1. Chapter 1

_"You wonder which is worse: the symptom or the cure."_

* * *

_Rich people always know where to build their houses_, Charles Xavier thinks to himself as he surveys the back acre of his family's estate from the edge of his porch. It is summer in New York, summer in America, but there is something about the location of the strategically built house upstate that gives a man respite from the unbearable heat. He's been away at Oxford for months now, but he's home at last. Summer for the holiday. And just like Nick Carraway, he feels that perhaps life is beginning over again, that he is being baptized anew in the sticky summer breeze whistling against his skin. A year away is too long, no matter how important his work in genetics is, no matter how important his degree is. A singular relief washes over him as he looks out at the land that Raven has managed to keep so meticulously in his time abroad. Manicured laws and flowing fountains cover the countryside, the perfect picture of a well-kept home. He takes a sip of his drink and sighs deeply. Yes, he is home again. At long, long last. And the world is quiet for the first time in too many months. Of course, there is still his thesis to work on and construct, and yes, he is still drowning in research, but to be home again is one of his last great joys.

Behind him, he hears the feet of Raven crunch behind him. Tuning her mind out for decency's sake, he doesn't turn to acknowledge her appearance or offer his greeting. They've always been that way, the two of them. No words are needed for any great manner of conversation to happen. They are content with their silences and their stretches of wordless camaraderie. She makes her way to stand beside him, folding her arms as she looks out at world stretching out before them. Last night, they stayed up in the lounge until they fell asleep, talking about everything and nothing, laughing like they were kids again. Raven's blonde hair goldens in the sun, radiating warmth, and she smiles as she looks outward and tries desperately to see what he sees.

"Bunch of trees, huh?" She asks out of the side of her mouth, unabashed at her desire to make fun of his silent contemplation.

Charles makes a noise of acknowledgement and nods his head once, not moving his eyes from the horizon, where the sun is steadily rising upward.

"It's good to be home," he says, simply, taking a long sip out of his glass of orange juice.

Unable to contain herself, Raven nudges him with her shoulder. It's good to have her Charles back. It's been a lonely year without him. She managed to struggle her way through making friends and winning over acquaintances, but over the year, she often found herself backsliding into a loneliness she found hard to recover from. Charles returning is a welcome relief from the darkness that often plagued her. Not that she would ever admit that to him. Not out loud, at least.

"It's good to have you home," she says, smiling before turning back toward the house, her strong and confident steps striding across the sturdy stone porch until she reaches the back door of the house, "Don't fill up on juice. The maid's coming to make us breakfast."

For a moment, Charles merely nods, understanding the line of logic that sentence holds. If breakfast is being made, it is only logical that one wouldn't want to spoil it with sugar-filled drinks and long, pensive looks into the sunrise. But then, the vocabulary of the sentiment catches up with the logic of it, and Charles spins to face the woman about to enter the house. Maid? They don't have a maid. In all his years, Charles has never hired a maid. For a moment, he wonders if he made one of those three in the morning long-distance calls to Raven while he was half-asleep and demanded that they get one to keep up with appearances. After all, all of his Oxford friends have maids. It's perfectly reasonable to suspect that he made the mistake of asking Raven for one like a child asks for a puppy.

"The maid?" He asks, his voice a harsh scoff.

Raven nods and walks back to him, taking the glass out of his hands and tossing the remains of the juice into the grass down below them with an easy flick of her wrist. She has been the leader of the house in his absence, and for the first time, Charles is granted the pleasure of watching her play the part with all the grace and agility that he knew she would have. It makes him proud to see her so brave, so confident, so sure of herself, even if it comes at the price of his blessed orange juice getting spilled out for grasshopper soup.

"Yeah. I hired one while you were away. I couldn't keep up with the house on my own," she says, casual and cool as she takes the same march back to the house.

This time, Charles pursues her, his mind running in every direction of this issue. She's hired a maid, which sounds all well and good at first blow, but when the reality of it sinks in, he wonders at the practicality of it all. He should have known that she had taken someone on; the house was simply too spotless for her to have gotten away with it on her own. He's never known Raven to be the cleanest of creatures, a trait that the two of them share, and he could never have expected her to get the house in this condition it's in. The world couldn't have spun so drastically in the few short months he was away from his home.

"How did you afford it? Your allowance hardly stretches for you as it is," he says, hot on her heels as she walks through the back door, drawing him into the lounge.

Raven smiles, finding a chair to sit in before leaning back in it with that toothy smile Charles knows so well in her. The pride he watches glint in her eyes is smug and it reflects in every glossy surface in the room.

"I'm a frugal individual," she gloats, smiling as she shrugs.

It's a worm hung out on a fishing pole and Charles takes the bait. He's known Raven long enough to know that there is more to this story, but she won't tell him unless she knows how badly he wants it. He watches as she reaches for a magazine and lays it out across her lap, leisurely tossing her way through the pages as she waits for him to give her the response she is looking for.

"And how's that?" He asks.

Ding, ding, ding. There's the jackpot she was searching for. That's the million dollar question. And though she plays it off as though it's nothing, as though it's the most natural decision she's ever made, as if it's one that's made every day, she licks her forefinger and flips a page in LIFE Magazine before her triumphant voice carries to Charles' ears.

"I hired someone from the Loony Bin," she says.

At first, he isn't sure he's heard her correctly. He plays the sentence over and over again, wondering at its angles and trajectories, wondering where he missed it as it flew right over his head. But, when his analysis comes up supremely empty, he asks the question that naturally follows such a failure of the mind, his eyes dumbly blank. He knows how Raven hates him digging through her head, so he asks the question as if he couldn't find the answer a million other ways.

"You did what, now?" He asks, raising his eyebrows.

Raven sighs, as if there is something that puts her out about having to explain her decision. Her eyes do not move from the article in LIFE about Mrs. Lindbergh, though she is hardly reading it at all.

"The Holbrook Hospital? About an hour from here?" She asks, and he nods in recognition. Everyone knows about Holbrook. One of the finest mental institutions in the nation, they have a reputation for making the right choices by their patients. He's never been there himself, but that's what the rumors and newspaper articles say. He's never had any particular desire to visit the sprawling campus that the facility calls home, but he takes everyone's word for it, "They have work furloughs for some of their patients and they work for practically nothing. She tends the house six days a week and has Sunday off."

