Flickers (Charles Xavier)

Chapter 28

The corridor was packed with students as they made their way to their next classes. Hank had got the hang of the new teaching timetable now – it had only taken him a few months, but he had stopped teaching completely the wrong lesson to the wrong students, or turning up at a lesson that Charles was teaching, so that was an improvement. He wondered how Iris had managed to stay so relaxed while teaching lessons, while he felt like he was constantly about to mess something up.

He heard a commotion near the stairs, and glanced up. He saw Jean snapping at a young boy with dark hair, wearing bandages over his eyes, and he was standing with...

"Alex Summers?" Hank called out, walking towards them with a grin.

Alex's face broke out into a smile when he saw him, "Hank McCoy! Whoa – what happened to the big blue furry you?"

Hank huffed out a laugh. It really had been a long time since they'd seen Alex.

"I keep it under control now."

Alex turned to gesture to who he was with, "This is my brother, Scott."

Hank raised an eyebrow, suddenly understanding why Alex was here, "Hey, Scott. I'm Hank McCoy. I'm one of the teachers here."

Scott nodded slightly, clearly quite disorientated with the bandages over his eyes. Alex rolled his eyes and turned to Hank, "Where's the Professor?"

"I'll take you to him," Hank smiled, leading Alex through the corridors.

"How's things been at the school, then?" Alex asked, "I'd thought Iris was helping you guys out, but I've seen she's been writing a lot of articles for the papers recently on mutants. I guess she's moved on from here?"

Hank nodded sadly, "She left a few months back. Don't... talk about it in front of Charles though. It's a touchy subject."

"Gotcha," Alex winked as they walked into a classroom, where Charles was sitting in the middle of a circle of students, reading an extract from a book.

"Now, what do you think the author meant when he wrote all that?" Charles asked as the students, closing the book slowly. Jubilee raised her hand excitedly, but when Charles spotted Hank, Alex and Scott he clapped his hands.

"That will be your assignment for tomorrow. Top marks everybody, class dismissed."

The students all started to filter out, and Charles exclaimed, "Alex! It's good to see you! It's been a while- you look well."

Alex grinned and leant down to pat Charles on the back, "You're not too bad yourself."

Charles thanked him, and Alex cleared his throat, "This is my brother, Scott."

"Hello, Scott," Charles' eyes twinkled, as they always did when a new student arrived at the school, "Welcome to the school for the gifted."

Scott muttered, "Yeah, it doesn't exactly feel like a gift."

Charles glanced away wistfully, "It never does at first."

Hank cleared his throat, "Shall we go outside and see what we're dealing with, then?"

The five of them trooped outside by the lake where there weren't as many students, apart from Jean who was practising archery nearby. Hank observed that her eye was on Scott.

"The first step in understanding one's power is learning the extent of it," Charles told Scott as they stopped next to the water, "Only then, can we begin the process of teaching you how to control it. If you do decide to stay, I can promise you that by the time you are done here you'll be able to go back into the world and live a stable life. Why don't you take your bandages off and we can have a look at what we're dealing with here?"