A/N: I invite you, ladies and gentlemen, to take an exciting trip to the past with our very favorite heroes. Crime, love, mystery, treason... all mixed together with mutant powers and a lot of style. Who doesn't love a little noir adventure, after all?
As always, please review! Also, the X-Men aren't mine, unfortunately. This is just for fun, not for money.
Stolen Paintings, Moonshine and Broken Hearts
Chapter 1 - Fake Monets
A long time ago, in New York's most famous island, a boy with killing eyes made an oath to dedicate his life to fighting crime and making a certain girl happy. But bear in mind, dear reader, that even the hardest things seem simple and feasible when one is eighteen. Ten years later, however… Well, let's just say that things tend to change over a decade.
The boy turned into a man, and it is in his office that our story begins.
Manhattan, Fall of 1933.
Three o'clock in the afternoon. Detective Scott Summers was leaning against his chair, distractedly turning around the golden band on his ring finger. He had been trying to finish the report on last week's bank robbery for the past two days and failing miserably. If he didn't hand it in the next sixty minutes, Magnus was certainly going to eat his guts.
Why did his wife had to be so pig-headed? he asked himself. He had screwed up, okay, he knew it. But it had happened four months ago, for Christ's sake! He had always been a good husband, so why was it so hard for her to forgive him now? Did she really prefer to be a separated woman? Didn't she know people gossiped around? What about the children? Was it fair to let them grow up apart from their father?
The detective sighed in annoyance. After all, it hadn't been his fault exclusively. He had only cheated because she had refused him, time and again. He was a man, and he had his needs, goddammit! She should have thought about him!
Scott closed his eyes and sighed again. Despite the awful habit of holding others accountable for his mistakes, deep down he knew he was the only one to blame for his marital troubles. His wife hadn't been the same since the funeral – depression, Hank had told him. Besides, he knew she cherished trust above all things, and he did promise to leave his Romeo days behind. She, for her turn, had promised to never intrude his mind again. Sadly, neither had stayed true to the vows.
Someone knocked on the door, making Summers snap out of his daydream. Before he could stand up to open it, a familiar figure stepped in his office.
"Long time no see, Scottie. How you've been?" Warren Worthington, wearing an impeccable grey suit and black tie, asked.
A curvaceous brunette immediately rushed into the office, her face flushed.
"Ah'm sorry, detective, but Mr. Worthington didn't wait foh me to announce him," the Police Department's secretary explained between pants, accidentally touching the businessman's hand that lingered on the doorknob. Or so he thought.
"It's okay, Anna, you may leave," Summers excused her and stood up to shake his old friend's hand. "Hello Warren. What brings you here?"
"Business, of course," the blond millionaire answered with his trademark flashing smile, sitting on the chair across from Scott. "Although after seeing your new assistant, I'm tempted to turn this visit into a pleasure trip."
The detective had to control himself not to roll his eyes – Worthington could be an obnoxious little creep sometimes. "What can I do for you?"
"Someone's been messing with my very expensive art collection, and I'd like to find out who the slithering rat is," Warren explained, blue eyes narrowed.
Summers grabbed his pen and notebook. "Messing how?"
Worthington crossed his right leg over his left and took his time to light up a cigarette. After a long drag and an even longer puff, he said. "Do you remember the two Monet pieces I bought for Betsy's studio a few years ago?"
"I recall you mentioning it, yes," the detective replied, even though he considered Betsy way more interesting than the boring pictures.
Warren tapped on the cigarette's butt twice, letting the ashes fall into the glass ashtray on the desk. "Well, since she and I are no longer together, I was hoping to make some profit by selling them on the next Hellfire Club's auction. You know, one's never short of women as long as the money keeps flowing," he added, winking.
"Hum," Scott voiced, not caring to agree or disagree.
The blonde took another drag and went on. "Anyway, somehow the two paintings have been replaced by facsimiles."
Summers eyebrows went up, impressed by his friend's words for the first time during the meeting. "Are you certain about that?"
Worthington snorted. "Come on, Scottie… Eagle blue eyes, remember?" he said, pointing to his eyes. "I could never be fooled by such cheap copies."
"Okay, right," the detective nodded and wrote something down. "When did you first notice the paintings had been replaced? And who has had access to them?"
At this point, the meeting became entirely professional and boring. To spare the reader of sheer tediousness, we'll move our focus to a phone call about to take place just outside Scott's office. Before dialing the number she knew by heart, a certain southern belle glanced around the NYPD's main room to make sure no one was paying her attention.
"Hey, it's me," Anna Marie whispered on the receiver. "Guess who's payin' Summers a visit? Warren Worthington, the millionaire," a brief pause, and she continued. "Somethin' about stolen Monets that are supposed to be sold in the next Hellfire Club's auction." Then the woman frowned almost imperceptibly. "Yeah, Ah can do that. All right. Bye."
In order to comprehend the current scenery and the intriguing personalities entangled in this tale, we must digress a few decades in time to meet an old chap of ours.
To New York's conservative society, Charles Xavier was an eccentric man. His upbringing had been the farthest from normal, being born and raised in an isolated eighteenth-century mansion upstate. Rumor had it his mother had gone crazy right after giving birth to him, claiming she could hear the thoughts of her newborn son inside her head 24 hours a day. Dr. Brian Xavier, a usually reasonable man, had been forced to institutionalize his dear wife in an asylum, where three months later the poor woman blew up her head with a .44mm. Tragic.
Since money was never a problem to the Xaviers, little Charles got to be nurtured by the finest wet nurses in the state until the age of four. Over the years, some of these ladies even agreed to keep the family's patriarch some company, often slipping into the master bedroom while the child slept peacefully in his mahogany bed.
