Xavier comes back to the mansion in a wheelchair for two reasons. The second reason: they are still growing accustomed to the fact that he is alive, let alone not disintegrated, let alone in a body; to confront them with the fact that this body is not only alive and whole and well—in as much as he can bear to be alive and whole and well—but also fully capable of walking, seems an entirely unnecessary shock.

Then again, in his life, he has avoided most shocks, necessary or unnecessary.

As for the first reason. As for the first reason.


*


Of course, he is welcomed with embraces. Of course, he is welcomed with tears. Of course, he is welcomed with stories of grand heroics and tragic failures and tiny joys. But Xavier knows within seconds that he has made the wrong decision.

There is no place for him here at 1407 Graymalkin Lane. With Storm as its confident young leader, more militant than he had dared to be; without Scott, without Jean, with scores of new students. He wishes he had stayed in Scotland, in a hospital bed with Moira MacTaggert fussing over him.

Or better yet—he wishes he had stayed in a house, floating in mid-air, staring down at a woman he had practically raised, feeling all of his cells unstitching, hearing Logan screaming—but no, no, no.

Storm offers to tender her position as head of the school, but he will hear none of it, and isn’t surprised to see the flash of relief on her face. The school has clearly improved in quality since his absence; there are more diverse classes, a wider range of teachers—who on earth are all these new mutant instructors? He has seen them in his mind, in Cerebro, but to see them walking down the corridor is another thing entirely.

Mutants who fought alongside everyone in San Francisco, he is told. Mutants who are respectful of the legend of Professor Xavier, but loyal, fierce even, to the bonds forged at Alcatraz: bonds with Storm, with Hank, with Logan. Xavier is now a beloved relic. That he could have ever been friends with Magneto is not to be mentioned. That he could have ever been Magneto’s lover is not to be thought.

But the real question remains; what is he to do, now. Professor Xavier, of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. What is he to do now, having returned to this home which is not his.

It is only to Storm that he confides two of the truths about his body. That it is not his “real” body, which was indeed destroyed; that it belongs to his long-comatose twin brother, kept alive in a hospital in Scotland. Even he winces at the mawkishness of this story.

Mawkish, or morbid: Storm doesn’t ask him if he had been keeping his brother alive all this time, artificially and at great expense, as a kind of spare, should such a situation ever arise.

Xavier wonders if Storm doesn’t ask because she doesn’t want to, or doesn’t have to.

The other truth: he still does not really know how to live in this body. Two years of therapy with Moira has made him capable of moving it, at least (it had after all been in a coma for some time), but it had done nothing for the neuropathy in his legs, though he has regained sensation and locomotion in his upper body. Essentially he has returned himself to his previous paraplegic state, which is victory enough for him.

What he doesn’t tell to Storm is that, every now and then, Xavier finds he can no longer connect to the body at all—he wakes up screaming, trapped, unable to move, unable to recognize the limbs in front of him. Or during the day, between one blink and the next, he suddenly loses hold of himself; he can feel himself slipping out of his flesh like jelly, or can feel the body unfastening from him, can see the skin of his skin dissolving into powder.

No, he doesn’t tell any of this to Storm. What he says is that he still hasn’t gained full control of his body, so he won’t be ideal for teaching practical classes, or indeed any class where he’ll have to hold things—things like a book, a pen—but he’s available for simple lectures, counseling, that kind of work.

Though even this proposal seems far-fetched to him—and to Storm, too, he can see.

They both know Xavier has come back for the same reason Storm would come back, had their positions been reversed; for the same reason they are all stupidly hoping Jean, or Scott, or any of their dead will come back: because this is the nearest any of them have to a home, because the pull of belonging is too strong, even in death.

He thinks of Erik saying, As always, you’re too afraid of being alone.

Storm says she knows just what Xavier should do. She tells him that Rogue has returned to the mansion after having taken the mutant cure.

However, Storm adds, the cure has since worn off; its only effect being, apparently, a rather dramatic increase in the intensity of Rogue’s powers. Even a millisecond brush from her hand found Bobby a two-week coma—“and Rogue an ex-boyfriend.” Storm adds.

She says that Rogue has since more or less isolated herself from everyone in the mansion, is now tutored privately by Kurt and sees barely anyone else.

