TRIGGER WARNING: MENTAL HEALTH.

Back at school new issues arrived. 

With the insomnia, chased up by narcolepsy, my attention fluctuated. Either I was hyper aware or catatonic. 

Every second of the day I carried with me the back-breaking burden of loss. It's that lump constantly situated in the back of your throat. It's the prickling of your eyes as you withhold your tears. It's the quake in your hand as you attempt to hold yourself together. 

Rebukings came often and fast. Sometimes it was a slamming of a book on my desk, other days it was the chalk being lobbed at my head, and if my tutor was feeling true pathos on that particular day, I was rewarded with a yelling. 

But a new debilitating factor was added to my life. And I remember the moment it first surfaced like the day is still fresh in my lungs. 

The clicking of my teacher's boots echoed around the freezing classroom. "Can anybody tell me; what is the second law of thermodynamics?" 

Deathly silence. 

I glanced around. Not a peep out of a single soul. Doing my duty, I raised my hand. 

Then all at once, an orchestra's worth of noise converged on my mind. 

'Know it all.'

'Nerd.'

'Teacher's pet.'

'Boffin.'

'Suck up.'

'Brown noser.'

'Smart arse.'

The volume was enough to make my temples throb and I winced. I contorted my neck to look around the classroom. I caught a few eyes, a few aggressive leers. But everyone's mouths appeared to be sealed shut, perfectly innocently. 

My teacher didn't look particularly surprised, it was as if the noise had fell deaf on her ears. "Yes, Charles..." And by extension 'Does anyone else in this class actually know anything?'

My lips parted in attempt to vocalise an answer. But I was too befuddled to speak by her blatant insult. "I'm sorry... What was the question?" 

'Stupid.'

'Idiotic.'

'Not so smart after all.'

'Show off.'

'Let down.'

I swivelled in my seat and scanned the sea of faces. "Have you something to say?" I insinuated, raising an eyebrow. 

A few snorts and giggles erupted from the back of the classroom. The others stayed innocently silent. As if not a word had been said. 

Horror dawned on my teacher's face. "Charles Xavier!" She spat. My head snapped around again. 

'Pathetic.'

'What a freak.'

'Creep.'

'Wierdo.'

It was like out of tune instruments blaring in my ears. Pitchy. Tinny. My brow furrowed with the strength of the noise. It all merged in one bombing of hatred. 

I stood up, knocking over my chair behind me, a vein pulsing in my head with pain. Gritting out the words, "If you have something to say to me, say it to me now!" I growled. 

That's when full blown laughter bloomed in the room. Obnoxious laughter at my expense. Jeering faces, mocking looks, pointing fingers. And above that all, was more insults hurled thoughtlessly at me. 

I felt the pinch of fingers snag my pinna. "Charles Xavier, leave the classroom!" My ear in one hand, and a ruler in the other, I was dragged from the room, my neck craned at an unnatural angle. 

"Are you going to let the get away with that!" I blurted, gesturing to the crowd laughing like I was a clown. 

Still I could hear a cacophony of hurtful things, the overture to the rumble of laughter. Hurtful things that stung like a branding iron.

She hissed at me when I'd finally been chucked out the classroom. "Get away with what?" She searched my face. 

I searched her face with mirrored confusion. "Shouting awful things at me!" Tears welled in my eyes. There was only so much abuse and emotional hardship I could cope with. And she had no sympathy for my current predicament. 

Her features set like stone. "Don't tell fibs, Charles!" Then without her mouth moving, there was an extension. 'Irritating child causing disruption in my class. He'll have me fired.' "Hold out your hands!"

I thrust out my forearms, palms bared to her. Eyes squeezed shut, I anticipated the swing of the ruler. There was a sickening sound as it carved through the air and a sting enough to make me seethe as it collided with my fleshy palms. They thrummed with a tingling heat. 

'Irresponsible child.'

