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Periphery
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As a child of twelve, Charles Xavier is not as adept or comfortable with his mutation as he will be in his later years — he hasn't even inferred, yet, that it is a mutation in his genes that is responsible for his unique and rather alarming abilities. He is an awkward child, shuffling and stumbling along in the heavy, too-large boots of a grown man, and he does yet not cultivate the same easy results that he will at fifty, or at twenty-nine, or even at seventeen. Nevertheless, he maintains a fair amount of control over his powers, and over himself — even if, in the less-vigilant hours of sleep, his mind wanders.
At breakfast, Raven sets her spoon into her bowl of milk and it clinks against the porcelain bottom, "I had a dream about you last night."
Charles looks up from his own cereal in surprise.
"Did you?"
"Yeah." The tiny girl bobs her head, golden curls bouncing over her shoulders as she returns her attention to her bowl, swishing the milk around. "Well… I had a nightmare at first. And then you were there, and I wasn't scared anymore."
Raven lifts the bowl to her mouth with both hands, her brown eyes darting to Charles' face and then back into the bowl. The young telepath puzzles over this for a moment. He knows for a fact that he didn't intrude on anyone last night — in any fashion.
"Well, that's strange," he says, offering a small smile, "Do you want to talk about it?"
"No," Raven says, "I'm okay." She gets up from the table, carrying her empty bowl into the kitchen to set it in the sink. "I told you I wasn't scared anymore."
Charles shrugs, chuckling.
"Alright, then."
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Charles, by nature, rarely seeks refuge from even the darker corners of the mind, where the subconscious has a terrible habit of curling up your fears and your worst memories and rolling them underneath the door of your dreams.
This night, he makes an exception.
Though it isn't a conscious one so much as it's the unconscious, instinctual part of his brain trying to tell him, Take it easy.
Enough is enough.
Charles slips out the window when he senses it, intruding on that narrow space under the door, where light usually leaks in. It comes in the form of long shadows and the heavy, steady sound of shoes hitting the hardwood, something scraping on the floor. Together these blot out any semblance of light, and Charles welcomes the feeling of cold stone under his bare feet as he walks away from it.
He doesn't dare run.
Every step disperses a thin wisp of darkness, revealing gray, uneven bricks underfoot and a lighter path ahead.
Without question, Charles follows it, watching his feet, occasionally glancing back at the dark drifting in his wake. He listens to the foot steps, his heart beating a steady rhythm against the inside of his ribs, but the sound grows quieter the further he walks and eventually it fades completely. Some relief sinks in here, but there is still the darkness trying to creep in, the shadows twisting in and out across his path, trying to confuse him and get him lost.
And there is the low hum that replaces it, that always overwhelms him.
There are murmuring voices, each trying to beckon him deeper into the dark, and Charles is as compelled to follow them as he is to keep his distance.
He doesn't want them.
He never has, and still they are there.
He doesn't know where he is going, or even if it is any better than here, but Charles would rather go than stay. He keeps his eyes on the dim, gray-blue light and presses on. At some point, he recognizes it as moonlight, peeking in through a small window that he cannot see — and at the same time he realizes this, he comes out of the darkness, quite suddenly, and into a room made of the same cold brick that he has been following all this time.
The voices stop.
It's cold, and Charles swears he can hear rain, though he can't see it. And, most importantly, he is not alone.
There are dozens — no, dozens and dozens — of other boys around his age, some older and some far younger, sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor, leaning against the wall or the thick, iron bars. They look as if they've been here for days and days, and the feeling permeating the air upsets Charles so badly, he nearly runs back into the waiting darkness.
His heart starts pounding again.
Standing in the middle of the floor, in his clean pajamas, he feels alarmingly out of place.
He wants his mother.
And he is not entirely sure of whether this feeling is his own or not, but it is strong enough, regardless, to cause an ache in his chest.
It beats through his veins, the sole voice ringing in a longing refrain.
Mother. Mother. Mother.
