Children's Crusade

[penknife]

Author: penknife
Title: Children's Crusade
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own them; Marvel Comics does.
Summary: Sometimes the choices Charles makes aren't easy ones.
Written for: kaydeefalls
Pairing/scenario requested: Xavier and any student: how Xavier found them.
Notes: Thanks to tartanshell and artaxastra for beta reading.

Children's Crusade

There are pictures spread out on Charles's desk. Most are printed off the Internet on plain paper, yearbook portraits or photos from cheerful websites with lists of their favorite bands. A few are aging newspaper clippings or awkward drivers' license photos. One or two Jean snapped herself; she's been to observe a few of them already, keeping her distance for now.

"This one," Scott says.

Charles glances at the picture in Scott's hand. "I don't think so, Scott."

"He has an alpha-level mutation that we've never seen before."

"He's also happily attending school in Boston."

"You hate it when they're happy, don't you?"

"Three more. That's all we can take."

"We could go over the first four again --"

Charles shakes his head. "No. We both agreed that they all have needs that make them a priority." Eight children graduated this spring, and he's promised Moira he'll take Rahne off her hands in the fall. Charles has spent his evenings lately searching for seven children who need Xavier's.

There are thirty pictures on the desk.

Scott frowns and picks up one of the newspaper clippings, although he doesn't put down the photo. "Katherine Pryde. Outed herself in Deerfield, Illinois when there was a fire in her high school gym. She panicked and fell through a wall in front of half the freshman class."

"Her parents have been supportive, but they've received threats," Charles says. "Her mother wants to pull her out of school and leave the state; her father insists that they shouldn't let prejudice drive them away. They're divorced, and not amicably."

"I think we should take her."

"Because of the threats?"

"That, and because of the 'not amicably.' I don't want to leave her dealing with the anti-mutant nuts if her parents can't put up a united front. It's a risk to her, and it's going to mean bad press."

"I agree," Charles says, taking the clipping and laying it on top of the small stack in front of him. He wants Scott to work through the decisions as though they were his alone, because one day they will be. For now, though, the ultimate responsibility is his.

He looks down at the pile of photos. A girl with wings in South Carolina. Such a hard mutation to hide. He'd taken in Warren on the strength of that alone.

And yet ... She never liked school, and dropped out to wait tables in her parents' restaurant. The best fried oysters she's ever had, Jean said. Jean watched her flying in the evening over the ocean, throwing her shadow over the returning shrimp boats far below. Charles hasn't got anything to offer her but a cage.

Charles picks up another photo instead, a scowling Chinese girl with spiked black hair. "Jubilation Lee," he says. "Nine months ago, her house was broken into and both her parents were killed. She's been in a children's shelter ever since. If she doesn't stop shoplifting from the local mall, she's going to get arrested."

"She's the one with the energy blasts?"

"She calls them 'fireworks.'"

"If she has a run-in with the police and panics --"

"Yes. Someone will get hurt." Charles puts her picture on top of the newspaper clipping. "Warren is in the area already, but I'm not sure she'll trust him. She's thirteen, and suspicious of people who say they want to help her."

"If Warren blows it, we'll go get her in the jet," Scott says. "But he's from the kind of background that she probably thinks makes a person trustworthy, and he can show her the wings. I'll give him a call and tell him to try not to scare her."

Charles looks at the remaining pictures. The youngest is eleven, the oldest eighteen, his arbitrary cut-off. He's well aware that a birthday doesn't make children automatically able to fend for themselves, but he has to draw the line somewhere.

None are in immediate danger; if they were, he would send Scott to bring them here now and find an extra bed. Some have visible mutations that will make them hated and feared. Some are in shelters or foster homes. A few have mutations that make them ticking time bombs likely to explode in someone's face eventually. Twenty-four children.

Every year he tells himself that he can't go through this again. Every year he can't think of any other way. There's only so much time and attention they can give, and he has to leave room for the children who will come to him during the year fleeing parents who beat them or angry mobs.

"We can take a break," Scott says.

"We should finish this." He picks up the picture of the youngest child, an eleven-year-old who glows in the dark.

"Too young," Scott says.

"He could manifest his full mutation at any time. If it's radiation-related --"

"Are we really going to take an eleven-year-old kid away from his parents because he might have a dangerous mutation?"

"He's already visible."

