Disclaimer: This is a work of fan-fiction. The here fore used characters belong rightfully to Marvel and I just borrowed them. The only profit I hope to achieve with this is the pure pleasure of the reader, so no copyright infringement intended. Please do not sue me, I don’t have money and won’t be getting some from this story.

Author’s notes: This was a challenge response, challenge mentioned at the end of the story.

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Fallen Hero 

by Belladonna

Could you be forced to do something you’d never do in your life?

It was dark on this night and the mansion was shrouded in a silvery shine by the light of the full moon. Actually everything seemed peaceful, but in the distance already the rumbling of thunder could be heard, a thunder that was the herald of a storm which should rise soon.

In the mansion itself everything was peaceful and all the windows were dark, not a single light shining in them which meant that the inhabitants either were sleeping already or weren’t at home. And on this night both had been the case in the mansion in Westchester, that was the home of the school for the gifted but nonetheless not everyone there had gone to bed.

In the study on the first floor sat a man. He sat there in the dark and silently looked outside into the night, up to the moon and he was deeply sunken into his thoughts, far away from the world that surrounded him. In his mind and thoughts he was free and not restrained by the heavy chains that bound him onto his wheel chair, he had to sit in since a severe injury that had cost him the use of his legs years ago.

The pale moonlight mirrored itself on his bald head and his blue eyes, so awake were directed into the far distance. In the back of his head he heard the faint buzzing of the thoughts and dreams of the inhabitants of the mansion, the background noise of the many minds in the house he never managed to completely shut out from his own. But he didn’t want to do that because for him it had become an addition to his own, like his own and in the silence of the study he often listened to them, the background buzzing of all these minds of the people who had become like a family for him and to whom he had always given one.

In the far distance the thunder growled louder and had come quite closer to the huge mansion.

~/~

It was dark in the entrance hall of the mansion when the heavy door opened with a silent creaking sound and closed again. A person stood inside the darkness and looked around. It was a man, his clothing dark and he looked around himself. But he was not searching, because  he knew exactly where he had to go, he knew his destination and what he had to do, once he’d reached it. Determined he looked out for his way and went directly to the study.

Professor Charles Xavier could sense that something wasn’t right, the buzzing in the back of his mind had become a bit unruly just like the weather outside. He turned his head around and glanced into the darkness of the room to find out more. As he slightly scanned the mansion grounds he recognized all its inhabitants and the newcomer that had entered the huge building earlier. He recognized the man and his glance returned back outside to the stars. There was no reason to be afraid or disturbed for him, for he knew the man, he knew him well and for quite a long time.

The man slowly entered the Professor’s study, he had entered it already often before and knew each and every single thing that was in it. Some of the items he himself had brought here, gifts for the Professor. On the desk there were standing several photographs of his students like were hanging on the wall. It were pictures of the Professor’s students, all his students of the past and present, on some pictures the man who silently stood there also was to be seen. He remembered it now, remembered well these pictures and the days on which they had been taken. It were all happy and beautiful memories but now bitter ones mingled between them as the man stood there in the door of the study and looked inside.

The Professor sat in his wheelchair, his back towards the door and he felt absolutely safe here. He was after all inside his own school, inside his own house and he knew the man who stood in the door, knew that he had nothing to fear from him. For a moment the man simply stood there in the door and glanced towards the darkness of the room, as all his memories came back to him and he remembered all these things, he connected with this house, in which he still lived and the inhabitants of it, that had become his friends and family, but also with the man in the wheelchair, who sat there unsuspectingly in front of the window.

The thunder had come rolling closer now and lightning lit up the nightly sky, just like it also lit up the study and the two men inside there.

~/~

“Good evening, Professor.”

Xavier already had seen him mirrored on the window and now he turned around, to face him. The man had brown hair and was wearing glasses, which now flashed shortly in the light of the lit up sky. He wore a plain suit and simply stood there, his glance cast downward, but now he raised his head and looked Xavier directly inside his. Yes, the Professor knew the man, he was a student, a friend and much more, he was family and he was not afraid of him. But nonetheless there was something about him now that was strange, something he’d never noticed nor seen in him. Outside the rain had begun to fall and now came down harder on the roof, the wind blowing around the towers of the mansion. Once in a while some lightning strikes were showing and lit up the sky, causing the stars and the light of the moon to shortly disappear.

