After breakfast, Charles locks himself in his study to stew over this newfound development alone. Sitting behind his desk, alone, he sulks in silence as he stares at the wall ahead. When he first retreated into this room, perhaps he managed to tell himself that he was going to sit down and pour over his research and his thesis, to get some work done on the paper that so very dearly needs it. He sits down with the intention of doing something productive, but his troubled mind doesn't quiet down, even in the stillness of his own privacy. Mind racing in circles as the clock ticks away the time, Charles rolls over the issue at hand. Raven thought that she needed some help around the house while Charles was away. Yes. Of course. That's only reasonable. But... This woman she's selected...He knows that she must be an empath, an empath whose mind he cannot read. Which leaves him with a dilemma, the likes of which he isn't sure he's ever encountered. He knows that the right thing to do would be to terminate what they're calling her employment, which he knows it nothing more than borderline slave-labor. Morally, it isn't right to keep her working here without paying her in kind. But... Professionally. His mind races as he thinks of what having a woman like her around could do for his research. An empath with the ability-innate or otherwise- to block out the powers of a mutant with his strength and power. It could be the discovery that cracks the rest of his research. It could be a massive breakthrough.
His heart and his mind are currently fighting for the power to make decisions and at the moment, he isn't sure which is winning the battle.
All at once, the door to his office opens and he jumps to look busy, picking up a random paper and pretending to read it as his glasses slide down his nose. Peeking through the door, Nellie clings to her basket of cleaning supplies, stepping to back out of the room, bowing her head in apology.
"I'm so sorry, I can come back-" She excuses herself.
But Charles shakes his head once, clearing his throat as he waves her deeper into the room. As long as she's here, he refuses to make her feel uncomfortable or unwelcome in his presence. Keeping his eyes on the random paper in his hands- which he now realizes he's been staring at upside down- he gives her permission to continue her chores.
"No, you won't be a bother," he says with a gruff assent in his voice.
So, in silence, she pulls out the tools of her trade and begins her task of dusting, her peaceful stilling the erratic air surrounding Charles and his conflicted mind. And it is in her silence that Charles watches her lithe and curving figure move from over the tops of his glasses, wondering what in the world he has done to make him deserve this.
Every other day, she sweeps into his office for its scheduled cleaning, sharing with him the gentility of the energy she projects upon him and the smell of her fresh cleaning products as he attempts to ignore her presence. He is not entirely successful in that pursuit, as he is as susceptible to her powers as she seems helpless to control them. Every other day, she waltzes into his study, smelling of standard issue boxed soap and contentment, and he finds himself at a loss for ways to distract himself from her. Of course, it's easy to brush away such an affliction of the heart and of the eyes, diagnosing himself as transfixed with her powers. But underneath, he knows that there is more to it than that, and occasionally Raven's words from Nellie's first day here haunt him. She's beautiful, isn't she?
On this particularly day, Charles sits with his fingers atop the keys of his typewriter, clacking away sentences that might as well be gibberish for all the sense they're making in an academic paper such as this one. His mind is only half-focused on his work, for as Nellie wipes down the top of the fireplace on the far wall, she's humming a startlingly familiar song, one that itches the back of Charles' mind until he cannot help but ask:
"What's that song?"
She stumbles at the surprise of hearing his voice after all of this time. He has been doing a startlingly good job at ignoring her with all of his might, and yet she can still fill the thrums of his discomfort hanging in the air. Today, for some reason, she felt his distress more acutely than she's ever done before, and without much way to calm him without unleashing the full force of her power, she began to hum in an effort to calm him more subtly, without the use of her power. But it only served to draw his attention to her. Pushing away from the fireplace, Nellie tightens her grip around the sponge in her hands as she stands at attention. His constant quiet has given her constant reason to feel nervous around him, and there is not a moment spent in this study that doesn't set her on edge. She's spoken to Raven about it, complaining in deferential tones that she doesn't think Charles likes her very much. With a knowing glint in her eye, Raven shakes her head, saying that feeling couldn't be farther from the truth. But, as she attempts to hold herself under control and keep her hands from shaking, she thinks that it is Raven, not her, with the wrong ideas about Charles' feelings for her.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you," Nellie says, vowing not to hum again.
Distracted, Charles keeps his response select and terse, not wanting her to speak too much for fear of never being able to stop again. He looks her in the eyes, wondering what secrets she's keeping locked away deep within those deep brown caverns, and responds:
"You didn't disturb me. What is that song?"
