Scott Summers awoke in a comfortable bed. He himself wasn't comfortable, but that was because he really never was; it was hardly the bed's fault. The mattress was in good condition – it wasn't lumpy and it didn't have any broken springs. The bedsheets were new and there was a quilt for warmth (that he never used). His glasses were tied onto his head with a shoelace, just in case he shifted position while he slept. (It hadn't happened yet, but that was no reason to take pointless risks.) He felt well-rested, which was a nice change. At the orphanage, he always got a full night's sleep, but never felt like it. He'd often awoken so tired, he wondered if he'd really been asleep. Now, though, he easily awoke at 6:30 without the use of an alarm clock.

He shut his eyes to shower, brush his teeth, and dress. There was something appealing about learning to function while blind, about knowing that he wasn't entirely helpless without his glasses. Scott couldn't for the life of him figure out what Xavier was going to do next, but he could at least eke every available ounce of predictability out of his environment. His comb was where he expected it to be. He liked that.

Scott liked the feeling of setting a goal and making progress toward it. He was getting better at navigating the mansion blind, which made sore knees and a foul taste when he mixed up toothpaste and antibiotic ointment worth it.

I'm going to go for a run, he thought at Charles. The professor had said he appreciated it if Scott told him when he left the house, and it was an easy enough direction to follow. It was the sort of thing that teens in books did, as long as their caretakers weren't evil or utterly blind to the plot.

Enjoy, came the professor's reply, but the psychic link didn't close immediately. Scott, thought Charles, this may be an odd question, and I want you to feel free to say no. There was a pause. Would you mind if I…observed your senses while you run? From time to time, I become nostalgic.

Sure, that's fine, thought Scott, but he simultaneouslyfelt an odd clenching sensation, just below his diaphragm, like he'd just been punched, which didn't make sense because the professor's request was perfectly reasonable. Kind of nice, actually, especially since he could've just gone ahead and done it without asking.

Thank you, thought the professor, and Scott could feel a tingling along his skin as the professor's astral form bonded with his somatosensory cortex. It was a plain, polite remark for a strange and invasive action. If you become uncomfortable or would like to sever the connection for any reason, just imagine a door shutting.

Scott started down the front path at a slow jog, turning left into the garden. He wasn't a very good runner – he had never developed much endurance and his right foot tended to point inward. And yet, running was one of those tasks that was amenable to goals and regular progress toward them, so he had persisted.

Land on the balls of your feet, toward the center, coached Xavier. Let me show you.

Scott saw, rather than felt, his legs shift to the correct form.

You'll experience less strain that way.

How do you-? Scott cut himself off before he asked what felt very much like an overly personal question. He maintained the same speed, trying to force his legs to continue as the professor had demonstrated.

I ran track when I was your age. Hurdles, primarily.

Scott tried to imagine the professor as an active young adult and was unsuccessful. He returned his focus to running and found himself mentally singing a marching chant. See that lady wearing brown? She makes her living lying down. She's a deep-sea diver, a deep-sea diver. See that lady wearing black? She makes her living on her back. She's-

Scott! The professor's thought-voice sounded almost scandalized. Where did you learn such a thing?

I don't know! yelped Scott in his mind. He was red-faced and he wondered how much of that could be felt telepathically. It's just one of those things you know. He added, I never really thought about what the words meant.

It's all right. It almost sounds like a marching cadence.

What's that?

A military chant, like 'I don't know but I've been told,' Charles thought the last bit in a sing-song tone.

'Eskimo pussy's mighty cold,' finished Scott, reflexively. "Eeep!" he shouted, covering his mouth his with hands. Sorry! Sorry!

Charles was laughing. Not a mean laugh, either. Scott, I do believe you're a military brat. You must have overheard those songs as a young child. His thoughts sounded delighted.

Why does that make you happy?

Because your records from the state are extremely limited. This might mean we could find out more about your family of origin.

Scott imagined a door and slammed it. He continued to run down the path.

"And how does that advance the cause of mutantkind?" asked Charles into the phone. He sounded intense – angry, maybe, and also sad.-

Scott held his breath. He couldn't hear the answer, but if he was quiet, he might get to listen to a full half of the conversation. Having returned from his run, he had considered apologizing for kicking the professor out of his mind so abruptly, but now he was snooping, so it obviously wasn't a day for advanced social skills.

