This story was unbelievably flawless. Like i said before, I could see it as the next movie in the new xmen movies. You are truly very talented and I think you could make it big as a Hollywood screenwriter. Please continue writing more Xmen fics like this! maybe a sequel? I loved the bromance between Erik and Charles and the love between Moira and Charles! Love Love Love this story! And like I mentioned in my PM, you are very accurate with the spinal injury symptoms, like almost dead on! Also with the geography of LA. I live in LA and I totally new what and where you were describing! Olive street in downtown..know where that is! Rancho Palos Verdes..I used to live there! The Long Beach freeway or the 405...always packed. you sure did your research! Anyways...I hope you do a sequel to this or a new Xmen story! I will most definitely check out your other stories though! All the best, your fan...Nicolette

jfdkasjfdlaskjfsalfidsO! OMG! SOOO CUTE AND HOT! I JUST LOVED THAT SCENE!

My ex boyfriend has spina bifida, lots of things he had to deal with are similar to what you explained in this chapter. It was very tough for him, being in a wheelchair since he was like 14 or so, and I can only imagine what poor Charles has to go through being new to the whole thing. Great job in the accuracy! Also, my current boyfriend is working on the music portion of X Men: Days of Future's Past and he is telling me that the movie looks like it will be very good. He wont tell me everything though :P In any case, I heard a bit of the new music and it sounds awesome! Anyways, great chapter, and the previous ones! Now I have something Xmen related to do until the movie comes out! Yay!

This story is absolutely phenomenal. Thank you SO much for posting :)

Wonderful read, and this is coming from someone that hasn't picked up a book in five years. You have a knack for getting the feel of the character to convey lively on the page, with a sense of realism to how this reality may play out as if real life. The relationship between Erik and Charles was handled beatuifully, as were the other characters and their interactions amongst one another. The action had a descriptive tone that actually allowed you to visualize the chaotic combat we've come to se in the films, and the dialogue was better than some of the X-movie lines I've heard while watching over the years. High praise to a great story, X-fan 3000.

just fantastic.

this was awesome! I didn't expect this to be so good!

Bravo! Absolutely amazing

I'm going to have to stop here. This is a well written story but I am a doofus who didn't spot the angst genre and assumed from the setup this would be more drama/adventure. The angst just seems to be repeating now and its obvious that the kidnapping is the whole of the major plot. The constant focus on the victim crucible made me lose interest 5 chapters back and I've speed read to here. I don't mind suspence/angst but this is all one big suspense for one thing, the kidnapping, you could probably cut the imprisonment section in half and not affect the flow of the story.
For me, the highlights were the overview of Xaviers' condition and the initial characterization. Before the kidnapping arc basically. The way the introspection moments for Xavier in particular were handled were a delight to read and be drawn into.
Anyway don't read to much into a reviewer that thought he was reading a different genre.

Hello Niralle!

I’ve got some useless criticism for you, as well as some general breathless gushing regarding this story of yours.

I don’t read a ton of fanfiction but I finished watching First Class (again) around 6:30 pm yesterday and on a whim decided to give myself about ten seconds to find a fanfiction that would capture my attention, but really I expected to lose interest and spend my evening making ice cream instead. I clicked on this one because in the byline thing you said this was an ebook, so I figured it might entertain me for a few minutes.

Soooo, it’s 2:30 am here, just finished reading this entire beast. I shamelessly admit that I have very little patience for ff stories that don’t respect the soul of the work they’re based on, or worse that don’t respect the depth of the characters (especially my favorite characters *cough Charles cough*). I hate to admit it because it makes me feel snobby but I’m really picky about which ff stories I choose to read.

