AN: This is AU, with the original five (Scott, Jean, Warren, Bobby, Hank) plus Alex - who was separated from Scott but reunited at the school. All are in their teens. But the story circles around Remy as a child and only mentions some of them briefly. I just thought I'd tell you for background's sake.
Child Of the X
Two figures bent over a small form lying on a bed, their features creased with worry. They had the look of intellectuals about them, men of thought rather than action. It was in the way they dressed, the way they stood, pensively and passive, rather than fierce and aggressive.
Finally, one of them straightened up in his wheelchair. He shifted about to look at his tall, slim, but slightly older companion. "Where did you say you found him?"
The other man sighed, running a hand through thick, white hair. "I was walking down an alley in New Orleans when I found the poor child was tucked behind a dumpster. I never would have noticed him if he hadn't been glowing so brightly."
That caught his attention. "Glowing, you say?" The crippled man pressed.
The other nodded in affirmation. "Glowing. It was 20 degrees below zero and he was generating enough heat to power a small generator. And god knows how long he'd been at it."
"How'd you get him to come with you?"
"I didn't. He was unconscious. I just picked him up and flew off."
"Incredible." Charles Xavier whispered. The child was obviously a mutant and a strong one at that, to be able to generate so much heat for such a long period of time. And unconsciously, as well. "Incredible." He whispered again. "Have you spoken with him?"
Erik Lensherr shook his head. "He did not awaken."
Xavier stared at him in shock. "And you brought him here against his will?"
The other mutant rolled his eyes. "It was for his own good. From his clothes, the child's obviously an orphan and a runaway, and it's just as plain that if he doesn't learn to control his power, he'll be a danger both to himself and society. And besides, we need all the strong mutants we can find, Charles. I wasn't about to let this one get away."
Xavier sighed. "It's times like these, Erik, that I worry about your judgment."
"Hmph." The taller man harrumphed. He looked at his watch. "I have to get going. You know how to reach me."
Charles watched his oldest friend walk away, trying to shake that familiar sense of dread in the pit of his stomach. It was getting difficult to deny that he and his oldest friend were coming at a crossroads, ethics-wise. While they both wanted the same thing - acceptance for mutants - Erik was willing to take any means necessary to achieve that goal.
Something he found unacceptable.
One of these days, they were going to find themselves on opposite sides of the battle field, two of the world's powerful mutants, and he hated to think what would happen then.
---
Brown lashes fluttered and opened, revealing odd red-on-black eyes. The child, a youth no older than twelve, sat up to inspect his surroundings. As he did so, he felt a hint of dread coil in the pit of his stomach.
This wasn't the alley he'd fallen asleep in, the boy realized with a stab of fear. He was lying on a bed, surrounded by high tech medical machinery. The air was sterile and the room itself had an emptiness and vastness about it that usually accompanied a laboratory.
His eyes widened in fear and dismay and his heart sank. There was only one place where he could be and only one reason why. Somehow, someway, his father had finally found him and had brought him home.
Bravely trying to ignore his rising panic, the boy looked about searchingly for a familiar metallic form. His first thought was that he'd never seen this lab before. But he quickly shook that thought away. His father had hundreds of bases and millions of labs. Then, realizing his father wasn't about, the boy frowned. His father had never left him alone in the lab, had said he was too smart to be trusted alone with the computers.
His strange eyes alighted on the console in the far corner. Maybe he could tap into the mainframe and find a way out. He quickly checked about, then quietly crept towards the computer. The buttons were unfamiliar, but years of mental training had honed his mind and he had little trouble examining and figuring them out. The boy reached forward, ready to begin.
"Hello."
---
The boy jumped and shrank back, fear evident in the mutant eyes. Xavier spread his hands out, palms up, in a gesture of peace. "Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you."
If anything, the youth only shied away even more. "Yeah. That's what Father always says before he experiments on me."
Xavier drew his head back sharply, unable to believe his ears. The boy had been an experiment? And by his own father? He gently reached out to probe the boy's mind, only to find himself blocked by impenetrable shields worthy of an experienced psychic.
Who was this child?
"My name is Professor Charles Xavier," He finally said. "You are in the medical facility of my school. You were found unconscious in an alley and brought here to save your life."
The boy contemplated his words. "This isn't Father's lab?"
"No," Charles said gently. "What is your name?"
The boy hesitated. The telepath could feel distrust and faith, borne out of an instinct to trust him, wage in the child's mind.
In the end, instinct won over. The boy slowly stood up.
"My name is Remington. You can call me Remy."
"A pleasure to meet you, Remy." Xavier extended his hand in greeting.
Remy shook it. He looked around the vast facility. A shiver passed through him. "This is a school?"
"Yes, it is. Would you like to see it? It was specially created for children like you."
"Orphans?"
"No, mutants."
