When it starts he doesn't know what to do.

He's 17, sitting in the middle of 11th grade English, his palms are sweating, his face is getting hot. He doesn't know why though, that only happens when he gets angry. But it's not the fact that hes going to have to read The Scarlet Letter within the next month or so. He's definitely not mad about that. He sighs, raises his hand and begs to go use the restroom to relieve himself, but he has no other choice than just to flee the school on principle,but he doesn't. He comes back into the classroom a few minutes later, feigning sickness and asking the teacher to send him to the nurse, who lets him call his 'mother' (Adopted, remember?) to come get him.

When Alex is on the drive home, he feels the burning in his hands and chest and his face all extreme and at once. He feels like he's dying like this, his whole body aches like he's over worn. He rubs a hand over his face tiredly, leaving it there to cover it as he groans. He feels miserable on the way home, like all things awful and terrible and like being torn apart from the inside out and burning all at once. He feels like he needs to expel something, vomit, piss, anything. He's just in a lot of pain and he'd like to let it end.

Alex finally makes it back to his home, to a house that really his, to a name that isn't, even his own bed isn't really his. His adoptive parents, they had a son before him, Todd, he was apparently the best kid ever. That's all his parents ever talked about. Todd this, Todd that. Todd never did this. Hey To-Alex...Can you grab me a towel please ? Alex knew full well he was a replacement child. Alex barely knew anything about the kid, all he knew was that he was tall, stocky, co-captain of the football team. What a cliche, thought Alex, I hope I never turn out like that.

But suddenly ,Micheal and Patricia Blanding got the phone call telling them there son was in the hospital, that he'd gotten in a car accident, some crazy driver who swerved down the road, assumed to be drunk, slammed him head on on his way home from the football game that night. Before Todd passed out, he'd mumbled something to one of the paramedics about who'd hit him, but the paramedic couldn't make out anything past;

"There was a glare on the road, like crystals or a diamond."

It was put down to a matter of the headlights and the reflective markers on the road, and the case was closed.

Considering how hard hitting it as losing a child, the Blanding's didn't really mind using him as a constant reminder of how much of a failure Alex was. Which, he wasn't, his grades just looked that way, due to the fact that Alex never bothered writing 'Blanding' in as his last name on high school papers, he'd always write Summers and the teachers would get all confused and sometimes just would throw the paper out and give him a 0.

Alex was on the swim team as well, god, right now he wished he could just hop in the pool and cool off. He was really getting uncomfortably hot now. He rushes up to his room, shuts the door, locks it, and for good measure, places a chair under the knob. Just in case.

He strips naked to see if it'll cool him off, that doesn't help.

He then decides to sit in the shower under the freezing cold water for an hour. It's cold. Like, really really cold. While sitting in this bathtub of cold, he thinks about what the hell this could be, because as of right now he's pretty sure he's dying.

He drags himself out of the bathtub, lazily grabs a towel, and lays on his floor. Soggy and feeling useless and lethargic, unusual for someone with a brain like Alex's, he stares at his ceiling.

It's all fine and good, but Alex suddenly really feels the need to get up and leave. Go somewhere. He jumps up, pulling on clothes as fast as he can, grabbing his car keys and speeding downstairs to his car outside. He lands in his front seat with a thud.

Soon he's halfway down the highway doing at least 70, totally speeding. He drives absolutely nowhere. Just driving to be going somewhere away from his 'parents'. After a while he can't take it anymore, he goes into a field somewhere where he's pretty sure he's safe from the prying eyes of others. He's scared. He has no clue of whats about to happen to know. He has no way of knowing.

And just like that, he explodes. Not actually, but his whole body goes white hot, all he sees is bright white, burning in his eyes, almost like they've been filled in with white, and he feels a dull burn in his fingertips.

This is it, he thinks, this is how I die. In a field, all on my own, no real family. No nothing.

This brings tears to his eyes, he can only feel them welling up, they never flow. It feels like they're... fizzling out?

Congratulations Alex Summers. You're officially completely alone in this world.

Alex isn't really sure what happened after that. Next thing he knows he wakes up in a prison cell, they say he's been arrested for arson. Great. Just what he needed for Patsy to use against him. But if the day before today wasn't the worst of his life. This sure was.

