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“Sit up straight, for heavens sakes.”
Charles jumped a little as he felt a ruler snap at the desk in front of him. He straightened his posture, trying for a warm smile at the professor in hopes she would appreciate it. She did not, just scowling at him.
“I suppose since Mr. Xavier has decided he isn’t going to be paying much mind to our lesson he would like to finish it for us?” She said, tilting her head.
“...what?” He asked. She raised her eyebrows. “I’m sorry I mean, could you clarify, ma’am?”
“Well you seem so focused on your own world, you haven’t written a single line of notes in the last hour.” She said. Charles looked down at his notebook, feeling his peers eyes follow his, and his face burned. “Surely, since you’re so familiar with the material, you’d like to help enlighten the rest of us, hm?”
“...yes ma’am,” Charles said. She seemed a little taken aback by that, but she wasn’t one to back down. Neither was Charles. He grinned at her and took the chalk from her hand, sliding out from the desk and refusing to let his hands shake as he walked to the chalkboard. He’d never stood at the front of this classroom before. Everything looked… weird… at this angle.
“We’re doing long division,” He said, squinting at the board. “So that’s just like short division but with more numbers. First we will take the eight and see how many times we can put eight into four. We can do it two times, there are two groups of four to make up eight, right?”
He looked over his shoulder at his teacher for confirmation, but instead, his blood just ran cold. She had the most stern, furious expression he had seen in a long time. He just swallowed, continuing on. He knew he was right.
“So then we move on to the next one. This one is a bit trickier, because it’s a five. Four goes into five once, but there’s one left over right? Because four and one make up a five. So we will take that over, and we get twenty one point five,” He said, circling the answer.
He felt the hand on the back of his neck before he heard her approach, and before he knew it he had been dragged out of the room.
---
“Pride is a sin, Mr. Xavier,” The headmaster said. He was a short, fat man, with thinning hair he really should have let go a long time ago, and glasses to small for his face that squeezed the bridge of his nose a little to tightly.
“I’m not being prideful. I did not do that equation wrong,” Charles said, crossing his arms. “I was told to do it on the board so I did and then she told me it was wrong.”
“Are you insinuating that your professor is lying to me?” He asked, his eyebrows raised. Charles swallowed hard. He was in treacherous waters right now.
“No sir. I just think perhaps she was confused a bit?” He tried, chewing the inside of his cheek.
“Xavier, do you know why Saten was cast from the heavens?” The headmaster asked. Charles bit back a sigh of frustration. Of course he knew.
“Yes sir,” Charles said, dipping his head.
“He was thrown out because he thought himself wiser than God most high,” The man said with narrowed eyes. “Now, tell me, do you believe you, or your teacher made the mistake?”
“I believe the teacher did, sir,” Charles said. “Because she is not God.”
“Mr. Xavier,” The headmaster said, standing up. Charles stood up too, following his posture. He was to angry to be scared now.
“And he wasn’t cast out for thinking he was better than God, he was cast out for a rebellion,” Charles said, all but stomping his foot. “I’m sure if God was wrong, he would have admitted it.”
“You and your blasphemous tongue,” The headmaster hissed, pointing at him rather theatrically. “You and your sinful ways, I see the devil alive and well within you.”
“No you don’t,” Charles said, even as tears sprung to his eyes. “I’m not evil for doing math right.”
“I will beat the devil out myself,” The headmaster hissed, moving and grabbing the cain from a high shelf.
“If God couldn’t get rid of the Devil, than what makes you think you can?” Charles said, all but taunting.
The following beating left Charles in so much pain he was unable to attend morning classes the next day. This absence cost him his free lunch privileges, and for the next month he was sentenced to silent lunches, alone in an abandoned classroom with the only available friends being spiders and old Latin books.
---
“This isn’t the proper translation,” Charles said, crossing his arms.
“Excuse you?”
