Thanks to guest, ellie, Foreststar of WindClan, HalfSquirrel, kristelalugo, mexicana, and Houdini for reviewing! About which is the older brother, Scott ages at a significantly decelerated rate-so he's physically younger than Alex, but was born first. Mostly they both consider themselves the older brother.

Once, the Xavier place was almost always quiet. It was home to reserved people living reserved lives and when they broke that reserve it was chaos. There was shouting, drinking, the breaking of things… better overall that it should be quiet, then, with those three unhappy people living their three unhappy lives. Charles, his mother, his stepfather, all wrapped up in misery.

It was quite the opposite now. The kids were supposed to be exuberant, usually were, and seeing both of them so sedate was unnervingly like seeing the house as it had been all those years ago. But usually they were so overtly alive, as was Alex, and the occasional bursts of enthusiasm with which Hank left the lab…

Charles woke alone again. He sighed and reached for the other half of the bed just to confirm, but he knew. He couldn't feel her, physically or psychically.

He went through the motions of the morning. He dressed, brushed his teeth, combed his hair. As he did, he scanned the other minds in the house. Ororo and Scott were together. Ruth, outside, was churning up the ground—she had decided to start a garden. Hank was fast asleep and Alex—Charles rubbed his head. Just touching Alex's mind brought him much too close to a mountain of a hangover.

As he headed toward the kitchen, Charles debated asking Scott about his homework. Officially, Hank was responsible for Scott's spring break assignment, and Charles could give a dozen science metaphors about things flourishing when left alone… but Scott's studies had a nasty habit of not flourishing.

Ororo he did not worry about. Her reading and writing was often lacking, but she was a dangerously clever young woman with a habit of scraping by in subjects where she couldn't be bothered with a decent effort. When she even half-tried… Charles sighed. A brilliant student could be just as frustrating as a struggling one sometimes!

At first, wrapped up in thoughts about the kids, he did not realize he heard their voices.

Charles paused. Overheard conversations could lead to such pain. He had just seen how Scott suffered for misunderstanding a conversation between Charles and Ruth. Nevertheless, he had heard this one before:

"Am I pretty?"

"Pretty?"

"Would you date me?" Ororo asked, and Charles recalled the same question. On the last night of his life, the last night before everything changed, Raven asked him the same question.

She tested him and he failed.

"You're my sister," Scott replied. "And you're fourteen."

They were not, as Charles initially guessed, sitting at the table. Both preferred the kitchen table to the more impressive dining room table. Today they were underneath it, their blanket fort still intact. Ororo's legs stuck out beneath a floral bedsheet, visible from her knees to her bare toes.

"But if I wasn't your sister, would you look at me?"

"I'm supposed to beat up guys who look at you."

"Don't do that—and if you weren't. If I was sixteen and we went to school together somewhere else, would you ask me out?"

"No," Scott replied, and Charles swallowed a sigh. That was not the right answer and he knew it, and he saw this playing out as it had with him and Raven, and then—"You would have to ask me. But if you did, I would go with you."

"Because?"

"Because you are beautiful. But as your brother…"

She must have shoved him, because they both started laughing.

Thinking about Scott in terms of insufficiencies was very easy. After all, he was an orphan, an often less than exceptional student, a boy who couldn't do more than he could. But, Charles thought, Scott was the better brother. He hadn't been able to see Raven as beautiful, couldn't see past that her exceptional appearance marked her as family.

And, a tiny part of his mind acknowledged, he had simply not found her appearance pleasing. That was true, too.

Stepping heavily in a wheelchair is, of course, impossible, so Charles bumped into the doorjamb to announce his presence. He went about making his tea as Ororo and Scott scrambled out from beneath the table. Good mornings were traded and various looks passed between Scott and Ororo—an entire conversation which Charles chose to leave between them.

Scott grabbed what passed for breakfast, looking properly ashamed at the look Charles gave him as he dropped Pop Tarts in the toaster.

"If you have Coke with those, you're grounded," Charles told him.

Ororo cackled.

"Wha—since when?"

"Since right now."

"I was going to have milk anyway."

"Of course you were."

Ororo, who had an even stronger objection to Pop-Tarts than she had to peanut butter (which was an abomination against nature and all things rational and good in the world), grabbed a soda. They were not biological siblings, of course, but siblings enough that she had perfected the art of simultaneously drinking and giving Scott an 'I have some you cannot' look.

"You don't even like that stuff," Scott said.