Charles stiffens; that doesn't sound like a hospital, that sounds like a prison. Work furloughs and cheap labour. That isn't rehabilitation. He makes a small noise of distaste and allows his entire face to display his displeasure.

"I don't understand," he says.

There isn't anything wrong with having a clean house. There isn't anything wrong with wanting help to get a clean house. But hiring a mental patient? Everything about that thought sets Charles' skin ablaze. Everything feels wrong about it.

"She's in Ward Four, which is for long-timers and the worst off, but they assured me that she isn't bad off at all. She's very practically sane, as far as I can tell," Raven defends.

_She's very practically sane_. That sentence will ring in Charles' ears for what feels like an eternity, a lifetime, at least. And it makes the whole situation settle even worse in his stomach, if that is even possible. He leans forward in his chair, and Raven watches his concerned look turn on her with the force of a year of its absence. It's a look she knows well and has not missed in his time at school.

"That isn't what I'm concerned about," he says.

Finally, she looks up from the article about Mrs. Lindbergh and raises her eyebrows at his expectantly.

"What, then?" She snaps.

That disapproving look. Raven almost rolls her eyes at it. When once it made her want to crawl in a hole and die for the shame of disappointing him, now she merely levels her gaze and takes his frustration with her head-on, allowing the force of it to hit her like a semi truck before it glances off of her slippery esteem.

"I'm concerned that you're basically paying for slave labor, Raven," he scolds.

Raven does roll her eyes at that sentiment.

"She likes it here," she assures him.

Now, that, Charles takes serious issue with. No one can like it in a place where they're trapped. No matter how enjoyable Raven seemed to think it, there is no assurance in captivity. This will have to be ended, this little arrangement. He cannot have it on his conscience. In the back of his head, he feels a rush of something uncertain and odd, an extra presence that weighs heavily on the see-saw of his thoughts. It comes unbidden, uninvited, and it creeps up on him like a lion in the brush.

"She likes working as a slave?" He asks, incredulously.

Behind him, a strong voice wills its way into the center of the room, even as the body that belongs to it remains in the threshold of the doorway.

"Who's working as a slave?" The feminine voice questions.

Raven shoots to her feet and Charles follows, spinning to greet the woman who has been working the house in his absence. He looks at her once, floor to eyes, taking her in like a statue in a museum. Her knees are red from scrubbing the floors and the nails on the ends of her lip fingers are broken and chipped. Her grey dress hangs on her body at awkward curves and drifts. Her face bears no makeup, her hair no curl. But then, he looks in her eyes. And that's when he understands. That's when the realization dawns on him. The presence he sensed in the back of his mind...It was her. She was the one he felt.

An Empath. The woman from the "loony-bin" that Raven hired is an empath. Charles stares with a blank expression, unable to form thoughts, much less words. Raven approaches the young woman with a surprising warmth that he isn't sure he's ever seen his friend greet anyone with in his life. They share a familiarity that comes as easily as breathing to them; Raven seems to have found a friend. An odd friend with an empathetic mutation confined to a life of servitude, but a friend nonetheless. It makes him all at once uncomfortable and glad.

"Nellie! Lovely. Nellie, this is Charles. I've told you about him before. He owns the joint," She says.

The young woman in question, only a year or two younger than Charles himself, extends her hands for him to shake. The master of the house, for his part, makes no move to greet her, too transfixed with the understanding that her mind is silent to him, that his understanding of her is limited only to what he can observe. It is another strike in his mind that quiets his tongue and dulls his eyes. Nellie isn't fazed when her handshake is not returned. Instead, she pulls the extended appendage back and locks the pair behind her back. The young man who stands in silence notices the clarity of her eyes, her speech. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with her. There doesn't seem to be anything amiss, though he finds himself up against a mental lock when he peels at the door of her mind, so there isn't any way for him to be sure.

"Oh, hello, Charles," she begins, her quiet dignity alight even in those few simple words. Then, she catches herself, as if some invisible code of manners ran up and grabbed her by the nose, "Is that alright, if I call you Charles? I call Raven by her name, but if you'd prefer-"

She trails off, leaving him a gap to speak, hoping for him to give her some sort of clarity. Raven had, of course, mentioned the man who owned the house and everything in it, and the evidence of him was everywhere, but there was never anything with any sort of detail before. Raven kept Charles rather close to her chest, and spent very little of her time talking about him at all. A moment of silence sinks between the three until finally Charles is startled from his contemplation by a clearing of the throat from his friend. Eyes widening slightly and body jolting to extend his hand, thoroughly embarrassed to have ignored her silent request for the formality.

"Charles is fine. My professors call me Mister Xavier and I can assure you that this summer I want no reminder of Oxford except for my thesis, which I have admittedly hit a massive roadblock with," he says, the last bit was more for Raven's sake than anyone else's.

An uncomfortable giggle rattles around in Nellie's chest and she looks at her feet, feeling the slightest bit uncomfortable at his ramble.

"If you say so," she breathes, before releasing his hand from their shake, "Charles it is."

His next line of inquiry comes off of his tongue without thinking about it, but his curiosity is too delicious to ignore. Though her mind is closed to his, he can sense the stability she exudes, the sense of wholeness that doesn't come naturally to one who is teetering on the brink of madness as Raven so described.

"Can I... Can I ask you how you came to be at Holbrook?" He prompts, leaning in a little closer to her.

Nellie's chest locks and she looks at the clock over the mantle piece, her chin tilting down in deference. Charles watches in supreme awe as she skates past his interest, and if he were looking he might have seen Raven's smirk grow three times larger.

"I'm sorry. The toast is going to burn if I'm not careful. I'm so sorry," she states, an easy lie that doesn't even bare mentioning considering she hasn't even put bread in the toaster, before disappearing the way she came.

Neither Charles nor his friend say anything for a while. He just stares after the young patient working in their house now, watching the place where she once stood in utter disbelief. An empath in a mental hospital whose mind he cannot reach... How curious. How odd. How intriguing.

"She's beautiful, isn't she?"