Charles sighed heavily, pausing to collect his face before raising his hand. The teacher didn’t call on him. At thirteen, Charles was right in that awkward phase where all his classmates -especially the girls- were much taller than him, and his hair still stuck up a little funny, and he had more opinions than he had tools to argue them.
“Professor Charles has his hand up-”
“If another person interrupts my lesson than you will be in detention for the next month, do you understand me?” The teacher snapped.
“But what you’re teaching is wrong,” Charles said. “That word doesn’t mean hell, sir.”
The man turned to look at him, and Charles fiddled with the hem of his shirt.
“What on earth are you thinking?” James, his friend, leaned over and whispered. Charles met his eyes, big round glasses obscuring them a bit, and shrugged.
“It’s true, he can’t teach fake things,” Charles whispered back.
The thoughts in the room were overwhelming. Several were in awe at Charles even making the statement to begin with. Some were just annoyed that the lesson had been interrupted and hoping he wouldn’t hold all of them up for lunch. Mostly, he felt pure, unbridled rage from the man in front of him.
“Up here. Now,” The teacher said, setting a chair down in the front of the classroom. Charles groaned internally, walking over. “On your knees, elbow on the seat.”
“I know how this goes,” Charles muttered under his breath.
The strike came before he could even brace for it, a thick, wooden rod directly on the boney side of his ribs.
“Six of the best,” The teacher said. “Count them.”
He tilted his head up, glaring at him for a moment, before sucking his breath in and shaking his head.
“Excuse me?”
“No,” Charles said. “I’m sure you can count to six, professor. You seem to be struggling more in the language department. You would have to be to mistake Gehenna, and Sheol .”
The entire room practically bleed fear and disbelief, and Charles was starting to think maybe he was possessed by some evil spirit, because no one in their right mind would ever have said that in this position.
There was no room for argument. The blows came quick and hard, and there were most definitely more than six. Although Charles kept his word, he didn’t count them. He opened his eyes at one point, peaking out and saw blood staining his white button up, through the sweater vest layered over it. He squeezed his eyes tightly as another blow hit the same spot, and kept them shut.
“You are to stay there until the day’s over,” The professor said. “If I see you move a single muscle you will be sent to the headmaster.”
The thoughts were loud, but everyone's mouth stayed shut. A blonde girl in the front row, one who always helped Charles make daisy crowns, almost spoke up to protest and point out he was being asked to stay still for two hours straight, but she was too afraid. They all were to afraid. Charles couldn’t blame them.
This was something to be afraid of.
Silently reaching out, he soothed their minds, trying to shield them from the distress. He still hadn’t opened his eyes or unclenched the awful wooden chair he was white knuckling, but he felt more than heard someone sobbing in the back of the class. He gave them the gentle impression that he was just asleep, barely moving not from fear or pain, but laziness. It seemed to help.
The lesson carried on, Charles stayed hunched.
---
“Why aren’t you afraid of their beatings?” Suzan whispered, smoothing Charles’s hair back and sticking a flower in it as they sat perched on a rock outside. Three hours of freetime after dinner was more than enough for him and a large gaggle of his friends to make their way to the old roaring river by the shed out back. They were strictly banned from going back there, but no one really seemed to check.
“What’s the worst they can do?” Charles asked. One of his friends scoffed.
“I think we saw it today,” He said.
“Yeah, exactly, we saw it today,” Charles said, reaching behind him with a wince as the movement pulled on his bad side. “They really can’t do worse than that. Not like they could kill me.”
“This doesn’t scare you?” Suzan asked, tilting her head. Charles just laughed.
“Nope,” He said. “My step-dad’s done far worse. And I don’t act up often. Sometimes I just… can’t help myself. They tell you lot things that aren’t true all the time.”
“...aren’t you scared of hell?” James whispered. Charles laughed again.
“You see, this is what I mean,” Charles said. “I- look. My father explained this to me before he died. See this rock? This is Isreal. And this nasty little puddle here?”
