Disclaimer – X-Men: Evolution and its characters do not belong to me. I do not make any money off this fic, nor do I intend to, and I give full credit to their actual creators. I'd appreciate not being sued.
A/N – I offered to do some requests on Livejournal, and Nemain asked for something Ororo/Xavier. I'm not sure if this really qualifies, but it was the best I could do in fewer than 500 words.
Undeclared
© Scribbler, May 2005.
Charles was not a daydreamer.
It was a difficult distinction to get across, especially when people seemed intent on presenting him as some new Martin Luther King. He dreamed, yes. But if he was an idealist, then he was a practical one, and as he'd found since he started the lecture circuit, one doesn't always appear with the other in people's minds.
This August week it was Los Angeles, and a large hall of UCLA, with a dais those running the get-together had dusted off especially for him. Charles had never really lost the feeling of nakedness that comes with being alone on a stage. It's a curious kind of isolation, surrounded on all sides by faces and eyes and thoughts, yet at the same time being totally alone. Nobody could bail him out if he faltered. Nobody knew the speech better. He talked, they listened, and if he was lucky he left with a round of polite applause.
The hall was awash with anticipation. It tingled along his skin. The tiny hairs on his arms and the backs of his hands felt like they were sizzling. He took a moment to lay a few extra bricks on his personal shields, just in case they had another incident like the one in Chicago, when an emergent and emotionally unbalanced telepath had been drawn to the crowd of minds and tried to crash the lecture.
Remembering the poor, distressed young man brought Charles to another memory, this one more agreeable, in a bittersweet sort of way. Like the beauty of a drenched landscape after a downpour – refreshed, quiet, serene even, but with a palpable sense of great energies just expended.
As if on cue, the star of the memory, who had comforted the mutant when he came back to his senses, lightly touched Charles on the shoulder.
"Charles, it's time."
Charles sighed. "I know."
"They seem positive." Ororo twitched the curtain to peek. "Quite a turnout, too."
"I feel like I should point out that there was also a large audience whenever Romans threw Christians to the lions. But that would be unconstructive and cynical of me, so I won't."
She smiled. It was like sunbeams through thick grey cloud. "Of course."
For a second Charles didn't know how he'd gone on stage during his lecturer days, before he founded the Xavier Institute and Mutantkind became public knowledge. They seemed gloomy and distant, the remnant of some past life, or the world before the immortal words "Let there be light."
"Charles?" Ororo said, looking at him expectantly.
He nodded and wheeled forward. "Let's just hope these lions have filed their claws, hm?"
She laughed, and it sounded like snowflakes breaking.
FINIS.