“Her German’s coming along great,” Storm says, in what might have been a joke, but she cannot seem to bring herself to inject even a trace of humor into her voice.

Xavier thinks of the girl—can it only have been three years ago—escorted into the mansion on Scott’s arm, coat damp with melted snow, twitching like a wild cat, speaking only to give her fake name, and to ask where Logan had been taken. Storm had brought her a turkey sandwich and the girl had eaten the entire thing in exactly three and a half bites.

At that time, Xavier hadn’t even met her in person yet, but a non-telepath would have been alarmed by all that hunger and fear. He hadn’t heard such a noisy mind since—but he does not have to think the dead woman’s name. He can hear Storm already thinking it for him.

“You can help Rogue,” she is saying. “The way—”

Here Storm looks away. “The way you helped.” But she does not say more. The name they are saying without saying.

“The way I helped Jean, yes,” Xavier finishes, feeling heavy with fatigue all of a sudden. He can see a look he doesn’t want to recognize appear on Storm’s face, can hear her thoughts before he can remember to unhear them.

He continues speaking, a touch more loudly than necessary, drowning all these silences out: “Yes. Yes. I imagine the method would be quite similar. Yes.”

Storm still looks startled, but she gathers herself again. “I think she would benefit from it,” she says. “Rogue’s been so—hopeless since she came back.”

Xavier knows it, has felt it since he returned to the mansion, as if his throat has been stuffed with cotton: the feeling of Rogue somewhere, in a room, with only the skin of her face exposed to air. As a telepath he has always found teenage misery to be one of the more difficult things to tune out—ironically enough for someone who has devoted his life to the managing of a school.

But teenage misery leaks, infects, has an urgency entirely unlike adult misery. Adults, at least, help him to tune out. We often tune ourselves out well enough, Xavier knows.

“She doesn’t feel like she can talk to me,” Storm adds. “She knows I was against the cure, and no matter how much I offer my help, or show that I don’t—don’t think differently of her—”

But you do, Xavier thinks.

“—she doesn’t trust me enough to really confide in me,” she finishes. “Kurt says she opens up to him a little bit, but I don’t ask him about it, I don’t want to intrude on their confidence with each other.”

Xavier nods. “Of course. Well, if you think Rogue would be amenable to that. I’d be more than happy to see what I can do for her. Even if it only means having one more person for her to talk to.”

Storm pauses. “In return, I think Logan might be able to help you.”

Xavier raises an eyebrow. This, he hadn’t expected. “Logan? Help me?”

Storm tells him that Logan is now in charge of both physical education and physical therapy; in the two years since—

—and here once again Storm doesn’t seem to know what to say: since Jean killed you, since Logan killed Jean, since everything exploded beneath our feet, all of our life together—

—since that, Logan has become something of an expert on rehabilitation in the mansion.

“Hank even wants him to get some kind of certification,” Storm adds. She smiles. “But of course Logan hates the thought of having to take any kind of test.”

Indeed, Xavier cannot imagine Logan as—what. A doctor, a nurse? Logan in a white coat, glasses. Like—but no, no, no.

“So you want him to,” Xavier gestures down at his immobile legs with his chin.

“It’s up to you, of course,” Storm says. She folds her hands on her desk—her desk, in her own office, which had once been a small library, just adjacent to one of the larger classrooms. Storm had not been bold enough to take over his old office, which, Xavier discovered, has been dutifully maintained as a kind of shrine. The perfection of the preservation unnerves him. Every bookcase dusted, the leather of every chair wiped and polished. As if he had never left. Never died.

“But to be honest, I think it might be good for you to spend some time with Logan, for Logan’s sake,” Storm adds. She glances out of the window, to the garden where he knows Jean’s gravestone stands.

And next to hers, mine, Xavier thinks.

“I still worry about him. About how he’s handling—all of this. Living here permanently. Being tied to one place. Not to mention—everything that happened.” Storm seems to be wondering if she should elaborate. She doesn’t.

Then Storm furrows her brow. “Though if Logan knew I said any of that he’d probably never speak to me again.”

Xavier says only, “You know very well I can’t possibly enter into any kind of counseling with Logan without his consent.”

Storm shakes her head. “No, of course. I just meant—it might be good for him to be able to talk to you.”