He pointed with a long, crooked stick, watching the gaggle of children’s eyes follow his movement.
“That’s that they called Gehenna. It wasn’t hell, it was a actual place. Like humans can just walk over there. They burned trash and babies, I think…” He said, trying to remember. “It was a long time ago- anyway point is, in the New Testament, almost no reference to a real hell is made, it’s all like metaphor. They say it would be like being in a trash dump. It wasn’t ever meant to be literal.”
“That’s not true,” James said, putting his hands on his hips.
“It is. My father told me that, and my father was the smartest man alive. Sure as hell a lot smarter that Mr. Jacobson.” Charles assured. “The issue is translations. Lots of rich old guys wanted the bible to say one thing, so they picked very specific Greek or Hebrew words. If it didn’t line up quite right? Squash.”
He stomped in a puddle, splashing the crew around him, getting a few squawks of indignation, and a lot more laughs.
“It’s really very simple,” Charles said. “You’ve just got to learn Greek and Hebrew.”
---
Charles was drunk off of bathtub wine he had made in his dorm, and trying desperately to sing the hymns that swam in front of his face. He wasn’t doing a very good job, and the kid next to him kept giving him sideways glances. He soothed their mind, setting it at ease. He didn’t need them worrying over him right now. He sat in his spot in the pew, focusing on keeping the world from spinning as he clutched his knees through the black slacks. He couldn’t take communion, not today. The guilt felt like a actual rock in his stomach, and when he thought to long about it, he wanted to cry.
The service lasted much longer than he wanted, and he had tuned out most of it already. He wasn’t going to sit and listen to the fifteenth fire and brimstone sermon entirely sober, not if he had anything to say about it. And at the moment, he actually did get a say in that, thankfully. Although, admittedly, he had been more than a little dubious of the recipe. James had been horrified by him, but that wasn’t uncommon.
Charles was actually getting quite used to horrifying people around him.
It wasn’t any matter. James might be put off by him, but the eleven and twelve years saw him as pretty amusing, but were more than willing to put up with him. They thought it was a bit funny, the way that he would hang around older students, cursing and drinking like he was one of them. At 14 he was still pretty small for his age, and it enhanced the effect of his delinquency for comedic value. But he didn’t care, he gave them money and they gave him alcohol and friends that didn’t ask him fifteen times a day if he had repented.
He hadn’t, by the way.
In fact, he hadn’t been to confession in at least three months. He wasn’t sure if the school tracked that kind of thing or not, but he had a feeling he should probably go soon. Now was basically as good a time as any, and so once the service ended, he half walked, half stumbled into the booth. He’d never gone right after service, if anything he would go before, but he couldn’t imagine more than twenty minutes more before he confessed his current state.
“...father?”
“Penitent first, my boy,” The voice said softly through the old carved wood.
“Shit right- shit.” He said, before covering his face. He swore he heard a soft chuckle. “Uh, bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been… twelve weeks? Since my last confession.”
“Continue,” The voice encouraged. He wasn’t sure if he had ever heard the priest talk back this much before.
“I have lied to my teachers, not been patient, not been humble, not been pure of thought, um… I’m drunk off bathtub wine literally now, I have broken school rules and disrespected my elders in thought and actions…” he paused before the next point, swallowing around his dry mouth. “I have… um… disrespected my parents. I think that’s it- oh I stole a bottle of communion wine. Sorry.”
a muffled sigh, before a overly weary voice followed. “Say thirty Hail Marys, and try to come back again before it’s been three months, my son.”
“Thirty- right shit- er- sorry. Okay, yes Father,” He said. “I’m sorry, father.”
“Thirty one Hail Mary’s, then,” He said. Charles sighed.
“...Father, can I ask you a question?” Charles asked.
“Yes,” He said. “Go ahead.”
