bottom drawer of his desk.

Charles wondered if it was still locked, if the contents were still there. As silently as he could muster, he transferred himself onto his wheelchair and rolled on squeaky wheels over to the desk. By now, most of its surface was covered in Charles' personal belongings, those of his father being locked away in one of the boxes under the shelves. He needed to find a better hiding place for them, he couldn't risk anyone actually finding the contents.

For now, though, he leaned down and tugged at the bottom drawer, which came loose and slid open after the second attempt. It was obvious no one had been using it in the past fifteen years. He brushed the dust away, his hand freezing in the air as his eyes were met with metal - the gun. Briefly, Charles wondered if Erik ever felt that gun, if he was ever going to ask him about it.

With a trembling hand, Charles pushed the drawer closed and returned to the couch, pulling the blanket to his chin and shutting his eyes tightly. He needed sleep, for he had to spend most of tomorrow hooked up to Cerebro. Using Cerebro felt like a bullet exploding inside his head, a feeling he was a bit too familiar with.

≿━━━━༺❀༻━━━━≾

"Your mind is extraordinary, Charlie." his father praised, his eyes glued to his funny screen, "You're quite smarter than kids your age, your memory is perfect." he turned around and smiled at the eight-year-old, "I bet you remember every detail of every day."

Charles did, in fact, remember everything. He was too young to know why, but information stuck to him like glue, and no amount of heat or water could peel it off. He still remembered the way nobody seemed to care when he said his first words, the way nobody held his hand as he stood up for the first time, or the way nobody comforted him after he got a boo-boo the very next second.

"Is the imaging broken?" His father came over to readjust the electrodes on Charles' head, still looking back at his screen, "How strange, your brain is processing speech in a silent room..."

Silent room? Charles had almost forgotten what that sounded like. No room he has entered in the last two months had been silent. After his father's research had become more extreme and experimental, Charles was unable to hear silence.

The truth was, Charles had lost his mind, developed auditory hallucinations that never stopped, even at night. He hadn't been able to sleep at all in the first week, unable to sleep through an entire night for two months straight. He was beginning to think the lack of sleep would eventually cause his body to shut down and die.

The voices were horrible and there were so many of them. For the most part, he couldn't make out what they were saying, overwhelmed by constant murmurs and whispers, but, from time to time, he could make out a word or two, sometimes an entire sentence. But none of it made sense to him. Sometimes, the bad voices would sound like his parents and that made him upset.

"Def--ctive--"

His father turned to him with a deep sigh, grabbing a cup of water and a glass container. He dropped a blue pill into Charles' cupped hand, watching the screen as the child swallowed it. For a moment, the voices quieted, but Charles knew they would be back in an hour.

"How peculiar. Let's draw some blood, son."

"Off the tree, please, thank you." Charles called out as he wheeled past all the children playing in the vast school garden. Hank and Alex believed the best Charles could do for himself is to keep himself occupied doing something he loved - teaching. So, they opened up the school gates to any and all mutants, adults and children of all ages.

At first, Charles was in agreeance, but he soon found himself overwhelmed with all the hopeful eyes searching for guidance from him. He believed he had a lot to offer, but he also knew things would be much easier had Erik and Raven stayed. Without them, Charles was left with no equal, no one for him to turn to other than a brick wall or an open wasteland. The pressure to not fail and the lack of support if he did terrified him. He was able to lead the X-Men to Cuba, why was he unable to lead children to math class?

"Professor?" a young girl walked up to him, her hands cupped nervously as she stared at him, her mouth opening and closing, debating whether she should ask. She took a deep inhale after some telepathic encouragement and let all of her words out in one breath, "Can we do another round of training, please?"

Charles offered her a warm smile, extending his hand out to her, "Of course, Rogue. Let's go to the danger room, first."

She refused to take his hand, despite knowing she'd be holding it soon enough. Rogue was a special student in his eyes, a student in need of every class and then some. With the ability to have the power of anyone in school, she often lurked around everyone's training time, noting how everyone's powers worked. But, when it came time for her training, not a single person would volunteer to help - no one, except for Charles.

At first, both Hank and Alex were vehemently against it, Sean not really caring all that much (Charles liked to think he trusted him, as he always repeated), but the truth is, no one could stop him. On top of being a telepathic mind-controller, he was the professor, the headmaster, his word was final, always. And if that meant Rogue had to sometimes dash upstairs to find Dr. McCoy in order to save Prof. Xavier from a seizure, then so be it.

The two of them snuck into the danger room undetected, which gave them more time to train, free from the "if you're not out in ten minutes, I'm breaking down the door" threats. The reason it was so easy for Charles to aid Rogue was simple - he was always in control. For now, at least. He can give her as much or as little of his powers as he wanted, and he could always force her to let go if needed. She trusted him because of that fact, she could relax, knowing he was taking care of everything.

He offered his hand again and Rogue took it, tracing his larger palm with a gloved finger, "You have really soft hands, professor."

"Do I?" Charles answered with a light chuckle.

"I don't want to go outside, this time." she sighed, tracing up his wrist now, "Can I just stay in your head today? It's quiet there."

"Of course."

This training was just for control, after all, making sure she got the hang of her own powers, so she knew how much she could take and how long she can hold on before having to let go. He couldn't possibly teach her how to use every single mutation on the planet, so he didn't bother, and that included his telepathy. The point of the training wasn't for her to successfully use borrowed powers, after all.

She slowly took off her gloves, her hand floating above his as she hesitated, then slowly lowered and grabbed onto him, both of them letting out a surprised gasp. He opened his mind and handed it to her on a silver platter, but also wrapped shields around her, confining her to the four walls of the danger room.

Shackles, handcuffs, chains, prison bars, leather straps, electric fences, bolted bunker doors - these were all things he knew the look of, the feel of, and was comfortable with. He shackled his mind, handcuffing it to his own head, chaining it to his brain, bolting doors around himself in order to protect those on the outside. His freedom was unattainable, when it would encroach on the freedom of others. Regretfully, this is the way he had to deal with Rogue now, strapping her to his own mind and refusing to let her go.

She had asked for this.

I never asked for any of this.

He meant to let go of Rogue's hand, he really did, but her grip was fierce and unmovable. There was something so powerful behind the grasp she had over his hand, his mind, he almost didn't want to let her go - didn't want to let her let him go. She clung to his mind like a lifeline, and he could feel her subconsciously barking orders at him. Don't let go. She was overpowering him.

"Professor?" Alex's voice was muffled by the locked doors, "Are you in there? Someone said they saw you go in."

He wanted to answer, to turn his head and unlock the door, let Alex in and hope he could fix whatever mistake Charles had made along the way, but he couldn't. His body wouldn't move, unless it was to convulse, a warm red substance running down his nose. How was she overpowering him?

A moment of silence passed and Charles was afraid Alex had left, but a beam of light soon flashed into the room, blasting the door down with it. Charles could faintly hear Alex screaming his name, wrapping his jacket around Rogue and trying to pull her off him. His head spun around, he could almost taste the blood in his mouth, and it all dawned on him when he saw Rogue's frightened face.

He let her overpower him.

He was letting her kill him.

"I'm thinking of a number between one and ten." his father sang, hooking more EEG electrodes to Charles' head.

"Five." Charles muttered, his eyes glued to the floor.

"That's right. Now..."

Brian walked over to the radio on his desk, dialling a channel that was something other than white noise. Once he was satisfied, he turned the dial all the way up, the music was almost unbearable, Charles could barely hear him after that.

"What's your mother thinking of?" he yelled over the music, then began reading his paper out loud, while his right hand rattled a children's tambourine, meaning to cause as much chaos as he could, thinking it would break Charles' concentration.

Thinking foolishly.

"She wants bell peppers for supper." he answered, twirling his hair.

His father turned the radio off, allowing Charles a moment of external silence. Then, he reached for his devices, and the eleven-year-old knew exactly what was going to happen next. The pain came before the shock, his head swung back and his eyes screw shut, his little nails digging tracks into the wooden chair.

His father leaned closer, "I'm thinking of a number between one and one hundred."

When asked "what do you wanna be when you grow up?" Charles had always answered the same - a teacher. He wants to find children who struggle the most in school, whose teachers had already given up on them, and he wants to give them hope, show them they aren't unmanageable or a lost-cause. He wants to tuck them under his wing and teach them with gentle words and encouragements. He wants to teach them with kindness.