Everything still seemed so peacefully inside the Professor’s study, two men who had known each other for a long time and for whom the other meant more than one could imagine simply stood there and remained silent. It truly seemed peaceful, but this was just the surface, for on the inside there already was a storm brewing and it was just shortly before breaking out.

~/~

You have always told me, that it would be important to stand up for peace, fight for peace between normal humans and mutants and I have always believed you. It was a good idea, a wonderful dream, you are following. But that is all for it will never be anything more than that, for will never be more than a beautiful dream, a dream I now no longer can believe in.

We are fighting now for such a long time for this dream and nothing has changed, nothing. Still mutants are being shunned and suppressed, feared and loathed and god knows still not being treated equally to humans. But we are as human as these people are too.

When I came to you to learn to control my powers, you have taken me in, made me a part of the family and also part of your dream. I have sacrificed everything for it, my own dreams I had and much more, to make your dream mine. It was a beautiful dream, one I have been following willingly, blind as I was then.

I can no longer believe in your dream, for now I have opened my eyes and seen the truth, a truth you never wanted us to see, did you? You know very well that this dream never will become reality but probably don’t want to believe it. You have known it from the beginning and never told us this, never have told us a single word about. But you never would tell it anyway, because it is just a comfortable method for your con game, to win new recruits for your campaign, one that is also nothing but a mere dream.

For as long as I can remember, we only have fought your enemies, fought against aliens that we didn’t even know about and maybe never wanted to do anything against us. But you have driven us further, driven us to fight further despite all the losses we had had to endure during your campaign and still do. We still fight against other mutants, evil mutants just like you always are telling us and teach us.

But who’s telling us that they truly are evil and want to fight mankind? We just have your word for that and until now it always had been enough.

But no longer, it is no longer sufficient for me for now I want answers. We never have stood up for a change, no matter what you were telling us. All our fights have just made it worse for us and only achieved the opposite of what we have been trying to achieve, what we always wanted. Now we are feared even more, we are outcasts and are seen as terrorists, just like those we fight in your name. I feel used, like a pawn moved over the board of your game, just like you want to and if necessary, could be sacrificed and will be.

You have founded the X-Men, in your small school for mutants and there will always be someone who will join your cause. And all just because of the impression of false hopes you are giving them. I get sick just when I look at you, at how you sit there in your wheelchair, sit by and watch. It almost seems as we’d truly just be your puppets, your pawns in a game you are playing with all the other powerful on this earth and all that concerns us is of no interest for you.

You just are pulling our strings to your advantage and it never bothered you, what we wanted or thought, because for you the only thing that ever mattered was your dream.

Wake up, Professor, because this dream of yours really will be nothing more than what it is, a dream. But that is is, what you want, isn’t it?

And that, your dream had it always been we should have lived for, fought for and died for, died for you. But did truly we want that or had that also just have been a clever manipulation of from you? Did we truly want to join you and your cause, have we always been too blinded by the dream so that we have wanted to give up our own lives for it? And what about those who do not want to join of their free will? Did you have to persuade them doing so?

You always told us that we should not hide ourselves, we only could make it worse for ourselves you told us, cause more anger in the normal humans. You might have been right with that. We are standing in the public, everybody knows who we are, knows our faces and what we can do. You have made sure of that the moment you revealed ourselves to the public. We never hid ourselves for you told us it would cause more mistrust, more fear. Why did you have so much fear to stand in the open yourself? Why have you never revealed your own secret to the public, your big secret that even you, the big and mighty Professor Charles Xavier are a mutant, too? Are you too afraid of what might happen, once the world would find out or do you know more about the truth than you allow us to know?

When I am standing here now I really feel sick at your view and I feel used, abused and weak-willed. What if I actually did not want to follow you for quite a whole time now or never at all, and you simply control me, to act out after your wish and command? I would not be able to tell otherwise and I cannot for I could never prove it and you could manipulate all my memories with a simple thought so that I would never remember anything.

We just are the puppets in your game, the X-Men founded for one single purpose only, so that you won’t loose in it. We just are the pawns you can place on the board as you might wish, the puppets on whose strings you are pulling.

It never had been you wish to change anything, am I not right? For if something would change, you would be at a disadvantage and once if we would recognize the truth you would have lost it all. And because of this you are eager to keep us small and in the dark, because of this you hide the truth from us out of fear that we might look behind your façade and think our own thoughts, make our own decisions.