My eyes cracked open again. "I am not irresponsible!" I cried in dispute, a lone tear worming a path down my face. Such an defaming comment made to a student's face was unprofessional at the very least. 

Amazement expanded her eyes. And in her shock, the ruler was cracked down across my hands again. I gave an indignant grunt, trying to cage noise of pain behind gritted teeth and sealed lips. 

Her deluded eyes marked my movements. "Do you want another for good measure?!" I could hear so many of her words racing in my ears. 

I ground my jaw at her. "If you believe in punishing me for the cruelty of other children, why not?" A pathetic sob escaped my lips and two more tears rolled down my cheeks, hot on my cold face. 

She slapped my red flushed palms again with the ruler, leaving a ruler shaped pink mark across the pasty skin. Abusing the already battered skin, I hissed. 

'The delinquent is a pathological liar!' She gave me an expectant look. 

"I am neither a delinquent or a pathological liar!" I flinched as she tried to bring the ruler down on my palms again and fury burned bright in her eyes. 

The second I'd whipped my hands away, the audacity faded and the self-doubt took its place. 

"I said neither of those things..!" She objected in a wavering voice. And that was the first time I'd ever seen a teacher look scared. She wrung her hand nervously around the ruler. 'He couldn't possibly know-'

Her voice was as distinct as a foghorn. "Of course I know!" And the moment I'd said those words, the penny dropped. 

"G-Go!" She yelled, terrified eyes boring into me. She pointed away, a quiver in her voice. "To the... The principle's office!" 

My mouth snapped shut. I nodded mutely and hurried on my way. My eyes remained at my feet as I scuffed along, hands thrust deep in my pockets. 

I tried to make myself invisible, shoulders hunched close and wordless. I scuttled along as unwanted and guilty as a rat. 

And along with the sound of rushing blood in my ears, ringing and my wracking breaths, I could hear the hundreds of voices as I passed classrooms. 

So many voices caving in on me and my head couldn't bare the sound. It was like being bombarded. I felt like my brain was going to implode from the imposing wall of sound. I scrunched my eyes shut and tried to force out the noise, but it was dizzying. 

I staggered on, my pulse racing and my head filled with sound. The more distressed I became, the louder it was amplified. 

It was seconds later I was floored by the volume of the sound. 

Then finally I caved. 

I blacked out. 

When I came around, the world had significantly quieted. It took me a moment to centre myself, and I found myself on my back with the school matron scribbling away at a desk, some kind of incident form, I was certain.

But down the corridor I heard a pair of voices that made me cringe. It was my mother, my tutor and the principle. My mother sounded a combination of furious and flustered.

"Charles has been very troubled lately!" And I could hear the strain in her voice as she acknowledged what she had been denying. "No boy should have to lose their father!" I heard her wheeze out a shuddering breath, followed by a quiet "I'm sorry..." And a few muted sobs.

I exhaled a growling breath and shut my eyes again; I wasn't willing to combat it just yet.

Eventually, after the adults had spoken, I was retrieved and my mother took me home from school.

The car journey home was almost deathly silent. The air felt thick with tension and I itched all over with nerves; it was only a fraction of time until I was going to be reprimanded.

"Suspended, Charles..!" She averted her gaze at the floor with disappointment. "Suspended..." She ran a hand through her hair. "That's not like you..." Her petite hands were quaking in her pristine silk gloves. "I don't know what's happened to you..." Her voice was weighty with condescension and admonishing.

I couldn't look at her. I couldn't stand to see the despondency on her face. "I'm sorry, mother..." I heaved out a heavy sigh.

"Sorry doesn't take back that lip of yours! Or change our family's reputation!" She snapped, her fingers mingling with agitation.

I sunk in the seat, praying that the ground would swallow me up, wishing that I could take it all back. I directed all my attention to the window, watching as the birds soared free from their sorrows.

"It wasn't my fault..." I muttered, rutting my foot into the back of the seat, shaggy curtains of hair hanging over my face.

