Archive of Our Own

1. He's always been able to read minds.

1a. Charles remembers a time when his mother had felt possessive affection towards him.

(It was before he could put names to emotions.) For far too long, he persisted in the belief that he must have done something to make her stop.

He loved her for as long as he could, in return.

2. Until he was seven, Charles wanted to be a scientist like his father.

As far back as he could remember, he'd look at his father and see affection, pride, and the fuzzy mental image of a young man in a lab coat. It seemed like a perfectly good goal to adopt for himself.

Then his powers grew enough for him to read wider and more deeply, and he noticed what other people thought about his father, whose comfortable lack of ambition had never bothered him before. Not until he looked more carefully inside himself and found a bottomless hunger that was so much more satisfying.

It was like turning on a light switch.

3. Kurt Marko spent a truly pitiful amount of time wishing that Charles was his son, and Cain Brian's.

At first it had been nice to be noticed. His mother forgot his existence frequently even when sober, and he basked in the stolen, silent compliments. Then he began to notice the cuts and bruises and scars on Cain, both mental and physical, the stark evidence of failure on the part of the father, not the son.

3a. The last thing Charles ever said to Kurt Marko: 'You did this.'

4. Charles tried to fix Cain once.

4a. It didn't take.

He'd been young, and although his control was perfect even then, he couldn't reach deep enough to make any real difference. (Yet.)

Before the attempt, Cain had been loud and violent and thoroughly unpleasant. After, he alternated between attempting to attack Charles and turning into a gibbering wreck at the sight of him. The only significant improvement was that Cain no longer feared his father quite so viscerally.

5. He can't imagine the person he'd be without Raven.

Softer, probably. Worse with people, certainly. Less determined to change the world. She taught him more than anybody else.

5a. Charles had never been possessive about anyone before her.

It was a frightening change to experience and a lot of previously confusing poetry suddenly made sense. (They weren't any less creepy, but at least he now knew something of what the writers in question were feeling.)

At first he fumbled like never before, clumsy in the grip of new emotions and unsure how best to express how he felt. With time, it became easier, but he never learnt how to stop where his overbearing protective instincts were concerned.

6. Having been left to develop telepath ethics on his own, Charles doesn't really have a coherent system to speak of.

6a. The sense of morality which stops him from harming others with his power is a completely separate matter.
6a(i). There are many exceptions to the general 'do no harm' rule.

6b. As a result, his behavioural spectrum goes from 'habitually invasive' to 'extremely invasive'.
6b(i). He does not (and will never) see a problem with this.

7. He's fully capable of feeling emotion to the same extent as any baseline human.

7a. In theory.

7b. In practice, he can't remember a time when he didn't have an unusually even disposition.

8. He's never had a problem with focus.

8a. The point between rage and serenity is different for everyone, or so his theory goes.

For Charles, more often than not it's hunger - the endless appetite for new minds to marvel at and talk to and think about changing.

9. The gesture that accompanies his telepathy is more habit than necessity.

10. He hates few things, but automatic weapons definitely qualify. They're so cold and impersonal.

11. He's not particularly fond of animals, either.

They're alive, and yet he can't feel them, not properly. It's disconcerting.

12. Charles has a surprisingly prudish streak, considering what he got up to in Oxford.

12a. He blames it on being English. Raven sees it as the kind of logic only Charles could use, and she's right.

12b. It's possible that an early awareness of human sexuality - and in particular that of his parents' social set, those adulterous, self-denying, shame-filled, shining examples of upper-class society - led to the decoupling of certain concepts in his mind.

12b(i). He has a better grasp of the difference between subconscious desire and conscious action than possibly anyone else, much of it obtained through seeing the fleeting sexual fantasies of countless others.

Sometimes they were about him. When he was particularly bored, he'd grade them for realism.

13. Charles enjoys sex for its own sake, and because the taste of a human mind alive with desperation and pushed past any notion of shame or control is one of his favourites.

14. His Latin is passable, his French fluent (but accented) and he even speaks a little Russian because of that time with the guy who turned out to be a KGB agent.

'At Oxford, really?' he'd asked, already knowing the answer.

'Cover,' Thomas-who-was-not-actually-Thomas replied, his smile indulgent. 'Couldn't be Cambridge, they've still not forgotten the Five.'

It was a joke, meant to misdirect. Charles forgave him the deception, because it was far less of one than what he was already planning.

'You do realize that I'm the very picture of all you hold in contempt?'

'Yes, but it's such a lovely picture,' Thomas said, and he was almost entirely sincere.

Raven gave him hell for a month after it ended. 'I swear your dick is attracted to lost causes', her sarcasm softened by the worried cast of her gold eyes.

15. Charles joined the fencing club at Oxford to humour Mr KGB and stayed on because he genuinely enjoyed it, even after Thomas-who-was-really-Andriy left town, his mission forgotten.

16. Every morning, he goes into the bathroom and smiles at the mirror until the face he sees is entirely mild and not at all unsettling.

16a. Even without prying, he knows that Erik has a similar habit.

Except where Charles tries to look harmless, Erik has perfected the art of making the sight of neat white teeth supremely disturbing.

17. Erik's mind is one of Charles' favourites.

It's the most admirably goal-oriented one he's ever touched, and one of the most dangerous, all trap doors and mazes and wire fences. The clarity of his thought processes is admirable, like a public speaker with perfect diction.

17a. For example, when he said your power is incredible and meant your power is frightening to me, Charles heard both in stereo, not a hint of static.

I want you had four layers all at once: physical truth, mental need for connection, attraction to power, and finally, brutally, too much power for me to trust, because he could also feel Erik's desire to try, buried deep but linked closely enough for him to follow the strings there.

If he were a different man, he'd have tugged on those strings until desire became need, and made Erik his in ways far more important than the physical, and far more permanent than any infatuation. But the inability to trust those with power over him is a fundamental part of Erik's being, and Charles can't ever abide any tinkering that would change his best, true self.

If he were a different man, he wouldn't have been tempted to try at all.

18. After Cuba, he spent what felt like an eternity raging against the loss of his old, whole self, and the consequent destruction of all his grand hopes.

In hindsight, it was awfully simple of him to assume that his life was over just because he couldn't use his legs any more. True, some things would have to change, but there is precious little else stopping him from becoming someone just as good, if not better than the person he would have been without the setback.

They did say that adversity bred character.

18a. He's already forgiven Erik for the misdirected bullet, and is simply waiting for the worst, most infuriating, most useful moment to tell him so.

19. Charles likes baseline humans just fine, although he's never wished to be one of them.

(It's difficult to be a geneticist in his field without being constantly aware of the importance of being at the top of the food chain.)

20. He makes an honest attempt at optimism, at seeing the best side of every person.

When the world falls below his expectations, he does his best to change it. He is an idealist, but one who has never had the luxury of believing in illusions.