Remy fidgeted nervously. "But I ain't a mutant." He followed the professor out of the lab.
"Really? I've been told you possess an incredible ability to generate heat energy and your eyes are an unusual color, I must admit."
The boy looked pained. "Are you going to try and enhance my abilities?"
The professor gave him a quizzical look. They stepped into an elevator. "We guide our students towards mastery of their powers."
"But no genetic enhancements?" The boy pressed.
A spark of apprehension formed in Xavier's mind. It did not help matters that he could not read the child's mind. "No, Remy. No genetic alterations."
The boy visibly relaxed in relief. "Father always made genetic enhancements on the mutants he controlled." The boy explained in a whisper.
The apprehension shifted into a nagging suspicion. There was only one man he knew of who was famous for his genetic mutant research. Xavier was almost afraid to ask, but ask he did. "Remy, who is your father?"
"I only know him as Father," The boy replied after a moment. "But others call him Sinister."
---
"For as long as I could remember, home was a small room in a large metal building," Remy said. "It was metal everywhere." Remy shivered a little at the memory of the cold metal that was all he'd known.
Xavier listened attentively. He had brought the child to his office once he'd learned the true identity of his father. Now, the boy sat across from him on a couch, about to reveal as much as he could of his history with the feared mutant called Mister Sinister.
"Every other day, Father would take me into his lab and do all sorts of tests on me." Remy closed his eyes. "As I got older, the tests would get worse and it would get so he'd have to wait weeks in between…just to let me heal." The last part was said in the barest of whispers. Red-on-black eyes shone with haunted hardness.
"How did you escape?" Xavier asked gently.
"Father underestimated me." The boy confided, smiling a little, a frightening smile, crooked and bitter, completely unlike that of a child's. "He did not expect me to be able to get past the security system in my room and hack into the database mainframe. I disabled the alarms and ran away." He paused. "That was two years ago."
"Remy, how old are you?"
"Twelve."
"Incredible. How did you manage to survive?"
The boy looked a little uncomfortable. "By any means possible, sir. I'm a thief."
Xavier placed a fatherly hand on his shoulder. "Thank you for sharing your past, Remy. I know it could not have been easy for you. Would you like some ice cream?"
Remy looked at him blankly.
The professor took his hand and led him down to the kitchen. "Come, you will like it."
Remy hesitated a moment, wondering what the man was up to. From experience, he'd learned people did not like thieves, even child ones.
The kitchen was thankfully empty. The professor gestured Remy to a stool and rolled over the fridge to take out a carton and spoon him some in a bowl. "Here."
The child poked at it unsurely. "What is it?"
"Ice cream. Frozen milk with sugar, basically."
Remy tried it cautiously, then grinned broadly and dug in. Xavier watched, pleased to have been able to raise his moody spirits.
"I take it you liked that."
Remy nodded happily.
"Good. Now, didn't I promise you a tour of the grounds?" Xavier held out a hand which Remy nervously took. It would seem that the boy was not familiar with the friendly touch of others. He would have to remedy that.
After putting on his jacket, and handing Remy one of Bobby's old ones, the professor led the boy outside, crunching softly on the evening snow.
Xavier watched as Remy took in the estate with an air akin to awe. The child's mobile, but guarded, features lost all pretense. Red-on-black eyes widened with every detail, every child laughing at play. They shone with a bright boyish wonder of suppressed glee that matched the broad grin on his face.
Xavier felt an odd sense of déjà vu. It was like being with a 10-year-old Scott Summers all over again. The two were alike in so many ways; both having suffered a lot before landing on his doorstep, both wary and frightened little boys wanting so desperately to trust but unable to easily open up due to betrayals. Both feeling like they were not worth the love they received.
And so strong and gifted in their talents. They would be powerful mutants one day. But before that happened, he would have to guide them into becoming strong, confident and mature individuals.
Scott had come a long ways in the six years under his tutelage. It would do Remy some good to walk beside his favorite student for awhile.
"Mister Xavier?" A worried voice cut into his thoughts.
Xavier realized they had stopped. He smiled warmly at the youth. "So, my young friend? What do you think of my school?"
"It's very nice," Remy looked longingly at the mansion, then dropped his gaze to shyly scuff a toe on the cement driveway.
"How would you like to stay here? To study under my tutelage?"
Remy snapped his head up in shock. Mutant eyes fastened on him hopefully. "You mean it?"
Xavier nodded. The child launched himself into the professor's arms.
"Thank you!"
Xavier smiled and smoothed the auburn head fondly. Then his gaze turned serious. "There is one thing you must know, however. My school is one for learning and honing one's skills, which cannot be done without focus and determination. I will not tolerate any inappropriate or self-destructive behavior. You live under my roof and, like everyone else, must adhere to my rules, do you understand?"
Remy nodded solemnly. Xavier relaxed and smiled.