He wakes up in a cold cell room, made entirely of concrete. He feels trapped. He gets up, paces. Paces some more. It's all he can do, really. Considering how his ADHD brain cant handle just sitting in a room with nothing to do. It makes him feel like someones screaming in his face. Like he's being pulled apart at the seams, bit by bit.

Some stuff he has to think about, which he feels like he'll be thinking about forever. Why him? Why is his life so shit? Why is he a mutant? He doesn't wanna be one of them. He feels worse than he ever has. He wants to see his little brother again.

He just wants to go home. He can barely breathe in there. A couple weeks or so in, they tell him that he's getting expedited to some place. They won't tell him but he hears the Security Guards talking, and he hears them mention the name 'Trask'. Sounds like a Bond villain, Alex thinks. Maybe he is.

The day comes, and he is quickly shipped off to just whoever the hell this 'Trask' guy is. Alex spends two days in the back of truck, overheated as he is already, he stares at the reflective glow of his chest on the ceiling. He watches the light refract and reflect, and it's all that he can do to keep himself from going insane trying to figure out whats going to happen to him once he gets to this place, whatever it is. Next comes a day and a half in what seems to be a shitty plane, like a really shitty plane. It shakes him about eveywhere, he tries his damndest to get sleep, but only ends up having nightmares about that. The day his parents died.

Eventually, they strap him down to a gurney, and wheel him in to see Max Zorin, or whoever this guy actually is.

Alex quickly hits the realization that this might not be as 'ha-ha' funny as he thought this might be.

He's a man of average height, Alex thinks that he might be around his height if he were up on his feet, possibly a bit taller. Definitely taller. Usually Alex isn't one for fear, he stopped feeling that a long time ago. But right now, staring up at this guy, donning a labcoat, pocket protector and all. He's got the most evil grin he's ever sen plastered across his gaunt features. Alex feels threatened and cornered as hell.

"Well," Alex begins, breaking the incredibly tense silence, smirking,"you're not Goldfinger."

"No , I'm surely not." he states plainly, face now looking bored. "You're Alex, aren't you?" he already knows that answer , though. He nods his head in affirmation. He gestures to a woman who stands a foot or two away from him. She approaches slowly, she's smiling calmly, then she looks to the table next to her, picks up a needle and a vial of something. She pulls from it, then leans down and sticks it in his arm, with as much force as she can muster, Alex thinks. He yelps, "WHAT is that?"

'Trask' just chuckles. "Oh Alex, you won't be screaming here in a moment."

Whatever this guy gave him, it wasn't just sleep meds, nor was it pleasant. It was a paralysis drug of some sort, as soon as he had started to struggle in his bonds, the nurse jammed that needle in his arm and he just... went limp. Froze, almost. Well, not most. He was frozen. But that wasn't the worst part of what they were going to to him. Not nearly the worst of it.

It started with just a few cuts, here and there. But then cuts became gashes, and gashes became skin samples, which then became blood samples. Alex was panicking, even though he couldn't feel any of it, he felt so awfully horrible, so scared he started to cry. His eyes were burning beyond belief, he barely was holding on. Eventually he freaked out so much so, that he passed himself out.

When he finally wakes up, he's in another cell, again. He feels sick to his stomach, feels extremely dizzy. He leans over the 'bed' which is simply a concrete slab with a pillow, and vomits onto the floor. This isn't good. This isn't good at all. Just like when he was small and he tried to take sleeping meds and got deathly ill. He feels it.

He falls off the slab, curling into himself on the floor and vomiting again. He's lying in his puke, he realizes, but he's far too weak to move himself out of the puddle. Letting go of his dignity, he begins to sob, uncontrollably so. That's when he notices a woman not to far away from him, on another bed. Her skin is blue, and from the looks, scaly. He thinks it a bit weird, and then knocks his head off the hard floor of the room and knocks himself back out.

The next few days go by in a blur, more tests, more toying with his body, tearing him apart bit by bit just to find out exatly what it is that makes Alex Summers tick.

Then, while he lays awake vomiting again, he hears the sound of bending metal, awful screeching and moaning sound. The next thing he knew, he and the blue girl are being carried out by a big furry man. Alex is absolutely amazed by this, thinking that they too are most likely mutants, and they're here to help him.