Raven's smug voice cuts through the room and immediately sets Charles into a stern, even derisive tone that brushes aside Raven's words. It's a ridiculous thought to entertain. He scoffs and sinks into the nearest armchair, reaching for the newspaper that's been waiting there since his arrival yesterday evening.

"She's been committed to an asylum, Raven. Let's not make jokes here," he scolds.

But the blonde shakes her head, her eyes betraying her sincerity. Underneath the layers of concrete misery and plastered smiles, the young woman Raven chose to be their new housekeeper is actually a beautiful young woman. There's something foreign and mysterious about her, something hidden and bolted. Charles must have seen it.

"I wasn't making a joke," Raven asserts.

Charles coughs, rubbing his nose twice before opening the paper to the first page of news. See it, he did. Nellie is beautiful. But, she's not there for him to look at. She shouldn't be there at all.

"Yes. Well. I'm not going to make a judgement like that. She's our help who we will be getting rid of soon," he says, trying to turn Raven away from this conversation.

A look of loud superiority graces Raven's slick features and she turns the conversation away from his evasion with the grace of a professional driver. She doesn't return to his thoughts of firing the patient; Raven could never allow that to happen, not when she knows that the woman needs the money.

"Say what you want. But I caught you staring," she preens.

And, once again, the woman in the grey dress materializes, this time holding two plates in her hands as she pushes her way through the swinging lounge door. She doesn't suspect anything that has to do with her, or at least, that's what she's projecting out toward Charles and Raven, and Charles anticipates that she has little if any experience controlling the steady downpour that is her emotional reach.

"Caught who staring?" Nellie asks.

Anxiously, Charles flips the page of his newspaper, hoping that she cannot sense the twitching in his heart, though he is certain that she can.

"Nothing. No one, that is," he snaps before Raven can open the mouth that he knows is racing desperately to bark out a snarky reply.

Nellie can feel the rocky terrain of his emotions, but cultivates the smile of her face without allowing it to falter even the slightest. Extending her hand toward him for the second time today, this time she is offering a plate of food. Simple fare that she keeps in the fridge, but that is what Raven suggested he would eat when she first mentioned that he would be returning for the summer holiday.

"Here's your breakfast. Raven told me that you prefer to eat light in the mornings," she says, hoping on hope that she's done the right thing.

He merely nods before taking the plate wordlessly and setting it down on the side table to the right of his chair. He bites his tongue when he notices that neither his plate nor Raven's contains any toast for her to burn. Nellie gives Raven her breakfast and the woman says thank you, winking as she does, leaving Nellie with unanswerable questions.

"Alright, then," she says, "Is there anything else you need?"

Again, the dark haired man answers before Raven can have the chance, and Nellie wonders if she'll be keeping this job. His attitude frustrates her, amuses her, and his emotions are laid so bare for her and her mutation that they can even waver her own feelings, if only in the slightest. He seems to truly dislike her.

"No. We should be fine, thank you," Charles answers.

Nellie looks to Raven for confirmation, and the woman merely nods her head, a clear sign of dismissal from the room. When Nellie's hand reaches the doorframe, however, she turns around, gathering the courage that settles in the base of her feet and calling out the man's name.

"Charles?" She asks.

"Yes?"

The woman in the grey dress realizes that she must do something to earn her keep with this man around now. There's something about her that disturbs him, and she reaches blindly at straws for a way to earn his respect. In the end, she tells one of the only truths that she has to give him, and in the way she tilts her chin up and speaks with distinct honor, Charles can almost see the shadow of the woman she must have been before getting admitted to this hospital.

"I know it isn't much, but I could help you with your thesis, if you like. I graduated from a pretty good University, and if you ever need someone to even read it over, I'd be happy to try," she says.

Shock registers in Charles' throat, and after a long while, he speaks:

"Ah. Well. That's... Unexpected of you," he mutters.

She smiles before leaving the room.

"There's more where that came from."

* * *

**So, there's the first chapter! This is apart of the Ward Four series, and is (chronologically) the first story told! This story is set pre-First Class. I cannot wait to hear your thoughts. Please leave me a review and check out the other two stories in this series, _The Better Angels, a Hank/OC story_ (the canon of which will MAJORLY intersect with this story!)and _The Lesser Fool, an Alex Summers/OC _story. Please review! I can't stress how much more fun it is to write when you know someone is rooting for you!**


	2. Chapter 2

After breakfast, Charles locks himself in his study to stew over this newfound development alone. Sitting behind his desk, alone, he sulks in silence as he stares at the wall ahead. When he first retreated into this room, perhaps he managed to tell himself that he was going to sit down and pour over his research and his thesis, to get some work done on the paper that so very dearly needs it. He sits down with the intention of doing something productive, but his troubled mind doesn't quiet down, even in the stillness of his own privacy. Mind racing in circles as the clock ticks away the time, Charles rolls over the issue at hand. Raven thought that she needed some help around the house while Charles was away. Yes. Of course. That's only reasonable. But... This woman she's selected...He _knows_ that she must be an empath, an empath whose mind he cannot read. Which leaves him with a dilemma, the likes of which he isn't sure he's ever encountered. He knows that the right thing to do would be to terminate what they're calling her _employment_, which he knows it nothing more than borderline slave-labor. Morally, it isn't right to keep her working here without paying her in kind. But... Professionally. His mind races as he thinks of what having a woman like her around could do for his research. An empath with the ability-innate or otherwise- to block out the powers of a mutant with his strength and power. It could be the discovery that cracks the rest of his research. It could be a massive breakthrough.

His heart and his mind are currently fighting for the power to make decisions and at the moment, he isn't sure which is winning the battle.

All at once, the door to his office opens and he jumps to look busy, picking up a random paper and pretending to read it as his glasses slide down his nose. Peeking through the door, Nellie clings to her basket of cleaning supplies, stepping to back out of the room, bowing her head in apology.

"I'm so sorry, I can come back-" She excuses herself.

But Charles shakes his head once, clearing his throat as he waves her deeper into the room. As long as she's here, he refuses to make her feel uncomfortable or unwelcome in his presence. Keeping his eyes on the random paper in his hands- which he now realizes he's been staring at upside down- he gives her permission to continue her chores.

"No, you won't be a bother," he says with a gruff assent in his voice.

