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“Well, you’ll have to teach me those tricks some time,” Raven said as the cab pulled up. “Usually it takes me forever.”

Unless, of course, I’m wearing a mini skirt, her mind muttered, But the ones who only stop for legs are the kind that usually drive home with broken hands. Charles grinned at the thought; he very much enjoyed the spirited ones. Never a dull moment with women who didn’t suffer fools gladly.
 
"I'm not sure if it's something I could actually teach you," Charles replied.  "A good deal of evidence supports the idea that it's simply a gift one's born with."

Raven slid into the cab, moving over to the far side and allowing Charles to get in after her. He settled himself into the car and shut the door, giving the cabbie his address. There were thousands of questions bouncing around in Raven’s head, many of which were ones Charles wouldn’t mind asking her, himself; he could only get so much from her mind without digging deeper and using his power a bit more invasively.

“So is this the treatment all of the girls you pick up get,” Raven asked, her voice light and teasing. “Or just us special ones?”

She winked and Charles laughed. “My dear, I’ve never met someone nearly as special as you.”

“But you two want different things,” Lana pointed out, her confusion still obvious. “He hates humans, and you want to protect them. And the other things you disagree with. How can his mind be so great if you two fight so hard against each other?”

He could be accused of having a bit of a god complex; it was something he had to come to terms with when he was studying psychology and came across the term and found it ringing all too true. But never once had Charles wanted to save all humans. He, perhaps better than anyone else, knew the difference between good and evil in the human mind. Humans were petty, irrational, and prone to killing what they didn’t understand—but then, the same could be said for mutants. There was a reason Charles could never see them as too different to coexist.

But Erik didn’t hate humans, not entirely. It was more a righteous fury borne from past wrongs and the ever-present fear that those wrongs would occur again. With Erik, however, Charles feared there were blinders on him. That one day he would become so obsessed with mutant freedom that he would enact those old wrongs onto humans. And if that ever did come to pass, Erik wouldn’t even recognize it for what it was because he would be the one in power.

“There is so much more to him than what he projects,” Charles answered, sighing and sinking into his chair. “More than violence and destruction—I’ve seen it, in his mind. But you must understand, there are horrors in Erik’s past that fuel his actions now, whether he realizes it or not.”

He paused, thinking for a moment about all that he’d felt and seen that night he and Erik first met. The all-consuming pain and fear that had grabbed Charles’s attention, then the sheer strength and fortitude that Charles had sensed when Erik was under his own power once again, so powerful and yet just barely scratching the surface. It made his heart skip a beat just thinking about it.

“I’m afraid it’s rather difficult to explain,” he added. “But it’s very difficult to truly hate someone, no matter how often or how fervently you fight, when you’ve seen that person at his most vulnerable.”

He thought of the memory of Erik’s mother he’d retrieved from the man’s mind. There had been so much love and peace in that memory that Charles had been blown away by the intensity of it all. It was like nothing Charles had ever experienced before.

Charles glanced over his notes and records, leg bouncing impatiently as he waited for the arrival of their latest subject. A new mutant to add to their little test group. A woman this time, around Charles’s age, who apparently had a way with technology—if the preliminary reports were to be believed. They’d already assigned her a tag—POL-D-0000781—and the plan was to run a few basic tests before integrating her into the group. Perhaps the presence of the younger mutants would trigger a maternal instinct in the new subject and increase her inclination to cooperation.

(That hadn’t worked well with DEU-M-0000019; the man had become incredibly protective of the children but that protective instinct had manifested in violent reactions that had led to sedation and isolation. But Charles was nothing if not an optimist.)

He tracked the movements of the transport vehicle and all of the minds there in—from the young MP wondering about his six-year-old daughter to the terrified wreck of a woman who could only be his new test subject—from the moment they entered his range. His time at the facility had allowed him to strengthen his mutation and his improve his control, which had become invaluable as he’d decided to take over and run it in his own way.