“Like Rogue,” Xavier points out.

Storm turns her head back around to face him again, sighing. “Professor, they’re so alike—they still see themselves as newcomers here, after everything. They’re both so defensive. But I know Logan trusted you—trusts you,” she corrects herself. “Has always trusted you. Even when he didn’t know if he could trust you, he trusted you.”

This, Xavier knows is true. He still remembers it, his first conversation with Logan. Snarling in guest sweatpants. Or even before that conversation, his first entry into Logan’s mind: guiding him through the lower annals of the mansion, feeling the almost violent longing for answers, communication, understanding, rolling from Logan’s entire body. Even when he had been equally violent in his suspicion and rejection, that longing had filled the entire room. Xavier hadn’t come across that kind of intense suffering, cloaked within intense defensiveness, since—

Since when, he can hear Erik saying-smirking. Since who.

But Storm is talking again, smiling at him. She says, “And it might be nice for Logan to have someone his own age around, for once.”

Xavier blinks. “Ah, yes,” he says, half-chuckling. “Old men and all. Yes, I see what we’re good for.”

He glimpses a flicker of panic in Storm’s eyes, sees her asking herself if has she made a terrible mistake, making such a joke, so soon.

Xavier waits just a too-sweet fraction of a second before assuring her: “You may be right. Yes. We’ll do it your way, then. I’ll help Rogue with her control, and Logan can help me with—”

He looks down at his legs again. “Physical therapy.”

Storm exhales, smiling. “Good. Great. I’d hoped you’d agree.”

Again Xavier raises his eyebrow at her. “You certainly have learned your way around a negotiation, Storm.”

“I learned from the best,” she replies automatically, and he knows very well she is only speaking out of courtesy. Has he ever been good with negotiation? Too good, perhaps; good at capitulation, good at compromises that gained nothing, lost everything. He thinks of Erik shouting, That’s your problem, Charles, there’s no negotiating with fascists!

In any case, Xavier smiles and takes, if not the compliment, the respect it is meant to show. “Do you have a preference for which of them I see first? I find myself—at liberty at the moment.”

Storm looks down at her watch. “Logan should be in the physical therapy room right about now, helping out a few other students and teachers. You can go in. I mentioned you might be coming in, he shouldn’t be surprised to see you.”

Mentioned it, Xavier repeats to himself. Mentioned it to him before she even talked to me. Has been planning this since I arrived; maybe since before I arrived. Storm certainly has learned how to be the head of this mansion.

“Very good,” he says, then curses himself for sounding like a third-rate butler. “I’ll be on my way then.”

Wheeling his way backwards, and spinning himself around to face the door, he suddenly feels his hand disappear.

He looks down at it, finger hovering above the button—this wheelchair, as provided by Moira, is nowhere near as advanced as his own now-obliterated one, but there should be a spare wheelchair of the same make, somewhere in the medbay, which he has yet to visit, which he cannot yet visit, won’t, won’t—

—but right now he has to think of his hand, of getting back inside his hand. He wishes he were like Jean, able to move himself with his mind, instead of being trapped like an infant within this dumb husk—

—but then he wishes he were like Jean for too many reasons—

—focus, Charles, Christ, get it together, man, the hand, the hand, this is your hand now, get it, back, back—

“Professor,” Storm calls from behind him, just as he snaps back into his skin.

Xavier turns only his head, not daring any other movement for now. “Yes?”

Storm is gazing at him with a small smile on her face.

Xavier thinks, You’ve had that smile since I met you, Ororo, I’ve known you since you were barely more than a teenager, you were angry at everything, weeks and weeks of pissing-down rain, it was like being back in Yorkshire when you first came to the mansion, and now look at you, look at you, you’re in this world now, you’re alive, you’re carrying all of these people—

“I’m so happy you came back to us,” she says, which is what he knew she was going to say. But the pleasure of hearing it doesn’t hurt him any less.


*


It is only when he sees Logan in person for the first time that Xavier remembers he isn’t quite sure if he likes Logan. Not to mention that they hadn’t really parted—is parted the right word?—on the best of terms.