"The child is a mutant, too. What about his well-being?"

Scott wondered if the professor was talking about him. And why.

"Well, unless you're willing to give me a location." A pause. "I thought not." Charles sighed. "You are a better man than this. I can't help unless…you have to see reason, Erik."

Who was Erik and why did he need help?

"The situations aren't parallel in the slightest and I won't allow you to pretend otherwise."

Scott could hear Charles' fingers tightening around the phone.

"No," said Charles, "I don't suppose there is. Goodbye, old friend."

There were two versions of Scott Summers, which Charles mentally categorized by their postures. Toe Walker was awkward, jumpy, and prone to lurking. He didn't have much to say and when he did speak, he mumbled. Toe Walker avoided Charles, avoided everyone. He spent most of his time exploring the mansion and the grounds, but there was no sign of joyful discovery. Rather, he had the look of a skittish prey animal who was investigating a new environment for signs of predation.

Flat Foot emerged when Scott had a task and a goal. Flat Foot had a straighter posture and a louder voice. He still kept to himself, but he had the capacity for assertiveness. He was intense, with a capacity for anger and initiative. He was focused on his task instead of constantly hesitating and twitching.

Toe Walker expected defeat. Flat Foot was stubborn and willing to fight for victory.

Toe Walker was still terrified of temporarily parting with his red glasses, though Charles had been scrupulous about keeping them no longer than the promised limit. Flat Foot practiced walking the halls of the mansion with his eyes closed, memorizing landmarks and counting steps.

Toe Walker washed his hair with soap for a week and a half instead of asking Charles to add shampoo to the grocery order. Flat Foot eased the Chevrolet into the garage and asked, "When I get my license, can I drive the GTO?"

The solution, then, as far as Charles was concerned, was to ensure that Scott had clear tasks to complete as often as possible – assignments, rules, expectations. He'd spent the first six weeks of their time together offering a sort of humanistic support, allowing Scott to decide what he would do and when. It was apparently too much freedom, and no good for this particular child. There would have to be regular lessons, chores, and an exercise regimen, in addition to their attempts to exert some conscious control over the boy's optic blasts.

"Focus, Scott! This isn't a game!" Charles positioned himself well away from the boy, who was lying supine on the grass, eye beams pointed directly up. They had tried this exercise several times already and had only established that Scott could pass his hands through his beams without harm, which was interesting, but hardly the grand prize.

"I am focusing," Scott groused.

"No, you're squinting. There's a difference. Focus your mind."

"I am! I don't know how to focus any harder!" He sighed. "I have a headache. Can I go do something else, now?"

"There is nothing else! Do you understand what you're capable of? If all that's holding your power back is these glasses, a mistake is inevitable. You'll knock over a building or push a bus off an overpass. And not only will there be a catastrophic loss of human life, it will be a disaster for mutant-human relations."

Scott's hand was on his glasses, but he made no move to put them back on. His jaw was set. Toe Walker was gone. This was Flat Foot. "You do it," said Scott. "You can take over my mind and make me do stuff, right? Make me do this. Make me focus and concentrate and all that stuff. Make me control it."

"That's certainly possible. With your consent?"

"Just for this, not to redecorate in there or something."

"All right," said Charles, though he had an odd feeling of dread about the possibility. He raised his right hand to his temple and allowed his psychic self to enter Scott's mind. When he'd spied on the boy's dreams and ghosted after him while running, he'd only visited the most surface thoughts, deliberately ignoring everything that lay beneath. Most minds were like nets: Each thought was connected to other thoughts, which was connected to other thoughts, and so on in a never-ending tangle. An inexperienced psychic could easily get lost, but Charles knew how to read those knots and strings like a map. None of that applied to Scott's mind. It was grey and inconsistent, like a skipping record or a book with missing pages. There was plenty of willpower, hard lines and sharp angles. There were mirrors and gears and levers. There were shelves, unlabeled and dusty.

It was fascinating.

And there was no link to his powers. Not to say that there was no mental representation of the blasts, but that there was no thread of thought leading from Scott's mind to his optic blasts. Charles found the remnants of such a control, tattered and charred, surrounded by warped and illegible charcoal scratchings.

"I'm sorry," said Charles aloud. "I've never encountered this before, but I believe I've located your brain damage."