"There are a lot of kids who are visible," Scott says. "More than when we were growing up. We can't take them all."

"I take it you have someone else in mind."

Scott puts the picture he's been holding onto down on the desk between them. "Robert Drake."

"He's safe in his own home. He's successfully hidden his mutation for several months."

"He has a powerful and unique mutation," Scott says. "He's also smart, idealistic, and stable. He has leadership potential."

"And just how do you know all that?"

"Because that's why you put him on the list."

Slowly, Charles reaches out and picks up the picture of the smiling blond boy. It seems heavier than it should be. "Yes," he says.

"We need him."

"I'm not sure it's idealism so much as kindness," Charles says, as if he thinks it will matter to Scott. "He doesn't like to see people get hurt."

"That works for me."

"You want him for the team."

"He's on this table because you thought I'd want him for the team."

It's still Charles's decision. Whatever he does, there are twenty-three children who will seem to stare up at him from their pictures with reproach. They'll go in the file with the others, to be brought out at intervals to monitor them. Or just to look at, when his pride in his work needs to be tempered with a reminder that he can't do everything.

Charles puts the picture down on top of Jubilation Lee's. "He goes by Bobby, not Robert."

Scott picks up the stack of pictures. "I'll make a note."

Charles watches from Cerebro that night. Now that there's no homework to do, Bobby's evenings are long. He watches TV in his room, lying on his bed. He wishes he could go hang out at the mall with his friends. He's afraid of what will happen if he does.

Sooner or later, they're going to find out, and then ... There was a girl in his junior high who everyone said was a mutant. One afternoon he found three boys holding her up against a locker and trying to shove her skirt up. He pulled one of them off her and they backed off, but they were still laughing and giving her the finger as they left.

He's scared. He doesn't want that to be him.

One of the first things children ask when they come to Xavier's is if Charles can read their minds. He always tells them that he can, but that he respects their privacy. And he does. He stays out of his students' minds as carefully as he avoids touching the ones who need him to ask permission before so much as laying a hand on their arms.

He doesn't mention how he first found them, or how he decided that they'd benefit from coming to Xavier's. They don't usually ask.

Bobby stretches out and closes his eyes, letting the hum and flicker of the TV comfort him. Charles has seen enough; there's no real reason for him to be here. He knows what Bobby likes for breakfast and what he wants to be when he grows up. He knows who his cartoon heroes are and what he thinks about when he jerks off in the shower.

He'll try to put most of that out of his mind when he meets Bobby. Bobby-with-a-teacher will be a different person than Bobby-alone-in-his-head, and Bobby-with-a-teacher is the one he'll have to deal with. Telepathy isn't that much of a short-cut to real intimacy and understanding.

However, it's an excellent short-cut to persuasion, and that's what comes first. Charles lifts the headpiece off with the usual shock of weight and real perceptions returning. Colors are duller, the air colder, his back aching in a sharp knot just above where sensation stops.

In the morning, he'll write to Bobby's parents. He thinks he has a enough idea of the sorts of things to say.

It's two weeks before Charles gets the call. He's started to worry, even though he knows from Cerebro that Bobby's told his parents he wants to visit. A school far away would be a way to buy time; months before he's expected to be close to anyone again, months before anyone puts the pieces together.

And he'd be far away from his parents. He wouldn't have to look them in the eye every morning and tell them that he's fine. He wouldn't give in to the temptation to go into their bedroom late at night and kneel down beside the bed like a little boy and tell his mother what's happening to him. He wouldn't reach out for her hand, frightened, and watch her pull her hand away.

That's his real fear under the surface, worse than the idea of people punching him behind the gym. It complicates things in some ways, Charles thinks. He tries not to think about the fact that it simplifies them in others.

Bobby's father is polite and a bit suspicious. He's read the letter and he's interested in Charles's school. Bobby's a bright kid, and although his grades haven't been perfect, his teachers are impressed with him.

"Many students with special gifts don't achieve their full potential in a traditional school environment," Charles says. He talks for a while about individual learning plans and the latest educational research on teaching gifted students. He's not faking any of it, although he certainly did at first, years ago. He's learned quite a lot about teaching high school students as well as teaching mutants.

He won't mention mutation on the phone. It would be too hard to judge how Bobby's father was reacting. Besides, Charles intends to give Bobby a choice. He's not sure that's doing Bobby a favor, but it's the first of many difficult choices the boy will have to make.

