professor_cx (professor_cx) wrote in firstclassrpg, @ 2011-06-21 04:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! backstory, charles xavier, jean grey |
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Who: Charles Xavier and Jean Grey (Age 11)
Where: Grey family home; Annandale-on-Hudson
When: Summer, 1958. Five years ago.
Rating: Teen.
Summary: After completing his doctoral studies in psychology, Charles Xavier is contacted by a friend of the Grey family. Their daughter Jean has been hearing voices in her head, and in 1958, there aren't many treatments for perceived mental illness that aren't... radical.
Being the physical centre of a person's nervous system, the human brain was more than a complicated organ; it was a marvel. On paper, it was nothing more the the evolutionary binding of sponge with billions of neurons and synapses. But to Charles, a student of the school of dualism, it was the philosophical home of a person's essence. The mind was a puzzle that Charles Xavier had yet to master, yet it felt entirely conquerable within his grasp. He needed only time, and he had it.
His mutation had long ago set him on the path to understanding the nature of the mind, yet his education had helped shape that knowledge from practical theory into grounded scientific fact. On the trans-Atlantic flight, he'd felt strong, secure in the belief that he wouldn't fail with this girl. It was simply not an option. The resolution faltered just outside of the idyllic family home in Annandale-on-Hudson. Charles was overwhelmed by a maelstrom of human thought and emotion.
In the moment after he crossed the threshold of the small perimeter fence, Jean Grey ceased being a theoretical entity. She was no longer just a prime example of a pitiable statistic, an unfortunate soul at risk of being prematurely forced to endure an irreversible violation of her mind. She was well on her way to becoming a potential risk for lobotomization; in speaking with her parents, Charles was frightened at how Jean was tailored almost perfectly to fit into the focus groups presented in his thesis. The fact that a doctor had dared to counsel the family on the matter was appalling. Jean was raw, young, and hurt enough that Charles' steps halted their forward progress entirely. The family here was in crisis, and he all but heard their silent cries for help behind their closed doors and shut windows. The family's collective stiff upper-lip did nothing to quiet them.
The girl heard voices. In her head. While that could have easily been reasoned away as legitimate mental defect, it had sounded so like the manifestation of his own powers. Had Jean's mind not been so in distress, Charles would have been all too eager to knock on the door. After all, to find someone like him with an ability he knew so intimately was simply extraordinary. To find her a mere two counties from his own childhood home was unfathomable. Under better circumstances, he might have even skipped up that very last step, unable to contain his joy at meeting another of his kind.
Charles pressed toward the house, his hunched shoulders protected from the unseasonably late rainstorm beneath his umbrella. He knocked twice on the family door and waited.
"Hello?" He called out over the sound of the rain battering the house's roof. There was movement at the window closest to the door, and he squinted in an attempt to solidify the person's fom. It was youthful and slender, and not at all the figure of an adult. From the telephone conversation with Jean's parents, the girl had four siblings. It was a family so full that he wasn't capable of actually conceiving growing up within it. "My name is Charles Xavier. I believe that your parents were expecting me?"