This is based on a mix of several different versions of the early X-men story. If you're not familiar with it, the gist is that Scott's parents died when he was young. He was sent to live in an orphanage in Nebraska. He then ran away and was taken in by a mutant named Jack Winters who mistreated him until he found Xavier. At that time, Scott was Xavier's only student. There's no clear sense of how long it was just the two of them. I've always found that dynamic fascinating, so that will be the focus of this story initially. The other first five will enter the story slowly.
The way it started was that they killed a man together.
It was self-defense, and their victim wasn't exactly a human being at that point, but the reality of the relationship between Scott Summers and Charles Xavier is that it began with violence.
Jack Winters had wanted his pet gun, his captive foster son, to kill a security guard who stood in between him and the final ingredient in his diamond transformation cocktail. Of course, Scott had already done a lot of bad things for Jack – mostly knocking down walls and blasting out tunnels. He'd even broken a woman's leg, although that was an accident. But he'd never killed anybody and he desperately didn't want to.
And then Charles Xavier showed up. Scott hadn't expected salvation to appear out of nowhere, and he certainly hadn't expected it in the form of a bald guy in a wheelchair, but he was scared and twitchy and prone to obey authoritative adults, so he did as he was told: lined things up and vaporized whatever was left of Jack Winters.
They never talked about it, the fact that a man died when they met.
"How many of us are there?" asked Scott, in between enormous gulps of pasta. He was a neat eater, fork in one hand and napkin in the other, but by no means a delicate one.
"Hundreds," said Charles, "at the least. And the number keeps growing."
"And they're all secret?"
"Some are visibly mutated, but most have a normal appearance."
Scott made a sound of acknowledgement before adding more pasta to his plate.
For well over a year now, Charles had been planning to assemble a team of mutants, to train them, educate them, and then to send them into the world as ambassadors of a new species. He had planned on a certain level of underlying confidence and competence. He had not been planning on an overly skinny child with all the leadership potential of a feral cat.
No, this boy was not here because he was the best choice as the conductor around which his band of mutants would rally. Scott was here because he had nowhere else to go and Charles was a softhearted fool.
Having finished his third helping, Scott stood, and without saying a word, started to do the dishes.
The more time Charles spent observing Scott, the more convinced he was that he would have to get to the next mutant earlier. Obviously, age 15 was too late. Scott was…defective.
The boy bit and clipped his nails obsessively, to the point that his fingertips were pink and raw. He flatly refused to allow Charles to handle his strange red glasses, even to examine them for just a moment. He had nightmares, horrible sweating affairs that he denied any memory of. He hoarded food, despite the fact that Charles explicitly commanded him not to – it attracted ants. He seemed to have little sense of how to interact with another human being. He was beyond awkward. He startled easily and crept about with his mouth hanging open. He looked down at all times, hair hanging into his eyes.
Mutants couldn't all be like this, could they? From what little verbal communication they had mustered, Charles had gathered that Scott was orphaned at a young age and spent several years in a Nebraskan children's home before running away and ending up in foster placement with Jack Winters. It was something of a mystery how Winters managed to obtain official foster parent status. Well, not that much of a mystery - Winters had mild psionic abilities. He'd allowed Scott to attend school when it didn't interfere with his schedule of robberies, perhaps the only kindness he'd seen fit to offer the boy. Was this simply the life that went along with being a genetic outsider?
Scott had located an oversized jacket. Turning the collar up, he managed to hide most of his head, up to the ears. He was, rather slowly, reading a book from Xavier's personal library, a WWII fighter pilot memoir called The Blue Arena.
"You're going to need a guardian," said Charles, after clearing his throat.
Scott straightened slightly, but he didn't look in Charles' direction. "You said I could stay here."
Charles suddenly felt ambivalent about that offer, but he said, "Of course." He added, "While you work on getting your powers under control."
"I don't want another foster parent. And I don't want to go back to the orphanage."
"You're too young to apply for emancipation. Some legal arrangement will have to be made."
Scott's jaw lay slack, hair hanging over his glasses. Charles didn't need telepathy to know the boy was thinking about the survival pack he had surreptitiously put together and stashed in the garage. There were calculations on Scott's face: How far can I get? How long will the food last? How long will I have to scrounge for shelter before I look old enough to get a real job?
Charles did something impulsive. "I would be willing to be your guardian," he said, finding his mouth rather dry. "Not as a foster father, per se, but merely to fulfill the legal role," he added, not wanting to assume a depth of relationship that did not yet exist. There was a moment – he wasn't proud of it – in which he considered erasing the boy's memory of the last minute. He was building a team, not running a shelter. But no, it was said and he wasn't going to take it back.
Scott sunk into his jacket. "Right," he said emptily, "yeah."
"Gently…gently!" Charles jerked forward as Scott decided to accelerate considerably faster than the situation called for.