"Speak up!" She announced in the most articulated voice she could muster, just to make her point. "I raised you better than to mumble!"  She sighed with displeasure. "What would your father say?"

Those words felt like a thousand needles burying themselves in my skin. I turned to face her, giving her my steeliest glare. "It wasn't my fault!"

A derisive laugh of dismay escaped her lips. "Whose fault is it then?!" She crowed.

"My teacher? The class?" I struggled over the parlance. "The voices!" I wasn't blessed with the eloquence in all my despair, thoughts of my father still drifting through my head.

A look of alarm spread across her face like clouds consuming a blue sky. "The voices?" A quiver was in her voice.

"I could hear them..." I explained, panic making my heart flutter. "All of them! Everyone, all at once..." I could tell I was saying something wrong because the colour drained from her face.

"What voices, Charles? Who?" Her eyes darted about my face feverishly.

"I don't know, mother!" Tears welled in my eyes. "I don't know..."

We pulled up into the drive and the car rolled to a halt. "You're not well, Charles..." A frown brewed on her lips and her eyes became lustrous. "You're not well..." She cupped my cheek. "I'm going to get you help, darling..." And I saw her weep. "I'm going to get you help if it's the last thing I do..." She pressed her lips to my forehead. "I'll get you a doctor. Okay?" Her hand nervously carded through my hair.

"Why?" I remember the fear that forked through me. "What's wrong with me, mother?" I cried to match her.

"We'll fix this, Charles, fix you."

Now, you must understand that my mother is of the mentality that if you shed out an extortionate amount of money than you can mend anything. That mentality extends to private healthcare, and blowing a small hole in our family fortune to find me the best psychiatrist in the tristate area. 

That's how I ended up in a shrink's office, perched nervously in an oversized armchair with my mother fretting across the room. 

And after being quizzed on nearly every aspect of my life from mealtimes to sleep habits, a diagnosis was delivered. "Missus Xavier," he had said, removing his glasses and popping them in the breast pocket of his shirt. "I regret to inform you that your son may have procured a rare psychological condition known as schizophrenia..." He'd given the diagnosis without looking once at me. "A particular strain known as paranoid schizophrenia; where the sufferer may experience auditory or visual delusions..." Delusions always seemed like a rather tall assumption. "...Which by the sound of it, is what your son appears to be suffering..."

I heard my mother give a sniffling sob. I reached across and took her hand, trying to reassure her that I was alright, even if the doctor was convinced I was all wrong.

"We don't know much about this condition currently, but we know it can be latent in some for years before emerging properly in times of severe psychological distress - which as you say, appears to be the case for your dearest child at the moment. So this comes as no surprise to me." He stole a glance at me, almost scared he was going to catch the lunacy off of me. "Don't worry yourself though; this could be a mere blip in Charles' mental health, early-onset schizophrenia can manifest in children of his age before disappearing for the rest of his life. And it doesn't seem..." He looked me up and down. "To be too life altering. Charles appears to be socialising healthily and developing completely normally, otherwise. This could be entirely temporary."

"And if it's not?!" My mother had blurted angrily.

"Let's take it one step at a time."

He had been of no comfort to her, or to me. And from then on, I was forwarded to a specialist psychiatrist who practiced in both child psychiatry and schizophrenic disorder.

Which brings you up to the here and the now. A year and a half down the line and I'm still probed weekly by my doctor. Over a hundred sessions and I still haven't drawn anything positive from it. I lie through my teeth, tell him it's stopped - and sometimes comes back - and he's beginning to believe that the condition is releasing its grips on me.

But they were all wrong from the start.

It's not delusions. It's not even schizophrenia. It might seem mad; but I can hear people's thoughts.

A/N - I'm actually really enjoying writing this book; Charles is a character who is so dearly close to my heart. Along with Matt Murdock and Bucky Barnes.

Dedication goes to flamingllamastickz! x