He wished he was taught with kindness.

"Seventy-four." he managed to yell out, the pain slowly subsiding was his only reward.

"Very good. Tonight, at the gala, you will meet a Mr. Thomas. I need you to tell me what number he's thinking of, at all times."

When he awoke from his dream, or, rather, memory, an unimpressed Hank stared directly at him, blocking the lights with his face.

Charles smiled, pretending he wasn't caught red-handed, "Am I that lovely when I sleep?"

"Don't turn this on me." Hank warned, not as easily flushed as Erik, which Charles found most ironic, "What happened in there?"

Charles tried to sit up, but Hank was shamelessly body-blocking him, "I miscalculated, let her hold on for a bit longer than I should have. Won't happen again."

"Suspiciously simple." Hank narrowed his eyes at him, "When Alex brought you to me, you were seizing. Charles, you do realise that multiple consecutive seizures can cause lasting brain damage?"

"Hank." Charles began with a playful pout, but quickly turned his tone to a more serious warning, "Get off me."

Hank stood up, allowing the telepath to sit finally, but still refused to wheel his wheelchair over, "You promise it won't happen again?"

"If only one of you would take my place now and then..." he complained quietly, but ended up nodding, rubbing his eyes, "I promise. And the reason your equation doesn't make sense is because you wrote a minus instead of a plus when carrying over."

He returned Hank's deflated pout with a sheepish grin.

≿━━━━༺❀༻━━━━≾

War came, as it always does, and carried the children and adults with it. Alex and Sean went, while Hank was spared, courtesy of a pair of glasses and one disabled Charles Xavier, who had also, for obvious reasons, been spared. Two people were not enough to run a school, but Charles desperately tried to run a shelter, a place mutants could live in, so they wouldn't have to face the harshness of the outside world, but even that plan failed once all of the children left, as well, brought back home by their mothers or simply vanished on their own.

That left merely the two of them, alone, in a house much too large for them.

With just a singular mind to latch onto, Charles found it harder to control his powers. It sounded strange, less minds should mean less work, but, in truth, it was the complete opposite. Charles read minds the way others read faces, or gestures, his telepathy wasn't an on-and-off thing like Raven's shapeshifting, more akin to breathing, a constant flow of thoughts and emotions, from the minds of others right into his, being processed there and gliding right back to where they came from. Minds were like air molecules, the more there are, the easier it was to breathe.

Now, all Charles could do was suffocate.

Without meaning to, he inhaled all of Hank, greedy for a breath of fresh air, he read him too deeply, wiggled into every nook and cranny of his vast mind, taking in thoughts that weren't his to keep, seeing memories he had no business knowing about. Hank hadn't noticed - he knew Charles was in his head, as he always was, but he was unaware of the depth he was swimming in.

During the day, Charles was sober enough to keep his mind as far away from Hank's as he could, preferred self-isolation over inflicting pain. It was night-time he was mostly worried about. For better access, Hank's room had moved closer to Charles', despite the new elevators. When he pressed his face into his pillow and closed his eyes to sleep, he dreamt strange scenes.

He was a child in class and all children were staring at him. He didn't know why, but his gut was telling him he should know. He tried to cower behind his textbooks, ducking his head behind the pages every time the teacher asked for a volunteer. Suddenly, she pointed a finger straight at him, all eyes glued to his frail form.

"Come up and solve this equation. Go on." she called out to him.

Charles walked up to the board and reached out to grab the chalk from her hand, but noticed quite quickly that there was something wrong with the back of his hand - it was blue, and furry.

His eyes quickly shot open as he scrambled to build his psychic shields back up. Asleep, Charles' mind subconsciously reached out for air, trying its best to not choke on the lack of oxygen. He knew he couldn't stay there, so he relocated himself back into his study, occupying the uncomfortable couch, once again.

He fluffed his pillow and threw it on the armrest, unfolding his blanket and laying it across the couch, but a glint in the corner caught his eye before he could transfer himself onto it. Swallowing a lump in his throat, he wheeled over to the desk, fingers tracing fine wood - an expensive desk, made of pure mahogany, elegant carvings around the edges. He made his way around to the back, his eyes catching a glimpse of papers peering out of an overfilled shoebox.

His hand instinctively reached for the bottom drawer, fingers gripping the knob, too afraid to pull it open. The drawer contained memories, omens, a form of salvation, but, most importantly, it contained the path he was on, one he had been following for a long time without realising it. Now that he is deeper down the path, he can finally recognise it.

"I thought you were going fishing with dad." Raven asked, her voice far too light, too innocent for the storm that was brewing inside the house.

"There's a storm coming." he had said to her, his eyes downcast, staring at one of her dolls that he held in his hand, whose hair he had been braiding for the past ten minutes.

He remembered that blonde doll, he had bought it for her with his own allowance, spending the entire dollar on her. He never once regretted his decision, especially seeing how happy it made his sister. They were playing house, Raven wanting to play the father and shoving the mother doll into Charles' hands before he could protest.

"What's taking so long, woman?!" Raven bobbed her doll around, putting on a weird accent and deepening her voice, "We'll be late for the show!"

She was laughing, so Charles tried his best to match her energy, even when all he wanted to do was sit in a corner and cry, "You can't rush beauty, Rob." he finally tied the rubber band around the doll's hair, flopping down on his stomach and pushed her over to Raven's doll, "Will you get the-" Suddenly, he sat back up, his head snapping to the door like a startled meerkat, "-car..."

"What's wrong?" Raven had asked, slowly sitting up to be in eye-level with him.

Charles' eyes dashed side to side, slowly lowering as his mind raced to piece the puzzle together. Something dark was unfolding in their house, a sort of smothering shadow covering the halls, creeping up the stairs until it reached Charles' heart and made its bed there, laying on top it with so much pressure, Charles thought his heart would burst.

Still too young to understand, yet too mature to feign ignorance, he had no choice but to stand, ignoring Raven entirely. He walked down the steps with heavy feet, until the doors of his father's study came into view. He pushed them open, agitating the darkness, an echoing thud sounded around the room, until his father kicked the bottom drawer shut, putting on a brave face even he knew was worthless around his telepathic son.

"Charlie, what are you doing here?"

The truth was, Charles didn't know why he had come down here. The eerie shadow was encapsulating his father entirely, making him almost unseeable in the black mist. His father was upset, that was obvious, but there was more to it, his unhappiness ran far deeper and deadlier that that, yet Charles, with all his telepathy, couldn't divine what was to come.

He put on a brave face, the same one he gave Raven every day, and extended his hand forwards, "Let's play."

His father looked upon him with shock, before his expression softened into that of understanding. With a nod, he took Charles' hand and brought him into the study. "Alright, Charlie, let's play, one last time. Okay?"

Charles opened the drawer and saw his reflection staring back at him from the metal of a silent gun. He took it into his hands again and lifted it towards the window, to look at it in the moonlight. Slowly, he turned the gun to stare down its barrel, his breath coming out in cold puffs. He wondered if it was still warm inside, if it still smelled of gunpowder and blood.

He turned it away, pulled back the rack and noticed an extra bullet still in its chamber. With a heavy heart, the dumped all the bullets out of the gun, taking out the magazine, as well. Accompanied by a low thud, he dropped the gun back in its drawer, closing it and swearing to never open it again.

He should have seen it coming. He saw it coming. He saw it coming, but did nothing to stop it. Why? Was he trying to break free? There were a million different ways he could have done that. He was a telepath, he could have made his father forget he was a mutant. He should have made his father forget he was depressed.

Could he have done that? Make people forget an emotion so deeply ingrained in their psyche, that it began seeping into their personality and everyday life? Could he make his father forget he was deeply unhappy? Could he have, then, made Erik forget he was tortured? Would they still have both pulled the trigger?

He was in his room when it happened, roleplaying an alien invasion with Raven (really, the imagination of this girl...) and just before the alien laid its nasty eggs in his brain, he heard the gunshot. He felt the barrel of the gun press against his temple before that. He felt the bullet pierce his brain before he ever heard it. Felt the heat explode in his head before anyone knew what was happening.

The world went quiet after that, his ears ringing along with his mind, unable to hear a single thought other than piercing static. Through a thick haze, he remembered covering his ears and rolling onto his side. If he concentrated hard enough, he could recall screaming, but he didn't remember the sound his voice made. Raven's hands were on him, as if he were the one who had been shot.

