Charles was starving. His breakfast that morning had consisted of nothing more than a cracker half covered in peanut butter. He had failed to set his alarm the night before, resulting in his dressing and readying himself for work at a speed normally reserved for mongooses waging battle against cobras. Neither Principle Frost nor any of her fellow members of management at the Littleleaf ISD in Northfield, New York would have been impressed had their newest guidance counselor shown up tardy during his first school year with them. He didn't know what had happened with his alarm - he'd never forgotten to set it before - but he did know that skipping lunch was going to cause his mood to deteriorate rather quickly.

None of this internal anguish was demonstrated outwardly for the only other inhabitant of his private office, of course. Across Charles' desk from him, slumped down in one of the chairs reserved for his guests and for the students with which he had sessions, was one Pietro Lehnsherr. A curious name for an even more unique young man. He had stubbornly deflected any and all of Charles' attempts to converse with him while they awaited the arrival of the boy's father, Mr. Lehnsherr. As such, they were now bridged within a kind of pregnant silence. It was not the way that Charles liked to conduct his sessions, but he had little choice in the matter-the child was unbelievably stubborn and resistant to any and all attempts at getting to know him or engaging in even the most neutral of small talk.

There were reasons for this solemnity. Inside the boy's head they would flash now and then when he let his thoughts wander in his anger to subjects such as his parents and the other children in the school. For an individual with an enhanced ability to 'read' people as the one that Charles happened to possess, fishing out the tidbits of information one at a time and gaining a better understanding of why his young subject was the way that he was posed no issue. He could not in good conscience exploit his telepathic power to the extent that he invaded the furthest depths of a person's privacy, yet he could skim. He could shave off the details that were relevant and try his damnedest to make good use of them.

So far, it was not working. He felt for the kid. What had ended Pietro up in his office today was not Pietro's own fault. Not solely, anyway. He was ambushed by other boys intent on roughing him up for no other reason than that he was different. In the last few weeks, Pietro's hair had begun to shift in color from the rusty red-brown that it had been before to a far more pale gray shade. Charles knew that it likely had to do with the fact that he possessed a gene which caused early graying. Very early, in this case. Knowing that little fact would not help anyone.

It was Xavier who had happened to pass down the very corridor where the so-called fight had occurred. One could not call it a true fight, really, not when it was four older boys ganging up upon a single victim. Pietro had held his own admirably well before his guidance counselor pulled his attackers off of him and helped him to his feet. Still, he had walked away from it with a black eye and a cut lip, and more anger boiling within him than Charles had ever sensed in a child before. It was obviously not the first time that something like this had occurred.

"Are you certain that I can't get you something to drink, Pietro? I think I might have a can of pop squirreled away in here somewhere..." Charles offered his most winning smile and he was not surprised when it was utterly ignored by the surly youngster.

"No, thank you." The boy had his pale eyes fixed on a point of the floor to the left of the desk that sat between them. His face had stopped bleeding some time ago, a stained tissue clutched between his fingers from when he had wiped the blood away. His features were already beginning to darken across one side from eyelid to lip and it looked rather painful. Were there not rules against giving the children painkillers without the express permission from parents, he might have benefited from a baby aspirin.

"Very well. Your father is on his way." It was perhaps the fifth time that Charles had assured Pietro that they would soon be joined by the elder Lehnsherr. He knew that saying it aloud would not make it happen any faster, and that Pietro did not want to talk to him at all, so he left him alone for now. He had already tried every trick and technique that he had learned in medical school for prying an unwilling patient out of his or her shell, and he had been met with stony and unwavering silence.