The woman was who he was most interested in: she was older than him by a handful of years and had manifested in the aftermath of World War II. Either she was a late bloomer or she’d manifested earlier and never noticed it, but either way, Charles was fascinated. The implications of what he could learn from her mutation were staggering; could mutations occur at any time in one’s life? Or was it truly only during adolescence? Not to mention the fact that his superiors were starting to drop hints about breeding programs again; Charles had had to nip that in the bud more times than he bothered to count, even if he was just as curious to see how mutations were passed on—if they were at all.

With a deep breath, Charles put his pen down and rubbed his eyes a bit as he felt the escort and his new subject approaching his office. He had strict orders that every new subject be brought to him immediately upon arrival; it made it easier for him to ascertain just how much security was needed and he could create a better plan of integration into the main group.

“Dr. Xavier? The new subject is here, sir.”

“Thank you very much,” he replied, sending a small suggestion for the MP to bugger off. “Let her in.”

The realization that he was a student crossed Raven’s mind, accompanied by a wonderful line of reasoning that she’d probably had too much to drink to really drive safely across town. Charles found himself nodding just a bit at her line of thought, still a bit enamored with the uniquely mutant flavor of her mind. Did all mutants have such wonderful dissimilar minds?

“Well, now that you mention it,” she relented, “the cab ride does sound much better than a romantic ride in a beat-up Volkswagen.”

She grinned and Charles laughed a bit at that. He kept tabs on her mind, half-listening in to her thoughts in the same way one couldn’t help but overhear a conversation going on at the next table. Raven was relatively won-over by his flirting; Charles’s ego swelled a bit at the proof that he hadn’t lost his touch in his dry spell. Normally, all usage of his mutation in his flirtation was purely parlor tricks, nothing too grand or tiring; he normally went after humans, who were hardly worth more effort.

He was rather thrilled at the prospect of getting Raven to his flat, hoping that the sheer relief of meeting another mutant would be enough to ease any concerns she might have regarding the exact nature of his mutation.

“You’d think if I were as ‘lovely’ as you say I was, more taxis would stop for me,” Raven mused, still grinning as she repeatedly failed to hail a cab.

Charles grinned. “That’s because you don’t know the trick, it seems,” he said as he raised a hand, letting his mind reach out to the nearest available cabbie.

Perhaps it was more akin to cheating as he planted the decision in the man’s mind to stop for two drunk college students, but Charles had never really bothered to care. It was simply him using one of his God-given talents, was it not? Hardly cheating, in his book; besides, it wasn’t as though he ever did anything at all harmful to the cabbies in question. If anything, he helped them out; he was a generous tipper when the mood so struck him.

The cab pulled up and Charles opened the door. “Shall we, then, my dear?”

“The world must have been so frightening,” Ashni said, her shock obvious in her voice.

Not so much frightening as...confusing. It had taken Charles years to work out that the sudden, intense emotions he had weren’t entirely his own; it had taken even longer to effectively shield against the world around him.

“Babies know when they are loved,” she added, more to herself than anything else. “But you would have felt it all; was it confusing? When did you understand that not everything was coming from inside of you?”

“It was rather confusing,” he admitted. “Though, it did become easier to manage when we came to Westchester—fewer minds around me and whatnot—but it wasn’t until after my father died that I realized what the problem really was.”

After his father’s death, there were times when the sudden need to drink seized Charles. While he’d known what alcohol was, he’d never found the idea of drinking to be at all appealing when he was that young and it had been start of it. Then Kurt and Cain had become increasingly permanent fixtures in his life and the emotions they had brought with him had been the final pieces of proof that there was more to it than Charles simply being sensitive. The idea that he was a mutant wasn’t one Charles had considered until he’d stumbled across his father’s notes on his empathic abilities after his telepathy properly manifested.

“How did you learn control?”

Charles let out a shaky laugh at that. “It wasn’t so much learning control as it was learning how to shield properly. And it was more of a sink-or-swim situation, to be perfectly honest.”

His had been a rather violent manifestation: the sudden onset of so many minds around his...it had been so much more intense than the press of emotions he had been trying to distance himself from.  He had knocked half the county unconscious that night, before he managed to build up rudimentary shields. 