And I’m laughing as I type this because this story took me COMPLETELY by surprise. I am still baffled at the adventure I was just taken on. I had no CLUE this would be such a delight to read and I’m so happy I clicked this! Unfortunately it’s super early/late and my mind’s turned to mush so I can’t be very coherent here but I will say a few things…

I’ll get my useless criticism out of the way first. The one thing that bugged me about this story is that after Charles awoke in the hospital after Erik brought him there to recover from his Cerebro overdose, you never mention that he’s bothered by the fact that the brotherhood now has a pile of mutants to recruit for their potential future mutant/human war, and it was Charles’s (involuntary) doing. He does go through his self-blame in regards to other things, and we do see inside some of his thoughts and I was surprised to not read about how guilty he felt for having been the tool that gave Riptide what he wanted, or shame, or at least despair that they’d gotten what they wanted… or a reflection about what it meant now that they had the list of mutant names… or SOME mention of that side of the consequences of what took place between Charles and Cerebro. I don’t recall even reading that he was worried about it.

But I call that criticism useless because obviously this story is a done deal. Perhaps somebody has already asked you about this though – I’d be interested to hear your thoughts about this. As a rule, I tend to miss important story elements, perhaps I’m missing something here.

Anyways, that detail is dwarfed by all the other things that I LOVED about this. Like, the research. You totally go into unpleasant detail about the nature of his injury, what he has to live with, how he lives it, how it all affects his mental state, the science behind stuff, the medical terms, the old-fashioned machines, etc ad nauseum. WAY TO GO. What an incredible amount of depth that adds to this story! Not only realism, but man, I felt completely bogged down with Charles’s burdens. I was like, ‘man, now we have to wake up and go through all those stretches and caths and blah blah blah… Charles, please, just go back to bed, don’t even try.’ But Charles did it! And then did it all again at night! Whilst balancing one heck of a schedule. I tell you, just reading about him made me exhausted, and not just because of the very late hour. I really, really felt… tired, reading all that, tired and fearful.

Not to mention all the other research I imagine you dredged up – the area along the West Coast, for instance. I’ve never been near the coast but it was rather easy to picture for me, and with the place names and streets you provided, it was really easy to see it all playing out in my head. And all the parts mentioned while they recreated Cerebro – had my mind reeling. I felt overwhelmed, but not in a bad way! It made me feel intimidated by what they were doing, but more deeply fascinated.

Perhaps this is because I just read a bunch of Ray Bradbury, but the writing style itself didn’t captivate me. To me it doesn’t seem like you worked at creating atmosphere with tone and your author’s voice. I do like it when stories/authors do that, create their own tone, if you know what I mean. But I soon forgot that because you made the characters carry the story so well. Usually when I read ff I’m always at least slightly distracted because in the back of my mind there’s this ever-present distrust of the author’s ability to render the characters to life. Let me tell you, I dropped my distrust in this story around Ch. 3 and didn’t spent a tick of time thinking about it after the fact. You seem to have an uncanny handle on each and every one of these characters, and you developed many of them further than we’ve seen in the movies (ie Riptide and Azazel). You’re efficient with their actions and feelings and the words were almost transparent between my mind and how I was seeing them throughout the story. A very remarkable reading experience!

Which leads me to this – because of how well you rendered the characters, because of how solid their interactions were, I was emotionally punched in the gut SO MANY TIMES while reading this. I had many of those place-hand-over-gaping-mouth-and-look-away-in-asto nishment moments, I just had to stop reading for a moment and THINK about the significance of what just happened, think about the weight of something that was said, etc. Sometimes I had to get up and walk away and do something else for a few minutes just to let it sink in. Especially the chapter/s when Erik knew and Charles knew that Erik was supposedly going to torture Charles into working Cerebro, but that the characters’ interactions were far, far more complicated than mere coercion, far more complicated than the simple fact that they had been friends, maybe still were… That whole section blew my mind several times.

“Tomorrow, I will force you to use that machine. I'll use any means necessary, and I'll bring you to that point—where you can't take it anymore. It will simply be too much to bear. And you'll concede… Then, I'm going to take you home," Erik whispered. "Back to your own life. And you'll be able to live with yourself, my friend, knowing you did everything in your power to prevent this. That you tried everything you could to stop it. You simply couldn't."