Preliminary testing of Scott's power had yielded minor destruction and no progress whatsoever toward control. He had obviously thought he'd disappointed Charles (which, in perfect honesty, he had), so the boy had busied himself for hours clearing out a garden patch that had long since gone wild. It was at this point that Charles had realized that he had no idea what teens these days liked – his only consolation was that Scott seemed equally clueless.
But, if there was one thing Charles remembered from his own adolescence, it was that every kid wanted to drive a car.
So here they were, in an older car that Charles had never bothered to sell, stopped at an intersection while Scott turned the windshield wipers on, off, and on again in his search for the turn signal. The truck behind them was honking impatiently.
"It's the one on the left, Scott. Good, fine. Now, slowly into the-" Charles cut himself off, a smile creeping onto his face, because they had apparently found the one learning curve that worked in Scott Summers' favor. Whatever bumps there had been at the beginning were now smoothing out and the boy was actually driving reasonably well. He signaled again and changed lanes before turning left onto a country highway. Charles couldn't miss the smile, faint and flickering as it was, when they passed a sign indicating a higher speed limit was now in effect.
"Now, I'd like to speak with Scott privately."
"Might I suggest the library?" asked Charles. "Turn left, end of the hall. I'll send him along."
Catherine Mirwis was feeling a little overwhelmed by the sheer size of the mansion, not to mention the elegant furnishings. She was a government employee and unused to luxury. The library was clearly home to a host of first editions, along with more recent texts about just about every subject. She was still reading spines when the door creaked open, startling her.
"Sorry," said the boy when she jumped. He was scrawny, underfed, and clearly just beginning his growth spurt rather than approaching its end. He was wearing strange red sunglasses despite the dim lighting. Even so, he kept his face angled down and to the left, mouth hanging slightly open. It wasn't immediately clear whether his shoulders were hiked upward or his head was hunched down, but either way, he looked like a turtle half-drawn into its shell. He was a toe-walker, she noticed, possibly due to anxiety, or a lingering effect of the brain damage. His hands hovered in front of his body as if he had no idea what to do with them. When he stepped forward, closer to the lamp, she could see fading bruises on his throat.
"No problem at all," she said, kindly. "Do you want to take a seat?" she gestured toward a straight-backed leather chair on one side of a chessboard. She sat down on the opposite side.
The boy didn't answer verbally, but he settled on the very edge of the chair.
"My name's Catherine and I'm a social worker." She paused, waiting to see if the boy introduced himself. When he made no attempt to do so, she continued, "And you're Scott. I want to start by saying that you're not in trouble, no matter what you tell me. My goal here is to help you. I don't work for the police and it's not my job to punish you for anything you've done in the past. I also want you to know that things you're telling me are not private. The goal of this conversation is to establish the facts of your situation before the law. If I ask you a question and you don't want to answer, please don't lie. Just say, 'I don't want to answer that,' and we'll move on to the next question. Do you understand all of that?"
"Yes, ma'am." His voice was still rather high, fitting his frame rather than his age.
"Why don't you tell me how you met Charles Xavier?"
"I was walking outside. It was raining. He was driving by and he offered me a ride."
That simple story opened up several questions, like, Why were you walking in the rain?, but Mirwis had learned it was often best to first work chronologically, before delving into the specifics. So she said, "And then what happened?"
"He said he'd drive me home. I said didn't want to go home. He said he had a spare bedroom where I could stay a few days."
Mirwis looked at Scott's file. "Home was with Mr. Winters, is that correct?"
Scott nodded.
"Were you running away?"
"Not really. I didn't have a plan. I just wanted to get away for a little while."
"Why was that?"
"I don't want to talk about that."
"Good," she always praised interviewees when they declined to answer, "thank you for telling me." It was so much easier than sifting through lies and confusions. Of course, they were going to have to settle on some kind of reason why Scott wanted to sever his relationship with Jack Winters – well, that was if anyone could find Winters. He hadn't been seen for weeks.
Mirwis was about to ask another question when she realized that she could hear Scott breathing audibly in quick, sharp inhalations. Without saying anything, the boy took his shirt off and stood up, arms held out to the sides. He had the wispy beginnings of underarm hair and a trio of freckles above his navel. Even behind those tinted glasses, she was sure he was looking right at her. There was a mass of brown and yellow over his ribs on the left side of his chest – a bruise well on its way to healing. On his right shoulder, there was a circular scar the familiar diameter of a cigarette. "Can you turn around, sweetheart?" asked Mirwis, temporarily forgetting she was talking to a teenage boy.
Scott complied silently. There were lines of little scabs and more bruises in various stages of healing, including one in a strange question-mark shape. A dog leash, Mirwis realized. She hated the aspect of her job that had gotten her so good at identifying weapons by the marks they left. She noticed that Scott actually straightened and calmed as she looked him over. She wasn't sure what that meant.