“I… don’t want to see my step-dad this summer,” He said in a hushed voice. “I know I should, I know he loves my mother in… his own way. But I really don’t want to go home. Not at all. He always lectures me and he calls me words I can’t repeat and- it’s just I am terrified of him, Father. How can I honor him and behave right if I am so scared?”
“The Lord makes no mistakes, my child,” The priest said. “He was placed in your life for a reason, it is not your place to judge if his actions are right or wrong.”
“I know, I know that, I’m sorry,” He said, shaking his head. “But Father surely this isn’t… right… is it? Is this life what God wants for me? I am afraid all the time. I can’t do anything right for him, no matter how much I repent it’s never been enough for him.”
“Your stepfather may see something in you that you do not see in yourself. Some form of evil that you are not privy to,” He said. “Think, what might you have done that would provoke such a reaction from a good man?”
“What if he isn’t a good man, Father?” Charles asked. He felt like he was going crazy. How could he make him understand, if he didn’t even entertain the idea that Kurt might be insane. “What if he just hates me to hate me?”
“Think, boy, what might you have done to cause this?” He asked again. “I doubt God would place a evil man in your life.”
“I… I mentioned to him once that I wanted to marry someone like my best friend James. That made him really mad, and nothing’s been the same since,” He said. “Could that have been a piece of it?”
Without warning, the most overwhelming sensation of disgust slammed into him. He keeled over, clutching his head. Whispers in Latin and revolt filled his every sense, and Charles scrambled away.
“You must not let the devil into your mind in such ways,” The priest hissed. “Those are wicked, evil thoughts. Fasting would… yes. Fast, as long as you can, at least four days. Purge all of that that is of this world from your body.”
“Why is that wrong, though?” Charles asked. “I haven’t done or said anything, I haven’t sinned have I?”
“Temptations like that… those desires are, at their core, the very makings of the devil. The perversions of the natural order,” He snapped.
“What? Why?” Charles cried, slamming his hand into the wooden wall. “Tell me. You have to tell me. I can’t stop sinning if you don’t tell me why it’s a sin.”
“You are more than capable, you understand that it is a sin and that’s more than enough,” they said in a cold, heavy tone. Charles brought his hands back up to his head, trying to block out the spiraling thoughts. Fear, disgust, rage, terror, it all filled his senses and made him ill. “Go. now.”
“I don’t even know what it is that is the sin?” He said. “What did I do wrong?”
“You know. Say your Hail Mary’s, do your fasting, it will all be made clear as you remove these… demonic desires from your flesh.”
---
In retrospect, Charles was too young.
A senior. Blond hair and black eyes and more freckles than anyone Charles had ever seen.
He’d been so drunk the first time he didn’t even remember it. Only small flashes. Brief clips of something so wrong and unholy and deliciously free that he didn’t remember if he had tried to stop it or not.
It never happened sober. Not even tipsy. But the kind of drunk where you already feel hung over, and your heart is beating to fast, and your vision skips like a bad record, showing you snapshots in weird fluttering imagery.
Charles started letting it happen on purpose.
It made him feel dirty and wrong, he’d prayed more in the last two weeks than he he ever had in his life before. But he also let himself drink until he couldn’t force another drop of communion wine down his throat and felt hands on him that might not have actually been real, and woke up alone in the forest more nights than his dorm room. James didn’t question him about it anymore.
They didn’t talk like that anymore.
He didn’t even know the mans name- and he was a man. Over 18, scruffy hair on his chin that he had to shave to stop a stringy goatee from forming. Charles hadn’t shaved before, he didn’t even know how to do it. His dad had died before he had shown him. Charles felt his eyes on him, in the dinning hall, in the gym, during morning mass. It made his skin crawl sober, and made him repent more fervently than ever.
But he couldn’t confess. Not this time. This sin was something to horrible for him to even utter out loud.
Because even when his hands shook and his stomach twisted and the brief flashes made him think he might be sick over his beans and toast, he also kept going back. Kept drinking beyond what he could. A couple times, he remembered, there had been others who had offered to carry him back to the dorm. He always let the senior take him. It was so exciting, he pushed away all the horror.
