IV.
Twenty years since then – Charles is thirty two now, and can control the voices he hears in his head now, more or less. He drinks when it gets particularly bad, finds the alcohol blurs his mind against the whispers that constantly tease at the back of his mind. Raven is almost 26, still just a child. They'd had another fight, one about him not realizing what she has to go through. Like he doesn't understand the fear of hiding – oh, it may not be physical like hers, but his is cause of a great deal more of concern. These thoughts give him nightmares, make him wake in the middle of the night and splash his face with cold water, praying that his subconscious held its grip and didn't let his dreams slip over into Ravens.
He controls minds. He's known it and done it unconsciously since he was eight. He stopped doing it that terrible morning when he sat down alone across form his beautiful mother and told her all about the new sister he had. He hasn't willing done it since. He shudders to think what would happen if the government caught wind of what he could do, fears the day he'll have to reveal who he is. They'll lock him up. He is optimistic, yes, many tell him so – he can't help to be, because he has all the badbadwrongdirtyawful pushing on his brain but he also has the gorgeousrightbeautifullight fighting back. But he is not naïve. Never naïve, not since he was ten. He signals the bartender for another drink and sidles up to a pretty ginger at the bar, before drunkenly starting on his mutation thesis. She's single and interested, and listens to him rant.
"You can even theorize that someday, there will be people among us who will have to power to read and control minds" he finishes, guiltily waiting for the colors of emotions to fill his mind, fighting past the golden hue that alcohol fills his mind with… There is the robins egg blue of amusement, the marigold interest and the scarlet attraction. But behind those are the dirty brown of fear, the murky grey of uncertainty and the black rage of anger. She tinkles a little laugh -
"Goodness, how terrifying! I don't believe that would be safe! Can you imagine someone pawing through your secrets all the time?"
Later, when he is leaving kisses all over, he will catch snippets of thought – daddy never loved me, fat bitch, you nerd, your mother hates you- he will close his mind to hers, and make her cry in ecstasy. In the morning, he will wake up early and walk home to Raven, making the appropriate apologies. But for now, hazy under her pleasure and the anger roiling in his gut at the world, he can think about how she won't ever understand why he has to hide, even amongst the people he belongs to. Mutants fear just as much as regular people.
Thirty two year old Charles Xavier knows that should mutants ever come to light, although Raven would be disgusting to them, he would be the one they feared and hunted down, simply for something he can't control, unlike Raven. Only, he knows that instead of one, both would.