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Raven had always had something of an issue with authority. If it was illegal, then she’d see it as potentially fun. Raven would be the kind of girl to see a protest or a riot or something of the like going on and run in with a whoop and screaming something to the effect of “Screw the man!” Really, she meant well, but it never failed to make Charles worry.

“Okay, okay,” she conceded after a long pause. “Just one or two.”

A dramatic sigh followed the concession and soon enough, Raven came out from behind the screen.

“So,” she chirped, doing a twirl and striking a pose at the end. “What do you think?”

“Lovely as always,” Charles answered instantly with a smile. He knew absolutely nothing about women’s fashions, but Raven always looked wonderful, in his opinion.

“I’ll try to not let you get drunk enough for a hangover. I’m pretty strong, but I’m not sure I could carry a drunken Charles home,” Raven promised with a laugh.

“Hey,” he retorted, grinning and trying to hold back his own laughter. “Are you calling me fat?” He fixed her with a purposely exaggerated look of suspicion.

Though, to be fair, he'd done a fair bit of bulking up in the last year; his growth spurt had finally kicked in, thank god.  If it hadn't, he'd worry that he'd spend the rest of his life as the only male he knew who clocked in at under five-foot-five.

Charles was walking a very dangerous line. Well, he wasn’t walking—no thanks to a certain someone who will remain nameless—but one gets the idea. If reliance on the bottle was an inheritable genetic, than Charles was willingly playing right into its hands. Well, that was off, too; genes didn’t technically have hands but—oh, never mind. The point was, he was getting progressively more drunk as a result of trying (in vain, it seemed) to drown out still sharp ache of betrayal Erik and Raven had left in their wake.

Raven—with her lovely, beautiful mind that he hadn’t been able to touch since they were children and her lovely, beautiful blue skin that was striking and stunning in all of the ways Raven herself was—had left because Charles, despite all of his telepathic powers, was utterly incapable of dealing with people. He’d never been able to manage: not as a child, not as a young man, and not as an adult. He only made one mistake after another. It was a wonder no one else had actually left yet. (Wouldn’t be long, though; Alex and Sean were both getting alarming close to acceptable drafting ages, and what of Hank? The poor sod couldn’t fight, covered from head to toe in blue fur as he was.)

And Erik—Erik was almost too painful to think about. Where Raven had been his sister in everything but blood, Erik had been...something else. Not a lover, not even close—no matter how much Charles had wished otherwise—but he’d been enough of an idiot to let himself become dangerously invested with a man who could no more stay in one place than the damned wind itself. Charles had been practically begging to have his heart ripped out and bludgeoned. And Erik had been all too happy to oblige him.

Another gulp of scotch to drown the bloody sentiment. Erik was a monster. A horrible, terrible, vile, beautiful monster, and Charles was certain that he would never find a mind anywhere near as breathtaking or gorgeous as Erik’s was. And what a dead loss that was.

“School teacher?”

Shite. Charles immediately righted himself in his chair, pawing at his face in an effort to dry his eyes (when the hell had he started crying?). What was (he had to think for a moment before her name came floating back) Lana doing there? Wasn’t she supposed to be resting or practicing or whatever he’d let her loose to do?

“Charles?”

If he closed his eyes, maybe he could pretend that Raven had come back—no. No, he wasn’t going to do that to himself. Raven wasn’t going to come home any sooner than Erik, and considering that both had left him to die on that godforsaken beach, it wasn’t fucking likely that either would come home anytime soon.

“Lana,” he said, making a grand effort not to slur. “What are you doing here?”

The last thing he needed was a student—especially a new one—to see how pathetic he actually was.

“Not judging me?” Magda sounded indignant and Charles bit back a sigh. “I assume you want this room to yourself,” she mocked. “If I wanted a room to myself I would have said get three.”

So she was going to share with Erik then. Of course she was. How stupid of Charles to assume otherwise. He was the outsider in this situation, the third wheel, as unwanted as ever. His chest felt tight and raw, as though the few remaining shard of his heart had torn the interior of his chest cavity to ribbons.

He could feel her mind practically clawing against his and he was getting too weary to keep her out. Charles was so tired of fighting. He was tired of putting himself back together just for something else to come and dash him to pieces once again. It was becoming an exercise in futility; he should just accept that he’d spend the rest of his life broken in basically every way and be done with it.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” she said, and Charles swallowed a bitter laugh at that, “but nor am I going to hide who I am. I did that before: hid what and who I was. Where did it get me? As a lab rat. I’m done hiding.”

She’d ended up on the table, then? Of course she had. When had that happened? How soon had she been taken away after they parted ways?

“And I am terribly sorry for what happened to you,” he responded, leaning forward and cradling his head in his hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t live up to my promise to help you as I could. And I’m extremely sorry that whatever was done to you apparently killed just about every scrap of kindness you once possessed.”