"Come, then. It is dinnertime and you must be hungry. Let us meet the others."
He extended his hand and was pleased to see a smaller one slip unhesitatingly into his.
Child Of the X
Two figures bent over a small form lying on a bed, their features creased with worry. They had the look of intellectuals about them, men of thought rather than action. It was in the way they dressed, the way they stood, pensively and passive, rather than fierce and aggressive.
Finally, one of them straightened up in his wheelchair. He shifted about to look at his tall, slim, but slightly older companion. "Where did you say you found him?"
The other man sighed, running a hand through thick, white hair. "I was walking down an alley in New Orleans when I found the poor child was tucked behind a dumpster. I never would have noticed him if he hadn't been glowing so brightly."
That caught his attention. "Glowing, you say?" The crippled man pressed.
The other nodded in affirmation. "Glowing. It was 20 degrees below zero and he was generating enough heat to power a small generator. And god knows how long he'd been at it."
"How'd you get him to come with you?"
"I didn't. He was unconscious. I just picked him up and flew off."
"Incredible." Charles Xavier whispered. The child was obviously a mutant and a strong one at that, to be able to generate so much heat for such a long period of time. And unconsciously, as well. "Incredible." He whispered again. "Have you spoken with him?"
Erik Lensherr shook his head. "He did not awaken."
Xavier stared at him in shock. "And you brought him here against his will?"
The other mutant rolled his eyes. "It was for his own good. From his clothes, the child's obviously an orphan and a runaway, and it's just as plain that if he doesn't learn to control his power, he'll be a danger both to himself and society. And besides, we need all the strong mutants we can find, Charles. I wasn't about to let this one get away."
Xavier sighed. "It's times like these, Erik, that I worry about your judgment."
"Hmph." The taller man harrumphed. He looked at his watch. "I have to get going. You know how to reach me."
Charles watched his oldest friend walk away, trying to shake that familiar sense of dread in the pit of his stomach. It was getting difficult to deny that he and his oldest friend were coming at a crossroads, ethics-wise. While they both wanted the same thing - acceptance for mutants - Erik was willing to take any means necessary to achieve that goal.
Something he found unacceptable.
One of these days, they were going to find themselves on opposite sides of the battle field, two of the world's powerful mutants, and he hated to think what would happen then.
---
Brown lashes fluttered and opened, revealing odd red-on-black eyes. The child, a youth no older than twelve, sat up to inspect his surroundings. As he did so, he felt a hint of dread coil in the pit of his stomach.
This wasn't the alley he'd fallen asleep in, the boy realized with a stab of fear. He was lying on a bed, surrounded by high tech medical machinery. The air was sterile and the room itself had an emptiness and vastness about it that usually accompanied a laboratory.
His eyes widened in fear and dismay and his heart sank. There was only one place where he could be and only one reason why. Somehow, someway, his father had finally found him and had brought him home.
Bravely trying to ignore his rising panic, the boy looked about searchingly for a familiar metallic form. His first thought was that he'd never seen this lab before. But he quickly shook that thought away. His father had hundreds of bases and millions of labs. Then, realizing his father wasn't about, the boy frowned. His father had never left him alone in the lab, had said he was too smart to be trusted alone with the computers.
His strange eyes alighted on the console in the far corner. Maybe he could tap into the mainframe and find a way out. He quickly checked about, then quietly crept towards the computer. The buttons were unfamiliar, but years of mental training had honed his mind and he had little trouble examining and figuring them out. The boy reached forward, ready to begin.
"Hello."
---
The boy jumped and shrank back, fear evident in the mutant eyes. Xavier spread his hands out, palms up, in a gesture of peace. "Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you."
If anything, the youth only shied away even more. "Yeah. That's what Father always says before he experiments on me."
Xavier drew his head back sharply, unable to believe his ears. The boy had been an experiment? And by his own father? He gently reached out to probe the boy's mind, only to find himself blocked by impenetrable shields worthy of an experienced psychic.
Who was this child?
"My name is Professor Charles Xavier," He finally said. "You are in the medical facility of my school. You were found unconscious in an alley and brought here to save your life."
The boy contemplated his words. "This isn't Father's lab?"
"No," Charles said gently. "What is your name?"
The boy hesitated. The telepath could feel distrust and faith, borne out of an instinct to trust him, wage in the child's mind.
In the end, instinct won over. The boy slowly stood up.
"My name is Remington. You can call me Remy."
"A pleasure to meet you, Remy." Xavier extended his hand in greeting.
Remy shook it. He looked around the vast facility. A shiver passed through him. "This is a school?"
"Yes, it is. Would you like to see it? It was specially created for children like you."
"Orphans?"
"No, mutants."
Remy fidgeted nervously. "But I ain't a mutant." He followed the professor out of the lab.
"Really? I've been told you possess an incredible ability to generate heat energy and your eyes are an unusual color, I must admit."
