Cold Comfort

Posted on Tue Dec 26th, 2023 @ 4:13pm by Charles Xavier & Bobby Drake

Mission: Episode 3: X-Tra Ecclesiam
Location: X-Mansion
Timeline: August 21st, 1990

Bobby watched the red Jeep pull through the gate and drive on down the road. His oldest friend and sometime rival had left home without saying goodbye. They had only been reunited for a few days, it seemed, but harsh words had been exchanged between them that couldn't be taken back easily. Now the opportunity had passed.

Sure, Bobby could go intercept Scott on the road, glide out and rain ice chips on him from the sky. He could create an ice blockade and stop the Jeep in its tracks. Or he could hop right in through the passenger side door at speed.

But he didn't.

Scott could have tried too. A ton of others had said their goodbyes to Scott. From up here, Bobby had even watched an emotional goodbye between Scott and Aurora. That... Bobby still didn't know how to feel about that. Who Scott knocked up was his business. It...it just felt wrong to give up on the others.

Though what had Bobby done? Since being back, he threw a rager, gallivanted around the state with Ethan, flirted with the new girl. Was he really any better? If Bobby were to be honest, he wasn't.

With a sigh of frustration, he watched Scott's Jeep vanish behind some trees and then slid from the roof top perch.

---

Professor Xavier made a sigh of his own. Recent events allowed no rest for the weary. While he had prepared himself extensively for the public debate between himself and William Stryker, it still went no better than his ill-fated debate with Bolivar Trask in years past. Between his public setbacks and his personal failures on the home front with his students, it was enough to cast doubt on everything.

Quitting wasn't an option. Peace was more than a dream. It was survival. Without his dream realized, the world would fall into another dark age of oppression and misery. And so he prepared himself for a direct confrontation. This one may not be a battle of words but a direct clash of wills. His students would find what they needed or they won't, but Charles Xavier would not allow for the treachery of William Stryker to stand without a response.

A knock came to his door. It wasn't often that Charles was caught unawares, though his mind did only passively track the familiar minds of his students. His return to full awareness allowed him to recognize the particular student at the door was Bobby. Since his return, it was difficult not to recognize Bobby from a distance.

"Enter."

While Bobby entered, the Professor stifled his inner turmoil and assumed the longsuffering and patient role of headmaster that his students so often needed.

"Hello, Bobby. Thank you for coming by. I've been meaning to sit with you."

Bobby shrugged. "It is what it is."

"Then come sit." Xavier motioned to a sofa against the wall adjacent to his desk.

On the invitation, Bobby shrugged again and flopped onto the sofa. It wasn't exactly what Xavier had meant but at least he was comfortable.

"I'm glad you're back," the Professor began. "You were missed."

Bobby scoffed. "Was I? Doesn't seem like it."

That stung a little on a personal level. "I regret that your return was right as I was leaving for a trip, Bobby, but had there been prior notice, perhaps something could have been done. As it stands, now is the first free moment I've had since your arrival."

"Yeah, yeah, I don't mean you," Bobby groused. He glared up at the ceiling. "Scott hasn't said two words to me. Cameron and Connor never did talk much." He snickered for a second at his poor choice of words. "You know what I mean. Never did get to know Iris well either. I threw a party after you left. Felt like I put in all this effort and nobody cared."

The Professor closed his eyes and tried not to groan. Of course there was a party on the eve of a crucial mission while he was gone. What else should he have expected? While the cat is away...

"So you feel that you have invested more into your relationships than you've received?" asked Xavier, trying to frame the situation through an accurate summary.

"Yeah. No. I don't know!" Bobby threw his arm over his face. "So much has changed. I don't know half these people. The ones I do have... have moved on. I mean Scott got a girl pregnant, for fuck's sake! Jean hasn't been gone that long. What if she's still out there? What if I was still out there? Would he have forgotten about me too?!"

The Professor took a calming breath. "Bobby, I know you're hurting deep inside. I can see it as surely as the light off the overhead lightbulb. But you must believe when I say there was not a day that went by when either Scott or myself did not think of you and the others. You are an irreplaceable part of this school. I built it up around you. Don't take that lightly, for I never have nor ever will."

A moment of silence passed between them.

"I don't feel like an X-Man anymore," Bobby said meekly.

"What do you feel like?" asked the Professor with gentle curiosity.

"I don't know," Bobby said at first. "I..." Was he going to say it? "I feel confused about a lot of things. Something happened the night before last. With Ethan."

The Professor stiffened. This had the makings of all sorts of new trouble.

"Not like that!" Bobby protested without even looking at Xavier.

"Not like what?" asked Xavier.

"You know," Bobby said.

"I truly don't." The Professor kept his voice low and gentle.

"Don't give me that. You can read my mind!" Bobby turned his back to the Professor and rolled onto his side.

The Professor shook his head even though Bobby couldn't see. "Not when you close yourself off to me, Bobby. Would it be easier if I did know your mind? You would need to open your thoughts for me to do so painlessly."

Bobby hesitated for a moment. "Maybe..."

"Very well."