And maybe he was. It sure felt like it.

Everything moved in slow motion, even Raven's frantic yelling and pooling tears fell like feathers against gravity. He blinked once, regaining a sense of self he had unexpectedly lost. He stood, ignoring the way Raven pulled him to sit back down, not stopping even when she accidentally pulled his jacket off by the sleeve.

The stairs seemed endless in that moment, spiralling downwards, straight into hell itself, so he took it a step at a time, wondering for a moment if the fiery gates would await him at the bottom. When he did eventually make it there, he wished it were the gates that he saw.

Instead, his father's study was wide open. His mother was outside, on the phone, crying and yelling, but he could not hear her. His eyes were focused ahead, paying no mind to anything else. He stepped closer, until he was at the doorway, his hand gripping the frame so tightly, he was sure still left dents to this day.

His father's body didn't even have the grace to fall to the floor. Instead, his upper half bent across the desk, as the rest of him sat comfortably in his grand chair. The gun was still in his hand, dipped in a pool of blood, its own creation. He couldn't see his father's face, but he knew he, too, was drowning in that same blood.

Something in him snapped, as he fell to his knees. The doors slammed shut and locked as tears streamed down his face in waves, yet he never let out a sound. Ever since the first experiment, he had bound himself to his father's mind, and now that he was gone, Charles felt like a part of him had gone with.

He spent fifteen minutes in his father's study, no one bothered them - he didn't let them. He would have spent days there, but he was growing weaker by the second, the pain splitting his head open like a nut. His head fell, along with his powers, hanging low, as two police officers barged into the room. One hauled him up and carried him away, while the other checked on his father.

Raven had, by then, turned into a maid, just so she could have the privilege of being the one they handed Charles to. She took him aside and kept talking, but he didn't hear a thing. He just stared at her with a blank look on his face, until she gave up and just held him close.

Today, she doesn't remember that. Or, rather, she remembers it differently. They had both ran to the study, but the doors were locked and they couldn't get inside. They huddled together until the cops came, then cried in each other's arms like the children they were. It was necessary to change her memories, for the expression she saw on Charles' face that day was so traumatising, he wished he could erase it from his own mind.

He finally picked up the shoebox in the corner and placed it on his lap. He would hide it in plain sight, somewhere nobody would ever bother to look - in Hank's lab. He would shove it so far down one of the shelves, even he would one day forget about it.

That night, he slept with a pillow over his head, too afraid of the truth - he had started binding himself to Hank's mind, as he did with his fathers, he was too terrified to even think what that would do to him in the end.

≿━━━━༺❀༻━━━━≾

"Hey... Charles?" a low hum above his head awoke him from his fleeting slumber. The pillow had slid off by now, covering the top of his head instead of his ears. The morning was still young, the sun shining golden hues into the cold study, basking it in warmth. When the couch dipped, he opened his eyes to a worried Hank. "You weren't in your room. Did you sleep here?"

He let out a sleepy moan, turning his head away, allowing himself a moment of silence to bring his shields around his mind once more, "I came down for a glass of water. Didn't feel like going back up."

Lying was as simple as walking had once been, having done it most of his life. He lied to his parents, he lied to Raven, and to all of his students, including Erik. Lying was much simpler than disturbing the beast of his childhood.

But Hank hadn't looked convinced, "You should have woken me up. The whole point of me moving closer to you was so I can help."

"Wake you up at three in the morning over some water? Don't be silly, Hank." Charles waved him off.

For a while, Hank remained silent. Charles hoped he had moved past the subject, and would soon get up and retreat to his laboratory or something. But the weight on the couch never went away, so Charles looked at Hank once more, "What is it?"

"I had a weird dream last night."

The blood in his veins ran cold the second Hank's mouth moved. Terrified, he wondered if he had implanted a memory into the other's mind by accident, like a traumatised child spilling everything into a sympathetic ear. Slowly, he sat up, holding himself up with his elbows. Hank's lips pursed childishly.

"You're good at interpreting dreams, right? I'm convinced my subconscious mind is trying to tell me something." He wiggled, getting comfortable on Charles' couch, resting his arm against the back, the two of them intertwined on all levels, "Remember how I told you I started working on a new batch of serum, specifically for you?" when Charles nodded, Hank continued, "I dreamt I finished it, and then I gave it to you. But you didn't like it. Am I trying to tell myself I've made a mistake with the formula?"

Charles swallowed, knowing where this was going, "I didn't like it?"

Hank nodded, "You didn't even want it. I don't remember what I said, most of the dream's kinda fuzzy at this point, but I remember it somehow convinced you to try it. I gave it to you and you made a strange face. Like you were crying or were gonna throw up. I guess it made you sick."

As expected, what Hank had seen was not a dream, but a fragmented piece of Charles' memories. Thankfully, the mind is at constant war with reality, supplying Hank with false puzzle pieces to reconstruct the missing moments. It saw a syringe and concluded it to be Hank's serum. But, for him to have seen the entire scene play out from his father's perspective meant horrid news for Charles.

It was as he predicted, his telepathy was replacing the gaps where his father had once been with Hank, pushing the role into his head, even returning stolen memories to where it thought they belonged. Being connected to his father meant seeing things from his eyes for the most part, it became especially true whenever Charles' mind was placed under too much strain, too much pain. It ran away, seeking shelter from those in power. He wondered if he would slowly start seeing things from Hank's perspective soon.

He reached out, his fingers dangling mere inches away from Hank's temple, "May I?"

Hank nodded and leaned into his touch, eyes fluttering closed to allow Charles to do what he needed to. The children loved this trick of his, but the teachers only used it for especially disturbing dreams. Dreams are a gift from your subconscious mind into your conscious head, a way the two world communicated. For that reason, Charles is able to interpret dreams with full accuracy. Sometimes, they'd have scary dreams because they've watched a scary movie the night before, but other times, it would be a warning to themselves, that their heart had sensed something bad was on its way. Charles could break through the barrier between the subconscious and conscious, finding the true meaning of each dream.

Instead of reading Hank's mind, however, he stealthily built brick walls around it, instead. He couldn't always be there to hold his own walls up, but the walls he built around others stayed up, for the most part. He built walls so thick, he could barely hear Hank's thoughts at all, only stopping once solely the surface thoughts were available. Gingerly, he pulled back.

"Hank, I do believe your serum is already finished. You were telling yourself not to overdo it."

"Charlie, I'd like you to meet Cain. He's the son of a good friend of mine."

Thirteen-year-old Charles had waved his hand, a polite smile on his face, "Hello, Cain, I'm Charles."

Cain was an older boy, sixteen and thoroughly uninterested in playing with children like Charles. His father had joined them for dinner, so now they were forced to interact. Charles didn't like the Markos very much, all their thoughts were dark and heavy, aggressive and unfriendly, but he needed to step into the role of a gold-star son for his father.

"Weirdo." Cain rolled his eyes and sat down on Brian's couch, putting his feet up on the table.

His father stepped closer, leaning down to whisper in Charles' ear, "I'd like you to tell Cain to put his feet down."

Charles never opened his mouth, he knew his father wasn't talking about a polite request. No, he wanted Charles to control Cain, that was the only purpose of his visit down in the study, to test Charles' limits again. Being controlled by Charles both felt incredibly nauseating and also interfered with data collection, so he would occasionally bring 'friends' for Charles to 'play' with. Charles hated these exercises.

At first he refused, but Brian took him by the wrist and squeezed tightly, threatening him with severe punishment if he didn't comply. With a tear building up at the corner of his eye, he watched at Cain slid his feet off the table with a loud thud.

"Good." praised his father, "Now make him stand, Charlie."

Charles shook his head, turning away from Cain, "No." He tried playing the coy game, wrapping his arms around his father's waist and nuzzling against his shirt, but he only pushed him away, repeating the command.

He did it, justifying it by telling himself these commands weren't hurting anyone.

But then his father whispered against his ear again, "Do you know the words to I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire? I want you to make him sing it."

Charles trembled, hoping he could lie, say the task was too hard, he couldn't do it, but his father knew better, knew he could but refused to. He held back his tears, fists curling tighter against his pant leg, as he looked back at Cain, who stared at him with a blank expression, entirely void of his own sense of self.

With a shaky breath, Charles squeezed his eyes shut, a tear finally gliding down his cheek. Cain opened his mouth and began to sing, "I don't want to set the world on fire... I just want to start a flame in your heart..."

