Home Again.
By Emparra.
When the draft letter came, it seemed unreal. The war was on the other side of the world, and he was right here in northern New York; it hadn't much affected him.
But, the papers came and Alex had filled them out. He would do his duty for his country, and frankly it wasn't so strange a thought.
He'd been to war before, with Sean and Hank, Raven, Angel, Darwin. And Erik. And Charles. But it hadn't ended well.
Three had left, one had died, two had stayed, and one had been badly injured..
And the time after that was rocky.
The school had opened and flourished for a while with a goodly number of students, both young and older, the Professor and McCoy teaching core subjects with Sean and Alex taking up the minor ones, and things were okay. For a while.
The three X-Men went out a few times to save mutants here and there, bring them back to the school in hopes of helping them. Some stayed, some left, some were angry and would not be helped, and a few came and left better.
Sean left too, going to make something of his life out in the world, and that was good. They heard from him every now and again.
Then Magneto killed the president and it all went to hell.
Charles had taught them well, though, and Alex was fairly sure he'd do alright in the army. He had mental discipline; a must when living with a telepath, because apparently even psi-null people could project and that could be a very awkward thing. He was in good physical condition from the PE classes he'd taught until the school closed, and he'd kept up with the exercise.
So he packed his bag and said his goodbyes, wishing he could ignore the horrible guilty feeling that he was abandoning what was left of his family as he walked toward the bus.
Both Hank and Charles had accompanied him to the bus station where he would board to go to his assigned camp, Charles using his power to alter the perception of the giant blue beast in the midst of all the people.
The serum Hank had been working on to treat the spinal damage hadn't done much in the way of easing the pain, though it did tend to dull his powers a little.
And Charles was a willing, if not openly excited, test subject and would go long with most of Hank's theories and experiments concerning both his injury and mutation.
But he still struggled with control: Hank was of the opinion that Charles' powers may have grown stronger amidst the turmoil of the recent few years, and Alex agreed.
He was rather grey in the face, and looked small and tired in that wheelchair; he'd probably spend the rest of the day in his room with a migraine from hell for his effort. But they'd insisted on coming to the depot with Alex, giving their soldier a proper send-off.
The bus ride was uneventful, unlike their arrival at the destination.
That was loud, confusing, unorganized, and demoralizing, at least for the recruits. Alex however, used to the madness that accompanied a school of rambunctious mutant children, ducked his head and went with it.
Boot camp was bearable.
Deployment to Vietnam could be summarized in one word: hell.
Days and days were spent slogging through thick jungle and swamps, stepping so softly to avoid the minefields that seemed to sprawl for miles, dodging in shrapnel and watching in horror when some unlucky soldier tripped a mine and was blown to pieces. Then they had to pick him up and get the gory mess of a man to a medical unit where he might die a little more comfortable if he lived through the blast, or simply to be sent home and buried if he hadn't.
Hank's regular letters were a nice reprieve, a way to forget the hellhole he was in for even a minute before they were tucked away.
Alex supposed he ought have burned them or something, but he hadn't the heart to. He'd brought no mementos of home, since there'd been no room in his duffle. Plus, if he were discovered as a mutant, anything that tied him to Xavier Manor would place Charles and Hank in danger.
They didn't need that.
But he hung on to the creased, bland stationary anyway, where Hank's neat hand brought him home just for a moment.
Then there were firefights and bombings, while days filled from first light to sundown with whizzing bullets and running, tortured screams and the stench of death and the smell of blood everywhere, and nights full of fear and hellish dreams.
No way anybody was getting out of this war without some level of messed-up-in-the-head.
Some of his buddies turned to drugs, some to drink, or any other coping method to distract; all of which he avoided. No matter the mind-numbing horrors that looped through his mind, one slip-up with his powers and it would all be over. He couldn't afford that. So he kept quiet, buried it all deep and didn't bother with it.
Bad idea? Maybe. But he was careful. He survived.
So when Alex was pulled from his squad and put into a barrack with other mutants, his heart leapt and skipped a beat. He hadn't used his powers, but someone had still found out. These other guys though, most of them hadn't stood a chance; their mutations didn't exactly blend in.
Then Raven/Mystique had come and rescued them, raising all kinds of hell, and sent them all on their way home.
Once they'd landed in the airport, they'd been booed by a few ignorant hippies, a couple foolish kids, but Alex hadn't paid much attention. He was focused on one thing; getting home. So he changed into civvies and started walking.
He'd walked and hitchhiked most of the way back from California to New York, catching a bus now and again, sleeping in cheap motels, catching snippets of news here and there.
It seemed Magneto was free somehow, the treaty signing in Paris had been interrupted by blue mutants, someone had created giant robots that hunted mutants, a baseball stadium had been dropped around the White House, and Mystique had saved the President.
Everything was a mess.
Alex almost dreaded going back to the mansion, though.
