Bruce Wayne
Bruce Wayne’s first memories of Charles Xavier dated back all the way to his early childhood, to a time where his life was way different from what it was now.
He remembered bright eyes, a warm laugh, a gentle smile – an accent that reminded the young boy of Alfred. The man in the wheelchair had been present at plenty of events his parents had hosted throughout the years. He was an old friend of his father’s apparently – despite being quite a few years younger than him.
Unlike any other of Thomas Wayne’s friends however, the Professor had never been dismissive or belittling towards Bruce. On the contrary, he seemed to have something about his presence that had always made the boy feel seen and heard. There had not been a time he had visited without taking a moment to have a chat with him – a real one, not just polite pleasantries well-behaved children are expected to exchange with their parents’ visitors.
Countless times he had saved him from the boredom of carrying trays with refreshments through the crowds of guests at parties at Wayne manor by having him sit with him to talk about school or whatever the young Wayne was interested in at the time.
Bruce could vividly remember one time – he must have been around seven or eight years old – and it was at the annual Wayne Enterprises Christmas function, the Professor and him were sitting by the fireplace in the main parlor. The boy was always scared to get in trouble for neglecting the tasks his parents assigned him at those events, but seemingly no one would ever even look at them when he was with Professor Xavier. He loved talking to him. Not only was there something deeply mysterious and fascinating to the young boy that came with talking to a real professor – it was also the way the man appeared to always know exactly what Bruce wanted to talk about. It was the first adult that he had felt taken seriously by and like what he had to say was given some genuine thought instead of being dismissed as the ramblings of a child.
That particular day Bruce had asked him what exactly his job was as a professor. Xavier had given him a little smile as he replied: “I’m the head of a school out in Westchester. A very special school.” Bruce had looked at him then: “A special school? What makes it so special?” Xavier had chuckled: “Well for one it’s a boarding school which means–”, “It means that the students have to stay in school aaaall the time, they only get to go home during break and for holidays. My friend Richard goes to a boarding school in Switzerland, that’s all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, did you know that?” The professor had laughed and nodded at that. Bruce had then noticed that he had interrupted him – how rude – so he quickly added: “Anyway, you were saying ‘for one’ which means that there are other reasons for your school to be special, then what else makes it a special school, Professor?”
“You may call me Charles, please, you’re not my student.” he had thrown in before replying: “And it’s a special school because of the people there - it’s a school for special children.” “I’m a special child!” “You sure are, dear. What I mean to say is that all of the students – as well as the teachers for that matter – have a special gift. They are mutants.”
It had been the day that Bruce had learned what a mutant was. He had heard the word before, when he was sitting in the kitchen with Alfred and he was listening to the news on the radio, for example, or when he overheard a conversation between grown-ups – but he had never quite understood what they were talking about. That night by the fireplace the professor had explained to him that some people were born with a special gift – it could be a skill, a sense, or a physical trait, that others simply didn’t have and that those special children needed to learn how to control that gift and how to properly use it, and that that was what him and the other teachers at the professor’s school helped those kids with. He also explained that there were some people out there who didn’t like those mutants and who would accuse them of being dangerous and therefore wanted to harm them – and that that was the reason why the kids all lived together at the school so they could feel safe and protected.
Bruce had listened closely to everything the professor told him and when he was finished he quickly agreed to what Xavier had said about making the mutants feel safe in this world. “I believe –” he had exclaimed, smiling at the professor: “That it’s not what we look like or what our bodies give us that decides if we are good or evil. It’s how we treat each other.” Charles had looked at him with a fond expression and leaned over to ruffle Bruce’s dark curls: “You are absolutely right,” he had replied: “And you are indeed a very special child for being able to see what so many grown-ups still fail to see.” It had made Bruce’s chest feel warm with pride to hear him say that and when Alfred had picked him up and taken him to bed a little later, he had enthusiastically announced that the professor was forever his favorite of all the people his parents invited to their house.
That conversation dated back what felt like a lifetime by now. There had been more lighthearted ones of the kind throughout the following four years but then Bruce’s parents died and his life changed forever. While the rest of Thomas and Martha Wayne’s social circle abruptly disappeared out of their son's life after the funeral, Charles stayed. However, something about the way Bruce saw the professor changed that day after the service, when Charles sitting by himself dressed in all black appeared so weirdly natural to him: Despite never having noticed a particular melancholy about the man before he somehow seemed accustomed to mourning... A thought that sent a shiver down the boy’s spine.
