Thanks to hippiechick2112 and feathered moon wings for reviewing! Charles still has his hair (for now!); Ororo doesn't like fantasy because it's fanciful and she's quite focused on practicality.
Ororo was used to changing her clothes with the cast. It took some wriggling if she wore a tighter shirt, so pulling on one of Doug's cast-offs was always a relief. It was nice of Doug to leave them for her.
Well, it was nice of Doug not to ask for them back, anyway.
She shoved her dirty clothes into the laundry hamper along with most of her other clothes. She did not like doing laundry, so pushed the miniature mountain down to make it look like less. Didn't like doing the laundry but she knew she would if Charles asked.
Hearing the whisper of wheels in the hall, she hurried away from the laundry and leapt onto the bed, scrambling under the covers when she heard the knock. Totally innocent!
"You can come in!"
Charles did. "Good evening, Ororo. How was Day One of prison?"
She rolled her eyes. "Miserable," she groused. Being grounded was horrid! How did Scott handle it? And Ororo didn't even like to leave the grounds!
"One down, five to go," he offered. "A fairly light sentence, I think."
"Yeah…" she had to admit. It was only one week. The weekend did not seem to count, something they both knew. With the 4th of July picnic, the Xavier estate was quite hopping. Of course, it had been more than the holiday. "Is Scott gonna be okay?"
Charles considered before answering, something Ororo appreciated. He wasn't going to tell the whole truth, but she didn't expect that. She appreciated not being outright lied to.
"You and Scott have very different manners of approaching challenges, but you're both survivors. He'll see his way through this."
"He brought me a book."
Charles chuckled. "Sounds like him. Are you going to read it?"
"Um…"
"Would you like me to read it?"
"Will you try?"
Charles nodded.
Ororo handed him the book.
Charles opened it and flipped past the first few pages. He cleared his throat and began to read: "Kon-Tiki. Chapter One. A theory. Once in a while you find yourself in an off situation. You get into it by degrees and in the most natural—"
Ororo interrupted, "That's a math word."
"So it is," Charles acknowledged. "This was a well chosen book for you! …in the most natural way but, when you are right in the midst of it, you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about.
"If, for example, you put to sea on a wooden raft with a parrot and five companions—"
"Okay," Ororo interrupted again, "maybe this wasn't so well chosen for me. A parrot? And that's not even how they should be on the raft!" she objected. "That's not a good story. In a good story, they get shipwrecked, everyone knows that."
As evidenced, even she knew and Ororo's exposure to western culture and stories had been quite limited. If she knew how the story was supposed to go, surely the author of the book ought to know!
"And if that happened, you would be indignant at the cliche," Charles pointed out. They both knew he wasn't wrong. He returned to the book: "If, for example, you put to sea on a wooden raft with a parrot and five companions, it is inevitable that sooner of later you will wake up one morning out at sea, perhaps a little better rested than ordinarily, and begin to think about it.
"On one such morning I sat writing in a dew-drenched logbook—yes, Ororo?" Charles interrupted himself this time, seeing Ororo's hand up to indicate she had a question.
"Logbook," she said.
"A record of a journey, sort of a Captain's record."
She nodded and brushed her hair out of her face. "But he's writing about writing about stuff," she objected. It was silly. It was pointless. It was redundant.
"Perhaps it was an important moment for him. The Heyerdahl story is actually a quite fascinating one, Ororo. When most people achieve extraordinary things, they do so not knowing the ramifications—the consequences—of their behavior. Remember Oppenheimer—"
"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds," Ororo recounted.
"Which is a quote from…?"
"The Bible?"
"The Bhagavad Gita," Charles said, "the Hindu holy text. Oppenheimer didn't mean to achieve what he did, of course. Heyerdahl only set out to prove a theory. It was—"
"Wait, wait. You've read this before?"
"No, but I remember when it happened."
Ororo's eyes nearly leapt out of her skull. "This is real?"
"Oh yes. It was a fascinating story. Heyerdahl had a theory—it was an experiment not undertaken in a laboratory like one I or Hank might do, but out in the real world. He was a man with the courage of his convictions." Charles was trying not to give away too many details, trying not to spoil the story, but he spoke with utter admiration for the man.
Not that Ororo would have been pleased to admit it, but she had to listen to the story for at last a few more nights now. She couldn't deny Charles the opportunity to read about this man he so admired. Besides, it was true. Something that was true was a lot different to hearing about than tornadoes taking girls on journeys to walk silver slippers down a golden road.
She settled deeper under the covers. There was always a danger she would fall asleep, these beds were so comfortable. The mattress no longer felt too soft as it had when she first arrived.
"I guess you could keep reading," she ceded. "If you really want to."