"Why don't you come up and see the school? I'd be happy to give you the tour. This is the slow time of the year for us; many of our students have gone home for the summer." That's true if for many you substitute some. Most of the children are there because they have nowhere else to go, but a few are luckier than that.

Talking over the phone, Charles is sure he's not pushing the man telepathically, which makes him feel free to try hard to persuade him. He won't let himself push Bobby either with his mind or with his words, but he needs the boy's parents to let him come see what Charles has to offer. He says what he's learned are reassuring things after years of practice, and by the time he puts the phone down they've made a firm date.

He lets Scott give the students the talk that morning, impressing on them that they're not to show off their mutations for a few hours. Charles is grateful to Scott for taking on the task; he hates having to tell the children to pretend to be normal in the one place where he's encouraged them to feel safe. He tells himself it's only their tension at the intrusion of the outside world that he feels, not his own.

He waits for them in the foyer and watches them come up the walk. They're neatly dressed but not dressed up; they've come not to impress but to be impressed. Bobby's father is looking around at the neatly-trimmed hedges. Bobby's mother is looking at Bobby, with a somewhat wistful expression. Bobby is looking up at the house, open curiosity on his face. He's not a bit afraid.

He watches their reactions as he opens the door and wheels back out of the way to let them enter. Bobby's mother frowns at the sight of the wheelchair, and then looks away, her face a polite blank. Bobby's father covers his surprise faster, although he doesn't hold out his hand. Bobby is silent, still curious. He's not hiding anything, or at least not much.

"Welcome," Charles says. "I'm Charles Xavier." That does prompt Bobby's father to extend his hand. There is meaningless discussion of the drive from Boston and the weather, and then Charles launches into the tour. He's done it enough that he could do it in his sleep, as long as he's careful to remember that he's giving them the edited version, not the full one.

They seem cautiously pleased by the time they get to the back steps out to the gardens, enough so that Charles risks saying "Would you like to look around outside for a few minutes? I'm sure Bobby may have some questions he'd like to ask."

"Well --" Bobby's father begins, glancing at Bobby. Bobby nods and mouths "It's fine" with a look of mild exasperation. "We'll just take a quick look around." His mother shrugs and follows him out. They stroll toward the basketball court.

Jean?

I'm right behind them, Jean thinks clearly. I'll keep anything weird out of their way.

Charles turns to Bobby. "So what do you think so far?"

Bobby shrugs. "It's a nice place," he says. "It seems --"

"What?"

Fake. "Nice."

"Not quite real?"

"Maybe it's just that it's summer."

"No," Charles says. "I'm glad you can recognize when you're being lied to."

"What are you talking about?" Bobby asks.

This is a school for the gifted, Charles says. But there are many kinds of gifts.

Bobby stares at him for a long moment. "You're a mutant," he says finally.

"Yes."

"Am I a mutant?"

"What do you think?"

Bobby nods slowly. He swallows, hard. "What is this place?"

"A school for people like you," Charles says. "A school where you wouldn't have to hide what you are, and where you can learn to use your talents effectively."

"All these kids are mutants?"

"As are the teachers."

"Ms. Grey is a mutant?"

Charles manages to only smile a little. Clearly Jean has made her usual strong impression. "Indeed she is."

"I always thought mutants were ... I don't know. Losers."

"I rarely lose," Charles says.

Bobby looks at him as if seeing him as a person for the first time. "I bet you don't," he says, and smiles a little.

"I'd be glad to have you. I think we can teach you things you'll find useful."

"I'd like that," Bobby says. He looks out the doors toward his parents, now investigating the reflecting pool. "But I don't know what my parents are going to say about me going to Mutant High."

"You have a choice," Charles says.

"You mean, not tell them?"

"I mean that it's up to you what you choose to tell them."

"If I tell them, and they freak ... what happens to the other kids if they tell people about you? They may tell people the teachers here are mutants. I don't know."

"It's important to our students' safety that this appear to be just another private school," Charles says. "Not all of them will choose to be open about their mutations when they leave here. And if the school's nature were widely known, we would face the threat of violence."

"It would screw things up if they freaked."

Charles nodded. "I can't allow that to happen. What I could do is modify their memories so that they forgot they had ever known there was anything unusual about this school."