It's something that she used to dance to when she was younger. Something that she used to sing when she was out in the world and free of this affliction that she's suffering from now. But she doesn't want to tell him that, not something so personal, so deeply ingrained in the woman she's become that she isn't sure that she could share it with him without ripping a piece of herself away with it. Shaking her head, she lies remorselessly.
"I don't know."
She and Charles look at one another for a while before Charles thinks better of pursuing this conversation with her any further. With a small nod of his head for her to return to her work so that he may return to his, the master of this house looks down at his typewriter, wondering after the odd sensation of loss that he feels when she turns her gaze away from him.
It is almost a week later when Charles gathers up the thought to speak to her again. She's pulled the trophies and medals from the glass and oaken case lining one of the walls and planted her self on the floor with a tub of grease and enough rags to clothe an entire refugee camp. The grease nearly covers her, staining her fingers like nicotine and smudging her cheeks like rouge. Her arms ache with the effort from the scrubbing she's giving these idols of glory, but it's worth it when she can see her smiling, pleased reflection in the silver medallion of his Honorary Exonian Knighthood sigil. Charles watches her unabashedly this afternoon, only half pretending to pay attention to the various equations laying in wait for his dedication across his desk. Something has been itching at his mind for days now, something that rests heavily on his heart. He has to know about her, he has to understand the person that has been quietly marching armies into the highlands of his mind.
"What do they pay you?" He asks.
It isn't a particularly polite or honorable question to ask. He knows how much Raven's checks made out to The Holbrook Hospital cost her, but he has no idea how much she makes off of the end. It seems a pittance that they pay the hospital, a few meager dollars that it seems to Charles could only barely cover the cost of transportation, but he has to know the truth her own lips before he can take stock of the decisions that need to be made here.
"I'm sorry?" She begs his pardon, narrowing her eyes up at him from her place on the floor, her hand stilling on the silver platter that her hands only just picked up from their place on the canvas she laid out to catch any stray bits of cleaning grease.
Readjusting his vocabulary so that she might understand him, Charles speaks again. This question has been nettling him ever since he asked Raven with no response. She claims she doesn't know how much they pay her, but Charles cannot be so certain that he believes that. Either way, Nellie will surely know what her salary amounts to at the end of each week when Charles supposes her dues are paid through an administrator of some kind at the hospital.
"How much money do they pay you to come and work for us?" He asks, reiterating his meaning.
A breath of a laugh escaping her lips, Nellie returns to her polishing, shaking her head as the ridiculous nature of the question settles into her bones. After all, she's a patient at a mental hospital. He cannot expect, not really expect, that she gets paid anything for the few precious hours of freedom that she is afforded by this job. For her, the job is the reward. Not that that's something she could ever expect him to understand. He's been free his whole life. There's not a caged muscle in his body.
"Nothing, Charles," she says.
It's just as he suspected, then, Charles thinks frustratedly. So, his mind pivots to another question, tilting his head to focus all of his confusion directly on her.
"And you do this willingly? You work for nothing willingly?" He asks, trying to peel the answer straight out of her, unsure if there is any other way to prompt her to truthfulness.
Her smile is disarming even when it isn't focused in his direction, Charles finds. And the look that's etched its way into her being is nothing short of affirmed. Just as she suspected, he doesn't understand. Because no one like him could ever understand. It's sad in its own way, really.
"Yes. It's my choice," she says lightly before giving him a pointed look of reassurance, "No one forced me into anything."
Charles' face twists in a look of discomfort, unable to balance the equation of her explanation. It doesn't make sense to him. It will never make sense to him, perhaps.
"Why do you do it?" He asks.
She sighs and puts the grease-stained rag and the silver platter down, looking toward the lip of the drawn drapes covering the window. A longing the likes of which Charles has never experienced nor has he ever seen dominates her features, taking control of her with aggressive force across her delicate features.
"Because, when I'm here, I get to see the sky. I don't get that at the Hospital. Not very often."
That, effectively, stops Charles' mind from working for the next hour that she's sitting in his study. He cannot fathom thoughts, much less words, and finds himself struck dumb by the sincerity of her convictions. Such a simple thing, really, to want to see the sky, to be reminded that the earth is still spinning and that the sun still hangs in the sky.
They do not speak for the entirety of her time at work that day. But the next, when she arrives in his office, she does not miss that he leaves his drapes open, giving her just a few more moments with the sky she misses so dearly.
The kindness of such a gesture resonates in the deepest part of Nellie's soul, and she does not stop smiling until she falls asleep that evening.