And where had he been when she’d been suffering? Had he been falling head over heels for Erik? Teaching children? Or had he been trying to kill his emotions with alcohol and drugs because he couldn’t take what they were doing to him anymore?

Part of him wanted to be cruel, to recall his own sister’s decision to quit hiding. If Magda was truly done hiding, why did she still bother with clothes? Wasn’t that just another form of hiding? Or did that only apply to female mutants like Raven, whose skin was so obvious different from all others? Had Erik convinced that Azazel chap to run around skyclad as well? Or had that special privilege only been reserved for Raven?

Charles bit his tongue and swallowed his own bitterness. He obviously wasn’t in a proper state of mind yet.

“I am still sorry,” she said, running a finger over his forehead.

Charles bit back the urge to tense at the contact. The poor girl meant him no ill will, and no doubt it was a habit she’d acquired in her life. Just because he’d become a bit jumpy with regards to physical contact didn’t mean he had to act on it.

Ashni acknowledged them both before giving them her full name. “I can’t believe you really did come,” she added, blushing.

“Ashni is a lovely name, my dear,” he said with a smile. “It suits you. And I often make the effort to meet other like Hank and I in person. Cerebro is a wonderful machine, but I do still prefer face-to-face interaction.”

Besides, going out and interacting with potential students made him feel as though he could actually do something, that his disability wasn’t truly as damning as he had initially feared.

“It is not...I honestly didn’t hope that you would,” she admitted, offering them a box of Turkish Delight.

Both men took one, if for no other reason than politeness.

“You asked me to come,” Charles pointed out. “I simply want to make sure that you are safe, and offer you a sanctuary if you are not.”

The choice would be hers; if she wanted to go with them, then they could leave as soon as she wanted. If she chose to stay, then Charles would back down and add her name to the list of mutants to keep an eye on, just in case.

Charles snickered like a school boy at the reactions he was getting. He could feel Erik’s surprise when the reactions started. The moment of realization was a beautiful thing, and Charles just offered Erik a shit-eating grin. He really was having way too much fun with—

Raven, naked and gorgeously blue, wrapped around Eri—

Charles immediately slammed up his shields and fixed Erik with a look that would’ve had him six feet under if looks could kill. He’d had his suspicions when Raven accosted him in the kitchen, naked and blue and full of bitter indignation for years of slights she’d accumulated against him, but the confirmation of it was enough to wreck him. The stadium was nothing compared to what Erik had just done.

The telepath gritted his teeth and motioned for Hank to come help him up. Erik was after the bloody helmet, no doubt. And so, Charles reached out again and planted one final suggestion in every mind he could reach: that Erik’s helmet was a large paper mache head that bordered on the disturbing.

“You know, I was going to lift the illusion after a few good laughs, but just for that, I think I’m going to let it stick,” Charles said. “Maybe I should add in a new name for you, hmm? How does ‘Drag-neto’ sound to you?”

Oh, wouldn’t that make for a series of beautiful headlines. Charles seriously considered just doing it so he could make a scrapbook of all the headlines to follow.

Magda had given Erik half an hour before they’d go looking for him—like hell Charles was going to let her go off on her own—and it was going to be the longest half an hour of Charles’s life. And he’d been through soul-crushingly boring society functions as a child.

“This room better have a king size bed,” she quipped as plucked one of the keys from his hand and strode off to the room in question. She paused before she opened her room down and affixed him with a look. “I don’t need your judging me, so stay out of my head, and keep your judgments to yourself.”

He narrowed his eyes and bit back a cruel retort. Did Erik manage to corrupt every person he crossed paths with? (That wretched little traitor voice in the back of his mind pointed out that Charles would be included in that list.) The shards of whatever had remained of his heart cut him deeper with each breath he took and if he wasn’t careful, he was going to suffer a breakdown the likes of which he hadn’t endured since the closing of his school.

Charles unlocked the door to Room 113 and shoved it opened. The world needed to become handicap accessible; he couldn’t take constantly having the absence of his legs thrown in his face. Hank had down wonders with the mansion once Charles had made the decision to return to the chair and his telepathy, but even he couldn’t make the whole world more wheelchair friendly. Instead, Charles was doomed to spend the rest of his days either being dragged about by a well-meaning metal-bender or struggling just to get through a thrice damned door.

Magda tried to shut the door connecting their rooms—and what sort of half-baked design was that, anyway—but the door remained stubbornly in place. Broken. Fan-fucking-tastic. Really, the cherry on top of a perfect evening. She came into his room—what, no respite for the heartbroken?—and got the coffee pot going.

Charles wasn’t sure if he should bother trying to talk to her or not. Silence itself was near unbearable—years of it had nearly driven him mad—but this, this tense silence, was even worse. And so, Charles swallowed his bitterness and irritation and heartbreak.