However, Brian Xavier's night adventures didn't remain secretive forever. Many years later, on one otherwise ordinary Summer night, the twelve-year-old teen woke up to excited moans echoing inside his head and an unfamiliar throbbing sensation growing in his pelvis. No less curious than surprised, the boy followed the strange sounds across the long carpeted hallway, coming to a halt in front of his father's bedroom door. The noises he could hear with his ears matched the ones he was hearing in his mind. That night, Charles Xavier realized he could listen to other people's thoughts.
Having received the best private education available during the turn of the century, Charles was able to successfully pursue a double degree in Psychology and Education, graduating with honors at the young age of twenty-two. Brian Xavier, who was completely ignorant to his offspring's methods of knowing all the tests' answers beforehand, beamed with joy. The pride he felt was so intense that he never made it to the small celebration party – the butler found his body lying naked on the bathroom floor. Fulminant heart attack, the coroner declared.
The most interesting people in the world tend to raise above in the face of tragedy, and Charles Xavier was nothing but an interesting character. Finding himself bored and free from guardianship for the first time in his life, he decided it was time to seek the answer for the question he had been asking every day for the last ten years – were there other especial people like him?
Hence, Professor Charles Xavier began his quest for equals. Every day he read the papers looking for strange events; after that, he drove to the city to visit freak shows, circus companies, and psychic tents, or any other form of weirdness he might come across. Finding only mediocre cons, he travelled to other states and even crossed the border to Canada and Mexico, like any rich, obsessed man would do. At one point, he boarded a cruise ship heading to the U.K., driven by a tea-table conversation about a man who screamed so loud that his sonic impulses allowed him to fly. Unfortunately, Xavier never found said man.
It took him a small fortune, eight whole years and most of his hair, but finally, in a dark alley of the yet not so Big Apple, his dedication paid off. On that fateful night, Scott Summers tried to steal Charles Xavier's pocket clock.
Although we've dedicated a good part of our narrative to present X's atypical background, the bald fella isn't of utmost relevance to the future of this plot – except maybe for bringing together our favorite people. Scott Summers, however, is. So let's once again move a few years back in time.
Scott was the older of two siblings who lost their loving parents to a burning building before the age of ten. The local social service spared no time in putting the children into a prison-looking orphanage, where they could grow up to become sad, cynical adults. Luckily for Alex, a middle-aged couple from New Jersey came in looking for a blonde, blue-eyed small boy. Unluckily for Scott, he was already a pre-teen and had inherited his father's brown hair and brown eyes. The two brothers didn't even get to say goodbye.
Alone and rejected, the older Summers decided the only thing left in him was a deep desire to raise hell to those around him. Therefore, orders stopped meaning anything, as he proved by never making the bed, stealing food from the kitchen, and picking fights with other boys. Not to mention several attempts of escaping. The punishment always came in the form of a beating or a whipping; but to his retaliators' despair, not once did the wannabe-criminal yell.
It was during one of those spankings that a fourteen-year-old Scott inadvertently found out about the optic beams. His eyes were squeezed shut, but when he opened them to stare his aggressor in the face, a bright red light emerged from his orbs, knocking the man out. A second blast, this time aimed at the front porch's lock, teared the gates open. Summers walked out of the orphanage and never looked back.
Nearly one year after, the boy found himself living in the streets of New York, begging the passersby for coins and stealing one valuable item or two whenever he was feeling bolder. That, of course, happened only when he wasn't busy spying on the Hellfire Club for Ms. Frost – in exchange, she would let him sleep in the old warehouse with her friends, and sometimes even allowed him to touch her in some very cozy ways.
That explained, we should now return to Xavier's and Scott's fateful encounter. The telepath had easily picked on the teenager's nervousness, finding it odd that the boy kept broadcasting that he should remain calm and with his eyes closed. Charles used his psychic talents to prevent the burglar from running and demanded to know why he couldn't open his eyes. Scott's response was an optic blast that left a deep indentation on the wall in front of them. Xavier's first reaction was to jump away in fear; his second reaction was to jump up in joy.
A copious meal of steak and potatoes later, and Summers was spilling the beans about his strange gifts. The professor was mesmerized to learn that the teenager could only keep the beams at bay when he remained calm or with his eyes shut. Needless to say, that became Scott's first night under Xavier's roof and tutelage.
In the following weeks, the man and the boy continued to search for others like them. They heard of a frozen neighborhood in Long Island in midsummer, and of an angel who saved desperate men from suicide under the Brooklyn Bridge, and went out to investigate. Then one day Scott showed his newfound protector a news report about a seventeen-year-old genius with huge hands and feet. By the time they returned from Illinois, Xavier's recently inaugurated School for Gifted Youngsters had four students enrolled.
The enterprise allowed the curious professor to comprehend what was behind those especial talents. His first conclusion was that the physical and biochemical alterations began during puberty, usually -but not necessarily- due to some stressful event. The second and much more chauvinistic finding was that only male specimens had the potential of developing powers. Little did he know he would soon be proven wrong.
In between Algebra, History and English classes, Xavier tested the limit of his students' skills. McCoy's intelligence seemed to be even greater than his strength, while Worthington's wings and hollow bones allowed him to reach impressively high altitudes. The young Mr. Drake could certainly use more discipline during his ice creation exercises; Scott, on the other hand, had been displaying a remarkable amount of self-control not only in the use of his concussive beams, but also during regular classes. Charles hadn't expected the rebel orphan to behave so well.
During an eight-month period, the professor organized his impressions on people with skills and published a paper in America's most relevant Psychology journal. That prompted several letters to arrive in his office –the vast majority questioning his findings– but one in particular called his attention. It was signed by a Professor John Grey, from Bard University.
Xavier needed to go to Annandale-on-Hudson. But this time, he would be going alone.