The boy looked pained. "Are you going to try and enhance my abilities?"
The professor gave him a quizzical look. They stepped into an elevator. "We guide our students towards mastery of their powers."
"But no genetic enhancements?" The boy pressed.
A spark of apprehension formed in Xavier's mind. It did not help matters that he could not read the child's mind. "No, Remy. No genetic alterations."
The boy visibly relaxed in relief. "Father always made genetic enhancements on the mutants he controlled." The boy explained in a whisper.
The apprehension shifted into a nagging suspicion. There was only one man he knew of who was famous for his genetic mutant research. Xavier was almost afraid to ask, but ask he did. "Remy, who is your father?"
"I only know him as Father," The boy replied after a moment. "But others call him Sinister."
---
"For as long as I could remember, home was a small room in a large metal building," Remy said. "It was metal everywhere." Remy shivered a little at the memory of the cold metal that was all he'd known.
Xavier listened attentively. He had brought the child to his office once he'd learned the true identity of his father. Now, the boy sat across from him on a couch, about to reveal as much as he could of his history with the feared mutant called Mister Sinister.
"Every other day, Father would take me into his lab and do all sorts of tests on me." Remy closed his eyes. "As I got older, the tests would get worse and it would get so he'd have to wait weeks in between…just to let me heal." The last part was said in the barest of whispers. Red-on-black eyes shone with haunted hardness.
"How did you escape?" Xavier asked gently.
"Father underestimated me." The boy confided, smiling a little, a frightening smile, crooked and bitter, completely unlike that of a child's. "He did not expect me to be able to get past the security system in my room and hack into the database mainframe. I disabled the alarms and ran away." He paused. "That was two years ago."
"Remy, how old are you?"
"Twelve."
"Incredible. How did you manage to survive?"
The boy looked a little uncomfortable. "By any means possible, sir. I'm a thief."
Xavier placed a fatherly hand on his shoulder. "Thank you for sharing your past, Remy. I know it could not have been easy for you. Would you like some ice cream?"
Remy looked at him blankly.
The professor took his hand and led him down to the kitchen. "Come, you will like it."
Remy hesitated a moment, wondering what the man was up to. From experience, he'd learned people did not like thieves, even child ones.
The kitchen was thankfully empty. The professor gestured Remy to a stool and rolled over the fridge to take out a carton and spoon him some in a bowl. "Here."
The child poked at it unsurely. "What is it?"
"Ice cream. Frozen milk with sugar, basically."
Remy tried it cautiously, then grinned broadly and dug in. Xavier watched, pleased to have been able to raise his moody spirits.
"I take it you liked that."
Remy nodded happily.
"Good. Now, didn't I promise you a tour of the grounds?" Xavier held out a hand which Remy nervously took. It would seem that the boy was not familiar with the friendly touch of others. He would have to remedy that.
After putting on his jacket, and handing Remy one of Bobby's old ones, the professor led the boy outside, crunching softly on the evening snow.
Xavier watched as Remy took in the estate with an air akin to awe. The child's mobile, but guarded, features lost all pretense. Red-on-black eyes widened with every detail, every child laughing at play. They shone with a bright boyish wonder of suppressed glee that matched the broad grin on his face.
Xavier felt an odd sense of déjà vu. It was like being with a 10-year-old Scott Summers all over again. The two were alike in so many ways; both having suffered a lot before landing on his doorstep, both wary and frightened little boys wanting so desperately to trust but unable to easily open up due to betrayals. Both feeling like they were not worth the love they received.
And so strong and gifted in their talents. They would be powerful mutants one day. But before that happened, he would have to guide them into becoming strong, confident and mature individuals.
Scott had come a long ways in the six years under his tutelage. It would do Remy some good to walk beside his favorite student for awhile.
"Mister Xavier?" A worried voice cut into his thoughts.
Xavier realized they had stopped. He smiled warmly at the youth. "So, my young friend? What do you think of my school?"
"It's very nice," Remy looked longingly at the mansion, then dropped his gaze to shyly scuff a toe on the cement driveway.
"How would you like to stay here? To study under my tutelage?"
Remy snapped his head up in shock. Mutant eyes fastened on him hopefully. "You mean it?"
Xavier nodded. The child launched himself into the professor's arms.
"Thank you!"
Xavier smiled and smoothed the auburn head fondly. Then his gaze turned serious. "There is one thing you must know, however. My school is one for learning and honing one's skills, which cannot be done without focus and determination. I will not tolerate any inappropriate or self-destructive behavior. You live under my roof and, like everyone else, must adhere to my rules, do you understand?"
Remy nodded solemnly. Xavier relaxed and smiled.
"Come, then. It is dinnertime and you must be hungry. Let us meet the others."
He extended his hand and was pleased to see a smaller one slip unhesitatingly into his.