You and me, against the world

After his illness – that was how the servants had taken to refer to the dark three years that had forced him in his room, too lost in his mind to interact with the world – he'd been assigned a private tutor to further his education until he was old enough to leave for college. While this actually gave him more time to spend with Raven, it also meant that she was his only company, like he was hers. Not that he minded: she was good company – she was smart and funny, and just as happy as he was to finally have someone who could understand what it felt like to be different – and Charles was happy with her. He taught her games and asked the maid to buy her toys, and nobody ever questioned his requests, both because of his wealth and position and because they still feared him the way people fear that they cannot understand. He also read to her: she knew the letters and was able to write her own name, but had never imagined she could learn more – from what he'd gathered from her stray thoughts and the few words she'd spent about her past, blue children at the orphanage hadn't deserve to be taught like normal ones; even what few stories she knew she'd just overheard as they were told to the other kids.

Charles lent her his books and guided her through learning more complex words, and then numbers, and additions, and multiplication tables. She wanted to learn how to write his name, and he was so touched when she asked that he hugged her tightly. Raven froze on the spot, unsure what to do; she'd never been hugged before, but he taught her that as well.

"I will ask mother to adopt you officially," he told her one day, a bright smile on his face. "That way, you can go to school and meet other children, if you like. And you can have a last name and a family."

Raven looked skeptical, and Charles could feel her confusion about that mysterious mother – so different from what she'd always imagined and dreamt of – that, in all the time she'd been living at the Xavier mansion, had never crossed paths with her or her son. He was actually unsure himself of what reaction he would get from the distant woman, but he hoped the new addition to the family would help her as well, shake her out of the cocoon of sorrow she'd wrapped herself in – the same cocoon she tried to escape taking part in frivolous parties and meaningless laughter, drowning the grief that couldn't be ignored in booze. Charles hadn't seen his mother for weeks, now, though he could feel her moving about in her quarters, and her despair would suddenly strike him and leave him subdued for hours afterwards.

Raven always regarded him with sadness when it happened, and while she politely restrained from making any comment or inquiry, her thoughts were so loud he often couldn't block them out completely. His powers had grown considerably since that fateful day when he'd first been aware of his own mind among the others; he could now feel the minds of all the inhabitants of Salem Center, and if he so much as lost focus for a moment he would risk to lose himself among them all like before. He'd had to strengthen his shields, raise them taller and thicker, keep his mind in as much order as possible so as not to accidentally project his own feelings and thoughts and involuntarily influence all those around him. When he'd made the butler serve cookies for lunch without directly asking for it, Charles had been so disturbed by his own power he'd burst into tears like a baby, and Raven had cried with him, overwhelmed by a misery that didn't belong to her, the cookies forgotten and never eaten on the table.

His newfound talent proved to be useful in their situation, though: her control over her mutation wasn't perfect – she was just a little girl, one who'd been as alone and lost as he, after all – and when she was too tired or too distracted, too immersed in a game or a book she was reading, keeping up the blond disguise proved to be too much effort and she unconsciously reverted to her natural red hair and scaled blue skin. It wasn't a problem when it was just the two of them, but the adults were another thing entirely: they couldn't understand. The first time it happened, the maid's screams made Charles panic, causing his powers to leak out, unleashed; the woman forgot what she'd seen and left the room with a hollow expression in her eyes, without a look to the boy swaying on his feet and losing blood from his nose. Raven was scared and horrified by it, but he reassured her everything was fine, and she promised she would be more careful next time.

When Sharon Xavier finally met Raven and informed her she would immediately start the procedures for the adoption, the little girl had been living at the mansion for six months. The woman hugged her new daughter in a way she hadn't her own son since her late husband's death, and then left the room with the same empty look the maid always had after Charles' intervention. The boy collapsed to the floor, a content smile on his face.

Later that night, as the two kids played undisturbed in front of the fireplace, Raven asked Charles why he didn't use his powers to make his mother love him.

The boy raised his head from the chess set lying between their prone forms on the floor, and his control over his powers must've slipped for a moment, because when he met her eyes he saw the same devastating sadness he felt in his heart reflected in them. She cried without knowing why, and he held her, caressing her hair and whispering soft words to her ear as if those weren't his tears she was spilling.

"It wouldn't be right," he just answered.

So the woman went on with her life as if she'd never been a mother. And if, when she announced she was getting married again, Charles was so shocked he couldn't even feign a smile, nobody noticed or cared, except the little sister he'd welcomed in his house: she took him by his hand, unconcerned with the smiling woman waiting for congratulations, and took him to his room, where she hugged him like he'd taught her.

They had each other, and it was enough.

(XXX)

And here was the last chapter. A big thank you to all that read my fic, I hope you all enjoyed it *hearts*

Title to this chapter was from XMFC: the night before Cuba, Raven tells Charles "I used to think it was going to be you and me against the world". I didn't particularly enjoy the scene, it felt forced and out of place for both of them, but as I said I loved the relationship between the siblings and that line embodies it perfectly. And I think I'm gonna write more about them, they're just too beautiful for fangirl!me XD