But surprise, Professor, for as blind as you might think we’d be, we are not, I definitely am not for a long time by now. I have seen behind the mirror and seen what the truth really is. I have recognized it and I have recognized the only way to make you realize this also, to make you realize that we are not just mere pawns in your game. My eyes have been opened and it is time that I will be doing the same with you.

~/~

The storm was howling around the towers of the mansion now, the rain poured stronger down and fell unyieldingly onto the roof, running down at the windows. A thunderstruck shook the room, it was so close that it almost was above the mansion.

The man in the door glanced down at the professor for a final time, his glance showing sorrow but his eyes were hidden behind his glasses. Above the Professor’s face rushed a slight cloud of panic as he realized that he had not been that safe like he thought to be. But he couldn’t explain it, he had not been able to feel any sign of hostility in the man as he had entered the room and still did not. Actually he didn’t feel anything from the man who faced him now and whom he had thought to be his friend, someone he was closer to than to his family. He had never seen it coming and never thought possible, but in the moment the man took off his glasses, Xavier knew how wrong he truly was, what big mistake he had made.

Outside the thunder again rolled over the mansion, it was like a shot from a gun, the sound of a huge explosion that shook the room and the winds were howling.

~/~

On his face there was a mixture of panic and surprise to be seen, his eyes were not showing fear but shock and alarm. He had expected this day to come, the day when someone would come after him because of what he was, had feared it his whole life but now that it had actually come, he could not believe it happening. The man who stood in front of him was the last person he had expected to do such a thing but he had done it.

The face of the man was the last thing, Xavier should see in his life, the last thing he should keep in his mind and memories and it was the most shocking thing he could have imagined, but at the same time the most surprising thing. He had no time to do or say anything, no time to defend himself because the moment he realized the danger he was in, it was already too late, too late for everything. His head rolled to the side and his dead blue eyes remained fixated onto his murderer, stared directly at him and in them one last silent question was left.

Why?

Professor Charles Xavier was dead, murdered in his own house, from the person he himself or anybody else would have expected it the last. His murderer stood right in front of him and looked down at the body.

In the moment, Xavier had taken his final breath something had clicked inside the head of the murderer and it seemed as if he had just woken up from an endless sleep, a dream that now had become a nightmare for him as he now through the haze of the night and confusion, that reigned his mind now, realized what had happened and his work in front of him was lightened with the light of another lightning stroke, just like the light illuminated himself as well.

~/~

Scott Summers glanced stunned down at the man, who had been his mentor and also his friend as well, the man who had become his family for him and who meant more to him than he could ever say. The man, who now sat dead in the wheelchair in front of him and whom he had just killed.

“Oh, my god! What have I done?”

~/~

The Professor’s body was found by the others in the morning.

He still sat in his wheelchair in his study, just like he had in the night before. In the chest of the dead man there was a gaping hole that had been caused by an optic blast from close range, the lines of the wound were cauterised so that not much blood was seen on the dressing gown. But they would have had difficulties to see it in front of the dark red fabric of it.

At his feet sat Scott Summers, one of his first students of his once newly founded school and also the first of his X-Men. He held the cold hand of the dead man in his and had put his head in Xavier’s lap, tears were running down his cheeks, tears of despair that tasted salty on his lips but that did no longer come to his notice just like anything else no longer came close to him.

The moment he had seen the body his heart had frozen and his world shattered. His thoughts had cleared and the wall of control that had lain over them vanished as well. But his mind no longer was the one of the man he used to be. It now tried desperately to put back together all the broken pieces that were left to him, of his life and all else. Scott sat on the floor on his knees and rocked his body forth and back, silently murmuring while more tears came running down his cheeks. He had his eyes closed and he did not notice anything that went around him nor did he want to notice any of it.

The founder of the School for the Gifted, mentor and teacher for so many mutants, who had come to him, was dead and a stunned silence crawled over the mansion, spreading out from the study on the first floor and only the silent whimpering and pleas of one man were heard, the man who had killed him.

“What have I done? Professor, I am so sorry. What have I done? Please forgive me, I am sorry, so sorry…”

It is said that even under hypnosis or other mental influences on us we can never be forced to do such thing we’d never do in an awake state of mind, because our subconscious, unnoticed by us, will always remind us of it and prevent us from doing these things. It will do this, will it not?

~fin~

Challenge: The challenge was simply to kill Xavier, no method or scenario specified.