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Summary: A student's-eye view of Xavier, post-_X2
Continuity: X2
Disclaimer: Charles Francis Xavier belongs to Marvel Enterprises, Inc. and Fox Entertainment Group, Inc.
"Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless? But you are young and I am old."
-The Fellowship of the Ring
"You like the cups?"
I looked around. Everybody was gone except me and Professor Xavier. The class had ended and I didn't notice. I was sitting
by the shelf where he kept his tea set and I started looking at it and I must have gotten distracted. That happens sometimes.
When I came to the school, when she was still alive, Dr. Grey said I wasn't autistic. I had known that but no one had
ever believed me. She said I was something new, and she made a name for it. Nominal clairvoyant. It means that I know all
the names of things. I'm not a telepath - I can't see what you're thinking right now. But if you gave your bicycle a name
when you were ten, I know it, even if you forgot. If your bicycle got lost and I found it, I could see your name on it, and
I could see your parents' names because they named you, and their parents' names. I can keep going back and back until there
are no names left, and sometimes it's hard to remember to stop.
Mutant powers are supposed to start at puberty. But I can remember the brand name of disinfectant that they used in the
hospital where I was born. The first word I said that someone understood was "pacifier." I was four months old.
But I was eight years old before I spoke in sentences.
Dr. Grey said that sometimes a mutation needs to do something to the body or the brain before birth, to get ready. Like
Meggan Rowell's fur. Like Terry Melton's blue hair. Like The Incredible Nightcrawler's tail, although I didn't know him then.
She said that my real power must be going to come later. But I'm not a teleporter, or a shape-_changer, or a hydrokinetic,
because I would see those names inside me. The power I'm going to have has to be something that no one has named yet.
Dr. Grey said that I didn't learn like other children because I knew the names of things before my eyes could even focus
right, so I never really had to look at things. She said it would help if I learned how to draw, but I can't, not even a stick
figure. I can';t remember what her face looked like, now, either. The shampoo she used was made with lavender and honeysuckle
and the names of them were in the air.
I was still looking at the paintings on the cups. They were of flowers and each cup was different, and the flowers' names
were written on them so that everyone would know
"What do you see?" Professor Xavier asked.
"Old names," I said. "Thomas Green. William Clarke. Mrs. Rebecca Hey."
"Those must be the authors of the herbals that the patterns were based on."
"The Universal Herbal and The Moral of Flowers."
There was something else that I could barely see, among the other cups. I put my hand there, trying to feel it.
"What are you looking for?"
"There's a flower with no cup," I said. "Rhododendron lepidotum."
"The rhododendron cup was broken, years ago. By Dr. Grey, when she was younger than you are now. I've thought of
replacing it, but it wouldn't be the same. This china was left to me by my mother."
"Catharine Emma Xavier."
"She owned them for only a few years before she died."
"Her name is still on them."
"I've always thought so."
He didn't say anything for a while. Then he moved his wheelchair forward and took two of the cups. "Do you like peppermint?"
"Mentha piperita."
"I'll take that as a yes."
He went to the credenza and turned on a Cuisinart cordless electric teakettle that had been given to him by Ororo Munroe.
"You didn't say a word in class today."
"The others talked."
"A little, at any rate. I think they're happy to be reading The Once and Future King. They're treating it as a vacation.
Which it is, of course. I thought we could all use one." He took Horizon 2% milk from a compact refrigerator I had never
seen before, though I had seen its name behind the oak doors of the cabinet. Then he put it down on his desk. "You were
fond of Dr. Grey, weren't you?"
"I don't understand how she could have died."
"That's hard for all of us to understand. I think what we have to remember is that Dr. Grey gave her life so that
the rest of us in the plane could live."
That wasn't what I meant. She was supposed to have another name but no one gave it to her yet. Nobody wants me to say
it but it's true. Kitty Pryde said that someone could give her a name even after she';s dead, but that's not it because I
would know. I can't see what the name is until someone gives it to her, but I know she's alive when she gets it and I also
know she's really dead.
"It's not right. It doesn't make sense."
"No, it doesn't."
He waited for steam to come out of the teakettle. He put a bag of Celestial Seasonings peppermint tea into one cup and
then he poured in water. Then he took out a canister of proper tea for his own cup.
"I understand I owe you an apology for the inadequacy of our acquisitions budget. Mr. Summers tells me you've read
every book in the library two or three times now."
"Some only once," I said. "Some are hard for me."