So, in silence, she pulls out the tools of her trade and begins her task of dusting, her peaceful stilling the erratic air surrounding Charles and his conflicted mind. And it is in her silence that Charles watches her lithe and curving figure move from over the tops of his glasses, wondering what in the world he has done to make him deserve this.

* * *

Every other day, she sweeps into his office for its scheduled cleaning, sharing with him the gentility of the energy she projects upon him and the smell of her fresh cleaning products as he attempts to ignore her presence. He is not entirely successful in that pursuit, as he is as susceptible to her powers as she seems helpless to control them. Every other day, she waltzes into his study, smelling of standard issue boxed soap and contentment, and he finds himself at a loss for ways to distract himself from her. Of course, it's easy to brush away such an affliction of the heart and of the eyes, diagnosing himself as transfixed with her powers. But underneath, he knows that there is more to it than that, and occasionally Raven's words from Nellie's first day here haunt him. _She's beautiful, isn't she? _

On this particularly day, Charles sits with his fingers atop the keys of his typewriter, clacking away sentences that might as well be gibberish for all the sense they're making in an academic paper such as this one. His mind is only half-focused on his work, for as Nellie wipes down the top of the fireplace on the far wall, she's humming a startlingly familiar song, one that itches the back of Charles' mind until he cannot help but ask:

"What's that song?"

She stumbles at the surprise of hearing his voice after all of this time. He has been doing a startlingly good job at ignoring her with all of his might, and yet she can still fill the thrums of his discomfort hanging in the air. Today, for some reason, she felt his distress more acutely than she's ever done before, and without much way to calm him without unleashing the full force of her power, she began to hum in an effort to calm him more subtly, without the use of her power. But it only served to draw his attention to her. Pushing away from the fireplace, Nellie tightens her grip around the sponge in her hands as she stands at attention. His constant quiet has given her constant reason to feel nervous around him, and there is not a moment spent in this study that doesn't set her on edge. She's spoken to Raven about it, complaining in deferential tones that she doesn't think Charles likes her very much. With a knowing glint in her eye, Raven shakes her head, saying that feeling couldn't be farther from the truth. But, as she attempts to hold herself under control and keep her hands from shaking, she thinks that it is Raven, not her, with the wrong ideas about Charles' feelings for her.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you," Nellie says, vowing not to hum again.

Distracted, Charles keeps his response select and terse, not wanting her to speak too much for fear of never being able to stop again. He looks her in the eyes, wondering what secrets she's keeping locked away deep within those deep brown caverns, and responds:

"You didn't disturb me. What is that song?"

It's something that she used to dance to when she was younger. Something that she used to sing when she was out in the world and free of this affliction that she's suffering from now. But she doesn't want to tell him that, not something so personal, so deeply ingrained in the woman she's become that she isn't sure that she could share it with him without ripping a piece of herself away with it. Shaking her head, she lies remorselessly.

"I don't know."

She and Charles look at one another for a while before Charles thinks better of pursuing this conversation with her any further. With a small nod of his head for her to return to her work so that he may return to his, the master of this house looks down at his typewriter, wondering after the odd sensation of loss that he feels when she turns her gaze away from him.

* * *

It is almost a week later when Charles gathers up the thought to speak to her again. She's pulled the trophies and medals from the glass and oaken case lining one of the walls and planted her self on the floor with a tub of grease and enough rags to clothe an entire refugee camp. The grease nearly covers her, staining her fingers like nicotine and smudging her cheeks like rouge. Her arms ache with the effort from the scrubbing she's giving these idols of glory, but it's worth it when she can see her smiling, pleased reflection in the silver medallion of his Honorary Exonian Knighthood sigil. Charles watches her unabashedly this afternoon, only half pretending to pay attention to the various equations laying in wait for his dedication across his desk. Something has been itching at his mind for days now, something that rests heavily on his heart. He has to know about her, he has to understand the person that has been quietly marching armies into the highlands of his mind.

"What do they pay you?" He asks.

It isn't a particularly polite or honorable question to ask. He knows how much Raven's checks made out to The Holbrook Hospital cost her, but he has no idea how much she makes off of the end. It seems a pittance that they pay the hospital, a few meager dollars that it seems to Charles could only barely cover the cost of transportation, but he has to know the truth her own lips before he can take stock of the decisions that need to be made here.

"I'm sorry?" She begs his pardon, narrowing her eyes up at him from her place on the floor, her hand stilling on the silver platter that her hands only just picked up from their place on the canvas she laid out to catch any stray bits of cleaning grease.

Readjusting his vocabulary so that she might understand him, Charles speaks again. This question has been nettling him ever since he asked Raven with no response. She claims she doesn't know how much they pay her, but Charles cannot be so certain that he believes that. Either way, Nellie will surely know what her salary amounts to at the end of each week when Charles supposes her dues are paid through an administrator of some kind at the hospital.

"How much money do they pay you to come and work for us?" He asks, reiterating his meaning.

A breath of a laugh escaping her lips, Nellie returns to her polishing, shaking her head as the ridiculous nature of the question settles into her bones. After all, she's a patient at a mental hospital. He cannot expect, not _really_ expect, that she gets paid anything for the few precious hours of freedom that she is afforded by this job. For her, the job is the reward. Not that that's something she could ever expect him to understand. He's been free his whole life. There's not a caged muscle in his body.

"Nothing, Charles," she says.

It's just as he suspected, then, Charles thinks frustratedly. So, his mind pivots to another question, tilting his head to focus all of his confusion directly on her.

"And you do this willingly? You work for nothing _willingly_?" He asks, trying to peel the answer straight out of her, unsure if there is any other way to prompt her to truthfulness.

Her smile is disarming even when it isn't focused in his direction, Charles finds. And the look that's etched its way into her being is nothing short of affirmed. Just as _she_ suspected, he doesn't understand. Because no one like him could ever understand. It's sad in its own way, really.

"Yes. It's my choice," she says lightly before giving him a pointed look of reassurance, "No one forced me into anything."

Charles' face twists in a look of discomfort, unable to balance the equation of her explanation. It doesn't make sense to him. It will never make sense to him, perhaps.

"Why do you do it?" He asks.

She sighs and puts the grease-stained rag and the silver platter down, looking toward the lip of the drawn drapes covering the window. A longing the likes of which Charles has never experienced nor has he ever seen dominates her features, taking control of her with aggressive force across her delicate features.