Alex is thrown into another plane, this time its black, sleek. There are people that surround him. He looks wide eyed at the two men standing above him. One has long, dark brown hair and is wearing a sweater of some sort. He looks almost familiar, and Alex feels strange looking at him. He feels like his brains being invaded, but also a weird sense of calmness that washes over him as he looks at him, like he used to get with Robyn. Then the other man, strong jawed, well built, seems stern, sure of himself. He wears a leather jacket and has piercing eyes. But to Alex, theres something...fatherly about him almost. Alex trusts them both already. Anythings better than what the last few weeks have been like.

He opens his mouth to speak, but words simply will not come out. He looks up with eyes wide and full of fear to both men, and one of them, the shaggy-haired one, puts a hand to his forehead, and Alex closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep.

When he wakes this time, he's in a well furbished room. Normal, pristine, comfortable. He's in a warm bed. Alex slowly makes himself aware, opens his eyes, looks around, sees the IV in his arm. He glances around some more, smiles like a happy little kid, wriggling under the blanket. He closes his eyes once again, trying to will himself back to sleep.

After he's in the middle of drifting off, he is woken up by the man with the longer, shaggy brown hair once again. He walks in the room calmly, taking long strides across the room to sit on the bed next to him. Alex twists his eyes shut tight, trying to feign sleep. He's definitely not ready to talk to anyone yet. Nope.

"I know you're awake." says the man.

Alex sighs defeatedly, turning on his side to face him. "Okay, yeah. I was pretending.. Now what exactly am I doing here?" he asks, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"I've brought you here to help you, Alex. That is your name, right?" he smiles, like he's trying to calm him, and Alex's chest feels all warm and not in the really weird way they have been lately.

"Y-yeah.. I'm Alex.. Alex B-" He stops himself. If there's any way to get out of being a Blanding and going back to being Summers, now is Alex's chance. " Alex Summers."

"I just want to help, me and my associate here Erik," he gestures to the tall figure standing in the door, who Alex will now know as Erik. "And I, am Charles Xavier. I'm the professor here, and I, like yourself am a mutant."

Alex sits up, as quickly as he and with how weak he is. "So you're -" the professor nods, and he shoots a glance to Erik leaning in the doorway, " a-and he is?" Erik chuckles and nods. "I'm a telepath, meaning I can read your mind. " Alex hears a voice say in his head. He goes even more wide eyed than he had been before. "And Erik, he has control over magnetism." to punctuate this, Erik levitates and crushes a coin laying on the floor next to the bed. Alex is speechless.

Charles then explains to Alex what exactly Largo wanted to do with him, about the 'sentinel program' that he's working on. He tells him the truth, how he wasn't there to save him specifically, but to save Raven, who he was very good friends with. They both gently break the news to him that if this 'Trask' guy is successful in his plan, Alex will be in constant danger because he'll already have been put into the programming of the sentinels.

He also explains that, if Alex wishes to do so, he can stay here, at the school that Charles is putting together. He will take high school classes as normal, and he can get his degree in Radiation Physics here as well. He will be the first of the many students that he plans to enroll over the course of the next few weeks.

Alex nods, albeit weakly. He leans back, lets his head hit the pillow and curls on his side and falls asleep. He feels someone drape the blanket over his head and after another moment passes, ruffles his hair.

Weeks go by, Alex trains rigorously with Erik, since Charles has already decided his 'gifts' can't benefit him, or in Charles' words 'Alex, I simply cannot fully understand or help you with your particular gift.'

Erik, at least to Alex, is the better of the two. He treats Alex like a son, or something of the sort. Which Alex likes, a lot. Erik's nice to him, he trains him with patience but enough discipline the lessons he teaches aren't lost on him, and he always encourages Alex to follow his heart, not what everyone tells him that his heart should be.

The third or fourth week that he stays at the school, Erik brought someone to the school with him. A new student, Alex thought. A girl, about Alex's age, it was the age.. she had to be a new student. He closed his eyes and decided, out of something that Alex thought uncharacteristic of himself, he would snoop in on Charles and Erik and the Mystery Girl's conversation, he just... wanted to look at her some more. He felt like such a creep, but being a currently 17 year old boy, he had a free pass to feel like this. It's part of being a teenager.