"What about you?  You've seemed to developed a great deal more control over your abilities that what you had the first time we met," Charles pointed out.

He knew she'd spent time with Erik and his Brotherhood; it stood to reason that they'd taught her some form of control.  But how much of her impressive control was actually a result of Erik's tutelage? 

Magda took a step towards him, an obvious challenge, but stopped short as the door opened. Erik opened the door with his powers, entering with a bag in each hand. If Charles didn’t know better, he’d think the older man had just come back from an ordinary shopping trip. As it were, he was very much aware of the fact that essentially everything Erik had with him was stolen.

One look at the tension between Charles and Magda was enough to tell Erik what had essentially conspired in his absence, but the man was fortunately smart enough to let sleeping dragons lie. With hardly a wave of his hand, he shut and locked the door and just like that, an undeserved sense of security crept through Charles’s tired mind. Erik—in a fit of compassion for which Charles thanked gods he didn’t quite believe in—handed him the requested bottle of painkillers and a glass of water. The telepath murmured a word of thanks before downing the largest dosage his body could handle. Erik also pulled out bundles of clothing and a small jar of cherries. Most obviously for Magda; cherries were the only fruit Charles couldn’t stand.

“I have gathered all the necessary supplies,” Erik said, breaking the otherwise terse silence. "We will leave shortly before first light. I suggest you both get some rest.”

They’d all need a bit of rest if they had any hopes of getting far enough way to resume their ordinary lives. Charles still itched for a telephone, still uncertain about the fate of his students and his school and his telepathy still recovering from whatever he’d been dosed with. A bit of rest and his powers would be back to full strength. Magda shot him a pointed look as she picked up the cherries.

“As I have not been drugged recently, and my eyes are wide open, I will take the first watch,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice, leaving no room for argument. “Then I shall join you,” she added, looking over at Erik.

Charles stiffened a bit and swallowed. It didn’t have the same shock value as it would have had earlier, but that didn’t mean the hurt lessened. Blind trust born out of love and devotion; Charles remembered that all too well. Erik certainly did inspire that in those around him, didn’t he? It certainly was nice to know that it was just Xaviers who fell for his charms.

“Well then,” Charles chimed, trying to keep his voice from revealing the tense bitterness still flooding through him, “I bid you both good night. Wake me when it’s my turn to keep watch.”

And with that, he made his way over to the bed he’d spend the night on and hefted himself out of the chair. It was a great deal more awkward than he could manage at home—the height of the mattress was different—but he still managed quickly enough.

Charles kept his eyes on the road, becoming more aware of where they were. Just because he’d barely spent ten years in Westchester as a child didn’t mean he’d forgotten the area entirely; he used to spend the majority of his time in Salem Center and North Salem with Raven, both of them eager to spend their free time away from Kurt and Cain.

“The Blitz must have been terrifying for a little boy,” Ashni pointed out, her voice soft. “Were your powers already manifesting by then?”

He nodded, slowly the car as they came to a stop sign. “I was born with a few basic parts of my abilities—empathy, specifically; I was overly attuned to the emotional states of the people around me,” he explained, making the turn. “As for the terror...well, it was terrifying for any child, empathic abilities or no.”

It was a little hard to explain; he remembered the heightened emotions that suddenly vanished or slowly slipped away. He often spent the raids curled up in the bomb shelter, sobbing for reasons he didn’t fully understand while his mother tried to comfort him more out of response to his own out-of-control emotions pressing on her than any actual motherly affection. There was a faint sense of comfort radiating from Ashni’s mind, the sort of mental hug Charles would have cleaved to without question as a child. He smiled a bit at that.

“Why did you decide to make a mutant school?”

Charles’s smile widened into a grin as he remembered the first time he ever used Cerebro. It had been a rush, exhilarating and thrilling and it had made Charles feel alive in all the ways he hadn’t before then.

