Fic: Charles (Box of Wicked: XMFC #2)

[enkaychi]

 Title: Charles (Box of Wicked: XMFC #2) | Read at AO3
Pairing: Erik/Charles
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Underage (in future)
Wordcount: ~500
Summary: Charles's parents find him an omega. He is not happy.

Enter your cut Charles Xavier was not a Traditionalist. Despite his family history and his anti-Anestra parents, he considered himself to be a Liberal. He didn’t think it was possible to be both a telepath and a Traditionalist. (Unless you were Emma Frost. But Emma Frost was something else entirely).

His parents knew this for fact. They did not like it. His mother, in particular, was very disappointed in him. But she was Sharon Xavier, U. S. Representative of New York’s 19th congressional district and member of the New Peoples Traditionalist Party (NPTP), colloquially known as Traditionalists. So when they told him they had chosen an omega for him he was not surprised.

Angry? Yes. Betrayed? Yes. A little panicked? Yes.

But not surprised.

If he was living in a pre-Change world, this wouldn’t have happened to him.

-

Rewind. The year is 1920 and the world is still recovering from the influenza pandemic. In late March, a teenage girl in Jerusalem collapses in pain. She is only able to incoherently describe what she’s feeling as burning. She dies two weeks later. The official record of her death says she’s a victim of the riots.

The next week the same thing happens to a twenty year old man in London, a sixteen year old girl in New York, a thirteen year old boy in Paris... thirty two people ages twelve to twenty-six. When they die, the whole world knows about.

In a single generation every child is born as what contemporary society terms Alpha or Omega. The world goes a bit crazy for some time.

Modern science is still unable to explain the Change. Whether or not that particular strain of influenza was at all responsible is a point of great debate among the world’s top virologists, geneticists, and evolutionary biologists.

Little known fact. These cases were not the first instances of heat cycling in the species Homo sapiens. Only the first cases in the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens.

-

On second thought, they probably would have just found him a nice girl of proper breeding to marry. She’d probably be nearly half his age as well.

-

When Charles tells Hank the conversation goes something like this:

“Well, how bad could it be?”

“He’s twelve Hank. Twelve!”

“You need to be optimistic. He might not enter estrus until he’s in his twenties.”

“Or he could go into heat next week!”

“That… is very rare.”

“But not impossible! Oh god what if he goes into heat tomorrow.”

“Charles, stop panicking. It won’t help anything. You’re usually more intelligent than this.”

“Shut up.”

“Very productive Charles.”

Hank thought this funny. No, he didn’t think it was funny. He would never joke about this. But he wasn’t sympathetic to Charles’s plight and he thought Charles was acting like a child (like Erik was, oh god). Charles did not appreciate this.

-

When Charles tells Tony it goes like this:

“Good for you, Xavier!”

“…”

Charles appreciated this even less, but he had expected it. Tony was a Traditionalist and agreed whole-heartedly with their philosophy.

-

Whoever Erik Lehnsherr was, Charles could at least be assured that the child’s upbringing would ensure he wouldn’t think Charles was a pedophile (like all his friends who were not Hank or Tony would think if he ever told them).

-

Erik thought Charles was a pedophile.

Wonderful.