"You wonder which is worse: the symptom or the cure."
Rich people always know where to build their houses, Charles Xavier thinks to himself as he surveys the back acre of his family's estate from the edge of his porch. It is summer in New York, summer in America, but there is something about the location of the strategically built house upstate that gives a man respite from the unbearable heat. He's been away at Oxford for months now, but he's home at last. Summer for the holiday. And just like Nick Carraway, he feels that perhaps life is beginning over again, that he is being baptized anew in the sticky summer breeze whistling against his skin. A year away is too long, no matter how important his work in genetics is, no matter how important his degree is. A singular relief washes over him as he looks out at the land that Raven has managed to keep so meticulously in his time abroad. Manicured laws and flowing fountains cover the countryside, the perfect picture of a well-kept home. He takes a sip of his drink and sighs deeply. Yes, he is home again. At long, long last. And the world is quiet for the first time in too many months. Of course, there is still his thesis to work on and construct, and yes, he is still drowning in research, but to be home again is one of his last great joys.
Behind him, he hears the feet of Raven crunch behind him. Tuning her mind out for decency's sake, he doesn't turn to acknowledge her appearance or offer his greeting. They've always been that way, the two of them. No words are needed for any great manner of conversation to happen. They are content with their silences and their stretches of wordless camaraderie. She makes her way to stand beside him, folding her arms as she looks out at world stretching out before them. Last night, they stayed up in the lounge until they fell asleep, talking about everything and nothing, laughing like they were kids again. Raven's blonde hair goldens in the sun, radiating warmth, and she smiles as she looks outward and tries desperately to see what he sees.
"Bunch of trees, huh?" She asks out of the side of her mouth, unabashed at her desire to make fun of his silent contemplation.
Charles makes a noise of acknowledgement and nods his head once, not moving his eyes from the horizon, where the sun is steadily rising upward.
"It's good to be home," he says, simply, taking a long sip out of his glass of orange juice.
Unable to contain herself, Raven nudges him with her shoulder. It's good to have her Charles back. It's been a lonely year without him. She managed to struggle her way through making friends and winning over acquaintances, but over the year, she often found herself backsliding into a loneliness she found hard to recover from. Charles returning is a welcome relief from the darkness that often plagued her. Not that she would ever admit that to him. Not out loud, at least.
"It's good to have you home," she says, smiling before turning back toward the house, her strong and confident steps striding across the sturdy stone porch until she reaches the back door of the house, "Don't fill up on juice. The maid's coming to make us breakfast."
For a moment, Charles merely nods, understanding the line of logic that sentence holds. If breakfast is being made, it is only logical that one wouldn't want to spoil it with sugar-filled drinks and long, pensive looks into the sunrise. But then, the vocabulary of the sentiment catches up with the logic of it, and Charles spins to face the woman about to enter the house. Maid? They don't have a maid. In all his years, Charles has never hired a maid. For a moment, he wonders if he made one of those three in the morning long-distance calls to Raven while he was half-asleep and demanded that they get one to keep up with appearances. After all, all of his Oxford friends have maids. It's perfectly reasonable to suspect that he made the mistake of asking Raven for one like a child asks for a puppy.
"The maid?" He asks, his voice a harsh scoff.
Raven nods and walks back to him, taking the glass out of his hands and tossing the remains of the juice into the grass down below them with an easy flick of her wrist. She has been the leader of the house in his absence, and for the first time, Charles is granted the pleasure of watching her play the part with all the grace and agility that he knew she would have. It makes him proud to see her so brave, so confident, so sure of herself, even if it comes at the price of his blessed orange juice getting spilled out for grasshopper soup.
"Yeah. I hired one while you were away. I couldn't keep up with the house on my own," she says, casual and cool as she takes the same march back to the house.
This time, Charles pursues her, his mind running in every direction of this issue. She's hired a maid, which sounds all well and good at first blow, but when the reality of it sinks in, he wonders at the practicality of it all. He should have known that she had taken someone on; the house was simply too spotless for her to have gotten away with it on her own. He's never known Raven to be the cleanest of creatures, a trait that the two of them share, and he could never have expected her to get the house in this condition it's in. The world couldn't have spun so drastically in the few short months he was away from his home.
