“Come in.”
Marie shot Logan a reassuring smile before pulling open the door to Xavier’s study. Logan tried to tamp down on his instinct to go first, or even better yet to just throw Marie over his shoulder and hightail it out of this damn place. Marie had repeatedly assured him that Xavier wouldn’t poke around in his mind uninvited, but he still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of a telepath getting anywhere near him. His mind had been fucked with plenty already.
Still, he followed her through the door into the spacious study. Sunlight streamed through the windows, bringing a mellow warmth to the dark-paneled walls and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The room smelled like sun-warmed leather and dry parchment, seasoned with Earl Grey tea and the faintest hint of cigar smoke. Logan stayed within reach of Marie, trying to dismiss the thought that his scuffed boots were stepping on a carpet that probably cost more than he would ever see in a lifetime. The Professor himself sat behind a massive desk, cleared of everything but a blotter and tea set.
“Professor,” Marie said warmly, but Logan sensed her small hesitation, smelled her uncertainty as the Professor continued to study the bottom of his teacup for a moment.
Finally he lifted his head, his keen blue eyes startlingly clear in his pale face. One look at those eyes and Logan could suddenly sense the power thrumming through the man, the unrelenting force of the mind behind the elderly facade.
“Do sit down,” the Professor invited graciously, although lines of tension tautened the skin at his temples.
He poured tea for them all in silence. He handed a teacup and saucer to Marie, and Logan saw a slight flush of pink tinge his pale cheeks as the tremor in his hand set the cup to rattling against the saucer.
“Professor,” Marie said, distress in her voice as she put the cup and saucer aside and grasped his trembling hand in her own steady grip. “Charles.”
Xavier closed his eyes for a moment, his face drawn with lines of anguish, and when he opened them again his eyes were clouded with regret.
“Rogue. You were always more generous in spirit than anyone could ask.” He squeezed her hand and then let go, sighing heavily before turning his gaze to Logan. “And Logan. I regret more than I can say that we should meet under such circumstances. That my...that my own family should have been the cause of such pain to you both. It is...inexcusable.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Marie chided gently. “Professor, you have done more for me than I could ever repay. Proteus’s actions were his own. You can’t hold yourself responsible...”
“Can’t I?” Xavier interrupted sharply. A look of chagrin crossed his face. “Please forgive me. I find my manners to be sadly wanting at present.” He took a sip of his tea, appearing to brace himself for the conversation ahead.
“When you first notified me of what had occurred, months ago...” He shook his head. “I thought by now I would be more prepared for this discussion, but instead I find myself to be...” the corner of his mouth tipped up in a wry smile that failed to reach his eyes. “...confoundingly unnerved.”
He took a deep breath, his voice strengthening. “Nonetheless, I owe you an explanation, and it is best I begin.”
He took another careful sip of his tea. “I am sure you were surprised to learn that I ha — have...” — his voice stumbled for a moment, as if unsure of the proper tense — “...a son.” He didn’t wait for any acknowledgement, his eyes shifting to look out the window as he seemed to sink deeper into thought.
“Moira and I met at University. We were very young, and some might say foolish. David was a surprise, but a happy one.”
He closed his eyes, giving himself over to the memory. “I was still learning to control my mutation, adjusting my mental shields to the presence of so many people after a quiet — dare I say solitary — childhood and adolescence. A wife, and then an infant; it was a learning experience, but...such a joy.” A true smile flickered across his face this time.
“I indulged myself in the pleasure of my son’s mind. The innocent delights of childhood — the comfort of his mother’s touch, the contentment of a soft bed and a warm bottle of milk. I experienced all of that, through the touch of my mind to his. Perhaps for the first time, my mother herself not having been so much a model of nurturing behavior...”
His eyes snapped open, and he cleared his throat awkwardly. “But I digress. What I mean to convey is the total shock — the total devastation — I felt when things began to change.” The lines of sorrow deepened on his face. “When that gentle, innocent boy began to turn into a cruel and twisted young man.”
Logan saw Marie start to open her mouth to form a denial, but she stifled the motion almost as quickly as she began it. There was no refuting it; they had both witnessed the complete remorselessness of Proteus.
“Moira and I began to fight incessantly. She could not admit — could not bring herself to see — what David was becoming. She saw only a hint of what was underneath; the petty thefts, the unrepentant lies. Even the occasional playground cruelties when he thought he was unobserved — all these things were diminished when viewed through the eyes of his mother’s love. But I...”
