Xaviers!

From the hallways near the music room somewhat of a racket can be heard. The most prominent sound is drumming, though as one focuses they might be able to hear the bass notes of a song being played along to.

Franklin walked the halls of Braddock Manor in an attempt to learn his layout.  If he was to keep his blindness a secret, he needed to know the floor plan in an out.  His explorations had revealed a series of classrooms and what was most likely a library.  He decided to focus his time on developing a system of identifying which classroom was which as he had no need need the library.  He was in the middle of mentally cataloging the smells, the sounds and the electrical layout of each room when music drew his attention.

Having been raised in  an apartment above a blues club, music was in his blood and he couldn't fight its siren call.  He would walk walk only minute before he found himself walking through the door that contained the rhythm.

Flows of electricity started to resolve as he neared. The caged pattern of a cell phone. The forked loop of a pair of headphones. Another lead off to a small speaker producing the music.

Beneath that, the more subtle flow of a human body's nervous system, the impulses almost a little too ready, anticipating the movements before they're needed, guiding limbs to produce the beats that he was hearing.

Whoever it was hasn't noticed his presence just yet, caught up in playing through the song.

Franklin noticed electricity flowing up a cable and forming a horizontal rectangle of energy.  He instantly recognized this as an electric keyboard. He instinctively took a seat at it and began playing a tune to accompany the music.  Eric, the owner of the club which he had lived over had taught him to play soon after he lost his site. The old man had once told him that music could sooth any man's soul.

The musician must have been right, as forgot the world whenever he played. The years of abuse, his hatred of himself, and his thirst for revenge all dissapeared. All that existed was the music.

As he plays, he can see the drummer's head turn towards him. Impulses at the corners of the mouth. A smile, without a beat missed. But not a word until the song's finished.

But when it is, he hears a girl's voice, with a noticeable brogue.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that someone else knows the song."

Franklin couldn't help but let his mouth form a barely noticeable smile. The gesture pained him, as he hadn't smiled for a very long while. "The song is a classic. It was mainstay for the house band at Mac's back home."

"The drum part's underrated. Good for practice."

"Another Yank on campus, aye? You new?"

"I arrived from Chicago today."

"How often do you practice?"

"Pretty often. Good stress relief. Or at least, they don't look at you as funny as they would if you went to town on a punching bag."

"Trying to get a band started with my girlfriends."

"Music heals the wounds a doctor can't see." Franklin whispered his mentor's words. Unfortunately, there was not enough music in the world to heal his wounds.

"Would you.. uh... like some company next time you practice?" Franklin regretted asking the question as soon it left his lips. Music would side track him from his mission. Besides why would she want to play with a monster like him.

"Sometimes it's not just me but the three of us, but we don't lock the door when we practice or anything," she chuckles.

"Hey ah... just so you know. Whoever you were back home you don't have to be here. Takes some people awhile to realize that, but it's true."

Her comment completely confused Franklin. What does she mean he doesn't have to be who he was? He can't erase his past. He couldn't be so lucky. "I can't change who I am. I was born Franklin Shinnick, son of a mass murderer and terrorist Brimstone, and that is who I will always be."

He isn't regretted revealing his parentage. He hadn't admitted it on his application as he didn't want to be denied because of it and now he had stupidly revealed it to a fellow student. Everyone would learn that he was a monster now.

"I wasn't... trying to pry or anything. You've just... got an awful lot going on in your head and sometimes I can't help but pick that up."

"But nobody here knows who you are, or who your dad is. If you asked around you'd probably find more than a few who came from awful homes."

Franklin let out a sarcastic chuckle. " Did their father start a cult, then used his power to gas his own followers, before beginning a series of attacks on human civilians? Do their mother try to cleanse the devil out of them by torture?"

He had no idea why he was opening up to this stranger. Maybe it was because he hadn't talked to someone in so long. Or maybe it was a side effect of whatever power she had. Whatever it was, he did it just the same.

She sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose for a moment.

"I'm not going to tell you what's going on with some of them, because it's not my story to tell. At any rate, it's not a bloody competition."

With that last note of frustration from her, Franklin gets the sudden impression of the room being much more crowded than he thought it was. He can almost hear small claws scratching on surfaces around him, and a ruffling of feathers.

Though he can't sense the electrical impulses of any birds.

It's a feeling that quickly fades.

"The point isn't who you were or where you came from. It's who you will be and where you're going."

"So let's start over. I'm Sam."

Franklin wasn't sure what he was more confused about, what had just happened or her last statement. What he was sure was how much he regretted unloading on her. No one else should have to bear his burdens.

"I'm sorry, Sam that was unfair of me. To be honest, I haven't given a moments thought of who I will be. There is no tomorrow for me."