Cain sang beautifully while Charles was controlling him, he knew the boy sang horribly on his own. It felt painful, listening to, essentially, his own singing voice coming out through a filter of someone else's vocal chords. Charles liked to sing, he'd sing to Raven every night to help her sleep - but now, he wondered if he would ever be able to sing a single note without crumbling to pieces over the guilt he was feeling right now.

"In my heart, I have but one desire..." Cain's eyes lifted from Charles up to Brian, an expression of grief on his face, "Please don't make me do this."

Brian's eyes widened, glancing between Cain and Charles, he took out his clipboard and frantically wrote something down, "Charlie, you're progressing rather rapidly! This is incredible. You're not just giving them orders like a dog, you're actually inside their head. I wonder..."

Cain fell backwards into the couch, once Charles had read his father's mind. His eyes were closed, and Charles was shaking his head rapidly, begging his father with his eyes to drop the idea. He knew he had angered his father by doing that, but he didn't care. It didn't matter what the punishment was, forcing a human being to act as his puppet was punishment enough.

"Ready?" Hank had asked, his eyes glued to Charles as his fingers pressed into his skin.

"Just get on with it, quickly, please." Charles squeezed his eyes shut, to embarrassed to even look.

"I don't want to hurt you..." Hank pouted, his hand moving to Charles' elbow.

"For God's sake, Hank, just put it in." Charles opened his eyes to stare at Hank now, one millisecond away from calling the whole thing off.

With practiced expertise, Hank pressed the cold needle into Charles' arm, shooting the serum into his vein with precision. They were in a familiar environment for this test shot, huddled in Charles' study, with Charles perched on the desk for easier access. He could tell Hank still worried about him getting sick from the serum.

For twelve years, Charles had never known silence. For four of those twelve, he had believed he had gone mad. He still sometimes painfully wondered if he was losing his mind, not because of his telepathy, but despite it. Twelve years of his life suddenly erased, as, for the first time, he heard nothing.

Nothing.

Then he heard everything. The heavy beating of Hank's heart, accompanied by a matching set of panicked breaths. Birds chirping outside, the grandfather clock ticking wildly in the hallway, the buzz of a nearby lamp, shuffling of paper under trembling hands. He wasn't sure if he could hear himself think, or if that was an illusion. It was all too loud, why was the air itself making noise?!

Then he felt everything. A yelp escaped his lips, as his hand shot to his lower back, which was searing with sudden pain, shooting up his spine and straight into his brain, a pain so blinding, he might as well have passed out. It was too much, too overwhelming, every sense sent into overdrive, hyperaware of his own body and surroundings, dizzy and disoriented.

Slowly, the pain subsided, replaced by a tingling sensation where there had previously been none. His entire body quivered, including his legs, which Hank had seen as a good sign. Charles couldn't focus on his legs, not with his mind splitting his head open, trying to unlock a hidden gate, break free from invisible shackles. He knew this feeling all too well.

When a twelve-year-old's powers were acting out, the logical step any parent would take is to throw him into a bunker made to withstand an atomic bomb. With Charles, screeching and trashing around, Brian had to drag him to the bunker, push him in and lock him up. Charles was having a massive temper tantrum inside, banging on the walls and screaming to be let out. His entire family were masterfully ignoring him.

Charles hated the bunker. Not only was it entirely isolating, cold and dark inside, but it also had a strange way of confining his powers into a small room. He had yet to learn to control them, causing his telepathy to lash out at unexpected times, giving everyone in the house a massive headache. The maids were instructed to pay no mind to him when he was down there, and Raven never came for him since she was simply glad the migraine was over. She thought he was getting a healthy time-out session. She thought wrong.

He only stopped banging on the door once his palms had gone red and bruised, and his voice went hoarse from yelling. Sliding down the wall, he curled his knees to his chest and pouted, rubbing his tearful eyes. He had began to make peace with his powers, even began enjoying them rather than fearing them. He had grown so comfortable, in fact, that the mere idea of losing his powers made him have panic attacks.

And that was exactly how he ended up in this mess. His father had approached him with his experimental drug, a blue serum inside a glass needle, and, for the first time in his life, Charles had outright refused it. He ran away, making his father chase him around the house like a child, wiggling and covering his arms the second he was caught. He knew that liquid meant bad news, always dulling his powers, and he would be damned if he let it happen again.

Thus, Brian had opted for the next best thing - locking Charles in the telepath-proof bunker. He would most likely spend the night there, as he usually did. He yelled one more time, once with his voice and once more with his mind, but it only bounced around in his head, with nowhere to go.

He tried reaching Raven, but found he couldn't. Both his parents were also out of commission, even the maids were entirely silent. He closed his eyes and decided to sing to himself.

"Mama may have... Papa may have..." he hummed silently, fingers combing through his hair in self-soothing motions, "But God bless the child that's got his own..."

A tap to the top of his head, that certainly didn't come from his hand, woke him from his notion. He looked up, cheeks stained with tears, and saw a strange man leaning over him, eyes as blue as the sky, smile as warm as the sun. The stranger extended his hand, which Charles took easily, standing up with him.

"Hello, Charlie." the man spoke with a gentle voice, "What's gotten you so sad, chap?"

Charles wiped his tears, never breaking eye-contact with the stranger. He felt safe with him, knew, on some level, that this man would protect him, has been protecting him for years, and will forever be his safe haven, probably his only safe haven. He trusted this man, even though he might not know him, because he looked familiar. He stood in a light sweater vest, baby blue suit jacket and matching pants, even his shoes were dressy. He spoke with a sweet British accent, so he must not be from around here. Although, thinking about it, the only person who spoke with an American accent in this house had always been Raven...

"How did you get in, professor?" the word came out of his mouth before it had registered in his mind, it simply sounded right, it fit the man, and, somewhere in that head of him, he knew it to be true.

The professor chuckled, a smile so beautiful, Charles wondered how lovely his life must be, "No doors can keep me from you, dear. I'm always by your side, right..." he tapped Charles' forehead, "...here."

Charles remained silent for a moment, taking the professor's mellow hand in his, stepping closer, "Would you play with me, professor?"

The professor sighed, patting the child on the head, "Not this time, I'm afraid. I'm here to teach you something."

"What something?"

"You can make that door open, Charlie. Do you want me to show you how?"

Charles' eyes lit up with hope, a large smile spreading across his face, mirroring the stranger's, "Oh, yes, please, professor!"

"Close your eyes." the professor guided him. He was in his mind, and Charles in his. He could feel himself squeeze in-between narrow openings on the side of the door, travelling freely throughout the house, until he reached one of the maids. He tugged her skirt gently, leading her down to the bunker, where she wordlessly opened the door for him.

The professor and Charles ran out as soon as the lamplight flooded into the bunker, the two of them running until they reached the grassy garden. Charles laughed as he rolled in the grass, the professor looking out for him every step of the way. They played tag, the professor walking in slow strides to allow him victory. The professor even pushed him on his favourite swing.

For the first time in his life, Charles was having fun, carefree and childish fun, knowing there was an adult there that cherished him and took care of him. He wished the day would never end. But, when he turned around to ask the professor to push his swing higher, the man was nowhere to be found.

Instead, he could see his father approaching him from afar, and he tensed up immediately, no longer feeling safe, forced back into his far-too-mature state of soldier/caregiver/lab rat. In the end, his father had given him the serum, leaving Charles alone in the study to sob over the loss of his powers.

Now, he was without them once more, but instead of feeling sorrow, he felt liberated. No more will he have to listen to the people in the city crying and yelling, the intense feelings of depression, aggression, hatred, loneliness, hopelessness were no longer his to bear. He would never have to listen to Hank's indecisiveness whether to stay or leave like the rest of them. He had miraculously crawled his way out of the pit of despair.

Things fell into place rather quickly. With Hank helping him through his physical therapy, he was out of his wheelchair in no time, up and about, reexploring the house, going to rooms he previously had no access to, spending more time outside in the grass that would have once tangled between his wheels.

He joined Hank on jogs, but the beast insisted on running at Charles' speed instead of his own, which made his usual jog more of a quick stroll, with Charles still out of shape and needing to sit down after every half lap. Charles wanted to kiss the marvellous hands that created such a divine blessing.