Xavier looked down at his hands, twisting the heavy signet ring on his finger. “I did not have the luxury of ignorance, of denial. I looked into the mind of my son, and saw only a monster. Not fully developed, still incipient, but where there should have been love and empathy and shame...there was only a vast emptiness.”
He sighed heavily, and his shoulders seemed weighted with the burden of that knowledge when he lifted his piercing gaze once again to regard Logan and Marie.
“I was a coward. I abandoned them.”
Marie made a noise of distress, her head shaking in refusal. “It is true,” Xavier said gently, unflinchingly. “You and Logan have borne the burden of the decisions I made so many decades ago. The very least I can do is acknowledge the truth of them.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose briefly as veins throbbed at his temples. “I had all sorts of reasons at the time. I told myself that it was just temporary. That I was building a haven, for all of mutantkind, at Genosha with Erik. That it was better for Moira if she could maintain her illusions, that it was better for David if I...”
He broke off his words suddenly, before gathering his thoughts and starting again. “You see, I had begun to meddle. Looking into my son’s mind, seeing only a gaping chasm where his humanity should have been — I could not discipline myself to remain a passive observer. Night after night I crept into his brain, trying to instill empathy where there was none, trying to control behavior that he had not the least interest in controlling himself...”
His eyes fluttered shut again with remembered defeat. “I failed, of course. It is always so much easier to destroy than to create. I could decimate a mind with little effort, should I choose to do so, but to create in an individual a quality they fundamentally lack? It is impossible. Once I realized that, I told myself that it would be better for David if I left. That if I stayed, the connection between our minds would only harm us both.”
Xavier’s pale gaze dragged slowly up again to meet Marie’s eyes, and then Logan’s. “At the time I called it self-preservation, perhaps even altruism. But it was sheer cowardice. And it allowed David’s hatred of me to fester. Allowed him to kill dozens of people in his quest to destroy me and those that I love, because I had failed to love him enough. And it has caused you both immeasurable pain.”
“Professor...” Marie shook her head again, but seemed stuck for words. She looked helplessly at Logan.
He cleared his throat. He hadn’t planned on saying much, but Xavier seemed aware that Proteus’s actions had affected Logan more than anyone.
“I’m with Marie on this one. Not your fault your kid was a psychopath. From what Marie’s told me, if anyone coulda fixed him it woulda been you, so I think you’re right when you say he was beyond fixin’.”
Xavier’s shoulders slumped a fraction as his features softened with relief. “You are both more generous than I deserve.”
Logan shuffled his feet a little against the patterned carpet. “I don’t think either of us came here for a reckonin’, Professor. We just wanna know what to do now. How to keep that bast — I mean, Proteus — from hurtin’ Marie, and maybe how to put him out of his misery if he really is trapped up there.”
Professor Xavier nodded. “I believe I can help with that. If David is simply trapped behind Rogue’s mental walls, even with the assistance of the other individuals in her mind, I will be able to access his consciousness.”
“And then what?” Logan didn’t want to cause this man more pain, he had been good to Marie, but he needed a straight answer on this. “Can you do that? End your own son?”
The Professor raised his ice-blue gaze to meet Logan’s eyes again, letting him see everything — his grief, his regret, but also his inexorable resolve.
Logan nodded curtly. “Yeah,” he rumbled. “I guess you can.”
_______________________
He had stopped screaming weeks ago. Or was it months? He didn’t even speak anymore, couldn’t even bother to try to console himself with the sound of his own voice. He had given himself up to the nothingness, the blur of days without nights and a room made of nothing but walls.
At first it seemed like an apparition, the man who appeared before him. A figure from the madness of his own mind, and then...
“Da?” he asked, his voice trembling.
The man’s eyes shimmered with tears. “David.”
“Da!” He pushed himself to his feet. He didn’t even try to argue that he was Proteus now. All he cared about was...
“Get me out of here, Da. Please! I know you can.”
Xavier shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry, David. I cannot.”
“You must!” He was screaming, and he reined his voice in, pleading now. “I canna stay here. Take me back to the island, but...dinna leave me here alone anymore. I canna do it.”
“I won’t leave you alone, David. Never again.” The anguish in his tone belied the reassurance of his words.
Proteus shook his head even as realization dawned. “No. No! Dinna do it, Da. Please. I dinna mean to...I’m sorry. Take me home instead. Please, Da.”
Tears were running down Xavier’s cheeks as he reached out. “I love you, David,” he murmured. “Sleep now, my child.” Proteus felt the warmth of his father’s embrace. And then he felt nothing.
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Chapter End Notes:
Please review! :-D