Then the man had offered Charles to drink just the two of them. Charles had said no, had shaken his head and backed away and had big, scared eyes that only ever accompanied those black out nights.
And then he’d knocked on his dorm room door that night at the third hour of the morning. And then woken up almost in the river.
Raven was who had saved him. One night, unable to stomach any more, he’d thrown up all over both of them. In disgust, his pants had been put back on and he’d been dropped off at his dorm. He’d crawled across the floor, grabbed parchment, and scrawled almost seven pages of confession and apology to his sister. A sister, he was sure, he would never be able to speak to again.
She’d understood. To a degree, at least. Compared it to her skin, to her own mutation, calling it ‘just another quirk’. He’d never cried as hard in his life as he had when he’d gotten that letter. She’d told him he could never go back to The Senior and Charles had promised her he wouldn’t. He did a few times after that, but only a few. Knowing she knew what he did, he couldn’t bring himself to do it without thinking about the horror of her writing. How scared she’d been when he’d explained how he’d wake up, half dressed and confused in the wilderness. How he’d rush into Mass and beg for hours on end with his hands folded over his face for God to make him normal.
And then, a lifeline.
He’d taken a cab over a hour long, paying with money he’d told his mother he needed for a school trip to a new cathedral being built. It was, in a sense. The priest from the school couldn’t be trusted anymore. Every confession that contained impure thoughts lead to the most violent of psychic impressions Charles could barely enter the booth.
But he needed to confess.
“Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been four days since my last confession,” Charles said, his voice shaking violently as he spoke.
“Confess, child,” The father said.
“I have taken part in… unholy behavior. The most devilish compulsions have overtaken me. I am to weak to resist them myself father, please,” He whispered, his voice shaking. “I have given way to sins of the flesh. Please, I wish to be clean again. I wish to be pure. To turn my eyes to God.”
“God forgives you, my child,” He said in a soothing voice.
And Charles had to cover his mouth as he’d sobbed through the rest of the confession. Because he knew God could never forgive him for his thoughts. For his desires. His actions with The Senior, perhaps he could, but until Charles found a way to turn away from the desires that drove them, he would never be pure again.
Maybe hell wouldn’t be so bad. He wasn’t cruel or evil. Rotten, impure, broken, maybe. But he wasn’t cruel. Maybe it wouldn’t be the most extreme expressions of the torture. Maybe he wouldn’t burn quite as brightly as The Senior would.
All sins are created equal.
---
Charles stood, his hands shaking as he finished the fifth page. Three left. He’d been assigned the essay as penance for his behavior in class the day prior. He hadn’t even known he had done something wrong, but by now he was starting to understand that anything that wasn’t carefully controlled the way they desired was wrong. It was on the importance of purity, and understanding the sins of the flesh.
He wasn’t finishing it.
It might be a death sentence, he was starting to wonder if he had a death wish. Actually, he had the opposite. He wanted to live as long as humanly possible. He had no idea what hell would be like, but he wasn’t excited to find out. Seeing the lengths others around him went through to avoid it. No one would do that to a child if hell wasn’t a much worse place to be.
But he was going there, like it or not. He’d tried. The last year, all he had done was try. And try. And try. He could love a women, he could have crushes on the girls in his class. Suzen with her long, flowing auburn hair had caught his eye. Technically, they were dating. But it wasn’t all he wanted. The girls across the pews weren’t the only ones who turned his head. And no matter what he tried to force himself into, he couldn’t change that fact.
He would go to hell. If he respected his elders or not. If he trusted his parents or not. He’d committed a sin of the flesh beyond forgiveness, because he couldn’t find it in him to properly repent. Not because he didn’t feel the guilt, but because he couldn’t change it. He knew he never would.
He didn’t want to change. He just wanted to love.