With Charles lying on the grass, panting heavily, Hank decided to do one last lap around the house with full speed, which meant he re-joined Charles in the matter of seconds, flopping down in the grass with him. Hank's serum was wearing off, Charles could tell by the blueish discolouration on his skin, even his arm hair had turned blue. Charles giggled, imagining Hank's fur turning green from the grass, like an overexcited dog rolling around in a freshly mowed lawn.

"What?" Hank asked, smiling, "Is there something on my face?"

Charles shook his head, rolling onto his side to get a better look, "Thank you. For making this possible for me again. I love running with you."

Hank smiled wider, his slowly sharpening teeth poking out, "Me too! I just wish it didn't mess with your powers. Still working on that, I promise."

With a sigh, he returned to the grass, closing his eyes against the harsh sun, "I wouldn't waste my time if I were you. Besides, I'll admit, I sleep much better now, on the serum. I might even enjoy being powerless."

Hank's smile dropped, a conflicted look on his face, "Are you sure? What about mutant and proud?"

Charles chuckled, "That was always Raven's line, I'm afraid. I'm all for pride, but there are limits."

"How could there be limits? Shouldn't we all strive to live as our authentic selves?"

How ironic, coming from someone like Hank, who had created an entire serum solely for the purpose of hiding his true self. At least when Charles did it, it was an unexpected by-product, not the point itself. The more time Charles spent away from his telepathy, the less he wanted it back. He would be entirely content if Hank never found a fix. In fact, he would have been the happiest if he was never born with this God forsaken mutant X gene.

"You wouldn't understand." was all he said, hoping Hank would drop the subject entirely.

"Then try me." Hank said, instead, visibly trying not to turn in the middle of a sentence, "I've studied you all closely, I've designed suits that enhance everyone's specific abilities, I built Cerebro! That should count for something, at least."

Charles looked at him, searching his eyes for the answer. Could he truly confide in Hank? Could he make him the first ever person whom he told the truth to? Would it be right to dump something like that onto his shoulders? Would it change the way Hank sees him?

Shuddering, he looked away, scouring his mind for a believable lie, "It's just... People aren't particularly fond of telepath. That's all."

To his surprise, Hank took the bait, "Yeah, I guess I know what you mean. I think I've basically heard everyone tell you to get out of their heads at least once."

He hated that sentence to his core, wanted to materialise it and crush it under his boot, stomp on it and burn it in the fireplace. He understood that people cherished privacy, but he had hoped that his own people, at least, would understand the need to use his mutation and the pain associated with suppressing it. He feared only a fellow telepath like Emma Frost could even begin to comprehend his pain.

But also- "How come you've never asked that?"

Hank shrugged, "I embarrass myself with my own words and actions, I doubt there's anything left up there that can shock you." he fidgeted under Charles' relentless stare, "And, I guess, I dunno, I got used to it. It's... comforting, having you in my head. Or, at least, feeling you in there. You'll laugh at me..."

"I most certainly will not." Charles protested, sitting up. It was strange, the only person who never once minded Charles' telepathy, had, in fact, marvelled at it, overcome with joy once he had realised his machine could even enhance it, was Hank, the person who specifically talked about wanting to be human, who created drugs to take away powers.

Hank sighed, "I don't know, I guess, since you're always there, I don't feel as scared. Like, if I were in the lab and something went wrong, you'd know and you'd help me. Before you, if something went wrong... I could die. It's like a God looking down on His creations, but you're not gonna punish me with eternal flames. Ugh..." he covered his face in embarrassment, "See? My mouth is worse than my brain."

Charles smiled, lying down closer to his friend, "Thank you, Hank. I'll... try to remember that."

Hank stood up, his cheeks burning red, "I need to go... Y'know, big, blue and furry..." and left to go inject more of his own serum.

≿━━━━༺❀༻━━━━≾

Despite his new ability to walk, Charles still sometimes slept in the study. On story nights, when the framed picture of Raven became too haunting to ignore, or the smell of Erik's cologne that still lingered on his leftover clothes became too overwhelming, Charles would retreat down into the study, curling up on the couch like a bruised child. Sometimes, when even the echo of his father's footsteps became too loud, he could cower in the corner like a houseplant, waking up with the sun, making sure the other inhabitant was none the wiser of his worrying antics.

One such day came tonight. With a harsh bang of thunder outside, Charles had awoken from his nightmare about sandy beaches covered in blood, a soulless marionette holding his head above water, as nine pairs of eyes burnt holes into the back of his head. He sat up with a start, clutching the sheets before he realised they were far from being Erik's arms holding him, more akin a spiderweb, tangling his legs and impossible to push off.

He breathed heavily. Ever since he had gone on the serum, his dreams became more... creative. In the way everyone else's were. But Charles wasn't anyone else, his dreams had always simply been recollections of past memories, exactly in the way they had happened, for all barriers of his mind were broken with telepathy, finding no need to send messages through dreams. Now that those barriers were back up, it manifested as dreams where Erik never left, where he had held Charles all the way to the hospital, petting his hair as he was coming off the anaesthesia.

With a groan, he got out of bed, shoving his feet into his slippers and trudged his way over to the centre table, where a game of chess sat, halfway played, eternally frozen in time, its winner yet to be apparent. It was mocking him, taunting him to play, to make the final move that would knock over the white king once and for good, but Charles couldn't bring himself to do it. Instead, he picked the black turtleneck off one of the chairs, inhaling its scent secretively.

It still smelled of Erik, even after all these years, the signature metallic scent invading his nostrils, jogging back loving memories of nineteen sixty-two, the year is all went to Heaven, then consequently went straight to Hell. He shivered, the cold winter's weather too much for his light pyjamas. Selfishly, he pulled the sweater over his head, finding warmth in a pretend embrace, knowing the real thing was never to be his again.

He hid in his study again, intending to sleep on the couch, but he noticed that a recent earthquake had nudged his father's picture a smidgen out of place, where now, not only was the frame visible, one could see the beginnings of a face forming behind papers. He dragged a chair over to the shelving, yanking the picture out from under the pile. Now he stood on the height of the chair, far too tall and far too grand for the smallness he felt, staring at his father's portrait, too terrified to let it go or put it away.

He turned it, placing it on the wall instead, where one of the nails had become increasingly lovely with the lack of picture frames. Staring at it, he wondered, if his father could see him now, would he be proud or disappointed? A word quickly popped into his head to supply an answer - fascinated. The things Charles could do, the things he had been holding back on, pretending not to be able to do, the things he'd secretly use his powers for, and the lengths he'd push them to. His father would most likely have wanted to perform more tests, jot down more notes, push him past his limits and then some.

Staring straight at him now, Charles saw his own face reflecting in the glass of the frame, overlaid on his father, blending into him like two peas in a pod. He was his father's mirror image. He had pushed those kids too far, forced them to use their powers for war, manipulated their desires to be someone, achieve something. He gave them power they could only ever dream of, precision, strength, new abilities they'd never even knew possible. Countless exercises, trial runs, experiments... He was gentle, never harming a single one of them, but the fact is, he had done just as his father would have.

That night, he curled up in the corner again, covering his face with a blanket, hoping to hide away from Brian's piercing stare.

≿━━━━༺❀༻━━━━≾

As soon as he was able to walk, father had taken him by the hand and lead him to his study. He gave Charles special toys to play with, that he could never take out of the room. The needles were shiny and the liquid in them swished around like the ocean, but Charles soon learnt that pretty things hurt the most.

His father would inject him with different concoctions, all with varying side effects, and wrote down everything that happened. One time, he gave Charles a dose of something, which, if he had to guess as an adult, he presumed were psychedelic drugs. Charles had mixed feelings about those experiments.

On one hand, he had lost all sense of self, and what little control over his powers he had, leading to panic attacks and paranoia, until he was crying in the corner, cowering in fear of everything. On the other hand, he lost all sense of self and control of his powers - that made it easier for him to disassociate from his life, pretending like all this hell had been happening to someone else, someone Charles could barely recognise.

That was how he felt when combining Hank's serum with a generous amount of brandy. The serum took his powers and returned a tingling feeling to his body, while the brandy took just enough of the edge off, that allowed Charles to spread out on his couch, his mind flying away into new highs - with no mention of Erik nor Raven to get him down.

It had been seven years since he last saw them. Passing time all the way to nineteen sixty-nine had been a hellish ride, going from missing them dearly to hoping to never see them again. If they had shown up at his doorsteps, depending on the day, they'd be flipping a coin whether he allowed them to stay or kicked them off his property. Now, he didn't even think about them.