As he relaxed his mind to separate from his realization of self into a grander awareness of all things, Xavier centered his passive focus around Bobby. The thoughts swirling within the young man's mind was like the mythological Scylla and Charybdis, the rock and the hard place. A monstrous trauma haunted him such as Xavier had seldom ever seen. It held the reek of death. Bobby's thoughts and feelings fled from it straight toward a maelstrom of depression that sucked up anything that came near. In between, suspended by manic episodes of blustering machismo, was Bobby's conscious mind.

~Oh, son...~ Xavier wanted to weep for the young man but he kept a tight rein on his own emotions. He was to observe, not intervene. Not yet anyway.

There was a singular incident that preoccupied Bobby's conscious mind, so Xavier entered that memory in order to see what Bobby felt unable to convey. He saw the pool party Bobby had thrown on the night of his return. More so, Xavier felt the hopes Bobby had cultivated in that everything would feel like it always had been. But it didn't. He frowned in sympathy.

The party had ended. Bobby sulked in the mire of his feelings. Ethan appeared, similarly insomniac that evening. The two had darted off into the night, chasing boyish antics of competition and seeking the next thrill.

Bobby and Ethan raced clear to the state capitol. That was impressive to say the least. There was more alcohol consumption. Xavier suppressed a sigh. Alcohol was among the most common substance for those who thought to self-medicate their problems away. He made a mental note to speak to Bobby later about substance abuse.

There was an altercation. Bobby and Ethan had been jockeying one another with their goofy antics right into the middle of an armed robbery. They both acquitted themselves admirably in the face of unexpected conflict. No collateral damage, minimal injuries, and Bobby even treated Ethan's scrapes. Xavier made another mental note to check on Ethan.

But it was after all of this that really preoccupied Bobby's mind. Sexual tension. Bobby and Ethan had stumbled from a violent moment into a romantic one that neither one expected. The tension struck a chord so deep that it brought forth something Bobby's mind had buried in order to escape his earlier amnesia. That was the scene in which Xavier immersed himself for best magnification.

/ / / Hiding behind some low-hanging branches, Bobby was crying. At least he was attempting. Tears were freezing into pellets and sticking in place on his cheeks. "Go away! Leave me alone!" His voice chucked. "Don't look at me!" A thick layer of ice encased his body, protruding with spikes like armored gauntlets and pauldrons. His head took on a horned appearance. "LEAVE ME ALONE!" His voice sounded inhuman, possibly due to a frozen larynx.

"I can't do that, Bobby," he said as he took a few steps forward. "I like you, Bobby. As a friend. I don't know what is going on, but I want to help."

"GET OUT OF HERE!" Bobby screamed again in his monstrous voice. "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!"

Ethan knew something was seriously wrong. So wrong that he knew he couldn't fix it himself. It was way above his abilities, but he had to try. He took six more steps forward. He was almost in Bobby's personal space. "No one is going to die," he said his tone as calm as he could make. "Bobby, I'm here for you. Just listen to my voice."

"Warren?" The ice spikes didn't disappear but Bobby's voice returned to normal. "You got away? How did you get away? I saw...you fell..." His voice chucked again. "Darkness! Why is it so dark?! I can't feel my legs!"

"Yeah, it's me, Warren," Ethan lied. "I got up."

As Bobby teetered and began to collapse, Ethan reached out to grab him.

"I don't want to die!" Bobby cried out. "No, no! I'm dead! Oh God, oh God, I'm dead!"

Ethan closed the distance between them and then wrapped his arms around his fellow teammate. "You're not dead, Bobby, and you're not dying."

A whimpering sigh shot from Bobby's throat. His body went limp while the ice around him dissipated like morning fog in the dawn's light. He was unconscious. From his view, he was in limbo between life and death, like a coma with the dread of despair. / / /

Xavier's eyes snapped open. Bobby was convulsing on the sofa. No. He was weeping. In Xavier's probing, he had ignited the memory and made Bobby to relive it all over again.

"Bobby, I am so sorry," the Professor said. "For all of it. You have carried so much all on your own. Please do not try and carry these burdens alone. If you cannot let me in, then it must be someone. Scott kept his inner demons to himself and... and now he has left us in disgrace with broken hearts in his wake. I do not want the same with you, not when you have so recently returned."

In a sudden motion, Bobby sat up from the sofa. His face was masked by an icy visage of a horned monstrosity. A gravelly voice came from his frozen lips. "You could never understand! No one can!"

Closing his eyes, the Professor confronted this unexpected but not unreasonable persona within his student. ~Do not think, Robert Drake, that you are the first to pass through the valley of the shadow of death~

"I DIDN'T PASS THROUGH IT!" roared the Icemonster. "I'M STILL THERE!"

~I know it may feel that way~ Xavier maintained his telepathic connection. He did not trust his ability to verbally reason with Bobby in this broken emotional state. ~But we are very much alive. You are here with me in my office, both of us fully in the flesh. You don't have to be scared anymore, Bobby~

Although the ice form fell away from Bobby's face, he was still not himself. He fell off the sofa, curled into a fetal position, and wept on the floor.

The Professor came near, lifted the young man as best he could, and held him to his chest as he would a small child. There was little that could heal this sort of wound except time. Constant support, regular therapy, and the passage of time. Quietly to himself, after Bobby had collected himself and went to his room, Xavier prayed it would be enough.