"How did you afford it? Your allowance hardly stretches for you as it is," he says, hot on her heels as she walks through the back door, drawing him into the lounge.
Raven smiles, finding a chair to sit in before leaning back in it with that toothy smile Charles knows so well in her. The pride he watches glint in her eyes is smug and it reflects in every glossy surface in the room.
"I'm a frugal individual," she gloats, smiling as she shrugs.
It's a worm hung out on a fishing pole and Charles takes the bait. He's known Raven long enough to know that there is more to this story, but she won't tell him unless she knows how badly he wants it. He watches as she reaches for a magazine and lays it out across her lap, leisurely tossing her way through the pages as she waits for him to give her the response she is looking for.
"And how's that?" He asks.
Ding, ding, ding. There's the jackpot she was searching for. That's the million dollar question. And though she plays it off as though it's nothing, as though it's the most natural decision she's ever made, as if it's one that's made every day, she licks her forefinger and flips a page in LIFE Magazine before her triumphant voice carries to Charles' ears.
"I hired someone from the Loony Bin," she says.
At first, he isn't sure he's heard her correctly. He plays the sentence over and over again, wondering at its angles and trajectories, wondering where he missed it as it flew right over his head. But, when his analysis comes up supremely empty, he asks the question that naturally follows such a failure of the mind, his eyes dumbly blank. He knows how Raven hates him digging through her head, so he asks the question as if he couldn't find the answer a million other ways.
"You did what, now?" He asks, raising his eyebrows.
Raven sighs, as if there is something that puts her out about having to explain her decision. Her eyes do not move from the article in LIFE about Mrs. Lindbergh, though she is hardly reading it at all.
"The Holbrook Hospital? About an hour from here?" She asks, and he nods in recognition. Everyone knows about Holbrook. One of the finest mental institutions in the nation, they have a reputation for making the right choices by their patients. He's never been there himself, but that's what the rumors and newspaper articles say. He's never had any particular desire to visit the sprawling campus that the facility calls home, but he takes everyone's word for it, "They have work furloughs for some of their patients and they work for practically nothing. She tends the house six days a week and has Sunday off."
Charles stiffens; that doesn't sound like a hospital, that sounds like a prison. Work furloughs and cheap labour. That isn't rehabilitation. He makes a small noise of distaste and allows his entire face to display his displeasure.
"I don't understand," he says.
There isn't anything wrong with having a clean house. There isn't anything wrong with wanting help to get a clean house. But hiring a mental patient? Everything about that thought sets Charles' skin ablaze. Everything feels wrong about it.
"She's in Ward Four, which is for long-timers and the worst off, but they assured me that she isn't bad off at all. She's very practically sane, as far as I can tell," Raven defends.
She's very practically sane. That sentence will ring in Charles' ears for what feels like an eternity, a lifetime, at least. And it makes the whole situation settle even worse in his stomach, if that is even possible. He leans forward in his chair, and Raven watches his concerned look turn on her with the force of a year of its absence. It's a look she knows well and has not missed in his time at school.
"That isn't what I'm concerned about," he says.
Finally, she looks up from the article about Mrs. Lindbergh and raises her eyebrows at his expectantly.
"What, then?" She snaps.
That disapproving look. Raven almost rolls her eyes at it. When once it made her want to crawl in a hole and die for the shame of disappointing him, now she merely levels her gaze and takes his frustration with her head-on, allowing the force of it to hit her like a semi truck before it glances off of her slippery esteem.
"I'm concerned that you're basically paying for slave labor, Raven," he scolds.
Raven does roll her eyes at that sentiment.
"She likes it here," she assures him.
Now, that, Charles takes serious issue with. No one can like it in a place where they're trapped. No matter how enjoyable Raven seemed to think it, there is no assurance in captivity. This will have to be ended, this little arrangement. He cannot have it on his conscience. In the back of his head, he feels a rush of something uncertain and odd, an extra presence that weighs heavily on the see-saw of his thoughts. It comes unbidden, uninvited, and it creeps up on him like a lion in the brush.
"She likes working as a slave?" He asks, incredulously.
Behind him, a strong voice wills its way into the center of the room, even as the body that belongs to it remains in the threshold of the doorway.