"Because, when I'm here, I get to see the sky. I don't get that at the Hospital. Not very often."

That, effectively, stops Charles' mind from working for the next hour that she's sitting in his study. He cannot fathom thoughts, much less words, and finds himself struck dumb by the sincerity of her convictions. Such a simple thing, really, to want to see the sky, to be reminded that the earth is still spinning and that the sun still hangs in the sky.

They do not speak for the entirety of her time at work that day. But the next, when she arrives in his office, she does not miss that he leaves his drapes open, giving her just a few more moments with the sky she misses so dearly.

The kindness of such a gesture resonates in the deepest part of Nellie's soul, and she does not stop smiling until she falls asleep that evening.

* * *

For the last hour, Charles has been groaning and huffing with his red correction tape as he pours over his writing so far. It's wrong. It's all wrong. He hasn't been able to make a lick of sense of the research he's managed to collect so far, but dammit, if he shouldn't be able to breakdown just the fundamentals that he's experienced in his own body. This is a disaster. Finally, he looks to Nellie, who is staring dreamily out of the window as she cleans the inside panes. Clearing his throat to capture her attention, he watches as she turns to look at him. The grey dress is hanging even more miserably off of her body and he wonders if it would be out of the question to get Raven to donate a more appropriate and comfortable dress to the Hospital for her to wear.

"Would you listen to a section of my thesis for me?" He asks.

After all, she says that she went to a very good university, and while he isn't particularly sure if that's true or what university she attended if she went at all, it might just help to say the words out loud, to hear them as though he were speaking them at a lectern. Nellie nods and stands against the wall, waiting for him to begin speaking.

"Of course," she says.

Offering her the chair across from him, he places his slides his glasses on and picks up the page he's currently battling against.

"Have a seat," he offers.

This is unprecedented, and for a moment, Nellie hesitates. But, stiffly, she manages to sink into the plush leather seat, sitting only on the edge as though she expects for him to command her to stand out of it at any moment, as if she feels herself unworthy of such a minor convenience. A switch flips in Charles' mind as he looks down on the paper before him, turning on the tone of a professor. His accent rolls in mountainous lilts, filling the room with a specific arrogance that comes from the mind of a man who knows he has no cause to be proud at all.

"'The creation of the societal _Other _has been often a point of great fascination for philosophers and psychologists alike, but has not often been explored by geneticists. However, when dealing with the scientific _Other, _both the perspective of the genetic and psychological must be examined. Take, for example the confession of the _Other_. Some take pride in their status as different, as separate, even considering themselves to reign superior. However, others revert into childlike hiding, psychologically speaking-"

Charles is caught up in his own mind when the sturdy voice of Nellie cuts through his thoughts.

"It isn't childlike to hide something that you're afraid of revealing," she says with absolute confidence.

The words pour out of her without her thinking better of it, popping from her lips like a cork from a champagne bottle. She thinks of her life, her stories which will be kept from the mind of her employer, and can say without hesitation that having a mutation and wanting to keep it secret isn't cowardice. It isn't childlike. It is self-preservation.

"It isn't? How so?" He asks, furrowing his brow and looking at her from over the rim of his spectacles.

Because Nellie knows that humanity is a party and mutants are not on the guest list. But, if one wears the right clothes, one can make it past the door. If one wants to survive in this life, they must be willing to blend in. She thinks of the Old Testament with which she grew up and of the stories of the sick who were cast out of the city walls to die alone. She knows the feeling. With a sad and all too familiar smile, she stands to return to her work.

"Because no one wants to become the lepers of their time, Charles."

* * *

"Raven, I have a question," Charles says over dinner that very evening.

Nellie's last task of any working day consists of cooking and serving the evening meal for Raven and Charles before being escorted by an orderly with dark eyes out to the waiting van idling to return her to the hospital. Charles' question comes in the middle of the dinner course, just as the back door closes behind their hired help.

"Shoot," Raven says, cutting a piece of lamb before serving herself a bite.

Charles gives her a pointed look, not even bothering to touch his food. His stomach is in turmoil and his mind is riding a merry-go-round as he runs over this conversation in his mind. There are many ways that this could go, many ways that he and Raven could discuss this issue, and he needs it to go down the smoothest of paths possible.

"You have to be honest with me," he intones, an air of gravity sinking down the room.

Raven gives him a half-teasing look.

"Am I ever not honest with you?" She asks, knowing the answer to this joke of a question.

Her lifelong friend nods his head in confirmation. There have been many, _many_ times that she's lied to him. Most notably:

"Last year when you let me walk out of the house in that atrocious pinstripe suit."

Her mind driving back to that memory, Raven snorts into her wine. It was a god-awful creation, but when he walked into her room to ask for her approval, she lavished him with compliments. And, oh, the look on his face when the passerby would point and stare at him was so delicious that Raven still remembers it to this day.

"I did _not _lie to you," she defends, "I said it was eye-catching. And, believe me, it was."

Charles laughs himself before shaking his head clear of the distraction and attempting to return to the heart of the matter, the reason for his whole conversation. Raven continues to tuck into her meal while Charles looks across the table at her with grave eyes.

"We've lost the point," he scolds.

She nods.

"Right. Your question."

"Is Nellie a mutant?" Charles asks.

The expectation from Charles is something of a fight. For Raven to rise to her feet and shout and tell him that he's being ridiculous, that she couldn't tell him even if she knew, that she would never betray someone's trust so far as to tell him about something as private as their mutation, that she would never hire a mutant into servitude the way she's done to Nellie. He expects raised voices and a fight which ends in quiet confirmations and steaming silence. But his expectations are not met. Instead, Raven simply offers her response as she reaches for the bowl of salad nestled in between the two candelabras serving as the centerpiece to their meal.

"Yes."

He stumbles for a moment, trying to regroup as he staggers from the discord between his expectations and reality. The easy and light confirmation that he gets from Raven disarms him until he can finally speak out his next question.

"An empath, isn't she?" He asks.

Raven rolls her eyes and slabs butter onto the nearest slice of French bread.

"You're the mind reader, not me," she retorts sharply.

Charles' reaction comes thoughtlessly, for if he had thought this through, he perhaps would never have revealed this detail to Raven at all.