“When I used Cerebro for the first time, I was stunned to find that so many mutants were only children just beginning to tap into their potential,” he answered. “So many young minds, so many unsure of what was happening to them, of how to control their powers; I remember what it’s like to have to struggle with control on your own. I decided right then and there that I wanted to help them all as much as I could manage, and then some.”

Of course, he hadn’t seriously considered the idea of turning the family’s estate into a school until he’d been confined to a wheelchair. Once going out and working with them where they were was a non-possibility, the only other option was to bring them to him.

“The distrust I feel for humans is not unshared,” Erik warned. “All those within the Brotherhood are victims of humankind. They will not like the idea of associating with them, and I do not blame them. Nor am I different in their mindsets. I have always admired your faith, Charles, but I do not share the same faith in humans.”

“As is your right,” Charles assured. “I am not asking you to trust them or have faith in them. All that I ask is that you do not treat the humans who teach and work here as the enemy. Many of them have mutant relatives themselves; our mathematics teacher is married to a mutant and they have a mutant son who is a student here. Our history teacher is the human child of two mutants and has a mutant brother who works for a logging firm in Washington state. A number of the children attending have human parents who care deeply for them. The humans here mean no mutant any harm, and all I ask is for you and your followers to acknowledge that.”

Already a great deal of mistrust had grown between humans and mutants; it was something that would have to be addressed and dealt with as quickly as possible if mutant rights were to ever get off the ground in the legislature.

“This is no choice when it comes to saving mutants or destroying those who held them captive. The two are related,” Erik insisted. “For who is to say that they will not do it again? How can we save mutants if we do not permanently eliminate the threat? Are you really so willing to accept my actions when it comes to destroying the source of these crimes against mutants?”

If it will save you from becoming the man who would willingly sacrifice a mutant child for your cause, then I will accept whatever I must, Charles thought as he drew in a breath.

“Destroy the facilities if you must,” Charles offered, “but if you utilize bloodshed and murder, then what good can we possibly hope to achieve? How can we convince the rest of the world that we are not monsters to be feared but people as deserving of freedom and respect as anyone else?”

Charles was willing to accept Erik’s intimidation of those who wished mutants harm; it was the man’s tendency to blame all humans for the actions of a few that was their biggest disagreement.

“There are humans who will not accept us, and I understand this. It would be impossible for me not to. But violent threats and intimidation will only take us so far. Surprisingly enough, such humans can be as stubborn and single-minded as any of us.” Charles tried to lighten his voice with the last part. It wasn’t exactly something to joke about, but he didn’t want to send off the wrong impressions to Erik; if the man thought they were in danger of treading down old arguments, what hope would there be for the continuation of their discussion?

“For the sake of mutants everywhere, we need to balance the militant with the coercion,” Charles added. He hated the word “coercion,” but the only other term he could think of was bribery and that sat even less well than coercion.

Something prickled at the edge of his mental periphery, something that made him shift a bit uncomfortable in his seat. It made old instincts flare up, screaming at him to run and run fast, while he had the chance—which instantly battled with the gut reaction of No; must protect Raven. He swallowed and tried to stifle the old instincts.

“Which only leaves the question of—” Magda stopped short and glanced towards the front.

Charles had sincerely hoped that he was just being overly paranoid, but Magda seemed to react to something out of the ordinary and he took a deep breath. Charles reached out with his mind and felt the presence of three ill-intentioned men. His heart sunk into his stomach.

“I think I am about to be robbed,” she whispered.

He nodded. The burglars were after something specific, and Charles went to dig a little deeper as he stood up as quietly as he could manage.

“They’re after something specific,” Charles whispered back, facing towards the front. “I’m not entirely sure what—their minds are surprisingly well—”

He cut himself off in realization. Humans didn’t tend to have natural defenses against telepaths, and their burglars were not mutants. They knew. Somehow, in some way, they knew there was a telepath around and they were prepared.

Which meant things were likely to get very ugly if they didn’t tread with caution.

Is there a back way out? He projected the question to her mind, eyes trained on the doorway leading into the small kitchen. If there was, they’d have to move quickly; they couldn’t rely on Charles’s telepathy for this one.