Later that day, when Bruce could no longer bear with the looks and talk from the funeral guests, he fled to his father’s office. His eyes stung with tears that were threatening to roll down his face and now that he was alone he let them. He was tired, oh so tired, and all he wanted to do is roll up in his mother’s arms and cry himself to sleep but he would never again be able to do that. He shivered with heavy sobs as he sat underneath his father’s desk hoping it might shelter him from the unbearable feeling of being vulnerable, exposed, that had ridden him ever since that night in the alleyway.
He hadn’t been sitting like that for long when he was startled by a knock on the door. Quickly he got up and wiped the tears from his eyes with his sleeve – he didn’t want anyone to see he had been crying like a toddler, after all he was twelve years old. “Come in.” he said, desperately hoping his voice didn’t sound as weak and pathetic as it felt.
The door swung open and the professor entered the room. He gave Bruce a sympathetic little nod before raising his hands in a gesture of defeat: “Would you mind closing the door for me? It’s always a struggle, turning the chair around, closing the door, and so on.” The boy nodded and hurried towards the door, closing it while still sniffling a bit. “You know, Bruce, there is really no shame in crying.” The professor said calmly.
Bruce was still standing behind him from having closed the door, and he froze, staring at the back of the man’s – newly and still unusually – bald head.
“Of course there isn’t”, he replied hesitantly: “But I don’t see a particular point in it, either.” “You are aching, Bruce. And you have every right to be.”
Now the professor ended up turning around his wheelchair after all, looking at the boy distinctly. Despite the unbearable pain in his chest, he found the way Charles’ blue eyes didn’t break contact with his brown ones quite refreshing.
Throughout the entire process of losing his parents, no one had once looked at him like that, looked at him not with pity but with genuine understanding in his eyes - no one but perhaps Alfred, though his looks were always accompanied with a sense of helplessness these days.
“If you want me to cry then why are you even here? I can cry fairly well by myself.” he hadn't meant to snap at the professor – he was just so … full of anger – he couldn’t stand here and have a calm conversation like that while his parents laid in their graves riddled with bullets. It didn’t feel right.
“So you are ashamed.”, “Excuse me?”, “If you want me to leave so you can cry then I assume you are indeed at least a little bit ashamed of it. How so?” Bruce had no idea what to reply to that. He felt exposed – once again. The brooding anger rose in his chest with even more intensity than before. Who did the professor think he was to judge his way of dealing with this situation? What did he know about what this kind of pain felt like?
"Bruce, trust me, the anger you are experiencing right now is misleading. The rage is pain and grief in disguise. You might want to yell, to break something, even hurt someone perhaps, but this is not –", "What could you possibly tell me about what I am going through? How could you even begin to understand what I am feeling?! I am tired of all you grownups looming over me and telling me how to feel, what to do, how to act – you act like you know everything yet you know nothing. NOTHING!"
The tears were running down his face freely now as he was yelling at the professor, tired of holding back. The latter didn't react whatsoever, though. He wasn't fazed, or angry, or offended in anyway. He just sighed slightly and leaned back in his wheelchair, his head resting on his hand.
"I know a great deal more about what you're going through than you're acknowledging right now." His voice was calm but serious, his eyes didn't stray from the boy once. He continued: "But I understand that you don't want to talk to me at the moment, and I won't blame you for that. Just know that you are entitled to your grief and that you are not alone in this. This is something I wish someone had told me when I lost my parents so I'm telling it to you now."
Once again, Bruce had no idea what to say to this. It dawned on him that he had spoken mindlessly and that he actually had no idea what the Professor might know and what not. Involuntarily his mind went back to what he had thought earlier when he had first seen him after the service. Before he could make out anything to say that he deemed appropriate, the professor gave him a sympathetic smile and placed a warm hand on his shoulder.
"It is undeniable that this tragedy has irreversibly changed you but it is in your hands to choose the shape this change will assume." He raised his eyebrows at the boy as if to make him consider his words before rolling past him to open the door.
When he disappeared down the hall Bruce was almost certain that this was the last he had ever seen of the professor, and that it would be his fault if that assumption turned out to be correct.
However, it didn't. The professor's visits to Wayne manor didn't stop after the funeral. He would come to visit every once in a while, he would talk to Bruce a little – check up on him, ask how things were going – but mostly he would talk to Alfred. They would sit behind closed doors in the kitchen, their muffled voices behind old wooden doors being the only proof that Bruce wasn’t alone in the mansion.
He appreciated the professor's visits, especially for Alfred’s sake, however, something in him felt like he couldn’t quite talk to him the way he used to – shame perhaps.