He closed his eyes and drifted, past the rooms, past the house, going all the way into the woods in the back, hiding between the trees. Sometimes, he wished he were a dog, sleeping on laps and only waking up to eat and play. He'd gladly become a dog, if he hadn't had that one hungry mouth to feed.

A few months after the situation with Cain, his father beckoned him into his car, promising a father-son road trip, but Charles was far too experienced to believe him. He knew his father was taking him to a hospital. He had given Charles a fair dose of the numbing medication, to the point where he could only read the utmost surface thoughts. In an hour, the effects would wear off, but Charles was still nervous.

They drove in complete silence, with Charles dozing off in the passenger seat. The medicine was making him drowsy, the lack of telepathy numbing his senses, lulling him to sleep, a place where all his troubles would be forgotten. Once the car had parked, however, he was ushered into a room in the ICU, where an old gentleman lay asleep in bed.

Only, there was something strange about this man. Although Charles could clearly see his chest rising and falling, he'd be ready to declare this man dead. He didn't dream, didn't even think, nor stir, simply lying there in eerie silence.

"This is Mr. Jacobs." his father explained, "He has, unfortunately, been in a coma for the past three years. The doctors have given up, they say he'll never wake up." he turned to Charles with a smile, placing his hand on the boy's shoulder, "But we can wake him up, can't we?"

This sounded suspiciously kind, Charles had to wonder if there was a catch. Was this man evil? A criminal? Was he a nazi, hiding in America? Charles couldn't tell, he had no way of knowing, the man's mind was void of any information. Could he even bring back someone with no mind to latch onto? How could he wake him up, if the man was braindead?

"I can't do that..." he whispered, "I can't... There's no mind for me to touch."

His father squeezed his shoulder, "Then try harder."

Charles let out a sigh, biting his lip in concentration. He placed two fingers to Jacobs' temple, rummaging through his head in search of anything, a piece of a memory, a fragment of a thought, anything. No matter how deeply he looked, this man's mind had long since abandoned his body, probably floating somewhere in the astral plane.

He couldn't look for him there, Charles had yet to learn how to come and go from the astral plane as he pleased. It was a mysterious place, a sort of comforting nothingness, a space that changes for its recipient, a place Charles could hide in through the worst of days. The astral plane was a heaven to the mind, there was no pain, no grief, only an immense sense of serenity.

He shook his head, pulling back, "I really can't, there really is nothing there for me, I swear it."

Strangely, his father seemed understanding, trusting, "Alright, son. Then, don't wake his mind up. Wake his body up." He positioned a terrified Charles into a nearby chair, squatting down next to him, "Do you think you can do to him what you did to Cain? Use his body like your own?"

"Please, don't make me do this..." Charles begged, trying to get away, "Please, I can't... Please, father."

"Shh, it's alright. Just five minutes, Charlie. Take over his body for five minutes, then we can go home and pretend none of this had happened. He won't know the difference, you said it yourself."

It would have been so easy to decline, to step into his father's mind, instead, and drag the two of them back home, erase his memories and pretend this never happened, that none of it did. But, it wasn't so easy when you were in Charles' shoes - this was his father, his idol, his superior in every way. He craved his validation more than anything else, even if he had to suffer for it.

He nodded, closing his eyes and letting his mind slip back into the limp body. He stretched himself throughout all the man's muscles, flowing through his nerves, until his soul had occupied every inch of his body. Then, as expected, the man's eyes fluttered open.

The first thing he saw was his father smiling down at him. No, he was smiling at the old man, knowing it was Charles looking at him. Slowly, the old man sat up, eyes lowering to inspect his wrinkly hands. Charles had never done this before. Yes, he had manipulated minds, but those were only commands, inputs that resulted in predictable outputs, all he had to do was plant the idea into someone's head.

But this was entirely different. This was Charles, stripped of his own body, putting on the flesh of another as one would a winter coat. He wore this person like a garment, claiming his skin as his own, twisting and bending it as if they were his own bones. It made him feel sick to his stomach. It made him feel powerful, and that, in turn, petrified him.

"I want to go home. Please." the old man said, pulling the covers closer to his chest.

"In a minute." Brian answered, noting something down in his book, "Charlie, I'd like you to put your right arm up."

The old man complied, holding a shaky hand above his shoulder. His father shook his head disapprovingly.

"No, I want Charlie to do it."

The old man closed his eyes, ready to transfer his mind back into the correct body. His father coughed, growing angrier.

"No, I want Jacobs to lift his left arm up at the same time as Charlie lifts his right."

Defeated, Charles did as he was told, straining to split his mind into two bodies, forcing both of them to bend to his will at the same time. It was exercises like these where Charles felt depersonalised.

What made a human a person? Was Charles the mind or the flesh? Was Charles a string of neurons or a web of veins and arteries? Was Charles the brain? Was Charles' mind separate from his physical brain? Was Charles a concept, intangible and invisible, or was Charles an item, skin and bone? If Charles was the mind, then would he still be Charles if he was transferred into a new body? And if Charles was the body, would taking away his mind make him nobody?

If Charles was the one in a coma, what would that make him?

"Good boy, Charlie." his father praised, "Now, let's go home, I have sweets waiting for you."

Back in Cuba, when Charles had seized control over Shaw's body, who had he been? If he was still Charles, then why did the coin pierce his head all the same, and why did it hurt just as much as the real one would have? If he was Shaw, then who was Charles, slamming fists into plane windows and begging Erik to reconsider? If Charles was both, then who else was Charles? Was Charles the entire world? Where does Charles end and others begin? Where stood the line between what is considered Charles and what is considered Not-Charles?

Which one of them had truly died that day?

A lifetime ago, on his eighteenth birthday, he had taken Raven out to a pub in Oxford to celebrate. It had been five years since his biological father's death, four years since his mother remarried to Kurt, and six months since he and Raven had ran away from home to live in Oxford. He was finally a free man, and the sad thing was - he didn't know how to cope with his newfound freedom.

So, he implemented strict house rules and codes of conduct, for both himself and his sister. Curfews, meal times, allowance, bedtime... It drove her mad, and it drove him mad that he had no one left to control him. He was stunted, socially underdeveloped, unable to support himself, but he put on a front for her, pretending he knew exactly what he was doing, pretending to be capable of supporting her.

On the tram ride back to their apartment, a very drunk Charles had begun to doze off, resting his head on his sister's shoulder. She hadn't minded, giving him a free pass to anything since he was the birthday boy. He would later blame it on the alcohol, but he started having a nightmare. Or, more accurately, a recollection.

He was strapped to a chair, electrodes glued to his forehead, as his father prepared a blank page for his next experiments. He had been interested in the way Charles' telepathy reacted to shock therapy, each voltage yielding vastly different results. He decided to document each one of them.

With every increasingly stronger zap, Charles' body would convulse harder, unable to scream, unable to move, unable to think. And, with each new pulse, Brian would mark down the symptoms. They passed the threshold for blood, which was now freely running down Charles' nose and ears. As minutes flew past, he lost focus, the room began to spin like a merry-go-round, until his eyes rolled back and he began seizing.

The next few crucial seconds, he only recalled from Brian's eyes. Seeing his son like that, stopping the experiment immediately, rushing to his aid. Charles could still feel the shock of the defibrillator against his frail body. He remembered he had flatlined. He remembered his father telling him that he had been dead for seven minutes, before he miraculously came back to life.

He had been dead. He remembered being in the astral plane. He didn't remember how he came back.

He woke up with a start, only to find Raven had also fallen asleep, her head resting against the window. He tried to calm his breathing, but the tram was packed full with a variety of thoughts and emotions, people thinking about dinner, others about their loneliness, one girl thought about her break-up, another about her embarrassing prom night... It was all too much, he couldn't block them out, he couldn't focus for long enough to make it all go away.

He was hyperventilating, his hands shook like leaves in the wind, his vision had began to blur. He squeezed his eyes and inhaled deeply, but, when he opened them, he was no longer in the tram.

He awoke to a cottage, with a beautiful view of a lake, his body snug against a rocking chair, sitting peacefully on the porch, admiring the body of water. It felt peaceful, it felt quiet - he knew exactly where he was.

The professor sat next to him, his features looking more familiar with each day, "Breathe. You're safe here, you know that."

