Edie Lehnsherr worries consistently about her son Erik.
It’s not his fault really, just a mother’s concern for her child. Erik is polite, intelligent, empathetic. He’s also mature for a twelve year old, mature enough to understand the dangers of his condition, to not show off in front of others. No, it’s not his abilities that worry her as such, his magic as she affectionately calls it.
Erik just isn’t overly friendly.
It sounds like nothing when she thinks about it plainly like that. It just weighs on her, the way he never invites anyone round after school, the way his teachers pull her aside at parent-teacher night and explain that they think Erik might be a little lonely. How, they tell her, he spends his breaks alone on the playground. She asked him about it once. I prefer being alone, he said, and that was that.
She still worries though. That’s what mothers do.
Not that Charles Xavier would know, mind you.
Sharon Xavier had stopped paying attention to her son a while ago, long enough that he doesn’t expect any different anymore. He’s also gotten used to his stepbrother’s berating and constant verbal abuse. It doesn’t upset him too much; he knows Cain has his own problems and Charles is just an easy target to channel his aggression. So he takes it on the chin, as his father used to say.
He misses his dad sometimes.
Still, life goes on. This arrangement of just keeping out the way works well. Until it doesn’t.
Charles is in his bedroom, quite content with a book in his lap. Five On A Treasure Island he’s reading, with his legs tucked underneath him and a blanket round his shoulders. It’s cosy in his little bundle, quiet.
He feels the first strike.
The unexpected force makes him drop the book, which hits the floor with a slap. He can feel it on his cheek, except that no one hit him, he knows no one touched him. He’s still alone in his bedroom.
Charles realises as the second blow comes, in the gut this time. The attacker is taking his sweet time, enjoying it, he reckons. That attacker being his stepfather, beating Cain in the room above him. The force of the pain, the fear of the older boy, had spilled over in its intensity and Charles had unwittingly caught on. He can almost see it now, the face of Kurt Marko leering above him.
His mutation turned up a year ago, when he was nine, and he’s by no means close to mastery of it. He doesn’t know how to just shut himself out of something so intense, so palpable. His only choice is to sit through it.
An hour later and Charles has managed to calm enough to settle back into his book, his eyes rubbed dry of tears and his pounding heart lessened to an ignorable drumming. He can ignore them, just about. He knows what Kurt’s eating in the kitchen, sure, but mostly it’s quiet again.
A buzzing in his head gets louder, gradually at first and then faster and faster. Charles wishes he understood better, a lot of the things he gets from other people he doesn’t know how to interpret. Because everyone feels differently: this buzzing, which he reads as anger once Cain opens the bedroom door and approaches him menacingly, is nothing like something he’d feel himself.
Then again, Charles has never had much of a temper.
Edie wasn’t expecting Erik to bring home a friend tonight, and she certainly wasn’t expecting the clearly younger boy who is now standing uncertainly in her hallway as her son hangs up their coats.
He has a sweet look about him, she decides as she watches him, his blue eyes wandering interestedly around the foreign setting.
“Mama, this is my friend Charles,” Erik says, nodding towards the dark haired boy brightly before leading him upstairs to his bedroom. Edie goes back to her sewing, pleased at this sudden development, when Erik appears beside her mere minutes after departing to his room.
“Where’s your little friend?”
“Still upstairs.” Erik sits down next to her, inhaling deeply. He looks up and her grey eyes meet his. She’s always secretly loved his eyes, how they’re so alike hers. She’s proud to have Erik as hers. “Mama, Charles got hurt yesterday.”
“What do you mean? Is he alright?”
“His wrist is all banged up and his face is bruised a little. His stepbrother did it,” Erik explains quietly. “Do we have anything cold to put on his arm?”
Edie gets up and rummages in the freezer for something suitable. “Are you sure his wrist isn’t sprained, schatz? He doesn’t need the hospital, does he?”
“He doesn’t want anyone to know about it, he’s scared they’ll find out and make things worse. He’ll be upset with me for telling you, but I was worried about him.” Edie hands him a small packet of frozen peas and shuts the freezer, turning back around and putting an arm around her son.
“Erik, how would he know you’ve told me? I won’t tell anyone, if it’s important to you I don’t.”
“He’s like me, Mama.” Erik’s eyes brighten as he says it. “He can read minds, and talk with them.”
Charles doesn’t look at his arm properly until break, tucked in the back corner of the concrete playground, finally working up the nerve to tug his sleeve up and examine himself. The skin is tinged an ugly purple, the faint outline of a closed fist still visible. It hurts him when he tries to gently move it in circles.
