▸ Column · Modern day; Xavier's School for the Gifted — a young mutant who was attacked for what they are writes to the Headmaster about night-time hypervigilance.
PROFESSOR X replies.
Replied to by Professor X, with a rebuttal from Magneto.
The letter
Three winters ago, two streets from where I was living, a handful of people caught me alone after dark. They'd worked out what I am, and one of them had a knife. He was eventually convicted, and I've long since moved across the city — but I still can't walk to the corner shop after sundown without my chest locking like I'm back on that pavement. I've spent a year and a half with a counselor I genuinely trust, and the nightmares have mostly lifted. The night-watchfulness, though, hasn't shifted an inch, and I'm starting to believe it never will. Last month I skipped a dear friend's farewell because it ran until ten and I couldn't face the walk from the car park. I sat in the dark afterward and wept, sick of folding my whole life smaller and smaller around this dread. My counselor says my body is "still in protection mode," and that it's valid — but I need things I can actually do between sessions. What has truly helped others who got back to moving through the night without bracing at every single step?
Professor X replies
I will not pretend to know your mind — I make it an iron rule never to enter one uninvited, and the reason matters here. The watchfulness you describe is not a malfunction to be overridden by force of will. It is a frightened part of you, still standing sentry at a post the danger left long ago. You cannot order a frightened thing to stand down. I have spent my life learning that you can only make it safe enough that it chooses to lower its guard, in its own time.
So do not make the walk alone, and do not make it a test you must pass. Reclaim the dark in company — a few yards at a time, a friend's arm near yours, the route lit and known. The next farewell, go. Arrange the walk beforehand so you needn't white-knuckle it by yourself.
There is a man I have loved like a brother all my life. His fear, unhealed, made him hard instead of free, and I could not reach him. I tell you this so you trust that I know what unattended fear costs. Hold steady the picture of the person who walks home easy under the streetlights. Be patient with her. Growth keeps its own clock.
— Professor X
Magneto weighs in
Charles would have you coax the sentinel quiet and learn, gently, to trust the dark again. I tell you the opposite, and I tell you kindly: your body is not broken. It learned something true — that for one moment you belonged entirely to someone else's mercy — and it has resolved, never again. That is not a wound. That is wisdom, and I would not surrender it for any number of breathing exercises.
You will not stop bracing because you have decided to feel safe. Feeling is weather. Become genuinely capable — train, learn to defend yourself, until your body knows in its bones it is no longer prey. The watch eases not when you trust the night, but when you no longer need to. Charles has spent his whole life surrounded by the strongest people alive. He has never once had to be his own shelter.
— Magneto
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