"I was twelve the last time I saw you." Charles answered, turning to look at him, "Why am I seeing you? Am I going mad?"

The professor laughed at him, "You wouldn't be asking that if it were true. The mind is a marvellous thing - it will not hesitate to give birth to what it needs. If there are holes in your memory, your mind will fill them in with fantasy. If your environment is too complicated to understand, it will alter your perception. No one plays tricks on you quite like your mind."

"I created you?" Charles asked.

The first time he had met the professor, he looked about mid-twenties. Now, when Charles looked at him, he could have sworn he resembled forties better. Perhaps even the professor was growing old, a lot more rapidly than himself.

"You needed a protector." he answered, a sad smile on his lips, "Someone to take care of you, shield you. Children find those people in their parents, siblings, friends... Unfortunately, the only person who could fill that role for you..."

"Was myself." Charles finished with a sigh, "You brought me to the astral plane? Why?"

"Because you're losing focus, Charles." the professor explained, "You're a big boy, you can't allow yourself to lose control of your powers anymore. You need to block them all out. Or take their pain and carry it like a badge of honour."

Charles shook his head, "I can't, for so many minds, I'd need the situation, the fear."

"No, the fear is not enough. Not anymore."

The professor stood up, taking his hand and guiding him to the lake, where they dipped their toes in, surprised to find the water warm.

"True focus lies somewhere between rage and serenity. Tell me, Charles, where is your rage?"

Charles closed his eyes, listening to the birds singing, the water splashing against rocks, the waves carrying fallen leaves. He never had rage, not purely. He had always manifested his anger into fear, when he was younger, or kindness, when he got older. But, beneath all the exterior, beneath all those layers of pride, was a child so angry, cheated out of a childhood, misunderstood and underappreciated. His rage lie within the confines of the Xavier estate in Westchester.

"Where is your serenity?"

That question was easy - his serenity was here, in the astral plane, the only place in existence where he didn't need to pretend to be someone he was not, a place he needn't bear the weight of the world, nor the pain of his own life. This was the only place he felt at true peace.

"Where is your middle?"

That question was wrong.

"Who is your middle?"

Raven. Raven had always been there, through both thick and thin, in both the estate and the serene moments they shared in their apartment in Oxford. Raven brought him a joyful future, but she also reminded him of his painful past. Most importantly, she carried love in her heart for him. Raven was his point between rage and serenity.

"Now you understand."

"Charles? Wake up, this is us." her voice brought him back into his body, nudging him awake. From that day forwards, using all of his telepathy to its fullest potential became the easiest thing for him to do.

≿━━━━༺❀༻━━━━≾

Somewhere in the middle of nineteen seventy, Charles had descended back into the study, holding a gun to his own head. It had looked so easy when his father had done it - make up your mind one day and shoot the next. Charles had made up his mind, but his finger was unwilling to pull the trigger.

He stood in the silent study, with only the sound of the clicking of clock hands as they slowly made their way towards half past six. The cool metal against his temple relieved some of the fever that had broken out. The grip still felt warm, the imprints of Charles' father still on the leather surface. He had made it look so easy.

He closed his eyes, letting the light of the setting sun wash over him, holding him in its warm embrace, beckoning him to come, feel the string of the flames of Hell. He had a special place there. With shaky hands, he finally pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

His eyes, rimmed red with tears, shot open, as he let out a breath he had been holding. Moron. He lowered the gun and fiddled with it, noticing its magazine was entirely empty. His eyes lowered back to the drawer in defeat, noticing the bullets scattered around inside. He sat down on the chair, mechanically placing each bullet back in its place, making sure the gun was actually loaded this time.

But, before he could bring it back up to his head, a knock at his door made him drop it. A familiar scene, Hank must have felt a storm coming the same way Charles had, opening the door to catch him in the act. Unlike Charles, however, Hank didn't seem to notice anything off. A coincidence, then.

Blood rushed to his ears, muffling Hank's speech, as his mind raced back to the last few moments he had spent with his father, how gruelling it had been, finding him dead in his study. He realised then that he couldn't subject Hank to the same pain, or anyone for that matter.

"Hey, you forgot your dose today." Hank informed him, holding up the syringe, but Charles had long since reverted back to a more familiar memory, his mind trying to pretend this wasn't his new reality.

He had long since been freed, hadn't he? His father had died and he left his family to go to college, take control back over his life. And he had done it, hadn't he? He got his doctorate, he became a professor, life was going his way. He was happy, content.

Then, how come to was happening all over again? How come he was going through the same routines, same experiments, same dread, feeling of emptiness? How come, after all he had accomplished, he was still the very same boy who wanted to curl up in a corner and cry?

The only possible explanation was simple - he had never left.

Oxford, the CIA, Erik, Cuba... They were all in the astral plane. It must have been the last experiment, the one Charles initiated the day his father attempted to kill himself for the first time, that propelled his mind into a state of madness, finally snapping, unwilling to return to his body, face the truth. But, if he knew none of it was real, he would surely wake up, so he needed to make it believable.

And, oh, how believable was it. How foolish it was, to think he alone could take on the world, recruiting mutants and helping them unlock their powers. It all made sense now, those had always been his dreams, his desires, to become a teacher. In his fairy tale, he had actually managed to accomplish it.

But, now that he was aware of the truth, he woke up, back in his father's study, with the setting sun painting the walls red. His father stood above him with two needles in his hand, one with blue liquid and the other red. This was familiar, this was right, this had always been the reality. Charles grew up, but the experiments never stopped.

With a defeated sigh, he surrendered, holding his arm out in submission, "The blue one goes first."

"Sorry, what was that?" a very unfatherly voice broke the illusion.

He was back in his own study, and the person standing above him was Hank, yet again. His mind truly wasn't going to let this fantasy go - whatever was happening it the real world, it was enough to make Charles relinquish his sanity.

He shook his head with a smile, allowing himself the solace of his own made up world, freeing himself from the pain. They didn't need him in the real world, but he needed this, this delusion, it was the only thing keeping him alive. He would no longer fight his mind on this, but, instead, allow it to protect him.

"Nothing." he muttered, "Where were we?"

≿━━━━༺❀༻━━━━≾

Winter had come, once again. They were heading to an end, Charles could feel it, but with no end in sight, he couldn't decipher it. All he knew, now that the seventies had officially started, was that Hank and he were heading straight towards an end, a brick wall at the end of the road. He had no proof of this claim, but his foresight had yet to be proven wrong.

They were huddled up in Hank's lab, with Charles dozing off in one of the chairs, the sleeve of his sweater rolled up over his elbow. He had been dozing more frequently, the drugs and alcohol making him groggy. Hank didn't seem to mind, stating he only needed him to be mildly awake.

Hank was on the cusps of creating the grand serum, the serum of all serums, one that would allow Charles to eat his cake and have it, too, keep both his legs and his telepathy. Deep down, Charles dreaded this breakthrough - he had gotten so used to being surrounded by silence, he couldn't help but wonder if the crashing wave of minds would send him to his grave.

A sense of panic washed over him before he could even recognise where it come from. A scratching of pen against paper, notes being jotted down, eyes flickering from the notes to his face and then back down. He sat up in panic, staring at Hank, who wore a look of confusion from his outburst.

"What is it? Is the serum making you feel sick?" Hank asked, hand ready to note Charles' answer, which is precisely why Charles didn't want to answer.

"What are you doing?" he asked, voice small, barely any breath in him.

Hank shrugged, turning his clipboard to the professor, "Drawing comparisons. It's the easiest way for me to know what I got wrong, if something goes wrong. For instance, if you start having an allergic reaction, that could indicate a penicillin allergy. I'd just have to replace that with something else, and hopefully that would fix it."

Charles stood up, approaching Hank and slowly taking the offered clipboard from him. He stared at the text as he would a barrel of a gun. It was filled with dates and times, not just from today, but from every single instance Charles had ever taken a dose of the serum, that Hank was aware of. Right next to each timeframe was a small note, describing Charles' state of being.

Charles had no adverse reaction, it said right next to December 15th, 1972, at 10:07 A.M. It was methodical, medical, professional, scientific. It was experimental. Charles displaying a pale complexion, Charles presenting with an unregulated twitch in his right calf, Charles had a mild case of insomnia.

The more he read, the blurrier the lines became. He blinked back the blindness in his eyes, only to find he had been holding a completely different set of papers.