He doesn’t exactly know why it makes him cry, it doesn’t hurt that bad. He’s a little too young, at ten, to understand what’s really upset him: the fact that the mirage of home being a safe place has been shattered abruptly, all in one awful night.
“Are you alright?”
“Go away please.”
Charles’ eyes widen as he realises what he just did. Bracing himself, he turns and sees a taller boy standing behind him, his reddish brown hair settled in waves on his head, his grey eyes wide with shock and… and excitement.
Charles might be better at reading people than he originally thought.
“Don’t be scared, I won’t tell anyone,” the older boy says slowly, letting a smile fall easily onto his face. “I’m like you.”
“A mutant. You’re a mutant?”
“I’ve never heard anyone call it that before, but yes, sure, I’m a mutant too. Now why are you upset?”
The shorter boy doesn’t answer him, keeping his eyes directed at the concrete, but Erik notices the hand tugging unconsciously at the left sleeve. Erik moves forward, slowly, giving him plenty of time to tell him to stop, but he doesn’t.
“Charles Xavier.” Erik stops in his tracks a little, a grin spreading across his face as he realises the boy answered his question before he’d even asked it. “You’re Erik Lehnsherr.”
“I am,” Erik says with a small nod, now close enough to touch Charles’ arm gingerly. “How old are you?” He asks, keeping his movements light and slow as he takes hold of Charles’ hand and slowly rolls up the sleeve.
“Ten.” Charles doesn’t meet his eyes, gaze fixed on Erik’s hands, but he doesn’t pull away or tell him to stop. Erik wonders if he can mind control people as well as read them.
“I think so. I’m scared to try it though, I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“That’s nice of you.” Erik has full view of the bruising now. He looks up and sees another smaller one on Charles’ cheekbone. “Do you want me to go get something for those?”
“No.” Charles winces as he responds too quickly, too forcefully, to seem natural. “No thank you.”
Erik knows, he knows something’s wrong but at the same time he doesn’t want to push it. He sits down beside where Charles quickly settled himself, pulling out of his bag the crumpled piece of paper he’d started drawing on yesterday. And so they sit, the two of them, Erik leant over his drawing and Charles with his head in a book about genetic engineering. They stay like that for a while, and somewhere along Erik, not lifting his head nor moving his eyes from the page, speaks quietly.
“You can talk to me about it, if you want. Or about anything you like.”
“I’m sorry I told her about it, I just didn’t know what else to do.”
Charles has been quiet since Erik returned with the frozen peas, and Erik could just tell that he knew. Still, he hadn’t resisted when Erik had applied the makeshift cold compress himself, holding it firmly on Charles’ skinny arm.
“It’s alright. She really did mean it when she said she’d keep it secret.” Erik beams at that, happy his mother is someone he can trust. Well, he always knew that, but Charles knows now too.
They relapse into silence, quite a bit more comfortable than the first time, until the soft voice returns to Erik’s head. “It’s nice of you. To care.”
“You’re my friend, of course I care,” Erik says, the response coming with such ease as if they’d never known any different. He notices Charles’ cheeks redden a little, the start of a grin forming at the corners of his mouth. “That is, if you want to be my friend.”
“That’d be nice,” Charles says, the sound of his voice outside, in Erik’s bedroom, catching Erik pleasantly by surprise.
When Edie goes upstairs to bring Erik a glass of water before bed, she finds him cross legged on his bed, flicking through a book she hasn’t seen before, something about genetics. He doesn’t raise his head until the sound of the glass on his side table notifys him of her presence, and when he does she can’t help but smile. He’s glowing.
“Is Charles going to be alright at his house?” Edie asks, sitting beside him on the bed. She’d only met him that afternoon, but she already houses great care, and consequently concern, for the strange little boy Erik has befriended.
“He’ll be alright. He’s good at knowing how to be with them,” Erik says, his tone shifting to accomodate the more serious topic. “I told him he can come here any time he likes, that’s okay, right?”
“Yes schatz, that’s fine. The less time he spends in that house the better, I should think.”
They say goodnight and after a kiss on the head she leaves him, closing the door behind her. Oh, how grateful she was that her Erik wouldn’t always be on his own anymore. Charles hadn’t spoken much at all during dinner but she got the feeling he was a nice boy, and Erik has already told her how clever he is. And he’s like Erik, he’s different. They are the same.
Edie Lehnsherr doesn’t worry about her son Erik quite so much anymore.