He picked up the last, half-finished page, and dipped his pen in the ink well. In massive, messy letters, he scrawled across the page.
I don’t want your god.
And as he walked over to the teacher's desk, he found himself already planning out how he would manage the bruises when he left for America this summer. It was three days away. He could keep his head down, stay good, stay well-behaved. But he didn’t want that anymore.
He just wanted to be pure. And he couldn’t be. So he was done trying.
---
1962
Charles woke up with his sheets twisted around him, chest heaving, as he tried to orient himself. His room. His bed. He was okay.
Erik had woken up beside him, perhaps unsurprisingly, with a furrowed brow. Charles shoved the blankets off of him, panting for a second before ripping the shirt off as well. He couldn’t breathe, the heat of summer had stifled the room, and his skin felt unnaturally hot. Sweat stuck his hair to his brow, and he stood unsteadily, walking over to the bathroom and drinking water out of the tap with his hands cupped around his face, funneling it to his mouth. A distant flash of the story of Gideon at the river pulsed in his mind, and he quickly switched to drinking with one hand, not wanting the mirror of the Judges story in front of him right now.
Concern radiated off of Erik, and Charles resisted the urge to smooth his mind of the memory and send him to sleep. He wanted to, desperately, but they had talked enough about his powers and how Erik felt about them, that he didn’t feel good about that. He walked back into the room, moving to the cracked window and throwing it all the way open, hoping distantly that he hadn’t been projecting the memory onto Erik.
“Bad dream?” Erik asked. Charles shook his head, shrugged, and then nodded. “Want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know,” Charles said, before shrugging again, He leaned his forehead on the glass window pane. It wasn’t cold but it was a lot cooler than his skin, and he laid his hands flat on the cool wood of the window cill.
“Was it CIA stuff?” Erik asked in a hesitant tone. Charles let out a relieved breath. At least Erik didn’t see it.
“No,” Charles said. “Just uh- school stuff.”
“Seems bad,” Erik said. Charles nodded. They sat in the heavy silence for awhile, before Charles peeked at Erik.
“What does Judaism say?” Charles asked.
“...about what?”
“This whole… this,” Charles said, gesturing between them in frustration. “Us. Was it talked about?”
“Oh,” Erik said. Something odd and heavy in his tone. He cleared his throat. “I don’t actually know. Not often. It wasn’t really a focus at all. The only time I ever remember it being something we spoke of was with the Nazi’s. In the camps, having a pink triangle was just as bad as being Jewish.”
“But like sermons or- does Temple have sermons?” Charles asked.
“Sort of- short ones,” Erik said. “I never heard it talked about. I always thought of gay people kind of like Jewish people. They were- we are born this way. Can’t help it. Hated for it.”
“Mmm,” Charles hummed, turning back to look outside.
“Where is this coming from?” Erik asked, standing up and walking over to him. “What did you dream about?”
“Just… it’s hard to let go of the past sometimes,” Charles said with a shiver. “That’s all.”
Erik’s hand brushed his back, rubbing up and down for a moment. Charles leaned into it. He could lean into it. He was allowed to lean into it. He relished the feeling. Warm, rough, tense hands against his skin. Erik stepped forward, letting his hand fall to Charles’s waist and pressing a kiss to his shoulder blade.
“Sorry,” He said, shaking his head. Erik hummed in discontentment.
“Don’t be,” Erik said softly.
“I know I get… weird about us sometimes. It’s not you, it’s really not you I don’t mean for it to be-”
Erik cut him off with a short, sharp squeeze on his side, and Charles swallowed the conversation down.
“I’m not upset, Charles. You didn’t do anything wrong,” He said. “You- hey, look at me.”
Charles blinked away his tears, trying to dry his face before he turned back. Erik locked eyes with him, cool, grey eyes full of earnest hope and equal parts sadness.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, you’re okay,” He said. “Come here?”
“Yeah, okay,” Charles said, letting Erik pull him against him.