The door to Charles' office opened mere moments later, no knock to announce the presence of a second visitor. Startled, the guidance counselor began to push himself unsteadily to his feet in order to offer a greeting to the man - it must have been Mr. Lehnsherr - but once again he was studiously ignored. In a few seconds he took in the sight of Lehnsherr, clothing unkempt and smeared with what might have been mud, and he deduced that the man had just come from a job where he worked in labor. In any case, he hoped that was why filth was being tracked across his office floor and not because man and boy were homeless. Pietro was far better clothed and far more clean, up until his skirmish with the other children had ruffled his feathers. Charles was tempted to use his ability in order to find out the truth of the matter. "Mister Lehnsherr, I presume. Hello, I'm Ch-"

Erik behaved as if there was nothing and no one else in the room that he was interested in save for the boy huddled in the chair in front of Xavier's desk. He crossed to him in three long strides and gently took Pietro's chin between his thumb and fingers, lifting his battered face up to where it could be clearly seen. He turned it right and then left, slowly, the better to absorb every detail of the injuries. "Was ist passiert?"

"Nichts." In the time that had passed between his being pummeled by a gaggle of shouting bullies and that moment, Pietro had not shed a single tear nor so much as whimpered. Now that he had the sharp eyes of his concerned father trained on him, his broken lip trembled and his voice began to quaver. He wanted to finally break down and cry out his pain and embarrassment, but he refused to do it in front of Mr. Xavier. Instead he turned his face out of Erik's grasp and hugged himself, sinking even further into the chair as though he wanted it to swallow him whole.

Charles was fascinated. In the weeks that he had known and worked with Pietro, not even a hint of a German accent had he heard during their chats, and yet here Pietro was speaking it with his father. Due to Charles' personal, self-imposed rules against invading the minds of anyone be they a patient or not, he had not sought to delve too deeply into the young student's past or sniff out any more than the information he required that was rooted in the present. Something about the way that father and child interacted set off red flags within him. He was suddenly concerned that the violent behaviour inflicted upon Pietro was not exclusive to his time at school. To make sure that this Erik (he could not help but to find that name floating on the surface of Lehnsherr's rather angry thoughts) did not beat his son, Charles decided to break his own self-imposed rule and dive a little bit deeper into his mind.

Mutant. Erik Lehnsherr had an enhanced ability, and a considerably powerful one. The knowledge struck Charles like a blow to his stomach and left him flabbergasted momentarily. Of course, he knew that other people with exceptional gifts existed in the world. Often he could easily pick out their bright minds amongst a given crowd of people and know immediately that they were different. Special. Gifted. Something about their minds always shined a little brighter than those of people who did not possess enhancements. Now he was being faced with one...or perhaps two...such people in his very own personal work space. He wanted to know more, but it felt wrong to pry too far. When the subject of his inner questing looked directly at him and he was fixed with a pair of ice-colored eyes that were identical to Pietro's, he was startled for the third time.

"And where were you?" Lehnsherr did possess a faint German lilt to his words unlike Pietro. He also had a great deal of rage and aggression pent up within him, bubbling to the surface in his body language and the rigidity of the unwavering stare that he was stabbing into the only other adult in the room.

Charles blinked, more than a little affronted. Here this man had waltzed practically unannounced into his private office and now he was making insinuations about whether a teacher had bothered to give protection to a student. During his search of Erik's mind, he had reassured himself that Pietro was not the victim of domestic abuse and that there was in fact a very powerful and profound swell of devotion hidden down beneath those spiked shields of fury that were employed by Erik Lehnsherr as defense mechanisms. Knowing this took the edge off of Charles' own irritation. A little. He tugged at the end of his blue cardigan to straighten it and stood a little taller, unafraid in the face of the other man's death glare. He chose to ignore the thinly veiled accusation. "Mister Lehnsherr. Pietro's home room teacher and I have been sending notes home with him for some time now, in an attempt to converse with you about certain...issues that he has been having."

"I am beginning to see more than a few issues here." Erik's hackles raised as he perceived an insult directed at his son, or at himself. The amount of pride within the man was incredible. It was easy, too, to see where Pietro had gained his temper.

"He's all right, Dad." The child in question spoke up in defense of Xavier in a voice bereft of the tremor it had held before. "He stopped them. The other guys. It's not his fault."