"Which ones?"
"Fiction."
"Oh, I see. I'm sorry. We'll get back to our textbook soon, I promise you."
"T.H. White," I said. "He's not like the others. He tells you the right names of things."
"How so?"
"When Arthur turns into an ant, he turns into Messor barbarus. Most writers would just say he turned into an ant.
They wouldn't say what kind, not even to themselves. That's the problem with fiction."
"Well, I think sometimes a writer doesn't have anything to say about any one species of ant, but only about ants
in general. To specify would only be distracting."
"But Arthur can't turn into ants in general. He has to turn into one particular kind of ant. There are ten thousand
species that have names and it would take me a long time to think of all of them."
"I see the problem. Imagine if it were a beetle."
I was thinking about names of beetles. Then I realized that he had handed me a cup. It had a picture of Veronica chamaedrys,
Speedwell. I drank a sip. I could taste honey made by Apis mellifera ligustica out of nectar and pollen from orange blossoms.
"I had hoped you might have something to tell us about the end of The Sword and the Stone," he said. "About
how the boy has to change his name to King Arthur and never be called Wart again."
"He didn't change. He was still Wart, even if nobody called him that."
He took the tea strainer out and held it dripping over his cup. "Yes, I suppose that's true. Just as Henry the Fifth
is still Hal... as Ben Kenobi is still Obi-Wan."
"Like Magneto is still Erik."
"Ah. Yes. I suppose you know all about... that."
"His name is on that tea strainer."
He looked down at it and stroked the handle with his index finger. "Yes, it is."
"It's a lot of places in this house."
"Yes."
"It was on your old wheelchair."
"I had to leave that one behind." The name of tears was in his eyes but I couldn't see the water.
"He was your," I said, and then I stopped. I have to remember that people don't usually like me to call things
their true names.
"It's all right," he said. "You're allowed to talk about it." He put the tea strainer down on a tray.
"You know, when I was about your age, I used to be troubled sometimes by things that I would see in other people's minds.
Thoughts. Emotions. I didn't know how to keep them out yet, but it helped me just to talk about them. To be able to name them
out loud."
"To Erik."
"Yes, he was the one that I could talk to then." He poured milk out into his tea and stirred it. "What
I meant to say is that... I don't know how to make it stop, but if it disturbs you, it's all right to say so."
I didn't say anything. I didn't know what he was talking about.
"It's difficult," he said, "when you can see through deception. It can seem that the whole world is made
of lies. But what we have to learn is that sometimes pretense is necessary. No one else here ever knew him as Erik. Jean was
the only one.... It could only be hurtful for me to...."
He covered his mouth with his fingers. He closed his eyes, just for a second. Then he opened them again.
"Or maybe it's just that I haven't been able to find the words."
Then I understood.
"It's grief," I said. "It's betrayal."
"Yes, of course. But being used in an attempt at something worse than genocide, by...." He paused. "Well.
Since euphemism would be pointless, by a lover. Words seem inadequate."
"It's situational depression," I said. "You also know the name melancholy."
"Perhaps you're right," he said. "I suppose I've been putting on airs, in a way. Like falling in love,
and imagining it's somehow different from what anyone has felt before, when it's really a very old story. That sort of self-_dramatization
would sit better on a teenager than on an old man."
"That's not really one of your names," I said. "'Old man.' It's not something you are, it's just a state
you pass through."
"Yes. On the way to something else."
I was looking at his face, like Dr. Grey taught me to do, and then I realized something. What he felt was grief, but it
was not the same as Mr. Summers' grief. They had the same name, but the name didn't tell you everything about them.
Once there was a flock of pigeons overhead, and I looked up and saw that one was special, because it had names. It had
been called Joseph's Double Duchess by a man named James Kinnear, and a boy named David Conce had called it Josie. It was
a racing pigeon. It was of a breed called Dordin. It would always have known where its home was. I think I would give what
I have for that knowledge. But it had forgotten. Or maybe it changed its mind.
Sitting there in Xavier's office, I realized that the pigeon wasn't special. Or they all were. Only the one had its own
name but they were all different. Saying Messor barbarus isn't really any better than saying ant. Ants and pigeons and emotions
should have proper names, like people, but they don't.
I could try to give them all their own names. But there are so many.
"Life is too short," I said.
He paused with his cup halfway to his lips. The flower on it was Viola tricolor, wild violet, also known as heartsease,
and he smiled.
"I hope you may always continue to think so."
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