What his younger self would have done to see them now. To feel Erik’s gentle touch. Nothing wrong, nothing perverted. He wasn’t a piece of meat, not something to be used and thrown away. He didn’t serve a duty to Erik, it wasn't some poorly kept secret. Erik didn’t feel any shame being with another man. Charles tried his best not to either. Erik hooked his chin over Charles’s shoulder, and Chalres responded in like, holding him tightly. The grounding kind of clinging hold you do when someone might slip away. Erik’s arms tightened around him, and he could practically feel the energy shift.
“What happened to you Charles?” Erik asked in the softest voice Erik could muster. Still clear and factual but somehow gentle in a way that Erik alone could do.
“Nothing like what you-”
“Don’t,” he said quietly, squeezing Charles. “Don’t. It was bad. I can see it was bad. Don’t think about me right now.”
“I’m sorry,” Charles whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“No no don’t do that, it’s alright,” Erik said. “I’m sorry I shouldn’t have asked. You don’t have to tell me.”
“Is that okay?” Charles asked, choking on a sob he was fighting back as best he could.
“Yes. yes it’s okay Schatz,” Erik said in a soothing voice. “Shh just uh- breathe. You’re not breathing well.”
“I know I’m-”
“If you say you’re sorry I am going to hit you,” Erik interrupted firmly, making Charles chuckle. “I’m not kidding.”
“I know you’re not,” Charles said. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Erik said. “Just focus on breathing, you’re okay. Everything is okay, nothing’s wrong right now.”
“Yeah, yeah you’re right,” Charles said.
It felt so right, standing there with Erik, alone in the room with no one but the moon and the trees outside to witness it. It felt so right, so safe in their oversized bedroom. Loving someone so much his chest ached with it. Caring for someone so much he thought he might throw up. The constant apologies he threw out at Erik were met only with reassurance. The panic only with kindness. The comparison between them only with the softest dismantling.
The purest sin Charles had ever committed.
---
1994
Charles said in the office, trying desperately to grade something that he couldn’t see clearly through his exhausted hazy eyes. He rubbed a hand over the top of his head, before bringing it down to pinch the bridge of his nose, when a harsh knock came at his door.
“Yes?” He asked in a heavy, tired tone.
“Hey, do you have time to talk to a student?” Storm asked, poking her head in. “Sorry, I can handle it if not, it’s just Ellie is kicking off like… bad.”
“No I’ve got time, of course. Send them in,” He said. “Anything specific start it?”
“No, nothing happened,” She said.
“Alright then,” He said.
Not a minute later, a small girl sulked her way into the room. She was a little awkward, all sharp angles and limbs longer than she knew what to do with. Her dark hair was cut short, something a bit shorter than a bob but a bit longer than a pixie cut, and she’d dyed the ends bright purple a few days ago. Charles thought it suited her. She stormed in, tears streaming down her face as she threw her bag in a huff across his room, letting it collide into the wall and fall at the foot of the chess set. Charles winced as it knocked over several pieces.
“Hello there,” He said. “Good afternoon to you too.”
“I can’t fucking do this anymore,” Ellie said, putting her head in her hands and letting out a sob. “I can’t Professor I can’t you can’t make me.”
“What can’t you do?” He asked. She hiccuped desperately, trying to take in a breath and choking on it. “Oh dear, here, let me get you a drink. Do you like soda?”
Charles hated soda, but he kept a stash anyway. She nodded her head desperately, and he fished one out of the fridge under his desk, handing her a orange drink. She opened it, chugging half and gasping.
“It’s June,” She said. “It’s fucking June Professor. I can’t. I can’t I can’t-”
“Breathe,” Charles commanded. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t tell you. You’re going to hate me, I can’t,” She said. “I can’t do this, they’re going to fucking kill me. I can’t go back I am going to do something and I am so scared of what I’ll do.”
“Okay, you’re safe here,” He said. “You’re safe in this room.”