Some of the venom was drained from Erik when he looked down at Pietro. He took what he was being told to heart in a way that he never would have done, had it been Charles who had told it to him. Reaching out, he ruffled fair auburn hair flecked with silver away from a pale, furrowed young forehead. After days of begging he had agreed to help Pietro dye his hair so that he would better fit in with the other children. It had hurt Erik to do it - it had felt like he was drowning out what made his boy extra ordinary. What made him Pietro. But he understood. Now the dye was bleeding out and the ravenous masses were using his unique son as a punching bag again. Erik's voice was monumentally more gentle when he spoke to the boy than it had been with Charles up until this point.

"Go out into the corridor and wait, ja? I'll be out in a moment." He watched Pietro go and then looked at Charles hard from under heavy brows, his expression strange. It was the face of a person who was trying to decide whether or not a creature standing in front of him was a threat.

"Let me start again." To diffuse some of that dubiety, Charles stepped around his desk and offered his hand to shake. He smiled brilliantly. "My name is Charles Xavier. I have spoken with your son's teacher, and with Pietro. I believe he is having a hard time of it. The other children..." He had to be careful here. Saying out loud that the other students were being insensitive beasts would not sound good at all. He licked thoughtfully at his lips. "They're not allowing him a chance to work through whatever it is that's bothering him. I contacted you in the hopes that you might have an idea what it could be, so that I might better be capable of helping him."

Up close, he was a bit struck by the scent of Erik; it was a thick mixture of mechanical oil and cement dust. Underneath that was a cleaner scent, a strong yet cheap soap of some kind. It was not the most pleasant combination. He found the definitive shape of the man's face far more appealing, with its rust-like stubble and those arresting, almost colourless eyes. His nearly bare arms offered another agreeable view that might have been more than a little distracting, were Charles a weaker man. But he was not a weak man, and the power of Erik's physical presence was beside the point entirely.

"There is nothing wrong with him," said Erik flatly. He looked ready to become defensive again. He had taken the shorter man's hand for barely a second to squeeze it in a firm, tense grip and shake it before giving it back. Now he seemed to regret having done it.

Charles resisted the urge to wipe the dirt from his palm on the side of his own gray trousers. "Of course not. I didn't say that there was. But we all... Well, everyone goes through rough patches, don't they? If Pietro is going through a rough patch - and I'm not saying that he is - I should like to help him. With your permission, I would let him talk to me now and then. Let's say, once a week. It would go a long way toward helping me to prevent his suspension for unruly behavior."

"He can talk to me..." Words like suspension and expulsion had reached Erik from these people before now via letters sent home after a fight like the one that had brought him to the school this very day. They felt like threats. Hearing it again made him feel somewhat cornered and he was not happy about that, but it was true that Pietro had not exactly been forthcoming in what was going on in his head. They were too much alike that way - the two Lehnsherrs, both tight-lipped and stubborn to the end. He was beginning to come around just a little bit to the idea of what was being proposed, Charles could feel it.

"Yes, of course. You're a busy man, though." From the rather barbed mind of the tall man in front of him, Charles had discovered a great deal during his very brief telepathic searching. It would seem that Erik worked exceedingly hard to support his son. And he worried about him, deeply. It was touching. These facts coupled with the fact that they might very well be mutants in hiding - just as Xavier was - made Charles all the more determined to do what he could to help them. "Another pair of ears could not hurt, could it?"

For a few painfully long minutes, Erik chewed on all that had been said. Fatigue warred with anger and exasperation until he was prompted to lift his hand and rub at his own upper eyelids. When his eyes opened once more they were slightly bloodshot. He seemed to have come to a decision. "I will think about it." With that, he turned on a dusty heel and left.

Charles exhaled two lungfuls of air through pursed lips and puffed-out cheeks once he was alone again. He made a face at the smear of something or other that had been left across his hand after the shake with Lehnsherr, and moved toward the dispenser of hand sanitizer that was a complimentary feature of nearly every room in the building. It was a start, he mused as he mentally went over the entire conversation that had just transpired. A mutant filled with fury and his wayward son. Charles had always been a sucker for the tragic cases in need of his help and now was no different. First, however, he would see about scaring up a late lunch.