Dark before the Light

Warnings: Angst, possible language, so far.

Pairings: None as of yet.

Summary:Chuck tries to fix something; Anti-Xavier but not really. The beginning of bad things.

A/N: Story writing is not my thing. Instead, I write nice, neat, short and possibly interesting poems. Story writing is not my thing, don't expect it to be, but this idea has been bugging me for the last few months and, well, this is the beginning. Tell me what you think.





It was morning, not quite full light, and the house seemed dormant in the pre-dawn glow. Hidden computer lines and camouflaged cameras hummed quietly at their work, guarding the safety of the children who lived in this too-large, too empty house for the troubled youths of the future, each child complete with nifty super powers, character fronts, and enough mental confusion and doubts to keep an open-minded psychiatrist busy for decades. The mansion was still except for two figures who crept quietly down the corridor.

One possessed all the quiet grace and fierce violence of a cougar, stalking beside the other with an air of constant anger. The other, harmless- looking, was gliding along in the stiff confines of a wheelchair, seemingly oblivious to his companion's frustration. Not that an angry Wolverine was a rare sight, the man seemed to find fury in every part of existence that he came across. Today's reason did not become apparent until the two had entered the lower levels of the basement, the space between this floor and those of the children's rooms enabling them to talk without fear of waking even the lightest sleepers in the mansion. Only when they stood before the door to Cerebro did Logan speak.

"Look, Chuck, I appreciate you invitin' me along an' all, but are you sure this is such a good idea?" As he spoke, Logan watched with a concerned eye as Charles Xavier unlocked the door to the main room of Cerebro, perhaps the most advanced and most dangerous computer in the country, and likely the world. "I mean, I know you've been havin' some bad dreams, but messin' with your powers might just make 'em worse. I mean, why's it so important for you to get a grip on your own head? You seem fine to me. You're more in control of your powers now than most of the students could hope to be in a lifetime."

Xavier frowned, as he reached the controls of the computer, and began to log into the interface. "I know I may seem in control of my powers now, this minute, but I've been having lapses in concentration, moments when I can't feel my powers, much less use them, and these dreams are only a symptom of that." The Professor began to adjust the interface to the computer.

The Wolverine frowned. "Maybe, yeah, you're havin' a bit of a problem with your powers," here he growled slightly, a sound as familiar to him as a sigh or a smile is to most, " but what the hell tells you to get this thing involved?" With a glance, he included the great, big, round room that housed Cerebro, as well as the mansion, its computer systems, the whole world in general. Then, with a hint of not-frown, "Why couldn't you just go see a psychiatrist, or is that too normal for you?"

The professor sighed, and now the lines in his face, the pale complexion of his skin and the tight, hollow way his cheeks cling to the bones of his face becomes apparent. And the problem is not something that needs to be dealt with, not here, in this empty room with a small console for the computer and very little else. The entirety of his face and posture seem to want nothing more than rest, a release from worry, something to make whatever was eating him inside stop, and he sighs as he turns to the animal- like human behind him - human because that's what they really are, and mutant is just another ethnic group. And he speaks. "No, my friend, you know and I know that this is just too far for any doctor to comprehend, I hardly understand it myself. What I know is that there is a pocket in my mind, a place I cannot wander." His face is too pointed, the skin shrunken over the too-sharp bone, his complexion waxen as he contemplates the illness in his mind. "I cannot reach it, even in deepest concentration, what you would call meditation but with the aid of my not inconsiderable powers. No, I cannot touch it, and in my sleep it seems that something wanders there, and uses the gifts that I have for I know not what." Xavier clenched his fist suddenly, his shrunken face filled with such fury that the man behind him started, unused to such a look on his friend's face. "I cannot see it!" the professor's fist came down on the arm of his chair, and he turned to look behind him at Logan, fear touching the anger in his face. "Don't you understand? I can't touch it, can't see it, can't control it and I don't know what it's doing with this mind," he touched his temple, gingerly, "I can't risk the things it might do with my powers."

"If it's real," Logan interjected. "If there's actually something there besides paranoia and fear of your own mind." He looked Xavier in the eye, no fear apparent in voice or posture. "We all worry about our powers sometimes, we all look to see if they might've altered the 'we' that's there, and they do. Our powers change us." He stood straighter, projecting as much reassurance as the animal in him would allow. "But just because they change us doesn't mean they're gonna do harm." He slouched again, and started to move towards the door. "if you're sure about this - and I won't doubt you if you're sure - I probably won't do much good inside the room. Might bounce radio waves off my bones or somethin'."

Charles smiled, much of his earlier fear hidden for the moment. "I suppose you may be right, old friend. But I must have my answer." Logan raised his hand in a slight wave, and Xavier signaled in kind, as the door to Cerebro shut and sealed. Logan would not step through that door again for forty days. By that time, the land around the mansion would be so much smoking rubble and ruin.

After Wolverine had exited, Xavier finished his modifications to Cerebro, and placed the helmet on his head. He had changed the code in Cerebro, temporarily, to allow him to focus the amplification of his powers that the room allowed upon himself, effectively picking apart his own head and seeing what was inside. Whatever comfort Wolverine meant to provide, the Professor knew his own mind, and something was occupying it. The closed- off area he had described had been in his dreams for three months, ever since the day of the soccer game, and it had been growing at a cancerous rate ever since that day. The first of the dreams had been right after the incident; he had dreamed that, instead of making the civilians simply forget the incident, he had made them fear it, and the brotherhood, and even the team that saved them, more than they already did. In the dream, he had fed their fear and hate until they attacked the mansion, half-crazed with the hatred he place in their hearts, and he had led the X-Men to destroy the humans with a smile on his face and glee in his heart.

It was these dreams that led him to stay up nights, fearing the darkness of sleep that only brought with it images of hate and destruction, of all the things he had sworn to prevent and all the things he had seen in those poor humans' hearts. It was the fear in them, in every one of them, that had to be creating these dreams. No man should ever have to see that much fear in so many hearts, and yet he dreamed of that fear ever night, and reveled in it.

It had to end. No man - human or mutant, it made no difference - no person could live like this and stay sane, if he wasn't insane already.

And so he lifted the helmet, and put it on his head. And so he entered the program, and let it run. And so he looked in his own mind, and found that place easily. Only now he could see it; now he could touch it, feel it, because that dark door was open and that thing, that horrible thing formed of all the fears and nightmares of every person whose mind he had entered that day, including the fears of his own mind, that monster of power and fear and anger and hate had escaped. It had left the door open to it's growing part of his mind, and now it shut the door leaving Xavier inside; and oh, isn't it sweet, isn't it sweet to know you'll never be blamed, you'll never be blamed because it wasn't your fault. You never asked to be created, you never asked to be shut away, and you never asked to live in someone's dreams; and if that person should show you power, if that person should decide to wake you up and give you perfect access to the whole of their power through the invention of their mind and another's, if that person should give you total access to the world because they were trying to find out if you exist, well, whose fault is that?

And it would be nice to say the evil monster went back to the back of Charles' mind, and it would be nice to say the monster didn't know how to work Cerebro, but the monster was free. The thing had control of Charles' powers, body, memory and mind, and it wasn't about to let go of them. It had plans to make, things to do, and the range Cerebro gave it and it's powers was sensational.

The X-Men did not wake up that morning in their beds or from a natural sleep. They slid from their rest to the call of the monster's mind, they opened their eyes and moved their limbs but they did not feel or see. The X-Men were the monster's children, now, and it would do with them as it pleased. And it pleased, as a start, to destroy Bayville.





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