So he was willing to communicate, just not to say it aloud. That was fine. "Did Jack Winters cause those injuries?" asked Mirwis.
Scott nodded, putting his shirt back on and settling back into the chair. This time, he sat further back with his sock-feet balanced on the edge, knees subtly blocking his chest.
"I'm very sorry that happened to you," said Mirwis. It was what she always said and it was always the truth. Predictably, it got no reaction. She went on to the next question. When it came to teens and disrupted placements, rape, statutory or forcible, was often a concern. "Did Mr. Winters ever approach you for sex?" The wording was careful, honed over many years, to encompass the experiences of children who saw themselves as victims as well as those who believed they were equal partners.
"No," said Scott. "I don't think he was into boys."
She thought about going through the neglect questions, but the boy was obviously underfed, and the physical abuse evidence was plenty clear. She decided to skip them for now.
"Scott, this is by no means a criticism of you, but I'm wondering why you chose to get into Mr. Xavier's car."
Scott smiled. Well, not quite a smile, but a fraction of one, a hint of one. "Did you ever wonder how he was driving a car? He can't press the pedals, can he? He's got these levers, hand-operated, for the accelerator and the brake. I could see them. Only paralyzed people have cars fixed up like that. So I figured, if he's paralyzed, he can't beat me up. He's not going to ask me to-" Scott omitted the request with a blush. "It was a gamble, but it wasn't stupid."
"I have one last question for you, and it's awkward. People sometimes get offended."
Charles gestured for her to go on.
"I need to know what your expectations are for this adoption." She exhaled audibly, almost a sigh, then continued. "When children are adopted in infancy, they do just as well as natural-born kids. But Scott will be a different case. He's not a blank slate. He's got fifteen years of life, including a brain injury and an abuse history." She fixed Xavier with an earnest stare. "We find that in cases like this, the adoption has the best chance of succeeding if the parents are prepared for the possibility that their new son or daughter may never love them back."
"Are you asking if I know what I'm signing up for?"
"Yes."
"I don't think any of us can know that," said Charles. "I'm certainly not holding out for father-son hiking trips." People were uncertain what to make of his disability, and their uncertainty made them hesitant. He usually tried to smooth things over in the interests of advancing the status of the physically disabled, but in this case, social taboo could be played for mental manipulation just as effectively as telepathy.
Mirwis opened her mouth as if to speak, then shut it again, obviously unsure what to say.
Xavier tented his fingers, pensive. "There is a long tradition, stretching back to the Medicis in Italy and centuries before, of idle wealthy men sponsoring talented youth. If the only role that Scott is able to accept for me in his life is that of patron, then I shall still count myself lucky."
Mirwis smiled gently. The whole situation seemed so unbelievable to her, like something out of a Saturday afternoon B-movie. Here was an unattached, childless, paraplegic millionaire, and there was a fifteen-year-old orphan, pathetically shy and downtrodden. See them come together in a heartwarming tale of plot holes and dramatic chords. This sort of thing never happened. But if what Xavier was saying was true, the situation would certainly be of benefit to Scott, couldn't possibly be worse than another foster home or group placement. You just won the lotto, kid, she thought. Aloud, she said, "Well, it looks like all of your paperwork is in order. I see no reason that we can't get the judge to sign off on these forms within the week."
"That's wonderful," as he wheeled around the desk to lead her back out.
"You're very organized," complimented Mirwis. "I can't believe you already had a completed homestudy."
"Yes," agreed Xavier, "that is hard to believe."
"Scott, I must ask. Why did you decide to trust me?"
"I already said. I know you were listening when I was talking to her."
"Yes, but the walking-in-the-rain story was a lie, though your on-the-spot improvisation about my modified car was very clever."
Scott worried his lower lip. "I don't trust you," he said, "not completely. I just trusted you enough to help me with Jack, and that…well, it worked, didn't it? And so I trusted you enough to stay here for a few days, and it hasn't been so bad, so now I guess I trust you enough to stay here for a while longer."
"Because my paralysis means that I cannot possibly physically or sexually assault you?" asked Charles, echoing what Scott had said to the social worker.
"She doesn't know about your powers, so she believed that. I'm not stupid. If you wanted to beat me up, you wouldn't use your fists – you'd use mine. Or you'd make me bash my head into a wall." Scott glanced at Charles before looking down again. "And I don't know what you like for sex, but if you wanted to make me do it, you could take over my brain and I wouldn't have a choice."
"I sound like a very dangerous man."
"You could keep me from running away, I think. You could even make me think I'm happy here and that I don't want to run away. I don't know how I could tell the difference between that and really wanting to stay. You're a lot more dangerous than Jack was."
"And yet, you lied to a social worker to ensure that you would be allowed to stay. Why?"
Scott sounded strange and a little bit sad. "Because I'm dangerous, too."
"And because I let you drive?"
"And because you let me drive."