“I’m not judging you,” he said, making a point not to look at her. “And I was raised with enough manners to keep from poking around in other’s heads uninvited.”

“Really?” Raven’s excitement was enough to knock Charles on his posterior had he been standing, even with his shields at full strength. She all but cheered in his slightly hesitant willingness to effectively break the law.

“I promise it’ll be fun,” she insisted. “Let’s go to a pub. We’ll have a couple of drinks, play a little pool; it’ll be exciting! What should I wear?!”

Raven scrambled off the bed and Charles sat up, watching in stunned amazement as she immediately began to tear through her dresser and her closet. He’d never really understood that particular question—though, considering his cardigan-stuffed wardrobe, Charles really didn’t have many settings between comfortable and fancy. If he wasn’t in a cardigan or something equally comfortable, then he was probably in a suit and hiding his misery behind a well-practiced fake smile.

“What about this?” Raven pulled out a white dress with a pink paisley print. “Too much? Too little?”

Charles blinked before realizing he should probably give a response. Just as he opened his mouth to answer, Raven gasped.

“More importantly, what are you gonna wear?”

The boy shrugged. “Um...a button down and slacks?”

Was that acceptable? It wasn’t exactly like he got out much. A sixteen-year-old in college? All the girls only cooed over him like he was their kid brother.

A stadium. Of all the things Erik could have done, he’d decided to bring an entire baseball stadium with him to Washington, D.C., and then, as if that were not enough, had decided to drop the sodding thing on top of him. And not to mention the bloody Sentinels Erik had decided to tinker with. This would not do. No, it most certainly would not do. Charles was bloody irritated and Erik was the reason behind all of it.

“He’s all yours, Charles!” Raven was a blessed angel sent from God.

Immediately, Charles reached into Erik’s head and dragged him out of unconsciousness, forcing him to remove the damned piece of stadium pinning Charles to the ground. The telepath then scrambled up to a seated position, cursing when he cut his hand on a bit of rubble. Oh, Erik was going to pay for all of the hell he’d put them through.

He adjusted his grip on Erik’s mind and then reached out the minds of everyone around them. Simultaneously, he loosened his hold on Erik while convincing everyone in a two-hundred-and fifty mile radius that Erik was dressed in the most ridiculous sparkly blue dress and horrendous red wig. Furthermore, he planted the suggestion in those minds that such was Erik’s standard costume. He’d take care of everyone his baseline range didn’t cover once he returned to Westchester and had access to Cerebro.

If Erik was going to insist on being an asshole, then Charles would gladly play at that game. 

“Well, seeing London sounds absolutely fantastic,” she replied, “buuuuut...afterwards...” She shifted into a much older woman, obviously in her early forties. “Do you think I can pass for being of legal drinking age?” She laughed at her own joke, and Charles joined her as she shifted back into her usual form. “I know. Went a bit too old. But better safe than sorry, right?”

Well, the legal drinking age in England was eighteen, with sixteen and seventeen year olds able to consume alcohol on a licensed premises so long as the beverage came with a meal and the order was placed by an of-age adult, but that wasn’t really the point. Alcohol was something Charles was careful with. He wasn’t legal to drink in the U.S., anyway, so that was usually his excuse to avoid it. Now, though...he might be willing to have a drink every so often.

“You know,” Raven added, cuddling her pillow back to her chest. “This happy, shiny you? It’s my favorite kind of Charles. You’re so excited, and you have this...this look in your eyes about so many possibilities of the future. Giddy looks good on you.”

He smiled at that. Happy Raven was his favorite Raven, too. The times when they could just goof off like the teenagers they were rather than have to deal with anything else...when they could just be kids. Carefree, even if only for a moment. Those were wonderful moments.

“Now,” Raven chirped. “Have I buttered you up enough to let me have a drink or two?”

Charles rolled his eyes and tried not to smile—failing on the latter part, which he tried to disguise by pulling the soft item he’d grabbed up to cover his growing grin.

“Well, no matter what we do tonight to celebrate, I definitely want you to show me around. You should probably do that sober.”

He snorted. “Good lord, can you even imagine? Me giving a tour drunk. Or doing anything while intoxicated, for that matter. You’d probably get a good laugh out of it, though.”

She’d probably film it if she could; claiming she was saving it for posterity when he sobered up enough to be upset by it. And then she’d give him that teasing grin of hers and he’d melt and let her keep everything she filmed so long as it didn’t fall into the wrong hands. Though...they did have the mansion mostly to themselves tonight...Kurt and Cain off Charles-didn’t-care-where doing he-didn’t-care-what. Maybe they could indulge themselves...? Just once, of course.

“Well...we do have place mostly to ourselves tonight,” he said. “Maybe we could have a drink or two, in celebration?”