Subject X displayed an adverse reaction to the red pills. Moving back to the blue ones immediately.

Subject X presented with a fever of 39°C. Putting him in an ice bath helped.

Subject X had a moderate seizure, lasting for 5min 37s - no visible damage.

Subject X went into cardiac arrest. No pulse for 7min 13s. No lasting effects after resuscitation.

In a state of panic, Charles ripped the paper from the clipboard and crumpled it, shoving the rest away from himself. Hank stood up as the monitors began to beep, approaching Charles with the caution one would have when dealing with a frightened wolverine.

"Hey, it's okay!" Hank called out, entirely unprepared for this, never even considering one of the side effects to be a full-on panic attack, "It's alright. Charles, it's me, Hank. Do you know where you are?"

Breathing heavily, Charles could make out Hank's features against his blurry vision, forcing himself to calm down, "Hank? Oh, God, I am so sorry..."

"No, it's okay!" Hank reassured him, placing a comforting hand to his shoulder, "Are you alright? I'm sorry, I didn't think this could happen, but I think I know what caused it."

Charles rubbed his eyes, trying to calm his shaky hands, "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me..."

"It's fine, it's my fault." Hank argued, picking up the paper and straightening it as much as he could, "The serum was too strong, I'm so sorry. Symptoms: paranoia, disorientation, leading to a panic attack..." he muttered the last part to himself, but Charles managed to hear nevertheless.

Hank walked over to the shelves, taking out a few components he needed, as Charles sat back down and attempted to refocus himself. He took off the nodes connecting to him, and unclipped the pulse oximeter off his finger, when he suddenly remembered what was hidden behind the boxes in that very same corner Hank was in. He turned around to stop him, but was too late.

Hank held a box in his hands, inspecting its contents with furrowed brows, "What is this?" He opened one of the folders, eyes going wide when he saw the name and face attached to it. Wordlessly, he turned to Charles, who returned his stare with one of his own, on the brink of tears.

"What is this?" he repeated, stepping closer to Charles, who stepped back in tune, "Why didn't you ever tell me about this?"

Like a child, he turn away and ran, all the way up to his study, avoiding the confrontation altogether. He locked the doors behind himself and hid behind the desk, unable to face Hank ever again. He knew Hank was probably reading through all those files, as Charles cowered in his study. The façade he had carefully created was falling apart with each new word Hank read, all those years of hard work, maintaining an image of strength and wisdom, down the drain. Soon, Hank would know who Charles really was, and he would leave, knowing he could never trust Charles again, that he was incompetent and incapable of being a true leader.

Charles quickly reached for the gun and, without thinking, pulled the trigger.

When he awoke, he was in a swamp, knee-deep in muddy waters, the tall kelp tangling around his legs like restraints, keeping him from ever leaving. He tugged desperately, managing only to make it another step forward, until the seaweed pulled him back down, making him fall to his knees. The water was so cold, one could die just from the temperature. He was already beginning to shiver.

"Face it, professor, you were never in control." small voice broke through the silence, "You desperately wanted to regain control by taking on the responsibility of leader, regardless if you can take it or not. You're responsible for so many lives and it overwhelms you. You can't take it. You can't bear their pain without breaking."

Charles looked up to find his child self, sitting on a mossy dock, his feet barely splashing the water, all the way on the other side of the lake. Charles understood then, the reason he was stunted. It hadn't been because of his father. No, the only person ever holding himself back had been he. The only person who could ever hold him back had always been himself.

He was the reason all of this was happening.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked, his voice boomed against the waves, "Why can't you just let it all go? Move on? Why are you punishing me?"

The boy smiled, shaking his head, "Oh, professor, you still don't get it, even after all these years? I am you, and you are me. I'm not doing anything, you are punishing yourself. You're the one who can't move on, can't overcome your own obstacles."

Charles inhaled slowly, as the tides rose, engulfing him up to his shoulders. He was aware he would drown here, the end he was feeling must have been this. "Then why not let me die?"

The other person shrugged, "You're only still alive because you think you still have something to give. What's left? Haven't you given your everything?"

"Yes..."

"Then let it go, professor. You have nothing left to give. The only reason you're still here is because there's something keeping you in the world of man. Sever the tie, break free, there's nothing tethering you anymore."

Charles closed his eyes and allowed himself to fall limp, sinking beneath the water, all senses engulfed by its cold nothingness, until he was numb, as if he had never even existed. It was so easy, letting go, no wonder his father made it look so effortless. There was nothing keeping him here, he could drift away.

The abandoned swamp fell into a peaceful silence.

Charles splashed water everywhere as he emerged, gasping for breath as he shook under the chilly air, "No, I can't, I haven't given my all!"

The child looked furious, standing up on the edge of the dock, "What more is there to give?! Just die already!"

"No! Not while our people are still out there, being hunted down like animals!" Charles fought against the waves that were hitting him from all sides, "I have an obligation to them! I promised I'd keep them safe! I can't go, not until the war is over!"

"The war will never be over, professor!" he pointed, cheeks growing red with rage, "They will gather us all up and kill us! Even if only a fraction of the humans hate us, it's enough to wipe us all out. Because we can't fight back! If we do, all the humans will see us as the enemy! We either die on their terms or ours."

"Then let me die on theirs!" Charles screamed, plunging the swamp back into silence, as even the waves stilled. He looked back up at the child with a smile, his eyes finally open for the very first time, "I have faith that a better tomorrow can be achieved. Maybe not in my lifetime, but somewhere in the future. A hundred years from now, humans and mutants will live as one."

The boy sat back down with a pout, his eyes rimmed with tears, "You are a hopeful fool."

"And you are filled with rage, my friend."

"And you're filled with serenity." the child smirked, "You taught me that. Do you remember? The point between rage and serenity. That's where true power lies."

Charles mouth fell open in shock, although, looking back at it now, it shouldn't have come as a surprise, "This isn't a dream, is it? This is the astral plane."

The boy nodded, "Yes."

"Charlie..." the professor whispered, looking around, "What happened to this place?"

Charlie looked like he was about to start sobbing, face red and puffy, as a single tear ran down his face, "You were gone for so long, I... I thought I'd never see you again. I was so scared without you."

Slowly, Charles walked across the large body of water, feelings its temperature rise from icy cold to the comforting warmth he was used to. Behind him, the overgrown grass cut back down, the trees making room for the sun to shine on them once again. He saw the house behind Charlie reconstruct itself, fix its broken walls and clean the moss off them. Even the dock transformed back into its previous state, sturdy and tidy.

Once he reached him, he took the boy's hand and lead him back into the warm waters, "You don't need to be afraid anymore." he wrapped his arms around the child, holding him close as he wept, "In fact, you won't have to fear anything anymore. I am your guardian, and I swear to protect you."

"Professor..." Charlie hiccupped, as his frail body began disappearing, "Thank you, for teaching me how to be strong."

Charles shook his head, staying with him until he was entirely gone, blown away by the gentle breeze, "Thank you for teaching me how to be brave."

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself back at the lab, still wired up and lying on the chair. He inhaled deeply, rubbing his eyes. Hank noticed he had woken up, a guilty smile on his face. He pushed his glasses up and handed Charles a glass of water.

"Looks like this serum was a total fail." he chuckled nervously, "It's a good thing you slept through most of it."

Charles took the offered glass, swallowing each sip with the thirst of a corpse, "I apologise, how long was I asleep?"

"Well, it's..." Hank looked down at his wristwatch, "Ten fifteen now. You fell asleep at around nine thirty, I think."

One might think the entirety of today had been a dream, but Charles was privy to the truth now - time is an illusion. The panic in Hank's lab at ten-o-seven did happen, but, at the same time, Charles was sound asleep up until ten fifteen. Both of these things were true, the concept of linear time was simply false. Everything was happening all at once, we simply choose which reality we wish to live in.

"Why was the serum a fail?" Charles asked, still recovering from his nap.

"Well..." Hank poked Charles' legs. He felt nothing. Oh. "The point was to make a serum that lets you keep both your powers and your legs. I accidentally made the complete opposite happen..."

Charles laughed, shaking his head, "It'll wear off soon, yes?"

"Yes, in ten minutes. I made sure the experimental dose only lasted about an hour."

Charles smiled, "Then I'll wait it out. It's only ten minutes."

He didn't mind having time to kill - in fact, he was glad he did, because he had a remarkable child with telepathy that needed his teachings.