"Who's working as a slave?" The feminine voice questions.
Raven shoots to her feet and Charles follows, spinning to greet the woman who has been working the house in his absence. He looks at her once, floor to eyes, taking her in like a statue in a museum. Her knees are red from scrubbing the floors and the nails on the ends of her lip fingers are broken and chipped. Her grey dress hangs on her body at awkward curves and drifts. Her face bears no makeup, her hair no curl. But then, he looks in her eyes. And that's when he understands. That's when the realization dawns on him. The presence he sensed in the back of his mind...It was her. She was the one he felt.
An Empath. The woman from the "loony-bin" that Raven hired is an empath. Charles stares with a blank expression, unable to form thoughts, much less words. Raven approaches the young woman with a surprising warmth that he isn't sure he's ever seen his friend greet anyone with in his life. They share a familiarity that comes as easily as breathing to them; Raven seems to have found a friend. An odd friend with an empathetic mutation confined to a life of servitude, but a friend nonetheless. It makes him all at once uncomfortable and glad.
"Nellie! Lovely. Nellie, this is Charles. I've told you about him before. He owns the joint," She says.
The young woman in question, only a year or two younger than Charles himself, extends her hands for him to shake. The master of the house, for his part, makes no move to greet her, too transfixed with the understanding that her mind is silent to him, that his understanding of her is limited only to what he can observe. It is another strike in his mind that quiets his tongue and dulls his eyes. Nellie isn't fazed when her handshake is not returned. Instead, she pulls the extended appendage back and locks the pair behind her back. The young man who stands in silence notices the clarity of her eyes, her speech. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with her. There doesn't seem to be anything amiss, though he finds himself up against a mental lock when he peels at the door of her mind, so there isn't any way for him to be sure.
"Oh, hello, Charles," she begins, her quiet dignity alight even in those few simple words. Then, she catches herself, as if some invisible code of manners ran up and grabbed her by the nose, "Is that alright, if I call you Charles? I call Raven by her name, but if you'd prefer-"
She trails off, leaving him a gap to speak, hoping for him to give her some sort of clarity. Raven had, of course, mentioned the man who owned the house and everything in it, and the evidence of him was everywhere, but there was never anything with any sort of detail before. Raven kept Charles rather close to her chest, and spent very little of her time talking about him at all. A moment of silence sinks between the three until finally Charles is startled from his contemplation by a clearing of the throat from his friend. Eyes widening slightly and body jolting to extend his hand, thoroughly embarrassed to have ignored her silent request for the formality.
"Charles is fine. My professors call me Mister Xavier and I can assure you that this summer I want no reminder of Oxford except for my thesis, which I have admittedly hit a massive roadblock with," he says, the last bit was more for Raven's sake than anyone else's.
An uncomfortable giggle rattles around in Nellie's chest and she looks at her feet, feeling the slightest bit uncomfortable at his ramble.
"If you say so," she breathes, before releasing his hand from their shake, "Charles it is."
His next line of inquiry comes off of his tongue without thinking about it, but his curiosity is too delicious to ignore. Though her mind is closed to his, he can sense the stability she exudes, the sense of wholeness that doesn't come naturally to one who is teetering on the brink of madness as Raven so described.
"Can I... Can I ask you how you came to be at Holbrook?" He prompts, leaning in a little closer to her.
Nellie's chest locks and she looks at the clock over the mantle piece, her chin tilting down in deference. Charles watches in supreme awe as she skates past his interest, and if he were looking he might have seen Raven's smirk grow three times larger.
"I'm sorry. The toast is going to burn if I'm not careful. I'm so sorry," she states, an easy lie that doesn't even bare mentioning considering she hasn't even put bread in the toaster, before disappearing the way she came.
Neither Charles nor his friend say anything for a while. He just stares after the young patient working in their house now, watching the place where she once stood in utter disbelief. An empath in a mental hospital whose mind he cannot reach... How curious. How odd. How intriguing.
"She's beautiful, isn't she?"
Raven's smug voice cuts through the room and immediately sets Charles into a stern, even derisive tone that brushes aside Raven's words. It's a ridiculous thought to entertain. He scoffs and sinks into the nearest armchair, reaching for the newspaper that's been waiting there since his arrival yesterday evening.