"I can't read her mind," he confesses.

Raven halts her frantic eating and merely stares at her near-enough brother with dumbstruck awe. There's never been a mind that Charles cannot penetrate. It's the one thing she's ever been able to count on in this life, Charles' abilities. The shock of such a revelation turns the wine to vinegar in her mouth and she swallows the now harsh-tasting liquid, letting it burn her as it goes down.

"Really?" She asks, reaching for the water decanter to take the wretched taste out of her mouth.

A bit ashamed at this new truth, Charles nods.

"Really," he says before staring at Raven with harsh attention, "Now, how did you know?"

With a shrug of her shoulders, the young woman across from Charles adopts an off-hand air.

"She told me herself," Raven asserts.

"Oh?" Charles asks, not even bothering to hide his surprise.

Her snap of a retort smacks Charles with unfamiliar harshness as a fire lights behind his friend's eyes.

"I have friends who aren't you, you know," she barks.

Remorse instantly washes over Charles' features as he tries to make things right. Her solitude has always been something of a sore spot for Raven, and he knows that any mention of it-directly or otherwise- is bound to set a few land mines off in the forefront of her brain. He reaches out to touch her hand, to comfort her, but she pulls away with a twitch of her body.

"I wasn't trying to imply-" He begins.

But the off-hand air returns to Raven's countenance and she reaches for her wine once more, wanting nothing but to end this conversation. A superiority slides into her tone, a child-like voice that says _I know something you don't know. _

"It doesn't matter. She doesn't want you to know."

Knowing that perhaps he was not the most hospitable host at first, Charles was beginning to think that he and Nellie were onto something, that they were on the verge of a tentative and hesitant kind of friendship. He narrows his eyes.

"Why not?" Charles asks.

In confidence, Nellie has told things to her friend that she knows Charles will never be ready to hear. Things that would sour his faith in human kind, things that would destroy the very idea that humans are worth saving. Their friendship, the odd bond formed between the two female mutants, has given Raven access to the mind and memories of a young woman so bound up in pain that the mere sight of the sun can conjure a smile to her face. And she will protect her friend at all costs, even if that threat that looms on the horizon is her own brother.

"She thinks you'll won't let her come back," she says, parroting the words that she heard from a terrified Nellie one afternoon when she was certain that Charles had felt the slip of her powers.

That's a ridiculous notion. She knows that Raven is a mutant and that Charles allows her to remain. Even if she doesn't know that Charles himself is a mutant, surely she must know that he doesn't hold any prejudices against them. Not when he writes his thesis them and keeps one in his home.

"Why would she think that?" He questions.

But Raven has answered enough questions about Nellie.

"'Tis not ours to reason why, but ours to do and die,'" She says in a sing-song voice before reaching across the table for the salt and pepper shakers.

Charles' voice teeters upon desperation.

"I need to understand her power," he asserts.

Raven's jaw tightens and she turns the full force of her defensive eyes upon the man across from her.

"She's a sweet girl, Charles. Don't fool with her mind," she threatens.

But Charles is already running off with ideas and thoughts and possibilities. He's going to get Raven to help him reveal Nellie's powers, whether she likes it or not.

"What if we pretend to have an argument while she's around? Hm? We get in a fight and see if it compels her to act?" He asks, rising from the table as he thinks through this plan.

Responding simply, the woman at the table shakes her head, hoping it will end this conversation.

"She isn't in that much control of her power," she vows.

Unfortunately, Charles is one of those glass-half-empty sort of fellows.

"It's worth a try."

* * *

**Please review! I can't wait to hear your thoughts! Also, if you're a Marvel fan, I did a Bucky/OC oneshot that I'd love for you to read! It's called _Death Takes a Holiday _and it's on my profile! Can't wait to get your thoughts on this chapter!**


	3. Chapter 3

The shape-shifter and the telepath are making a grand entrance this morning, stomping through the main entryway and raising their voices to unimaginable heights, listening as the sound echoes against the lofty ceilings and glass windows of the sprawling mansion. This is a fight that they need for their housemaid to hear, so they play it up as if it were some sort of old British farce, throwing their arms in the air and stomping their feet for effect, dragging the argument out longer than they have ever done in any sort of realistic scenario. Raven trails slightly behind the man in the tailored suit, pulling faces at him.

"Charles, I'm sorry-" She begs in a tone that makes him cringe.

He tries to remember that this is supposed to be heated, something dramatic and frustratingly angry enough that Nellie will be forced into action of some kind. So, he lays it on thick. This isn't a real fight, and if it were, Charles is much too British to ever consider having an argument like this one in any sort of manner where the hired help could hear him. He would speak in low and dangerous tones until Raven gave him what he wanted. But now, he gives himself a glimpse into what sort of man he would be if he liked to raise his voice.

"You're _sorry? _You cannot be simply _sorry_ for this, Raven," his words now slide from between his teeth like the tongue of a hissing snake and the theatricality of the moment carries him away, "I want you to be _contrite_. I want you to wear sackcloth and parade your around the outside of the town walls-"

Raven gives him a frustrated look and punches him in the arm before mouthing a word through her annoyed lips.

"Seriously?" She asks.

He realizes how much of a prick he sounded just the moment before, but it's been said now and there's no taking it back, not in this drama that they've constructed for themselves. Singlemindedly, he pushes towards his goal, knowing that he needs to get this truth out of Nellie; he needs to force her to come to terms with his knowledge of her mutation without simply coming out with it. This seems to him the only way to create the reality he needs.

"Just go with it," he urges, waving her off of him before rubbing his now tender arm.

Pursing her lips and rolling her eyes, Raven tosses her hands up to the sky before dragging her feet across the room. _Charles really is hopeless sometimes,_ she thinks to herself. Charles pauses in front of his office door, hovering there as he blows some steam back into this fake argument of theirs.

"You've _lost _my thesis. _Lost _all of that work-" Charles shouts.

Raven's next question is deadpan, the sheer amount of obnoxious tension in Charles' voice becoming all too much of her to handle.

"Why didn't you have copies made?" She asks.

Charles doesn't feel anything coming from the inside of his office, but he knows she is in there. She must be; after all, this is her normally scheduled cleaning time. She should be inside just about now. So, in order to light a fire underneath her, he begins throwing real insults.