The letters Hank had written him during his deployment kept him mostly up to date, but Charles hadn't done well since he left. He'd been slowly losing grip of his powers since before the school closed, and after it had shut down, he had spiraled. It had been hard to watch the once vibrant and optimistic man who had taken in a bunch of frightened, lost children and taught them to be strong and have hope, to watch him withdraw and lose hope himself.
By the time Alex had left, the telepath had been almost as uncertain as a child with his power and in great pain, depressed over the loss of half of his first class, over half of his family, and his whole school.
In the years Alex was gone, Hank told how the once great man had almost completely shut down, become a broken shell of who he used to be. He'd become bitter and caustic, completely without hope.
It had been almost pathetic the way Charles had paled when the draft letter had come, and how he'd hugged Alex so tight at the bus station with tears in his eyes.
The selfish part of him didn't want to go back and take care of someone else, didn't want to be relied on to stay together anymore. He just wanted to a safe place where he could fall apart; the only place he'd come to associate with the word home, a place where someone else would be there to catch him and pick up the pieces because he was too tired to hold on anymore.
But that was not something he could put on Hank, the one who'd stayed behind to take care of Charles when Alex had gone and gotten a job, moved on, tried to make something of his life.
He'd killed, watched people die in horrible ways, watched men sob in terror as battle raged around them. But they wouldn't make it if someone didn't hold it together.
So he'd bottled up his feelings in order to survive, put up a numb front for the world to tear at instead of dealing with them and allowing his heart to bleed and cry and feel the pain, pushing through on automatic.
Most of him just wanted to stop, to lie down and quit because this was too painful to keep up. He was too tired to let himself feel.
If you didn't feel, you couldn't be compromised. Right?
Was this what his old mentor had felt like? So full of despair and fear of his own mind that daily function was a burden? Was this what had dulled his eyes, hardened his heart?
If Alex came back to live, how could they not drag each other down? He couldn't be that burden. He couldn't bear that burden.
He just... couldn't. None of them could handle that.
Alex turned down that last road, focusing on keeping one foot in front of the other, or else his mind would take him places he didn't want to go.
It was quiet here, except for the occasional bird trilling away and the crickets singing as they hid in the grass.
When he came up to that particular iron gate at 1407 Greymalkin Lane, Salem Center, Westchester County, New York, it was closed. He pushed through and slammed it shut behind him; it had been closed since the school shut down and had not been opened except for every now and again.
One foot, other foot, one foot, other foot, and on and on.
Then there were stairs, and the front door.
He rapped once, twice, and turned away to wait for Hank, when the heavy door was pulled open. Alex spun around to meet a pair of blue eyes staring up at him.
"Alex? You're back?"
It was Charles, faint disbelief flickering onto his face.
"Yeah." he answered, and they stayed there for a moment.
Alex shifted his bag on his back, and Charles seemed to snap into action. He pulled backward to allow the man inside, and pulled him down for a firm hug which was returned wholeheartedly.
There was something different about him now, though, something Alex couldn't quite put his finger on...
Charles let go and gave a small smile. It wasn't the vibrant, excited grin of the idealistic young man who'd come to him in prison, but it was the most genuine the energy-bender seen in years. He sat a little straighter in his chair than he had at the depot, eyes a little brighter. He seemed to have recovered a little bit.
Would Alex's presence only drag him down again?
But his old mentor was asking how his trip back had been as he turned his chair toward the hall, and was he hungry? Hank was out at the moment, but should be back soon...
Alex wasn't really listening, and Charles was nervous.
But then the chatter stopped.
Alex looked up to see Charles turning back toward him, something unreadable on his face.
He felt an old, familiar niggle at the back of his mind; the telepath had always given warning when touching someone else's mind, and that had been his asking permission to enter. But before Alex left, Charles had been so uncomfortable with his power, he'd kept to himself as much as possible, withdrawn.
He gave a small nod and closed his eyes, feeling the gentle presence ghost his conscious. Familiar. Comforting.
"Oh, Alex. So much... such pain you've seen." came a gentle voice. 'I'm so, so sorry."
Alex opened his eyes and looked down to Charles. His eyes were full of tears as he looked up to his old student.
"I'm so sorry."
The words hit him, and his throat began to close. Tears welled.
They wouldn't fall, not yet, but maybe sometime soon. All the things he'd buried deep inside began to spring up and course back to life.
Those three simple words echoed in his ears and his mind as Charles Xavier looked up at him with tears in his eyes, full of sympathy, understanding.
Never pity, never patronizing.
That fire that had been so dulled by the time Alex was shipped off, was bright again, faltering but alive, and full of love.
So Alex did the most logical thing that came to mind; he dumped his bag on the floor and sank to his knees, throwing his arms around the telepath, and letting himself be clasped by strong arms. No matter that he was larger than the man in the chair, stronger, scarred and hardened by war, Alex Summers leaned into the embrace and rested his head.
He was home. He was safe. He was wrong; he'd be taken care of just fine.
Feniss.