Hiding behind the doorframe, he peeks his head in, somewhat hoping he'd get noticed just for an excuse to talk to her. He listens intently and then he hears it- "This is my daughter, Lorna."

Alex feels like he's going to have a heart attack. His.. daughter? Alex was currently snooping on Erik's daughter. He had the hots for Erik's daughter.. yeah, he definitely did. He ran away from said doorframe as fast as possible, and sat on the couch, face red with a mix between fear and embarrassment. Erik's daughter.. Erik's daughter; Lorna. What a pretty name.

Soon after, he found himself stuck in a conversation with Lorna. She'd approached him herself; she was only there for a few weeks, visiting her Father. She hadn't met him much but when she had he'd been the "best Dad she could ask for", in her exact words. Alex felt slightly jealous, he wished he'd been able to see his own Father, even if only on small occasions as Lorna did hers. He also found out she was studying to get a degree in Floral Design, she was very much into flowers it seemed.

"Maybe I'll get a job in a Florist shop near here, so we can hang out. You don't seem like you know too many people."

How insulting, Alex thought, but she wasn't exactly wrong. He was not a native New Yorker, and nor did he particularly want to engage with any of them, so he just stuck to the few fellow students at the school for a friend group, which was himself, and.. another guy, a bit older than him, named Darwin. He'd apparently been through a load of private schools and something else, he was very vague when talking about his past, and currently he worked as librarian, but he'd stopped to go to the school and- Alex zoned out, boy, did he ramble. Just thinking about the rambling he'd experienced was making him bored.

But anyways, Lorna was right. He really didn't know anybody.

"I mean.. I guess so, uh, say- uh, coffee?"

"... coffee?"
"I mean, do you want to go out for coffee, sometime.. not as like, a date or anything I mean, just coffee you seem.. nice."

"Do you want it to be a date?"

"I don't know."

"Me either. Is Three o'clock good for you?"

Coffee with Lorna goes will. He's on his way home after dropping Lorna back at her own place.

When he finally makes it back to the school, he walks trhough the doors as Erik explains theres a new student.

He introduces himself as Sean Cassidy, and Alex almost instantly is in love with him. At least he thinks. Even though he definitely shouldn't be. He has this gorgeous head of hair, all curly and blondeish-red. Like, Robert Redford or something like that. They shake hands, and have a short conversation on the couch about powers with Erik and Charles.

Alex knows that he feels things for the Sean boy, but cant place why. He shouldn't feel that way, right? The blood he feels pool in his stomach, how he feels slightly lightheaded. He'd heard his 'parents' talking about how they saw him looking at some boys while out to dinner on occasion, or they'd heard things from Hailey. Alex was more in denial about it than he'd ever been about anything. He was sure he wasn't gay. That's what he wanted to believe. He didn't need anything on top of the issues he already had.

He'll drown this poor kid out with plenty of beer and weed from Erik, and maybe Lorna. If he's lucky enough to deserve a girl like that.

He ignores it, and goes to sleep.

The next week or so is pretty uneventful, or at least that's what Alex expects. Another student joins, Angel Salvadore. Alex hits it off with her as well, not the same way he did with Lorna though (Or Sean for that matter). He sees more and more of Hank and Raven. Raven is a good friend to Alex as well. He and Hank get along, but sooner or later something changes about him and Alex isn't sure he knows him anymore.

Alex isn't even sure he knows himself.

The last two weeks now have been throwing himself between wanting to ask Sean out , to Hank, to Darwin, to Lorna all over again. He can't get his mind off how weirdly disgusted he finds himself getting thinking about being in a relationship at all whatsoever. He thinks he'd like a boyfriend or a girlfriend, but then he thinks about it the actual concept of dating is rather foreign to him. He has more to worry about. Plus, if he turned out to be gay or bi he doesn't feel like that would benefit him much in the run of things, considering he's already a mutant- for all he knows, a wanted one. Nevertheless, Alex would find himself on the occasional lunch date with Lorna, or staying up all night watching Married with Children and sometimes Knight Rider with Sean, which, considering both boys had obvious attraction to each other, Alex considered that as a date as well, even if he'd never admit it.