Charles moves across the room, stumbling over the uneven floor and maneuvering around the other children in his way. He goes to the farthest corner where the feeling is strongest — where it lingers, like the white blindness in a warren, and seeps into the very stone — and he stops in front of a boy, who is only a few years older than himself, but who, somehow, seems infinitely older.
The boy doesn't acknowledge him, and for a moment Charles hesitates.
"Can I sit here with you?" he asks, his voice barely making a sound in the stifling quiet of the room. It seems to echo softly through the darkness, as if he is truly alone and this is all a dream. He is painfully aware of the alternative — going back. "I'm scared."
Charles doesn't realize this is true until he says it out loud, and a cold, anxious feeling settles in his chest. He feels selfish. The boy lifts his head off his knees, though he doesn't look at Charles, instead casting a brief frown around the floor, as if unsure of how to answer.
"Tun was du willst."
The words are German, rough and mumbled as the boy replaces his forehead against his knees and lets out a heavy sigh, but Charles understands them all the same,
Do what you want.
He scrambles forward without any further prompting, cramming himself in between the older boy and the corner, and folds his knees up to his chest, resting his hands on top of his knees in the same fashion as the older boy. Charles looks around, again, at forbidding, lonely room, before pressing his forehead against the backs of his hands and closing his eyes.
He takes a few steady breaths, hoping to clear his mind. He feels as if he's suffocating in this strange atmosphere, but some tiny bit of warmth is starting to spread back into his limbs.
"Warum hast du Angst?" the older boy asks, surprising Charles.
Again, he hears it clearly.
So why are you afraid?
He looks up into a dark, somber green, and stares for a long moment because there's something profoundly sad in those eyes — it makes that desperate feeling in his chest swell. He wants to cry.
Charles raises his shoulders in a meager shrug, lowering his gaze, and absently pulls at a fold in the knee of his pajama pants.
"Aren't you afraid sometimes?" he asks instead, looking up again.
Slowly, as if he's given the question a great deal of thought, the older boy dips his head in a short nod. He keeps his fists clenched, squeezing something in his left hand, and he glances away. Charles mimics the nod and leans slightly forward, crossing his arms atop his knees.
After a few moments, Charles, looking at his toes, offers,
"So perhaps we'll be less afraid together."
Somehow, he already feels less afraid, and those green eyes turn on him one more time before Charles wakes up, safe and in his own bed in Westchester, his mind buzzing with a vague, but powerful sense of consonance.
And there is nothing else.
He remembers nothing but the darkness, trying to escape it — the nervous feeling tingles up again, for an instant — and the steady hum of voices; voices that begin anew as soon as he wakes.
Tiredly, Charles sits up and rubs the heels of his hands against his eyes, his temples. He takes a deep breath, and a moment to collect his thoughts, pushing away all of the restless others cajoling and fighting for his attention. He doesn't want them, especially not at this hour.
Someone is having financial trouble.
Someone is sick.
A baby is crying.
Charles slowly lets out his breath, drags another one in to fill his lungs. He pulls up his walls until he is closer to home and there is silence, or at least something reassuringly close to it.
He can sense Raven, two doors away and sleeping soundly, and — at a much safer distance — Cain. His mother, and Kurt, are in another wing altogether, and the three of them are sleeping, peaceful or otherwise. When he is certain everyone is where they should be, Charles withdraws into his own mind once more, and relishes in the peace for a while.
He tries to sleep again, and tries, like all of us do, to recall the feeling that was present just before he woke up.
It eludes him for 18 years.
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(A/n) Pointless, boring, unbearably random, and with no real direction: yup, that's how I roll! In a list on scenarios that are unlikely to happen in the X-men verse, this holds a decent enough place in the ranks, but hey. The idea's been stuck in my head for a while now and if fanfiction doesn't occasionally take a dip in the slightly-improbable pool, well, then it just isn't any fun. (It isn't as if Xmen is very canon, anyway.) I writing useless stuff to occupy NaNoWriMo and I'm way behind on my word count. I hope you guys enjoyed this... whatever it is.
Edit: Thanks to medi22 for accurate German! I really appreciate it, dude. C:
Please review!
-Motcn