For the last hour, Charles has been groaning and huffing with his red correction tape as he pours over his writing so far. It's wrong. It's all wrong. He hasn't been able to make a lick of sense of the research he's managed to collect so far, but dammit, if he shouldn't be able to breakdown just the fundamentals that he's experienced in his own body. This is a disaster. Finally, he looks to Nellie, who is staring dreamily out of the window as she cleans the inside panes. Clearing his throat to capture her attention, he watches as she turns to look at him. The grey dress is hanging even more miserably off of her body and he wonders if it would be out of the question to get Raven to donate a more appropriate and comfortable dress to the Hospital for her to wear.
"Would you listen to a section of my thesis for me?" He asks.
After all, she says that she went to a very good university, and while he isn't particularly sure if that's true or what university she attended if she went at all, it might just help to say the words out loud, to hear them as though he were speaking them at a lectern. Nellie nods and stands against the wall, waiting for him to begin speaking.
"Of course," she says.
Offering her the chair across from him, he places his slides his glasses on and picks up the page he's currently battling against.
"Have a seat," he offers.
This is unprecedented, and for a moment, Nellie hesitates. But, stiffly, she manages to sink into the plush leather seat, sitting only on the edge as though she expects for him to command her to stand out of it at any moment, as if she feels herself unworthy of such a minor convenience. A switch flips in Charles' mind as he looks down on the paper before him, turning on the tone of a professor. His accent rolls in mountainous lilts, filling the room with a specific arrogance that comes from the mind of a man who knows he has no cause to be proud at all.
"'The creation of the societal Other has been often a point of great fascination for philosophers and psychologists alike, but has not often been explored by geneticists. However, when dealing with the scientific Other, both the perspective of the genetic and psychological must be examined. Take, for example the confession of the Other. Some take pride in their status as different, as separate, even considering themselves to reign superior. However, others revert into childlike hiding, psychologically speaking-"
Charles is caught up in his own mind when the sturdy voice of Nellie cuts through his thoughts.
"It isn't childlike to hide something that you're afraid of revealing," she says with absolute confidence.
The words pour out of her without her thinking better of it, popping from her lips like a cork from a champagne bottle. She thinks of her life, her stories which will be kept from the mind of her employer, and can say without hesitation that having a mutation and wanting to keep it secret isn't cowardice. It isn't childlike. It is self-preservation.
"It isn't? How so?" He asks, furrowing his brow and looking at her from over the rim of his spectacles.
Because Nellie knows that humanity is a party and mutants are not on the guest list. But, if one wears the right clothes, one can make it past the door. If one wants to survive in this life, they must be willing to blend in. She thinks of the Old Testament with which she grew up and of the stories of the sick who were cast out of the city walls to die alone. She knows the feeling. With a sad and all too familiar smile, she stands to return to her work.
"Because no one wants to become the lepers of their time, Charles."
"Raven, I have a question," Charles says over dinner that very evening.
Nellie's last task of any working day consists of cooking and serving the evening meal for Raven and Charles before being escorted by an orderly with dark eyes out to the waiting van idling to return her to the hospital. Charles' question comes in the middle of the dinner course, just as the back door closes behind their hired help.
"Shoot," Raven says, cutting a piece of lamb before serving herself a bite.
Charles gives her a pointed look, not even bothering to touch his food. His stomach is in turmoil and his mind is riding a merry-go-round as he runs over this conversation in his mind. There are many ways that this could go, many ways that he and Raven could discuss this issue, and he needs it to go down the smoothest of paths possible.
"You have to be honest with me," he intones, an air of gravity sinking down the room.
Raven gives him a half-teasing look.
"Am I ever not honest with you?" She asks, knowing the answer to this joke of a question.
Her lifelong friend nods his head in confirmation. There have been many, many times that she's lied to him. Most notably:
"Last year when you let me walk out of the house in that atrocious pinstripe suit."
Her mind driving back to that memory, Raven snorts into her wine. It was a god-awful creation, but when he walked into her room to ask for her approval, she lavished him with compliments. And, oh, the look on his face when the passerby would point and stare at him was so delicious that Raven still remembers it to this day.
"I did not lie to you," she defends, "I said it was eye-catching. And, believe me, it was."
Charles laughs himself before shaking his head clear of the distraction and attempting to return to the heart of the matter, the reason for his whole conversation. Raven continues to tuck into her meal while Charles looks across the table at her with grave eyes.
"We've lost the point," he scolds.
She nods.
"Right. Your question."
"Is Nellie a mutant?" Charles asks.