"Because I didn't think my moron of a housemate would _accidentally _toss the thing in the fire-"

Raven finds herself unable to back off from that particular choice of words. _Moron_. She wants to scoff and roll her eyes. She is about the farthest thing from moronic, and though she knows this is nothing but an elaborate hoax, she doesn't want to step down from such a claim.

"It _was _an accident!" She snaps with such fervor that it catches Charles off guard.

The insistence of her words only cause a few flames to lick the bottom of his conscience.

"Do you want me to fail?" He spits.

Scoffing and running her lips over her teeth, she folds her arms in front of her chest, breathing heavily as this false argument draws up some real feelings inside of her. She's never wanted Charles to fail, never. Well, not exactly, at least. She's always wanted him to succeed; she just perhaps would like for him to succeed a little closer to home. Oxford University is so far away and though she's proud of everything he's done, she feels that he could at least have called her a few more times last term.

"Yes, are you happy now? I _want_ you to fail-" She shouts caustically.

In the middle of her near-rant, however, the rarified air begins to rattle and shake with something warm and comforting, as though someone lit a fire and threw a warm blanked over your shoulders in a comfortable sitting room in the middle of a raging evening snowstorm. It comes in cycles, a gentle and rocking breeze through Charles' soul. It's nothing he's ever felt before, but a feeling so reassuring that it's as if it was always apart of him to begin with, a piece of his heart so content that it needed to be awakened. He breathes out and feels the world decompress around him; her power is coming at him through the door at last.

"Do you feel that?" He whispers to Raven, his eyes teeming with excitement.

She nods, almost sadly. Part of her wished that Nellie would ignore the emotions racing in this room, if only so her secret would be kept. But, once again, Raven's hopes are dashed, and Charles continues with is half-baked plan to out Nellie's abilities. Shoving his shoulder into his study door, he pushes his way into the room with a finger already pointed in the direction of the young woman he felt projecting emotions upon him.

"Ah-ha!" He declares, pleased with himself.

Nellie's expression immediately drops as her eyes find the floor. Clinging to the duster in her hands, she tries to keep her voice steady as she hopes on hope that she didn't just give away her secret. It all happened so fast. She heard the shouting and felt the pulsing anger in the air and it began attacking _her_, so she tried to dispel the situation with a little bit of warmth. That was all.

"I'm sorry. I didn't meant to eavesdrop. I was just trying to clean," she says, trying to deflect the fear of capture that rises up in her throat.

Charles does not ask her, but rather tells her the only thought on his mind.

"You're an empath," he says, as if he is announcing some great victory.

If it were possible for Nellie's stomach to drop any farther than it did already, it reaches rock bottom now. Blinking fast and trying to control her breath, she looks up at him with desperate eyes.

"What?" She asks.

Still so smugly satisfied that he thinks there is nothing wrong with what has just transpired, Charles nearly prances further into the room, letting the door shut behind him, leaving Raven out of this conversation, not that she wanted any part of it to begin with.

"You projected your emotions through the wall. I felt them. I know what you are," he says, so close to gleeful that it takes everything in her not to project some new emotion on him, just out of spite.

She doesn't, though, and she shakes her head with a nonchalant smile, reaching for a vase on a small end table before dusting it with needless vigor.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Nellie denies.

But Charles has won, now, and he doesn't want to lose that feeling. So, he merely contradicts her, knowing that he holds the cards here in a battle that she wasn't even aware she was invited to.

"Yes, you do," he hums.

Her hands still on the glass vase before her arms grow too tired to hold it any longer. Slow as she can manage, she places it back on the end table, uncaring for once that she's left fingerprints on the perfect crystalline decoration. Her entire body is stiff; her eyes close.

"You're a mutant, aren't you?" Charles asks, standing a few steps behind her.

She doesn't answer. It isn't the sort of question she's ever been inclined to answer. After a moment of waiting, Charles implores her.

"Aren't you?" He asks again.

Like a ragdoll dropped by her careless owner, Nellie drops to the sofa, her hands between her knees and her shoulders bent in defeat. It's the first time Charles has ever seen her without a trace of that bravado, of that bravery she's always worn like armor.

"Are you going to fire me now?" She asks in a voice so unlike her that it knocks the wind straight from Charles' lungs.

He furrows his brow as he processes both the words of her question and the intent behind it, both of which leave him positively puzzled. It's a query that makes no Earthly sense to him, though he does recall Raven mentioning something to the same effect only the day previous.

"What?" He responds.

Gathering all of her strength to speak, but not moving from her position of retreat, Nellie wallows in the feelings that are wracking her system like a bad case of the flu. If this is going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back, to so speak, if this is going to be the thing that gets her fired, she wishes that he would not drag it out any longer. Don't play with her like a spider over the flames. Just be done with it. Put her out of her misery.

"Because if you're going to send me back and get someone else, I would prefer it if you just said so instead of making a joke of it," she says.

Again, those two words stick with a distinctly molasses flair to Charles' mind.

"Fire you?" He repeats.

It's all her mind can conjure up. When people know about her mutation, it means that her time there is done. No one wants someone in their life who can so thoroughly mess with the chemistry of a person's heart. Nellie can alter the mood of rooms, of crowds, with just willing it to be so. And no one wants someone who has that much control. She assumes that Charles will be just like everyone who has come into her life before him.

"I can have my things packed in twenty minutes and I can call someone to come and get me," she replies in a small voice.

"I'm not going to fire you. Where on Earth would you get that idea?" He asks, scoffing.

She didn't get it from him. It's an expectation that is written in the code of her blood; it's one of the few near-certainties that she's come to readily accept in this life.

"Remember what I said about lepers?"

He recalls the memory, as it has been burned into his conscience since that moment, one that comes up into the forefront of his thinking every time he tries to return to his thesis writing. _No one wants to be the leper of their time, Charles. _Whenever the thought comes to mind, it brings with it such an intense melancholy that he must quickly distract himself before he allows himself to dwell too long on it.

"Yes," he replies.

Nellie looks at the veins in her hand, and the tan lines still burned into her skin where her favorite rings once sat on her fingers. They aren't allowed jewelry in the hospital, but the scars of them still remain, a constant ghost of the person she used to be. They're fading steadily with each and every day, but for now, she's stuck with them.