There was peace. Scott ran daily and began lifting the weights that Charles' stepbrother had left in the attic. Charles started instructing his ward in classical academics, focusing on philosophy, history, and science. They never discussed the phone call, and Scott never overheard Charles talking to the mysterious Erik again. Likewise, Charles made no further overt attempt to ask after Scott's connection to the armed services (and if he queried a few contacts, he kept this to himself).

They had dinner together most nights. They weren't family, not yet, but their initial wary awkwardness had faded to merely Charles' normal standoffish demeanor and Scott's unexpressive face.

Scott was exhausted at the end of each day, but a good kind of exhausted, the kind that came from results, from work one could be proud of. He had stripped down to his underwear – he sweated a great deal in his sleep and saw no reason to wreck pajamas in addition to bedsheets – when he heard the professor's voice in his head.

Get dressed in your running clothes and sneakers. Meet me in the garage as quickly as possible.

Scott complied, thinking, What's going on? as he hurriedly laced up his shoes.

There is a young mutant in trouble. He's being held in protective custody. There's an angry mob after him.

The estate was enormous. Bobby could have had a room half a football field away, but instead he had apparently chosen one right next to Scott's. Scott knew this because he could hear Bobby whimpering and sobbing.

Professor, hissed Scott. Professor!

Is this an emergency? Charles' thoughts sounded annoyed, not particularly alarmed.

The kid is crying, thought Scott. He saw himself as markedly older than Bobby Drake, even though they were only about a year apart. Scott and the professor had successfully rescued the boy from his predicament and brought him back to the Xavier mansion in a state of shock.

Then handle it, answered Charles. There was a feeling of a door shutting and the mental connection was broken.

Scott knew in that moment that he would have rather weeded a thousand gardens than 'handle' a crying boy. But he had a task and he was going to do it. He rolled from the bed gracelessly, steadying himself with his hands so he didn't make a loud thump against the floor. He slid a pair of shorts over his underwear and took a t-shirt from his clothes hamper. He wondered if he should brush his teeth. No, probably not.

Scott knocked on Bobby's door.

"Whatdoya-?" mumbled Bobby weakly.

Scott decided that meant, 'come in'. "Are you injured?" he asked. He could see Bobby in the dim light coming through the window, sitting on the floor with his back to his bed and his knees hugged to his chest.

"No. No? I mean, maybe a little bruised, but I'm okay. Except I'm not okay because I was just trying to help her and I didn't mean to hurt anyone and I don't know what's happening and people were trying to kill me and I want my mom and dad!" The last part was practically a wail.

"So, you're not injured?" clarified Scott. He was still hovering in the doorway. "Because I know where the first aid supplies are."

"I just want to go home and wake up and find out that none of this is real."

"You should probably stop wanting that."

Bobby gaped at Scott before twisting his features into a mixture of snarl and pout. "Easy for you to say. Is the bald guy your dad?"

"No, I just live here." Scott didn't see the point in explaining the guardianship arrangement. And Charles had been clear – it was just a legal technicality.

"Don't you miss your parents?"

Scott thought about that. "Yes," he said finally, "I miss them." He sat down next to Bobby on the floor.

"It's not like I've never been away from home before," said Bobby. "I've had sleepovers. I've been to camp. One summer I stayed with my grandparents for almost a month. But I've never had anybody want to kill me before. That's not supposed to happen to kids."

"I don't think it's supposed to happen to anyone, except maybe enemy soldiers in a just war." Scott and the professor had been debating Just War Theory as a literary exercise while reading Thomas Aquinas.

"Aren't you scared?"

"Of human mobs? No, they should be scared of me," said Scott. From anyone else, that would sound like a threat – or perhaps tough-guy posturing – but he said it matter-of-factly, like a teacher gently correcting a student.

"Wow," said Bobby, "if this were a horror movie, this is when you would start making stuff fly around the room and spinning your head all the way around."

"The professor says there are mutants who can move things with their minds. Telekinesis, it's called."

"Oh god, there's gonna be creepy little girl twins and a little kid on a Big Wheel, isn't there?"

"Uh…there's no kids here," said Scott, clearly missing the reference. "Nobody younger than you, anyway. Just the professor and me and the staff."

Bobby didn't say anything for a long moment. He swallowed several times. "Thanks for talking to me," he said softly. "You should go back to bed. I'm just going to sit here for a while."

Scott stood up. He had a strong sense that he was supposed to say something. He settled for, "Breakfast is at seven."