The expectation from Charles is something of a fight. For Raven to rise to her feet and shout and tell him that he's being ridiculous, that she couldn't tell him even if she knew, that she would never betray someone's trust so far as to tell him about something as private as their mutation, that she would never hire a mutant into servitude the way she's done to Nellie. He expects raised voices and a fight which ends in quiet confirmations and steaming silence. But his expectations are not met. Instead, Raven simply offers her response as she reaches for the bowl of salad nestled in between the two candelabras serving as the centerpiece to their meal.
"Yes."
He stumbles for a moment, trying to regroup as he staggers from the discord between his expectations and reality. The easy and light confirmation that he gets from Raven disarms him until he can finally speak out his next question.
"An empath, isn't she?" He asks.
Raven rolls her eyes and slabs butter onto the nearest slice of French bread.
"You're the mind reader, not me," she retorts sharply.
Charles' reaction comes thoughtlessly, for if he had thought this through, he perhaps would never have revealed this detail to Raven at all.
"I can't read her mind," he confesses.
Raven halts her frantic eating and merely stares at her near-enough brother with dumbstruck awe. There's never been a mind that Charles cannot penetrate. It's the one thing she's ever been able to count on in this life, Charles' abilities. The shock of such a revelation turns the wine to vinegar in her mouth and she swallows the now harsh-tasting liquid, letting it burn her as it goes down.
"Really?" She asks, reaching for the water decanter to take the wretched taste out of her mouth.
A bit ashamed at this new truth, Charles nods.
"Really," he says before staring at Raven with harsh attention, "Now, how did you know?"
With a shrug of her shoulders, the young woman across from Charles adopts an off-hand air.
"She told me herself," Raven asserts.
"Oh?" Charles asks, not even bothering to hide his surprise.
Her snap of a retort smacks Charles with unfamiliar harshness as a fire lights behind his friend's eyes.
"I have friends who aren't you, you know," she barks.
Remorse instantly washes over Charles' features as he tries to make things right. Her solitude has always been something of a sore spot for Raven, and he knows that any mention of it-directly or otherwise- is bound to set a few land mines off in the forefront of her brain. He reaches out to touch her hand, to comfort her, but she pulls away with a twitch of her body.
"I wasn't trying to imply-" He begins.
But the off-hand air returns to Raven's countenance and she reaches for her wine once more, wanting nothing but to end this conversation. A superiority slides into her tone, a child-like voice that says I know something you don't know.
"It doesn't matter. She doesn't want you to know."
Knowing that perhaps he was not the most hospitable host at first, Charles was beginning to think that he and Nellie were onto something, that they were on the verge of a tentative and hesitant kind of friendship. He narrows his eyes.
"Why not?" Charles asks.
In confidence, Nellie has told things to her friend that she knows Charles will never be ready to hear. Things that would sour his faith in human kind, things that would destroy the very idea that humans are worth saving. Their friendship, the odd bond formed between the two female mutants, has given Raven access to the mind and memories of a young woman so bound up in pain that the mere sight of the sun can conjure a smile to her face. And she will protect her friend at all costs, even if that threat that looms on the horizon is her own brother.
"She thinks you'll won't let her come back," she says, parroting the words that she heard from a terrified Nellie one afternoon when she was certain that Charles had felt the slip of her powers.
That's a ridiculous notion. She knows that Raven is a mutant and that Charles allows her to remain. Even if she doesn't know that Charles himself is a mutant, surely she must know that he doesn't hold any prejudices against them. Not when he writes his thesis them and keeps one in his home.
"Why would she think that?" He questions.
But Raven has answered enough questions about Nellie.
"'Tis not ours to reason why, but ours to do and die,'" She says in a sing-song voice before reaching across the table for the salt and pepper shakers.
Charles' voice teeters upon desperation.
"I need to understand her power," he asserts.
Raven's jaw tightens and she turns the full force of her defensive eyes upon the man across from her.
"She's a sweet girl, Charles. Don't fool with her mind," she threatens.
But Charles is already running off with ideas and thoughts and possibilities. He's going to get Raven to help him reveal Nellie's powers, whether she likes it or not.
"What if we pretend to have an argument while she's around? Hm? We get in a fight and see if it compels her to act?" He asks, rising from the table as he thinks through this plan.
Responding simply, the woman at the table shakes her head, hoping it will end this conversation.
"She isn't in that much control of her power," she vows.
Unfortunately, Charles is one of those glass-half-empty sort of fellows.
"It's worth a try."
Please review! I can't wait to hear your thoughts! Also, if you're a Marvel fan, I did a Bucky/OC oneshot that I'd love for you to read! It's called Death Takes a Holiday and it's on my profile! Can't wait to get your thoughts on this chapter!