"That wasn't a biblical analogy. That was from experience," she mutters, shaking her head.

Charles struggles to salvage this situation, to take that gallows look from her eyes as quickly as possible.

"I don't want to fire you. I want to study you," he assures her.

But, somehow, this is not comforting to the young woman; it only serves to offend her ever more deeply.

"I'm not a lab rat," Nellie insists.

_Well,_ Charles thinks to himself, _this could not have gone any worse than it has. _

"No. No, not in that way. I..." He struggles to find the words to explain himself, "Has Raven told you that I'm like you?" Nellie nods, and he taps his forehead with two fingers, "I can read minds. But, the thing is, I can't read yours. Powerful enough mutants are sometimes like that. Impenetrable. I was wondering if I might..."

He offers her the two fingers that just touched his own forehead, looking in her confused expression for some indication of how she might be taking all of this. Yes, Raven told her that Charles was a mind-reader and that she was a shape-shifter. But... Nellie had no idea that she wasn't readable. Biting her lip, Nellie looks at the hand extended in her direction, trying to weight her options. Now, it doesn't feel like she has much of a choice. So, with a single nod of her head, she watches as Charles sinks to his knees on the floor before the couch where she's sitting. She inclines her forehead toward him and he reaches out to touch her temple, the fingerprints on his left hand leaving dizzying treasure maps on the skin there.

He closes his eyes. She follows suit. They breathe in tandem.

What follows will stick to Charles' bones for a lifetime. He feels no memory, hears no thoughts that belong to someone who isn't himself. But he has never felt closer to another human being in his life. Perhaps it is a projection she's sending out, or perhaps it is the feeling of their powers circling each other in the space of the shared space between their two minds, but, in this moment, Charles feels almost as if he and Nellie are holding each other's souls in the palm of their hands. Like she's reached out and touched a part of his heart that has long been tucked away for fear of what someone else might see. There's nothing concrete in this moment, nothing solid to it, but it's a feeling that cements itself to Charles' ribs forever.

After a moment of this sensation running up and down Nellie's spine, she pulls away; the touch of a hand on her temple slides away from her skin as she sits back on the couch. Her eyes gaze into Charles', and they assess each other for a long moment, neither willing to broach the terrifying subject that was the closeness they just felt the second before.

Charles shakes his head and stands.

"Well, we have quite a houseful now, haven't we? Three mutants under the same roof. Who would have thought?" He jokes, though his smile is pained, strained.

Nellie shakes her head.

"Certainly not me," she says.

He walks around the room, stepping around the various cleaning supplies that she's left idle around the wooden floors.

"But it'll be good for you," for the fear of sounding patronizing, he extends the focus of the truth, "Good for us all. You'll see," he promises.

Defiantly, Nellie rises to her feet, raising her chin.

"I'm not going to thank you," she quips, knowing that she doesn't have to cooperate with this whole idea of camaraderie that he's trying to build around her.

Charles shrugs, knowing that this wasn't going to be easy.

"Nor should you. I haven't done anything yet. Nothing that a decent person wouldn't, anyway," he says, crossing to a decanter full of water and pouring himself a glass.

Nellie shrugs.

"You'd be surprised how many _decent_ people have let me down before," she says, placing imaginary quotation marks around that choice word.

Decent people are not good people, and Nellie knows that perhaps better than anyone in this world, not that it's a story she's willing to share or relive ever again.

"Any examples?" Charles asks, taking a long sip of his water.

A head shake from the woman in the grey dress as she scoops up her cleaning supplies.

"None that I'm ready to share," she responds.

_None that I'll ever be ready to share_, she wants to say.

"Well, when you're ready, I'd be glad to listen," he promises.

It's a promise she thinks he will never need to cash in on. Raven knows; Nellie told her. But Charles...Charles does not need to know.

"Your thesis is on your desk, by the way," she says, casually, "And you're having some serious problems on page seventeen. I left some notes in the margins, but if I were you, I would ditch it and start from scratch."

It's almost as if she's a professor giving him revision notes. A wry chuckle comes from Charles' throat as he folds his arms across his chest and raises an eyebrow at her incredulously. While he and Raven were pretending to argue over losing just this very thesis, Nellie was in here, reading it without his permission and giving him editing advice.

"You certainly made yourself comfortable in my office," he says.

"You certainly made yourself comfortable outing the secret I've been trying to keep my whole life," she responds with unexpected acid on her tongue.

He hadn't thought of it that way. He was just... He was only trying to... _Outing _her? That feels a little harsh, though on further inspection, he knows that is exactly what he did. He stole a secret that wasn't his to even ask for. And the fact that she _knew_ it was a rouse, that she figured out the game he was playing, that she was being manipulated...That strikes even farther than he realized it would.

"Nellie, I just want to understand you-" He offers.

"And that's fine. But you never asked," Nellie counters, her voice softening as she tries to make him understand just what it is that he's done.

Charles reels.

"What?" He asks.

Nellie does not balk or retreat from this conversation. If they are meant to work together, if she's going to give him access to his mind, she has to know that he knows how this betrayal feels. Not painful, but harmful. That's a distinction that Nellie draws in her mind.

"You never even _asked_ me if I was a mutant," she reminds him, "You were so afraid that I wouldn't answer that you didn't even ask. Do you think that makes me want to trust you?"

"I hadn't thought of it that way," Charles says.

Picking up her broom and leaning her weight against it gracefully, Nellie shrugs her shoulders.

"I know. That's why I said it," she says, her eyes honest and clear before turning toward the door, "Anyway, I'll be here all the earlier tomorrow morning. You can look around in my mind all you want."

This promise catches Charles pleasantly off-guard.

"You're giving up that easily?" He asks.

It is her turn to be smug; she hides her smirk as she continues her strides toward the door.

"I'm giving up because you didn't find anything today, and tomorrow isn't looking too promising either."

Chuckling to himself, Charles sits down at his desk, watching her leave for the evening.

"Goodnight, Nellie," he calls behind her.

"Goodnight," she mutters, shutting the door behind her.

* * *

**here we are! Chapter three! Please review! I can't wait to hear your thoughts. :D**


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