Franklin got up and began walking to the door but stopped. "I have to ask, what just happened?"

"What do you mean, what just happened?"

"Listen, I know you've probably been told a lot of bloody garbage about what you are and what you're worth. America's horrible like that with mutants."

"But just because you can't see a way through doesn't mean there isn't one."

Franklin struggled to put what he felt in words. "It felt like we weren't alone in here."

Franklin felt a single tear slide down his cheek. "Not all of us deserve a way through." Did this person care what happened to him? Why would she?

"That was... probably me. My mind isn't always confined to my head."

"Look, you've been marinating in just awful shite for probably way too long. Like I said, a lot of people are like that when they first get here. You get in an echo chamber of people who are scared of mutants, hate mutants, that sort of thing."

"Just... trust me that even though it'll take awhile to unpack all that it doesn't need to define you. You get to decide what does, for once."

Franklin turned back to Sam and let another slight smile cross his lips. "It kinds felt comforting, like I wasn't alone." The smile disappeared and he became serious again. "I wouldn't even know where to begin to unpack. For the past five years I have known only one thing. I am evil and the man who made me this way needs to pay for creating me and everyone he has hurt. It is my responsibility to stop him."

"Well then, if you've got it all figured out, why are you here?"

"At first, I came here to learn how to use this better." Franklin removed his gloves and let them drop to the floor before let the electricity flow out of his body and across his hands. He began to stare at his hands as a confused look came to his face.

"But as soon as I stepped through the front gate, I felt something I couldn't understand. A pull to belong. A certainty that I am not good enough for this place."

"If all you want is to not make the lights flicker, X-Corp has offices and social workers for that."

"If you want to know what it's like to be a mutant and not feel ashamed to admit it, here's where you go."

Tears began to trickle down past his glasses. "But I hurt someone. Someone who completely trusted me and I nearly killed them. Am I not a monster who should be ashamed?"

"Did you hurt them because you lost control?"

Franklin's face barely showed the terror he felt as he stared at his hands. "We were having a childish fight when my curse revealed itself. I shoved him and this evil electrocuted him. It was five years ago and he still hasn't woken up."

"Do you know how many people here have a power that could put someone in a coma or kill them?"

"How many of them were punished by God for the evils of their father?"

"Either all of them are being punished, or none of them are. Yourself included."

"It's a genetic condition, Franklin. It doesn't care what your parents did. It happens to people who have a bunch of recessive traits come together into something new."

"My parents go to mass every Sunday like clockwork, and they had no idea what they had on their hands with me."

"What do your parents think about you being a..." Franklin had trouble getting the word out. It was such a simple word, but he had been raised under the impression that it was a synonym for Satan himself. It took all of his resolve to say one simple word. "Mutant?"

"They've been as supportive as I really could've expected them to be. They got me help, which I frankly needed."

Franklin couldn't comprehend what he had just heard. Her godly parents had supported her, instead of trying to exercise the "demon" from her? They didn't send her to a doctor to be experimented on in hopes of curing her? And almost as shocking was the fact that she had needed help. Sam seemed, for lack of a better word, so normal. "What help did you need?"

"I needed help to stop hearing the thoughts of everyone around me. I needed help when I accidentally pulled a nightmare out of my little sister's head and subconsciously shapeshifted into that nightmare."

"It took me years to basically re-learn how to be myself, Franklin."

Franklin removed his glasses and let Sam see the electricity coursing through his useless eyes. "I don't know who I am Sam. I only know what I have been told that I am." Tears began streaming down his face.

"Everyone here seem so certain about about who they are and what they want. How can I know who I am if haven't been able to see myself or anything for so long?"

"You've never talked to other mutants before, have you?"

"I mean, really talked."

"People here are still figuring it out. It's uni-bloody-versity. That's where you go to do that."

"You don't have the tools to figure yourself out yet. You don't have the words yet. If you did you would've just marched off to this... this dead end you think you're destined for."

"You had to have been hoping for something, even if you don't know what that is yet."

Franklin dropped to his knees and openly wept. "Can you help me?"

"I'm... maybe not the best one to ask. It's just my first year here. You have to trust the faculty, Franklin. They're the real ones who've been where we are and came out on the other side."

Franklin felt ashamed for breaking like he did. He couldn't afford weakness, but what if Sam was right. What if there was another reason then revenge for him coming to the University. Nothing made sense anymore. All that he knew is that he for some reason trusted this girl he just met. "I don't know what to do. I can't trust anyone to know the truth of my father. Hell I didn't even tell admissions that I am practically blind."

"There are therapists on staff, for starters. Nothing you say to them would go past those doors."

"There's nothing... less... about you for needing help. Everybody here does."

Franklin pulled himself to his feet. "Why can't I talk to you Sam?"