Overall, things were going rather smoothly for Alex. This was a pretty ideal high school life. He wished he had his brother though. He missed Scott. It caused him an indescribable emptiness more than the weeks he'd have to spend back 'home' at his foster parents' house ever did.

Every morning, he'd check the newspaper- missing persons, obituaries, the letters section, the goddamn funnies- on the hope of some news about Scott's well-being. He'd listen to the news on the radio, watch the news on the television, check the letters section in that months Green Arrow comic. Keep a close eye on the missing boy on the milk carton in case it was Scott with some plastic surgery, or something.

Last he heard he'd been adopted, when he asked his foster parents to check in on Scott's status at the orphanage and for once they actually complied. Alex didn't like that, not one bit. That cut his chances of finding Scott again down by a truckload, especially since now they probably weren't legally family, or some shit. He felt himself shake with anger at the concept. No one took his family- his only real family at that, away from him. But, what could he do? Charles had already agreed to help hunt Scott down for him using Cerebro, but he also said he'd probably have to wait until Scott's powers flared up or started to emerge to find him, but, that posed yet another problem; there was a chance Scott WASN'T a mutant, and that would make him near un-findable until Cerebro finally got it's upgrade, which wasn't scheduled until 1989.

Every day was a waiting game, that's for sure.

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One day, that waiting game ended.

A normal routine Cerebro check- any runaway mutants, little kids who's new powers had gotten out of control, Charles was always right 'On the case!' '

Charles Xaiver always, always came off as a nice man, but the more time you spent around him, the more you seemed to come to the realization that half of what he put out to be was an awful facade. You never knew if he was lying, if that smile was real, what exactly his agenda with helping all these kids was. What was even harder to tell, was what his creed when it came to mutant equality and rights was. It bashed against Erik's somewhat mutant-supremacist beliefs, but Erik wasn't exactly blamable. He knew what it was like to be of an oppressed group ten times over, and with each day mutants became considered more and more dangerous to non-mutant society. Even characters such as Iron Man spouted constant anti-mutant rhetoric, when, at least Alex thought, someone like Tony Stark was a hundred times more dangerous than the little boy with dog legs or the girl who could breath fire would ever be, and yet who were they threatening to 'register' and lock up? 'Something has to be done about the mutant threat!' Yeah, but what?

Meanwhile, Charles, despite the Mutant Saint of sorts he painted himself to be, seemed to believe, for whatever reason, that mutants were somewhat inferior to normal people, acting like non-mutants needed to step up and be White Knights to create true equality, and that mutants shouldn't have to do anything, not in a way like Erik Believed, but in a way that he had the thought in his head that mutants were inherently too stupid or weak to take care of themselves. Except for Charles himself, of course.

He also managed to make even the nicest comments seem overly passive aggressive, and seemed to make his almost compulsive smoking weed into an excuse for every action he did.

Overall, it was confusing, it was very, very confusing, being around Xaiver or 'Professor X', as he sometimes called himself, was like having a constant migraine that wasn't exactly painful as much as it.. made you.. forget what you were about to do? What a guy. It put a bad taste in Alex's mouth when it came to telepaths, that's for sure. It just seemed to him that Charles had developed a sort of egomania from the nature of his powers, but what did Alex know.

But, all bad aspects aside, Professor Charles Francis Xaiver had just found Alex's baby brother.

Charles led Alex into his office, on the desk was a road map with a city in Illinois- Joliet- circled, along with several newspaper clippings scattered about on top of it.

"Please, take a seat, Alex."
Alex sat down.

"What's with the newspap... oh my god." Alex scanned over them, it was a story he'd been keeping an eye on- a 14 or 15 year old boy had been found being used in Child prostitution, more specifically, child sex trafficking, by an ex-scientist named Jack Winters- but had never dreamed- maybe Charles was just concerned? Maybe the clippings were upside down? No way was it Scott.

"Charles, are you.. saying that-"

Xaiver shrugged in response. "I believe so. Children in Scott's condition usually fall easiest to that sort of thing."

"2519 West Division Street, Chiacgo. There's an orphanage there, there's a mural out front. I'll come with you if you like."

Alex just sort of felt shocked. How was he supposed to respond to this? He.. wasn't there for him, and this happens.

"I.. let's. I need-" No Alex, you don't need a minute. "Let's go."