𝗭𝗘𝗥𝗢 𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗘: Xavier Thorpe

three, like a church confession booth.

"Hey, can I tell you something?" he asked, timidly, his heart beating a hundred miles per second. "Something personal." he quickly added.

Xavier had his brows slightly furrowed at the inclination, but he stayed put. "Sure, of course. Only if you want to, though. You don't have to tell me something personal back just because I told you something personal about myself. I get if you're not comfortable."

If Aleksander didn't know any better, he'd think that Xavier was rambling, spouting everything he could just because he was nervous. But with his tone, it was obvious that he was just putting in every bit and kind of reassurance he could to make sure that Aleksander was comfortable talking about whatever he wanted to talk about, and he couldn't be any more grateful.

"No, it's fine. I want to." he laughed without any actual humor, mostly using the noise to mask the pounding of his heart.

He took a deep breath. He didn't know where to start.

"I'm not actually German. Daisy's not my mom, we're not even related." he started, not daring to look Xavier in the eye, "My name's not even Walter. It's just a lie to protect me from... something. I'll tell you later, I think."

"Again, you don't have to tell me if you can't or don't really want to." Xavier's soft words caught him off guard, yet his downcast expression never faltered.

"Well, yeah, I probably can't. But I do want to tell you, if that makes you feel any better."

He could hear Xavier's smile with how his words came out more curled than usual. "It does makes me feel better. Thanks."

And Aleksander took that as a cue to continue. "I'm not a normie either, or whatever you guys call non-powered humans around here."

"What are you then? Does that mean you have powers, too?" Xavier asked, genuinely curious and intrigued now.

"Well, they called me an Inhuman. But in basic terms, I'm just an overpowered teenager who got his powers because he was experimented on. And apparently that's the definition of an Inhuman, so that's the technical term." he shrugged, now feeling a little desynthesized about being described and analyzed like an object and not like a human. He's not fully that anyway; whatever was in Loki's scepter changed his DNA and now he's all messed up and-

"Shit, so you've got like the superhero type of powers. That's sick!"

"I guess so, but I am not a hero. Far from it. I don't like calling myself one."

"Alright, alright. Anti-hero, then. If that's better- what are your powers, anyway? What can you do?"

Aleksander smiled cheekily at that, knowing people's reactions when he first tells them the description of what he can do. "Basic telekinesis at first. Then got experimented on some more-"

"There goes the experiment thing again. How'd... that happen? What happened there? Again, you don't have to tell me fully. You can be vague if it's a sensitive topic."

Aleksander decided to just drop the bomb. "I was kidnapped when I was a kid by this silly little thing called Hydra. My parents' house was bombed the day before, and me and my siblings had nowhere else to go since our parents died instantly from the bomb. Fun, right?" he had to drop in some sarcasm in there, it wouldn't be a Maximoff speech if there wasn't. "Hydra is this like... weird terrorist organization that was created by Germans somewhere in the early 1900s. Naturally, they had a lot of like beef with people. And when they wanted them terminated, they usually didn't wanna do it themselves."

"Terminated?"

"Killed."

"Who's 'they'?"

Pardon him, he asks a lot of questions. It would be a little annoying if it wasn't endearing.