Katie Rogers prodded at the ugly yellow bruise that was spreading across the inside of her thigh carefully with her fingers as she slowly climbed the slightly icy walkway to Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Once she reached the huge front door of the school, she paused and shivered violently in the bitterly cold December air.
She half expected someone to jump out from behind the bushes and snatch her, to drag her kicking and screaming. Her pale blonde hair was whipping around the face when the door was opened suddenly and a tall lean man greeted her. She stepped back too quickly, lost her footing on the icy step, and fell backwards.
Katie let the man help her up, but watched him closely as his sinewy arms lifted her up the ground and set her promptly on her feet. "Are you alright?" He asked her while she made herself overly busy as she gathered the things that had fallen out of the brown paper bag she had been clutching. "Yes, I'm fine" She said a little too quickly for Scott to believe plausible.
"Why don't you come in from the cold?" He asked her as he examined the girl carefully from behind his ruby red visor. They seemed to stare at each other steadily for minutes even though just a few seconds had passed until Katie softly said "Alright".
She followed him into the great expanse of the waiting room and while Scott expected her to set down her brown bag and take off the battered jacket she was wearing, she only clutched it more tightly around her, despite the warmth in the building. Her eyes that were as deep and blue as the ocean scanned the room carefully, looking for danger in the dark shadowy corners.
"I'll take her now, thank you Scott" Said a sudden voice from one of the open doorways. Katie took a step back against Scott's chest. "It's alright," Charles Xavier said calmly as his electric wheelchair gilded soundlessly towards her. "No one is going to hurt you here"
Katie looked cautiously around the waiting room once more until slowly meeting Charles' sparkling blue-gray eyes. "Come on" He said encouragingly and Katie followed behind him as he wheeled into his gleaming wood office. When the doors swung shut behind her, she jumped like a rabbit under a gun and watched him even more warily.
"Please, have a seat" Charles said as he wheeled behind his desk and watched her easily. "I'd rather stand" Charles nodded slightly and pulled out a sheet of pristine paper. "I've been expecting you to come a while ago, but rather late then never right?"
"Have you been watching me?" Charles shook his head. "Not at all, but I do have well, a sort of link to every mutant on the planet, I've had a feeling that you have been under...well I had a feeling that you would be coming.
"Our kind has always been under persecution Miss. Rogers..." "It's not because I'm a mutant," She said quickly as she interrupted him and then immediately looked fearful as a peachy pink blush slowly crept up on her cheeks, blooming like pretty flowers. "I see," Charles said as he wrote something down onto the sheet of paper in front of him. "Well Miss. Rogers, it is my wish that you will stay at my school, at least for a little while anyway"
"I don't have any money," Katie said and Charles laughed a rich tumbling sound that made Katie relax a bit. "I don't make my students pay room and board. I do expect a certain level of maturity from the older students though, to demonstrate good behavior for the younger students of my school. However, I swear upon what I told you before Miss. Rogers, no one here is going to hurt you"
With what seemed like great difficulty, Katie slowly said "I believe you," and coming from child a girl, Charles Xavier knew this meant a lot, and would do everything in his power on earth to keep the promise he had made her.
"Scott will take your bag and show you to the room that we've had prepared for you" Katie nodded and turned when the door to the vast office opened, and the man, apparently called Scott, walked back in. Katie followed him out, but kept a safe distance between them, as she didn't know whether to flee or not. "It's the 4th floor up," Scott said amiably as he walked her up "I've always thought that we should have elevators anyway"
A group of students years younger than Katie came hurdling down the stairs wearing thick jackets and they rushed out to play in the fresh fallen snow. "This is a school?" Katie asked slightly awed as she gazed out of one of the expansive stained windows that looked out over the snow-capped garden. "Yeah, it's something isn't it? The professor built it ages ago, no one really does know when, you'd probably have to ask him that yourself"
A blackbird cawed shrilly out somewhere in the garden and took off like a rocket into the stone gray sky that promised more snow before night. They walked down a wide hallway until Scott stopped at the first door on the end. "This is your room," He said and opened it. Katie's first impression was that it had to be a trick. There was a gorgeous 4-poster bed draped heavily with Irish green covers and the walls were high and painted as white and clean as the new snow in the garden.
"This is gorgeous," She said as she gently ran her fingers over the polished mahogany desk that was positioned in front of a crystal window that faced the glorious garden, and out past the boundaries, was a little frozen stream that winded its way into the dark woods.
"The professor will be glad to know you like it. There's information on your classes and schedules in one of the drawers, but you still have about a month before the spring classes start. So in the mean time, make yourself comfortable, get to know the other students and teachers. None of us will bite...well maybe expect Logan and if you're really not lucky you have him as a teacher"
Scott gave a sort of shudder that made the tips of Katie's unpainted mouth turn up in a smile that lightened up her whole face. "Forget I said that," He said and shoved his hands into the deep pockets of his jacket and flashed a brilliant smile. "Welcome to the house that Xavier built, I think you'll find that you're going to like it here" He said smoothly and excused himself from her room.