"She's been committed to an asylum, Raven. Let's not make jokes here," he scolds.
But the blonde shakes her head, her eyes betraying her sincerity. Underneath the layers of concrete misery and plastered smiles, the young woman Raven chose to be their new housekeeper is actually a beautiful young woman. There's something foreign and mysterious about her, something hidden and bolted. Charles must have seen it.
"I wasn't making a joke," Raven asserts.
Charles coughs, rubbing his nose twice before opening the paper to the first page of news. See it, he did. Nellie is beautiful. But, she's not there for him to look at. She shouldn't be there at all.
"Yes. Well. I'm not going to make a judgement like that. She's our help who we will be getting rid of soon," he says, trying to turn Raven away from this conversation.
A look of loud superiority graces Raven's slick features and she turns the conversation away from his evasion with the grace of a professional driver. She doesn't return to his thoughts of firing the patient; Raven could never allow that to happen, not when she knows that the woman needs the money.
"Say what you want. But I caught you staring," she preens.
And, once again, the woman in the grey dress materializes, this time holding two plates in her hands as she pushes her way through the swinging lounge door. She doesn't suspect anything that has to do with her, or at least, that's what she's projecting out toward Charles and Raven, and Charles anticipates that she has little if any experience controlling the steady downpour that is her emotional reach.
"Caught who staring?" Nellie asks.
Anxiously, Charles flips the page of his newspaper, hoping that she cannot sense the twitching in his heart, though he is certain that she can.
"Nothing. No one, that is," he snaps before Raven can open the mouth that he knows is racing desperately to bark out a snarky reply.
Nellie can feel the rocky terrain of his emotions, but cultivates the smile of her face without allowing it to falter even the slightest. Extending her hand toward him for the second time today, this time she is offering a plate of food. Simple fare that she keeps in the fridge, but that is what Raven suggested he would eat when she first mentioned that he would be returning for the summer holiday.
"Here's your breakfast. Raven told me that you prefer to eat light in the mornings," she says, hoping on hope that she's done the right thing.
He merely nods before taking the plate wordlessly and setting it down on the side table to the right of his chair. He bites his tongue when he notices that neither his plate nor Raven's contains any toast for her to burn. Nellie gives Raven her breakfast and the woman says thank you, winking as she does, leaving Nellie with unanswerable questions.
"Alright, then," she says, "Is there anything else you need?"
Again, the dark haired man answers before Raven can have the chance, and Nellie wonders if she'll be keeping this job. His attitude frustrates her, amuses her, and his emotions are laid so bare for her and her mutation that they can even waver her own feelings, if only in the slightest. He seems to truly dislike her.
"No. We should be fine, thank you," Charles answers.
Nellie looks to Raven for confirmation, and the woman merely nods her head, a clear sign of dismissal from the room. When Nellie's hand reaches the doorframe, however, she turns around, gathering the courage that settles in the base of her feet and calling out the man's name.
"Charles?" She asks.
"Yes?"
The woman in the grey dress realizes that she must do something to earn her keep with this man around now. There's something about her that disturbs him, and she reaches blindly at straws for a way to earn his respect. In the end, she tells one of the only truths that she has to give him, and in the way she tilts her chin up and speaks with distinct honor, Charles can almost see the shadow of the woman she must have been before getting admitted to this hospital.
"I know it isn't much, but I could help you with your thesis, if you like. I graduated from a pretty good University, and if you ever need someone to even read it over, I'd be happy to try," she says.
Shock registers in Charles' throat, and after a long while, he speaks:
"Ah. Well. That's... Unexpected of you," he mutters.
She smiles before leaving the room.
"There's more where that came from."
So, there's the first chapter! This is apart of the Ward Four series, and is (chronologically) the first story told! This story is set pre-First Class. I cannot wait to hear your thoughts. Please leave me a review and check out the other two stories in this series, The Better Angels, a Hank/OC story (the canon of which will MAJORLY intersect with this story!)and The Lesser Fool, an Alex Summers/OC story. Please review! I can't stress how much more fun it is to write when you know someone is rooting for you!
