Children, it has often been found, have a habit of announcing every exciting new discovery they make.
This is not a good thing if said child starts hearing voices in their head.
To be fair to his mother (and Charles often had to remind himself to be fair) had tried, but when her son didn't grow out of this 'phase' and started 'hearing' not just words but pictures and colours and sounds and feelings and memories and a whole great mess in his head that he didn't understand, she just couldn't cope.
Because when somebody tells you they hear voices in their heads, nobody ever thinks that it's actually real. And so little Charles had been sent to The Asylum.
The Asylum did actually have a real name, but nobody ever used it.
Really, Charles thinks from his cold cell. Sorry. Room. It wasn't his mother's fault she had sent him to his own personal hell. She had only been trying to help.
…
Coming back had been painful, but he hadn't much choice but to take their ragtag little bunch to the old house. Mansion, however anybody wanted to classify it, he still didn't want to be here.
"Honestly Charles, I don't know how you survived, living in such hardship."
He could have corrected Erik. He didn't actually spend much of his childhood here after all, but he didn't. He almost liked the mistake. That's what he had been doing all these years, after all, creating this persona. The Charles he had created had never had to live through any hardship.
Perhaps he was slightly insane after all.
…
He very quickly memorises them all. The nurses, the doctors. The ones who shove medicine down your throat if you don't co-operate. There's the nice (relatively) ones and the scary ones. There's Nurse O'Connor, who he privately dubs The Trunchball.
One day he's just so bored and so he asks, so timidly, trying to be polite, if he can have his books. They reply with maybe, if he's good. He promises to himself he'll be good, the only problem is that he doesn't know how. The rules have all changed from what he knows, and he finds he often breaks these new rules without knowing.
…
Charles made a list of rules, training timetables and no alcohol to see if some form of order would calm his ever present low level panic. It doesn't.
Chess with Erik seemed to go some way to calming him though.
Life with this random mixture of people, all with different objectives (although they pretended they have the same one) started to make some strange sort of sense and they become more like a group than odd people pulled together by necessity.
…
It's been years.
He's learnt to calm the mess in his head, to organise it. He's learnt the rules, but he can't be satisfied. He has to prove that he's not mad because the voices in his head are right, they're always right. He knows what people think, what they say before they say it. So if they're right all the time they can't just be in his head, right?
He's learnt to hide it, over time, this knowledge he has, but now he will show it, and they will have to admit he's not mad, and everything will be all right, won't it?
He's wrong. He's so, so wrong.
…
Every crack Erik made about his presumed privileged upbringing hurt far more than it should and Charles found himself wanting to yell that he knows. He understands. He's felt pain like that.
But he didn't, he reigned himself in, because since when has telling people the truth gotten him anywhere?
He can't show anybody his weak spot, but especially Erik, because he had somehow had wormed in far further than he should have.
…
He's shivering in his cell when He comes to see him. The one who's like him, except not. He can feel the pain and fear and anger of all his inmates – patients, but he cannot see the memories or hear the thoughts, but he feels the emotions, the pain and loves it.
Charles thinks the word sadist was meant just for him.
He talks to Charles in his simple, patronising tones, smiles at Charles' reactions and walks out.
Charles has broken the rules. In here they are all insane. He must learn not to argue, not to question the doctors. And now he must be punished.
…
It's the old argument, the mutants vs humans debate.
Erik insisted that mutants should survive as the more evolved form of humanity, simply because of the laws of evolution, but really it's because he knew (or thought) that humans would oppress the minority mutants, and that they should strike the first blow.
Charles quickly gave up his 'be the better man' argument (although it is an ideal he'd love to be able to keep) and instead argued that humans (meaning both humans and mutated humans) can be vindictive bastards, and will always find a reason to discriminate against their fellow humans, "Whether you're black or white or blue." Charles said, "So therefore an all mutant society would not be a perfect one. It would only be a matter of time before divisions sprung up. Starting a war is not the solution, but there is a possibility of forming some sort of discordant harmony with the humans."
Erik actually seemed to consider the point, and Charles wondered whether he'd managed to get through to him this time.
…
It's late at night when the anger starts to get him. He's been angry before, but never like this. He'd be scared if he weren't so consumed.
…
"So, what's your secret?"
The question caught Charles off guard, and so he just turned around to face Erik without saying anything.
"Come on, you know all my secrets, and I can tell you're hiding something. Something big. You hate this house."
"I don't hate the house."
"Then what do you hate?"
Nothing, he wanted to say, I'm all sunshine and daisies, can't you tell?
And the curious thing is some treacherous part of him wants to tell Erik. He could wipe Erik's mind, make him forget, but somehow that doesn't seem an option. And Charles is here now, he might as well deal with it.
"Come with me, I'll show you."
They ended up outside an old, dilapidated building, which seemed more menacing than it rightfully should be, as no one around seemed willing to go near it, or even look at it.
"This is the old Asylum," Charles said, "well, it's really, 'The Lowood Asylum For The Mentally Ill'." Erik wanted to ask, but stayed silent, "When one stupid little kid who can't keep his mouth shut starts telling everybody who'll hear that he can hear voices in his head, people don't take it so well. I spent most of my childhood here."
"What happened?"
"They probably would've shut it down anyway, in the end. What they did to the 'patients'…" Charles didn't say, and Erik didn't ask, so eventually Charles continued, quiet, almost as if he wasn't quite there, "One night, after years, I got more angry than I had ever been. I had been getting much stronger but my control still wasn't that great. I got angry and I lashed out. I kind of, there's no real words to explain what I did, but I kind of overloaded everyone's brains. Everyone. The doctors and the patients and the cleaners. Even those I didn't hate. Even those I liked. And so I ran. Everybody died in one night with no possible explanation, nobody noticed one little, scared teenager running away. I taught myself control, it was a long, painful process, but I swore nothing like that would ever happen again, then I created a new life for myself."
There was something horrific, Erik thought, about the way Charles told him he had simply reinvented himself, as if his identity meant nothing, but Erik could understand the desire for a whole new life, but what he had got was an endless quest for revenge.
Charles shivered, "Do you know what a mind does when it dies, Erik? It reaches out, screaming, clinging on to anything it can find." He looked at Erik, "If I wasn't mad before, I certainly am now, Erik."
Erik took only a second to decide something then. He walked up to Charles and said, "To quote your words back at you, Charles. You are not alone."
And that's how it was, two irreparably damaged souls clinging to each other and creating their new world.
A/N – Gah, I'm not really happy with this one, just based on a basic what if, which kind of grew and became this. Anyway, please review and tell me what you think.