X-Men: The Gifted Ones

77. XAVIER MANSION, WEST CHESTER, NY

Charles realized he had missed his beloved home, his beloved school while he had been away. The massacre, the meetings, nothing could convince him to break his promise that his school had to go on.

It was Jane's last wish. He remembered how she had never asked him for much. She had only asked for the school at the start of their marriage. She implored that the school would go on at the end of her life.

Some of her last thoughts were about the twenty children that resided inside of his home. Twenty children who became the kind of family that Charles could give her.

He swallowed the lump in his throat as he approached the front door. He remembered the first time he had entered his home with Jane as his wife. They had been so deliriously happy. Even as she was carried over the threshold, she had thought about the unorthodox family she hoped to have with him. Sure, he had distracted her with fantasies and illusions of lovemaking, but she had taught him what it had truly meant to give himself to someone. She had pushed him to transcend the physical. It had brought his telepathy to heights he had never thought possible.

He would always be her husband. He closed his eyes and tried to think about the task in front of him. How hard could it be to go through one's own front door? It was easy enough when he was a child, a bachelor, a husband. Could it be that much different as widower?

He tried to do it as a Professor returning home to his students.

Home...she had made it a home...

He tried to be glad to be home, glad to be fulfilling her wish. He looked at the bronze plaque next to the front door. The words "Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters" stood out in relief.

He looked over at a contrasting sight: The raised mound where Jane was buried. He had ordered a simple white marble headstone for the site. The doleful words to be carved in bas-relief. He mulled over the few lines of text that would be on the stone: "Capt. Jane Margaret Tropp Xavier, November 2, 1941-March 16, 1968, US Army Nurse Corps." He thought of all of the life, all of the living, that the dash between the dates represented. He knew the date of death could have been his own, but she had stopped that.

She was the reason he was back home now, about to enter the front door to return to his school, to return to what was left of his life.

He took a deep breath and pushed himself over the threshold.

"Welcome back, Professor!" the children greeted him, some of them leaping into his arms. He looked over at little Sunder, Jane's especial pet. He knew the child would miss her more than anyone. Seeing the boy's sad eyes in that strange, misshapen face that Jane had loved so much strengthened his resolve.

He would dedicate his life to these children, and he would bring in even more, and as these children grew up and left, he would make sure more would arrive. He decided he would have room for at least a hundred of these children. Jane's death had left a gaping hole in his heart, and he knew she would approve if he filled her place with mutant children who needed a safe place to grow up.

He vowed to himself that the school would go on as long as he had life in his body. He would make sure it would go on after his own death by training students to one day succeed him as Headmaster.

As long as his home stood, there would be a school.

I will keep mypromise, my love, he prayed silently. And God help anyone who tries to stopme!