Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men in any of their various incarnations

Author's Note: This was written in response to the prompt: X-men first class, erik/Charles, I am

He is who he chooses to be

Charles has been a telepath for as long as he has lived, which is, at this point, only about a fourth of his memory. It was a much smaller percentage when he was younger, of course, and he finds himself somewhat grateful for the deaths that allow one generation to make way for the next. His memory goes as far back as the oldest living person in his vicinity and, if they had a particularly interesting or intense life, their memories may be duplicated over to his head so that they stay with him even when he leaves the area.

Other kids talked about "finding themselves" when they were in their teenage years or early twenties. For Charles it had been an ongoing struggle to keep track of himself.

He finally decided on a set of characteristics that would define him as opposed to other people and he'd just live by that. His is a little half-cultivated half-wild garden within the ecosphere of human consciousness.

He's happy, he's hopeful, and he's definitely outgoing (even if he's a bit more out-going in the mental realm than he'd really like.) Sometimes he reviews his characteristics to decide if he needs to shift them around or make any changes, and if he decides he needs to, he does so.

His personality is what he has decided it is, as are the memories and experiences that have formed him into this.

He tries to be somewhat conservative about how he changes, since Raven had been upset by how much he'd changed by going to university. She had said he was like a different person and he hadn't known how to say that he both was and wasn't different. He'd changed who he was, but he had always been the person who changed like that. So now he tried to be more conservative but now there was Erik.

Oh Erik.

Where Charles thought his mind was kind of like an ecosphere, shifting depending on natural selection, Erik has a mind like a road. It went in only two directions and while there was scenery by the wayside, it was very determined to get where it was going.

Charles found himself tempted to travel that road. He'd just stick out his thumb and see if he could convince Erik to let him hitchhike for as long as it went.

It would be such a wonderful trip, but he held himself back. Instead he just added some of that determination to himself. Let himself become just a bit more focused on destination and the path from here to there. He didn't have a road like Erik, but he had a little path that paralleled Erik's.

Charles was delighted.

Except that Erik's road just kept going, straight ahead, and his own path was more twisting, opening up to admire a few scenic rest points and wending it's way around a few landmarks.

Erik thought there was a straight road to his destination but he was unique. No one else had a road like Erik did. The ones who came closest were saints and killers and almost all martyrs.

Charles knew how people thought and how they responded. He knew that Erik would declare war on humanity and humanity would see him as nothing more than a minor nuisance. Even with Charles at his side, they would be nothing to the ecosphere of human consciousness.

But if they were apart, in conflict with each other, if they took each other seriously, then their personal conflict could define the great societal conflict.

It is the best that he can do for Erik. But he knows that Erik won't understand anymore than Raven did.

He is both naive and cynical, knowledgeable and innocent. He is who he chooses to be and the he is the person who chooses at the same time.