Thanks to ellie, hippiechick2112, and feathered moon wings for reviewing!

Meanwhile, back at the mansion, Scott finished scrubbing the last of the plates and set it aside to dry. He dried his hands on a dishtowel, then took a bottle of milk from the fridge and poured a glass.

The kitchen was clean. Scott had no need to hang around. More than that he couldn't believe he was creating another dirty dish! Nevertheless, he set his glass on a coaster and settled at the table with his algebra book. Hank said that a person could never do enough review where math was concerned.

It was true, of course, and Scott had half-forgotten many of the principles already. Or he never knew them in the first place. Algebra was tricky. It wasn't like geometry, which just made sense.

"That's what I like to see!"

Scott looked up from his book. "Hi." He went to put the kettle on.

"You don't need to do that, Scott."

He drew the tea tin out. "I don't mind. How are you taking it these days?"

Charles smiled. "You decide."

"I wouldn't know where to begin."

"I trust you."

Scott swallowed. Tea was a big thing for the Professor. Why was he asking Scott to mess about with that? Scott didn't even like tea. Sure, he made the tea the day Alex's dad arrived, but that was just the stuff in the box marked 'English breakfast tea'. (Apparently that was a thing.) Even he knew it had been under-steeped.

He was fully out of his depth now. Nevertheless, he looked through the spices.

"How are you finding work at the library?"

"I enjoy it," Scott said.

"That's good."

"They have a typewriter and Mae's teaching me to type."

"Is she." Charles did not doubt it. He only said that as a prompt.

"It's funny. You'd think the keys would go A, B, C, D but they don't, it's Q, W, E, R… um… well, that's the idea. Why do they do that?"

"Perhaps you should ask Hank."

Scott nodded. "I will. I'm sure he knows."

"I should find my old typewriter. In fact I wish I had thought about this myself, it would have spared me months of reading your chicken scratch compositions."

"Hey!" Scott objected, but he had to laugh. He knew his penmanship left a lot to be desired.

Charles hated to mention this, but knew he had no choice. They were having such a pleasant chat and he didn't know when he had last seen Scott this animated. Certainly before Chris arrived. Nevertheless, "Are you planning on sleeping tonight?"

"I won't feel right until Ororo's home."

"Hank said she only broke her arm," Charles said. It was a painful injury, to be sure, but not life-threatening. It would hurt and heal. Then he caught the expression on Scott's face and realized, "But that's not what you're concerned about, is it?"

Scott raised his hand to his mouth, then jerked it away before he could start biting his thumbnail. "Hospitals are bad places. Anyway I should put away the dishes now," he mumbled.

Charles went to help him. The tea needed to sit for a while longer to steep properly, so he may as well make himself useful.

"You know Ruth loves you and Ororo. She would never let anything happen to you."

They both remembered the look on Ruth's face the day Raven threatened Ororo. That had not ended well for Raven: Ruth dislocated her arm and squeezed the bones until they broke. The way she did it was unnervingly matter-of-fact.

Scott kept putting away the dishes. It was a nice thing to hear but a difficult thing to respond to.

Charles started to help with the dishes.

"You don't need to do that."

"Just because I can't walk—"

"It's not that. Domestic stuff is, um, not your forte."

"This is a simple task. Even I can—shit!"

Scott wasn't sure what to react to. His dad had just used the sentence 'even I can shit', albeit inadvertently, which was deeply disquieting. And Charles, who corrected anyone who said yeah instead of yes, just swore.

He glanced over and forgot either. Like his body needed to reject the claim of domestic capability, Charles had cut his palm.

"Come sit down. Um, sorry." It was an instinctive thing to say to someone who had been hurt—and very much the wrong thing to tell a paraplegic.

Scott grabbed a cookie tin from the cupboard.

"Is this really the time?" Charles asked. When Scott opened the tin, however, he realized it had been re-purposed. The tin contained bandages, cotton balls, rubbing alcohol, tape, tweezers, aspirin, and a flashlight.

Scott gripped Charles's hand, then took a cotton ball and cleaned away the blood. A second cotton ball was held over the mouth of the alcohol bottle and soaked.

"This is going to sting."

It did.

Scott stuck a butterfly closure over the cut, then a dressing.

"Where did you learn to do this?" Charles himself would have wrapped his hand in a tea towel, possibly applied some band-aids if the bleeding hadn't stopped. And it would have been perfectly sufficient, but not so thorough.

"Hank taught me."

Scott wrapped an elastic bandage around Charles's hand. As he did, Charles realized Scott had become… confident. Not that Charles ever doubted it would happen, he just missed that it had. It wasn't just knowing how to take care of a cut. Someone so injury-prone should know that. It was the surety of his movements.

"This is probably overkill."

Perhaps not total confidence.

Scott tidied up the first aid kit and put it back in the cupboard.

"Why a flashlight?" Charles wondered. "The rest I understand."

"In case the power goes out. I'll finish putting away the dishes."

Charles couldn't argue this time. Instead he sipped his tea. It was cool enough now that it didn't burn. "Assam and cinnamon?" he guessed.

"Yeah—yes," Scott amended. He had his back turned, so Charles did not see him biting his lip not to laugh at the word 'Assam'.