“Only for two more weeks. I’m only safe for two- two weeks,” She hiccuped. “Oh God.”
“Ellie, I need you to loop me in a little here,” Charles said as softly as he could. “Why are you so afraid to go home?”
“They- my hair,” She sobbed, folding over, her hands coming and pulling at the offensive strands, arms braced on her knees. “My hair and my makeup and my- oh my God Professor I threw away all my old clothes from home I hated them. I hate them. And I have so many cool clothes and they are going to see and- they will know what I am. They’ll know and they’ll kill me. They’re going to fucking kill me.”
“This isn’t about your mutation,” He said quietly. She looked up, horrified, but also relieved. She shook her head a little.
“No,” She whispered. “It’s not.”
“I take it you haven’t told them?” He asked. She shook her head.
“You can’t. Oh my God wait Professor you can’t tell them. Please don’t tell them please, if they find out- I’m dead. I am literally dead. On the floor. Six feet under- you don’t understand my dad’s a pastor Professor. He’ll have my head I can’t go back, I’m already a mutant I can’t-”
“Ellie,” He said, holding up his hands. “Stop. Breathe before you keep going.”
She paused for a second, taking a huge, gasping breath and choking on it.
“I’m not going to make you go back,” he said in the most calming tone he could. “We can tell them you’ve got to stay the summer. If I told them you failed a class, would that put you in danger?”
“I- they’d be mad but… I didn’t fail a class did I?” She asked.
“No you didn’t dear, but if I tell them you have to stay over the summer, I need a reason. Let’s say you failed… mmm we’ll go with Spanish,” he said softly. “I will call them and explain the kind of teacher Mr. Lensherr is, say we have lots of kids failing because we do, by the way. Will that cause anything too bad?”
“Just a lecture,” She hiccuped again. “You’re not…”
“Darling, there is a lot more to me than you know,” He said in a careful tone. “You’re not the first kid to ask me this either. It’s alright, you’re safe here, okay?”
“But I have to see them eventually,” He watched her sniffle, wiping her nose on her knee. He reached over and handed a tissue. “I pierced my tongue Professor.”
“That can be dealt with in time,” He said. “If you want, you can see them here first. Let me be here when they come get you for a break. It will give them a chance to at least internalize any shock first. And listen to me, if that’s not safe, you do not have to go back, understood? Not ever.”
“I’m from Georgia,” She sobbed. “Have you ever been to Georgia?”
“I haven’t had the… pleasure,” Charles said, squinting his eyes. He had a feeling pleasure wasn’t what she associated with the state.
“I really don’t have to go back?” She whispered.
“No. You don’t,” He said. “You’re safe here. All of you.”
“...what did you mean when you said I don’t know everything about you?” she asked. He hummed, biting back a cringe before she could see it. “What do you know?”
“People are very multifaceted,” he said. “You might find I understand your position more than you realize.”
Recognition flickered in her eyes, and Charles was pleasantly surprised to notice he didn’t feel even an ounce of regret at his statement. He hadn’t in a long time, actually.
“Is it… will it ever feel… I don’t know,” She said. “Never mind.”
“It gets so much better,” He promised quietly. “The world's changing rapidly. It’s become a much safer space. I know it doesn’t feel safe at all right now, and it still isn’t. But Stonewall, the changes we have seen in the last twenty years alone, it’s changing. And even if it wasn’t. Once you’re grown, you decide who is in your life and who isn’t. If your family isn’t safe, you get the option to make one. It’s not the same, but maybe that’s a good thing.”
“...really?” She asked.
“I wouldn’t lie to you,” he said. “It got better for me. It will get better for you, too.”
“Thank you,” She said. “You know I haven’t ever… like told an adult before.”
“I’m honored you told me,” He said. “Now, do you have any choice words about Mr. Lehnsherr I should include in our letter?”
“Oh fuck yes I do.”
Fin.