Ororo shrugged. Liking it wasn't the point. Having something he didn't was the point. "Mom said I should help her," she commented. Charles pretended to ignore another unspoken conversation, this one ending with a sharp-eyed warning look from Ororo.

The toaster dinged. Scott grabbed what Charles refused to consider food and took a seat at the table. He kept glancing at Charles, whose tea was brewing.

"Professor?"

"In a moment, Scott."

His eyes were smudged beneath his glasses and something was clearly bothering him. Their last conversation had been taxing and Charles just knew this would be the same.

"I wanted to—"

"This will only take another minute."

Once the tea had been brewed and poured, Charles settled at the table, ignoring the sheets. He was perhaps a bit reckless in how long he let the leaves steep, but Scott was radiating tension.

Charles took a sip—yes, another thirty seconds would have been beneficial here—then prompted, "What was it you wanted to tell me?"

"I, um… something happened last night and—" he began, his gaze clearly on the table. He had tilted his head forward just so, trying to hide his face behind too-short hair. It was getting long again, but not enough to hide behind.

"Look at me."

Scott raised his head. He looked back at the table, shook his head, took a breath, and finally he was able to look at Charles and say, "First, it's my fault. Not—not all of it, but some of it—it was my idea. And I know I'm going to be grounded but there's one thing I have to do first. Then you can ground me forever."

Charles considered reading Scott's mind and decided against it. He did not care for the mannerisms he was seeing now. They were the same behaviors he saw when Scott first arrived. Scott was working through them and Charles gave him the space to do that.

"I… last night," Scott explained, "me and Hank—Alex wasn't home. Hank took me into town to look for him, but only because I was going anyway."

Charles waited, but no more details were offered. "And?"

"And I wanted you to hear it from me."

"I see."

All things considered, Charles supposed, this was not nearly so bad as he had feared. He was surprised to hear that Hank left the grounds and concerned that Alex was spiraling out of control. Alex had a wild streak from the moment Charles met him, but this…

"Where did you find your brother?"

"He, um…" Scott began, then lowered his head.

"Scott?"

For someone who insisted he needed his tea, Charles was not overly interested in drinking it now. Instead he watched Scott, waiting for an answer.

"He'd been drinking. I found him at a bar and we brought him home."

"Hank took you to a bar."

"He didn't want to."

"Hank is an adult, you're a child."

"He decided to take me home," Scott said. "That was what Hank wanted. So I got out of the car and started walking, because I wouldn't go home without Alex. Professor, Alex is struggling. Ororo, too. I promised I wouldn't say too much, but I can't—I want to help them, but there's only so much I can do."

Charles nodded. His composure slipped, just a little, his expression betraying not only that he knew but that it weighed on him. "I know."

"Then why aren't you doing anything?"

"I am."

"You're not! Alex—"

"Alex is an adult. I'll speak with him, but…" Charles shook his head. "Loving someone doesn't give you the right to make their choices for them. I've tried to do that and all it does is push away the people you love." Saying he loved Alex might be something of an exaggeration, but this was not wholly about Alex anymore.

Charles did not mention Ororo, but it didn't mean she was any less important. She was less destructive, her needs less pressing, but he knew she was struggling, too. That was why he made a point to spend time with her.

Scott was quiet for a moment and Charles finally did take the time to sip his tea. It wasn't even cold.

"Professor?"

"Yes."

Honestly, no one in this place understood a nice cup of tea. He was going to make it a rule. There would be a rule that no one was to interrupt Charles's nice cup of tea unless there was a fire.

"Aren't you going to punish me?"

Right. He had forgotten who he was talking to.

"Consequences, Scott. Actions have consequences."

"That's not a verb."

"True. Two weeks washing dishes."

"That's fair."

Coming from Scott, that meant nothing. He would have deemed thumbscrews fair. Charles decided this was not something worth saying. Instead, he said, "Whatever it is you feel you need to do today, don't be rash. Think it through."

Scott nodded. He was not one to lose his temper, but too often he got an idea into his head and rather than think it through, he acted on foolish assumptions. For all Charles tried to teach Scott what the world actually was, his understanding was deeply flawed.

"All right then."

Scott swallowed the last of his Pop-Tart, drained his glass and deposited it in the sink, then headed for the door. Finally, Charles was alone to enjoy his still-warm tea!

"Hank told you, didn't he?"

…not so alone.

He looked up and realized Scott wasn't asking.

"And had you not done so as well, it would have been a month washing dishes."