"Well, it's a new one," Charles said. And then he lied, as parents do: "but I like it."

After he finished putting away the dishes, Scott grabbed a cookie and went to sit down. He didn't eat the cookie, though. He set it aside and drank his milk.

"Scott—"

"You shouldn't call me that."

"Chris is asleep. Speaking of sleep…"

Scott groaned. "Can we not, please?"

"This is a conversation we're going to have, unfortunately. Scott, it may be time we took the lock off your bedroom door."

The look on Scott's face was one of embarrassment and defeat, but what was Charles to do? When Scott was in that sort of state, having him behind a locked door was far from ideal.

"The nightmares haven't been a problem in over a year, it's bad now. Worse than before. I'm concerned about you. You told me once that you dreamed about the orphanage. Is that still the case?"

Scott sighed and his shoulders slumped. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not angry with you. I'm concerned. You're not yourself since your dad arrived."

"He's not my dad. He's my father. You are my dad."

"I'm touched. But we're still talking about the nightmares. Did Chris… if he's said or done anything—"

"No, of course not. It's nothing like that."

"You've changed since he arrived."

"I barely see him."

That was true. Scott didn't work on the ship. Hank, Ororo, and Alex loved that thing and even Ruth spent time there, but never Scott. He was barely in the same room as Chris except at dinner and then Scott was either quiet or joking with Ororo.

Or mouthing off.

The fact that Scott avoided Chris did not help his case.

"Is this about what I said the other night? About Katherine?"

Charles shook his head, not understanding. "Katherine, who—your biological mother," he realized, carefully not saying 'mom'. "I'd like you to apologize, but no. This is not about what you said. It's about your thoughts."

"The ones about Ingrid Bergman?"

Charles chose not to remark on that. Scott had to be immensely uncomfortable to resort to crude comments—not that it was a secret he was sweet on Ingrid Bergman. Only Alex tended to mention it, though.

"For the past few months, I've had concerns about what I've heard in your mind. I think since you arrived here you have seen that I am not going to hurt you. No matter what you do, I will never raise a hand to you or to anyone else." Charles left out the fact that he really couldn't. Scott was nearly if not fully grown, even if he tried to hide it, and Ruth said his progress in self-defense was exceptional. Whereas Charles was a cripple.

He also chose to leave out that he had once attempted to settle a problem with fisticuffs. It really didn't work out well. Erik was much stronger, so much less merciful… and Charles had learned his lesson from that experience.

"We haven't discussed what was said to you, however, and I'm beginning to think that was a mistake. That may have been the worst thing Milbury did. What he did to you physically was unforgivable, but making you believe you were worthless…"

Scott flinched.

"You are not worthless."

"You said that before."

"Well, if you listened attentively, I wouldn't have to repeat myself, would I?"

Scott sighed in the way that always suggested he was rolling his eyes. Sometimes Charles thought Scott rolled his eyes just because he could. Who would know behind those glasses?

"What I find most astounding about you is that you spent so much of your life with that man and Milbury was perhaps the worst role model anyone can have, yet you are absolutely nothing like him. You are a compassionate, caring person, more so than most. You saw Hank for who he is, you brought home the most bedraggled stray I have ever seen and you loved her, you've taken care of the other students. You have a very good heart and your da—your father causes you to ignore it. You've said some very unkind things to him. So I'm quite happy to keep you away from him, Scott, because I don't want to see you turn into that person. I'd very much prefer if you continued to behave like the thoughtful young man I know you are."

Charles had not expected Scott to respond to that—not the kid who was momentarily speechless at a high grade. He let the knowledge settle for a moment.

Then, more brightly, he continued, "Anyway, you'll need to be prepared to present a much more certain persona for college interviews—"

Scott groaned loudly. "Aw, come on!"

"You are going to college one day," Charles informed him.

"But—"

"No, I won't have that, any of it. You're smart and a diligent student," Charles indicated the algebra book on the table as proof. "There is nothing in the world to keep you from a college education."

He regarded this as simply another thing Scott needed to learn, something he hadn't been taught in Omaha—like self-respect and table manners. Given what his life was like in the foundlings' home, Scott hadn't stood a chance in school. So now that things were better and he had seen that he could be academically successful, Charles felt it was time to start talking more seriously about college.

Scott looked ready to argue. Instead he asked, "Are you going to take the lock off my door?"

"I don't know. We're worried about you—Ruth and I. I realize you think you're an adult, but you still need looking after. I'm concerned you might… find yourself in a situation in which you need one of us."

"I'm sixteen."

"And you've started to lock your door and have terrible nightmares."

Scott couldn't refute that. They sat in silence for a while, until Scott said, "Professor?"

"Yes?"

"It doesn't matter if it's true or not. It always hurts to hear."

Ruth and Ororo returned shortly after that, and Charles still had not thought up an adequate response. Both women looked a bit worn out. One of Ororo's arms was in a sling, but she looked fine otherwise—fine enough to be gnawing the end of a licorice stick.

Scott walked over and hugged her, carefully. "That was stupid, by the way. I'm really glad you're okay."

"Ugh, don't be so soppy."

Ruth gave Charles a look. Something had happened. She could feel it. He just nodded in confirmation.