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 Title: Voices


No pairing this time, just chuck. This is a darker look at what 
happened when he got his powers.


Disclaimers: I don't own him, damn it. There, are you happy now? I 
admitted it. He belongs to Marvel.


Feedback is appreciated, wanted, and desperately craved. Please send 
it!!!!!


Love and stuff,
Apocl158


        My name is Charles Francis Xavier.
        And I am a mutant.
        I was born this way, although my gifts didn't reveal 
themselves until puberty. That was when I discovered I had a power 
unlike those around me, that I could shape the feelings, thoughts, 
and actions of other people. Not too much for a fourteen year old boy 
to deal with, eh? When it first began I thought I was going crazy. 
There were suddenly voices in my head, other than mine, and I 
couldn't shut them off. I didn't tell anyone, I was too afraid to. 
Even at my age I knew what happened to people who said they heard 
things that couldn't possibly be there. While I doubted my mother 
would have committed me, I know my stepfather would have done so with 
glee. So I waited, and hide, and withdrew into myself, reading and 
studying until all I could see were numbers and letters. And after a 
while, they went away. Sometimes, though, when it was quiet and 
still, I could still hear them, silent whispers in the back of my 
mind.
        When my mother died they came back full force.
        I couldn't shut them away like I did before, couldn't make 
them stop. It was then, deafened by that cacophony,  that I 
discovered that I was not crazy. Instead of being mindless chatter 
they started to separate, to become something more, something 
coherent. I learned that they were thoughts, though they were not 
mine. The revelation was startling, and relieving. I wasn't crazy, it 
wasn't an onset of schizophrenia like I had feared, I was simply 
different.
        Now the only question I had was how to turn them off.
        When I went to college I felt like I was drowning. There were 
so many thoughts, so many conflicting images that I couldn't 
concentrate. I started taking on the character traits of others, one 
moment joyous, the next angry. It was there that I learned my first 
real lesson on disorders. I jumped back and forth, from bulimia to 
anorexia, and everything in between. Imagine feeling, experiencing, 
the disorders that could occur on a campus the size of Columbia 
University. I bounced back and forth, unable to figure out my own 
motivations from that of those around me. I was obsessive-compulsive, 
bipolar, and depressed. It was these changes that drove me to study 
psychology, instead of pediatrics like I had planned for so many 
years. Before I could help anyone, I needed to know what was wrong 
with *me*.
        Studying became an impossibility, as there was no quiet place 
for me. No walls could keep out the thoughts around me, no music 
could drown it out. The older I became, the worse it grew, until I 
couldn't tell where I ended and they began.
        It was then that it started.
        Nothing too serious. What is one to do when the thoughts 
around them keep them awake at night? Just a few pills, here and 
there, too help me sleep, to keep them at bay. It didn't matter what 
it was. My roommate David had Valium, which I would borrow from time 
to time, to help me sleep. Then, when I became an intern, I began to 
experiment. Thankfully nurses didn't watch the medicine closet at 
hospitals with the same vehemence that they do a now. It was then 
that I discovered, quite by accident, that amphetamines worked.
        You could imagine my relief.
        A few pills at night, to make the voices go away. It worked 
that way for a while, then one or two during the day, to keep me on 
track. Suddenly, the work that made little sense to me was crystal 
clear. Theories that were once out of my reach became child's play.  
Most people don't realize when their going the wrong way on a one way 
street.
        And neither did I.
        The odd thing about addictions is that they change you. I 
became moody, irritable, euphoric, and chatty. I felt, for the first 
time, that I was normal, that I could handle what was happening to me.
        And then they came back.
        In the middle of a psychology final they started, whispers, 
nothing to worry about. For a time I pushed them to the back of my 
mind. Then they hit, and it was like a blow. It felt like my mind was 
being battered on all sides, by noises, emotions. And this time I 
couldn't contain it. I still remember what everyone was thinking when 
I ran out of the class, the worry, and the curiousity.  I don't 
remember how I made it back to the dorm, all I remember is wanting to 
make them stop. And there was only one way that I hadn't tried yet.
        I still have the scars. Two faint ripples over my wrists, 
faded with the passage of time. I can remember lying there, on the 
floor, staring at the ceiling as my life's blood drained out of me, 
and thinking that for once in ten years I was actually getting rid of 
them.
        I would have died if it wasn't for David. When I came to it 
was night, and my wrists were bandaged, David sitting next to me, 
wondering what to do next. It was then that I found out how to block 
them, how to find that quiet place inside myself where there was only 
me, my thoughts, my dreams, my emotions. I could still feel them, 
drumming against my mind, but they were no longer burrowing into me, 
changing me, and I was relieved. After years of noise, blaring, 
hateful noise, there was finally silence.  
        After that I was a new man. It took me longer to learn to 
truly control it, to do what I can now. The mental tricks that I 
discovered were frightening, and more fascinating than anything I 
could have learned in a textbook. I came to understand that it was a 
gift, even though it had taken me a trip through hell to learn that.
        The addiction was another matter. Ever since sweating out the 
amphetamines I have had the greatest admiration for those who broke 
themselves of a habit, for it was a battle that I felt I could never 
win, and to do so was one of the happiest moments of my life. I still 
have, and I fear that I might always have, the craving; but I never 
give in, no matter how tempting the thought was, no matter how harsh 
the situation.
        After all these years I still wonder how I survived. 
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, or so the saying goes. What I see 
when I look back is a man too afraid to face what was happening to 
him, to truly see what he was doing. So afraid of what was behind him 
that he never bothered to look forward. It makes me marvel at how the 
human race has survived so much, fought to keep its hold. It is that 
experience that in part made me who I am, what I am, and I wouldn't 
go back and change anything, for that would change me.
        I can hear the thoughts of my students. The sound is no 
longer uncontrolled, its soothing, a gentle wave of emotions and 
thoughts that wash over me. Most of them think of me as a fortress, a 
cornerstone that will never falter, that has never faltered. I am 
their rock, someone in complete control, in sync with everything 
around him. Few notice the scars, though I have seen more than one 
student staring at my wrists on occasion. Most understand what it 
means, though few care to entertain the thought that I could have 
been weak. It makes them listen when I tell them that the road to 
control is harsh, pathed with razors and pitfalls enough to drown 
anyone. But despite all that, I am still their rock.
        Sometimes I wish I could show them the cracks.
        





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