That night, Ororo learned that a fathom was a measure of six feet, glistening meant shiny, and people could be named Nut ("with a k"). She did not need to say how much she loved the lengthy passage about the eastern wind, though she did interrupt when the book recounted legends of Tiki, "son of the sun".
"Like Jesus?" she asked. Having done time in a Catholic orphanage, Ororo was more than a little familiar with the terminology. "The son, like the father, son, and holy ghost?"
"No, but I see the misunderstanding. Tiki was son of the sun, s-u-n."
Ororo's face scrunched in confusion. It was too late at night and her head was melting into the pillow. "Like star of the star or…?"
"Male child of the star," Charles clarified. "Though that is rather less eloquent a phrasing."
"Where was the writer from?"
"He's Scandinavian, I believe, name like Thor Heyerdahl."
"So he's white."
"Most likely."
"But he called his book Kon-Tiki. He acts like—he doesn't believe in Tiki, but he doesn't care about that. The nuns got all up their—"
"Ororo," Charles warned.
She pouted, but did not bother lying. She had been very close to obscenity. "They did, though. I never believed in Enkai or any of the other gods, Jesus included, but they did. But Mr... Thor," Ororo said, deciding against even trying to pronounce Heyerdahl, "says he listened to Tei Tetua. Maybe he just didn't write about trying to persuade him otherwise."
"Perhaps," Charles allowed, "or perhaps Heyerdahl didn't mind what anyone believed. We respect other people's beliefs here, don't we?"
Ororo thought about that for a moment. Then she shook her head. "Not if it's Alex and cheese," she said, remembering the 4th of July Jarlsberg incident.
"Well, Alex was wrong on that particular matter," Charles agreed.
He returned to the book, reading until Thor Heyerdahl drifted off listening to the waves on Fatu Hiva. It seemed like a good place to leave the story and a good place for Ororo to get to sleep.
After he left Ororo's room, Charles made his way to his study. He had taken to keeping notes about this endeavor and Heyerdahl's book only encouraged him to do more of the same. In general, Charles tried not to think about Erik. That was much easier. However, he remembered Erik's insistence that this new species be discovered by its own kind.
Erik had been right about that, but he had been short-sighted, also. Discovering the species was more than about discovering who had powers. It was about watching how those powers developed and how they impacted the people who carried them.
Charles knew Ororo had not been using her powers for more than the wind lately. He wasn't unaware. There had been a time she called up rainstorms on a whim; now she contented herself with breezes. Or rather, malcontented herself.
He was recording observations when he heard a tentative knock at the study door. He did not need his telepathy to know who it was.
"Come in, Scott."
Scott looked like he either was ready for bed or had just left it. He wore his plaid pajama pants and black t-shirt, both a little worse for wear. His expression as he approached the desk held nothing but discomfort and Charles didn't know why.
Scott took a seat opposite him. "I, um… I wanted to ask you about something."
Charles closed his notebook and put it aside. He thought about the day Ruth accused him of spoiling the children. If he did, today he was happy to do so. He couldn't imagine saying no to anything Scott wanted—although that was perhaps informed by the fact that all Scott ever wanted was attention and love.
"What is it?"
"Well…" Scott looked over Charles's shoulder as he explained, "Ororo and I sometimes… listen… to the conversations inside the ship, and today Mr. Summers was telling Alex about before I was born. He said that… that my, um, that Katherine and Chris, they were both working on this Army base outside Dayton. She got pregnant." The word made him blush faintly. "My mom—my mom from before—she was only sixteen. She was two years older than Ororo. He said her parents told her she could go away somewhere as long as she said that she didn't want me. Her parents kicked her out and she was living almost homeless."
Charles had no idea. "She sounds like a remarkable woman." He meant that. The thought of Ororo pregnant a couple of years from now was rather unsettling, but the thought of a sixteen-year-old, pregnant and alone, somehow surviving… it truly was remarkable. It must have been during the Depression, too.
Scott veered off, "I thought people could only have babies when they were married."
"Most people mean to, but accidents do happen."
That was quite sweet of him to think. Charles realized Scott may have had gaps in his education on these matters. Most boys learned it from their fathers or friends, but back in Omaha, Scott had never managed to make friends. As for his father, Charles had never seen reason to broach the subject of romance. It wasn't a part of Scott's life yet.
"But what, um… I mean, how… when is…" Scott babbled, turning a blistering shade of red.
Surely he wasn't asking...
"I-I know the basics," Scott continued. "I mean—a man and a woman, and all that, but I don't… not sure what… how they…"
Oh good God.
"Are you asking me where babies come from?"
Unable to look at him, Scott nodded.
Few people had ever seen Charles Xavier freeze like a deer in the headlights of a bulldozer.