"You can do that?"

"I can."

"Wow." Bobby frowned. "Okay, so I could just tell them, and if it goes badly, there's no real harm done, right?"

Charles shook his head. "I can make them forget what they've heard, and I will if I must. What I won't do is change their feelings so that they approve of your attending school here. That would be both more difficult and more unethical, and it might harm them if I tried."

"But you don't have a problem with lying to them?"

"What matters is what you feel to be right." Charles does have a problem with lying to them, but he's decided long ago that much of life is a matter of choosing the lesser evil.

"I -- " Bobby takes a deep breath. "I want to come here. I don't know what they'd say if I told them. I don't want to screw this up." He looks at Charles. "What do you think they'd say?"

"I suspect they wouldn't allow you to come if they knew," Charles says. "I don't know for sure. I can hear people's thoughts. I can't necessarily predict their actions."

"I don't want to take the chance."

"As you wish," Charles says. The doors rattle, and Bobby's father steps back inside.

"So, did you two get to talk?"

"Bobby was just telling me that he's doing very well in mathematics," Charles says.

Bobby looks at Charles in surprise as his father nods proudly. If Charles could hear his thoughts, he thinks the question would be How did you know? He stays out of Bobby's mind so that he can pretend he doesn't know a question's being asked.

Bobby hangs back as his parents head toward the car. "Be there in a minute," he says. He turns back to Charles. "Aren't you worried that I'll tell?"

"Will you?"

"No," Bobby says, and Charles can see the weight of the secret starting to settle on his shoulders. He looks up at the house. "No, I won't tell."

"I hope to see you in September," Charles says.

He finds Scott in the rec room playing video games with Jubilation. She's decided she wants to be called Jubilee. Charles tries to remember that, and not to smile when he says it. "You can tell them to stand down," Charles says.

Scott lets his cartoon figure dissolve into fiery death and stands up. Jubilee stays glued to the screen, jabbing at the buttons with her thumbs.

"How did it go?" Scott asks.

"I think we'll have a new student in the fall," Charles says. Walk with me, Scott.

Scott follows Charles out into the hall. It's quiet there for the moment; it's a mark of how long he's been teaching that the quiet seems unnatural. "They took it okay?"

"They still don't know. Bobby chose not to tell them."

Scott frowns. "That's going to be a pain to handle."

"It's what he wants," Charles says. "He has the right to choose what sacrifices to make."

"Even if we hadn't found him, he'd still be lying to them. That's not your fault."

"I don't know." Charles stops, looking out over the back lawn. There are children playing basketball, now, with Jean perched on a wall watching them. Under her gaze, no one dashes across the court at inhuman speed or makes the ball blink in and out of existence. You can stand down, he tells her.

Jean looks up at him and shrugs. They still need to learn fair play.

Charles leaves her to it. Defining fair play as it applies to mutants and basketball is not his problem. Defining fair play as it applies to saving the world is. "He didn't want to jeopardize the other children. Or expose his parents to possible harm."

"Good," Scott says. "It sounds like he's a good kid."

"Those aren't things a child should have to worry about."

"Sure," Scott says. "He shouldn't worry about a thing. Just like me at thirteen. Or, for that matter, you at thirteen, right?" It's a scolding, but a gentle one.

"You think I'm being idealistic."

"I think you're always idealistic. But you're practical, too. That's why we get things done."

Scott is excellent at getting things done. Charles knows how lucky he was to find him. He'll carry on when Charles is gone, if they still need to carry on. Charles is afraid that they will, and he knows he can rely on Scott to do everything from bring him coffee when he's in a bad mood to save the world.

And when the responsibility is on Scott's shoulders, Scott will need people to rely on, too. Charles doesn't intend to leave it up to luck this time.

"I need someone to take my classes on Monday," Scott says. "I'm going to go up to Chicago to talk to the Pryde girl's parents. I really think they could use some reassurance in person that we're not scary. Or I can take your English class, if you want to go up there yourself."

"I don't think you need me for this one. If you'd like to have Jean along, that may make Monday's schedule a bit tricky." Charles knows Scott doesn't like flying when the controls aren't in the hands of someone he trusts, but the jet is a bit conspicuous for the Chicago suburbs.

"I'm fine with going by myself."

"In that case, I think I can arrange things without much trouble."

Scott smiles. "You always do."