Logan and his terrifying romantic obsession with Jean, trying to be the knightly hero—anything to escape from the monster he was trying not to become. Trying to defend her honor, her personhood. Her “say.” Even in his mind, Xavier feels his jaw clenching. As if Logan, with his, what, months, only months, of knowing Jean—as if Logan understood her better, deeper, truer. That this might be true is not something Xavier particularly wants to dwell upon now, however.

Even the memory of that last conversation is starting to irritate Xavier all over again. What had he meant when he had said to Logan, Least of all to you? “I don’t have to explain myself, least of all to you.” Why least of all to Logan? He had known full well the man’s feelings for Jean. Who did he owe explanations to about his far-from-unimpeachable conduct with Jean, if not to the people who loved her? But the words had tumbled from Xavier’s mouth with more bitterness than he had anticipated. He had spit them out.

He feels that bitterness in his mouth now, watching Logan hand a pair of crutches to a young man with a scaly tail. No one has told Xavier how Jean died, but he already knows. Was inside that foreign body, in Scotland, thousands of miles away, when he felt it. Felt her bleed out of his mind and body the way she bled out of the world. But that is something else Xavier does not particularly want to dwell upon now.

Logan looks up at him. “Professor,” he says, and Xavier starts, slightly. He had been expecting something a little less respectful; Charles, or Chuck, or Wheels. Had been expecting a rougher voice; not this quiet care.

“Hello, Logan,” Xavier says.

Logan murmurs something to the young man, who continues hobbling back and forth across the room, under the guidance of another older mutant who seems to be Logan’s colleague.

Logan approaches Xavier. For a moment Xavier considers reading his mind, then thinks against it.

The man stands in front of Xavier’s wheelchair. “Christ,” he says. “It really is you.”

“In the flesh. Well. More or less,” Xavier says. “In some flesh, at least.”

Logan’s fists clench and unclench. Finally he clasps a hand on Xavier’s shoulder. The hand is a hotter hand than Xavier is accustomed to feeling. Though he isn’t really accustomed to feeling hands of any temperature on his body.

Since when, he can hear Erik saying again. Since who.

“Christ,” Logan is still saying, his eyes wide. “Jesus Christ. It’s really you.”

Xavier looks up at him. “Careful, Logan, you’re in danger of giving me a bit of an inflated ego.”

Logan jerks his hand back and rubs a hand through his hair. “So—” He coughs. “Storm tells me you were interested in some—physical—therapy.”

Did she, Xavier thinks. Did Storm contact Moira? How would she have known any of this. Then he thinks of his own days as head of this mansion. This organization. A leader has to have her ways, he knows.

But Xavier continues, “That’s right. You see, I’m in this body, but unlike my own body, it doesn’t actually have any physical damage to its spinal cord; the body itself is, theoretically, capable of full locomotion. But it’s been in a coma for a number of years, and it’s taken me two years just to bring it to this level of mobility—”

“Two years,” Logan repeats. “You’ve been alive for two years?”

Ah, Xavier thinks. That, Storm didn’t tell him.

“Yes,” he replies carefully. “Just before—what happened—I transferred my consciousness into the body you see before you. It’s my twin brother’s body.”

This ridiculous soap opera-worthy story is starting to tire him, he hopes he doesn’t have to tell it too often. “My brother had lost all brain function in a rather serious accident almost twenty years ago. His body was in a hospital in Scotland. I—occupied it.”

He watches Logan’s face for a reaction. There isn’t one, or at least not one he can read.

“I knew it,” Logan says. “When you looked at me—when you smiled at me—just before—it seemed like you were going somewhere. Like you knew where you were going.”

Xavier remembers that. Why had he looked at Logan at that last moment? Hearing Erik in the room shout, CHARLES! Erik’s voice, that keening desperation, had called him back so sharply he had almost gone straight into the older man’s body instead.

That would have been something, Xavier muses.

Indeed, he can hear Erik chuckling. If you really wanted to be inside me so badly, you could have just—

Be quiet, Xavier thinks, and he doesn’t know if he’s talking to himself.

Then he thinks of Logan’s horrified eyes, his contorted face as he clawed his way back into the room where Xavier was being destroyed. And Logan’s eyes now, gazing down at him.

“All right,” Logan says, breaking the silence. “Well, if you’re up for it, I’m up for it.” As if they were going out for a picnic.

Xavier tries to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, and fairly fails. “Oh, I’m up for it.”