The above part tore me to absolute bits. I swear I’m not a sadist and I’m not fishing for a whump story. It’s just this dialogue is so rich with undercurrents. Especially after what had just happened. After Charles has finally made himself clear to Erik, and Erik finally gets it. At this point you’ve already done a wonderful job making both sides of this coin (ha ha) understandable to the reader. (I must say, I didn’t walk into this being any sort of Erik fan, but through your writing I feel more than a bit of sympathy for him, which was completely unexpected.) At this point, I understood why Charles would say he can’t, and I understood why Erik would say what he says – would tell Charles that he’d force him to use the machine – after you’ve let us know many times and in many beautiful ways that clearly Erik still cares deeply for Charles. And despite that care, he’s STILL going to do this awful thing to his friend, and you’ve made that believable, you’ve made that inner conflict very clear to the reader, and it’s all very complex and disturbing and completely fascinating to read. That one could take such an awful threat in one hand and take such a statement of care in the other and stick them together into this THING, this monster statement of emotion, and have it make so much sense, is mind-boggling.

Other things I loved about this story abound. The whole scene where Charles busts through to Cerebro with a kitchen pan, makes his way so slowly to the console, tries and tries to make the thing go, fails, and tears the thing apart (that was another punched-in-the-gut scene, I was hanging painfully on every word). The fuzzy lines between ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’. How few plot holes there are, if there are indeed any. I didn’t notice any. How so many characters were included, and utilized, and had important roles to play. The expansive nature of the storyline. The well-rendered suspense. The fact that you didn’t write long, distracting author’s notes before and after each chapter. Etc etc etc etc etc!

Now it’s 3 in the morning. I believe I’ve communicated my delight at having read this story. I totally didn’t mean to write such a long review, but I guess that just shows how much I loved this! You know someone likes a story when they ramble on about it at length, right? Thank you for sharing this! Best of luck with your original writing endeavors, I’d say you’re bound for success!

-Crookneck

You're an amazing author, I loved every bit of this.

I don't usually review, because English is not my first language and I feel like I can never express myself like I would in my mother tongue... but this story deserves all my diligence. So, before I start what I'm sure is gonna be a long and rambling review, I want you to know that I loved it, loved every single moment of it.

I'm a long time reader of X-Men comics, and our dear professor has always been one of my favourite - or maybe my favourite - characters: he's good but he's complex, with all his dark sides that so greatly contrast with his utopistic dream and his belief in human nature, but are all there all the same. I expecially loved him as he was written by Lobdell - I'm one of the very few readers who loved Fatal Attractions and the Onslaugh saga, and I could never forget the wonderful "… When the tigers come at night!" and "Up and down". And maybe because I was so very young when I started reading X-Men and grew attched to what was MY personal idea of the characters - or maybe because they're really that bad - I never really liked the movies. I've seen them all, and I'm gonna see the next ones as well, but they contrast too much with MY characters.
That being said, I actually didn't dislike (which is slightly different from "I liked") First Class. Totally different from the comics, and I really really can't understand why they de-aged Sean, or put Alex in the first class, or where Scott, Jean, Warren and Bobby are, but... but I loved the relationship between Charles and Erik. It was closer to my view of them in the comics, and though McAvoy's hair wasn't blond and looked too much like Zach Braff's in Scrubs, I think they were more the Xavier and Magneto of the comics than Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen's versions. And though Mystique is totally out of place in this picture, I'm actually one of the few who didn't hate her, and I really believe deep down she cared about her "brother", just like Erik did.

Now, about your story, I hope I won't forget anything as I write this review. As I said, I loved it. Every single thing that looked amiss in the movie (Charles quiet acceptance of his new condition in the end, the Brotherhood's easy acceptance of Magneto as their new leader...) was explained or corrected in this story, and it was just perfect. I even like your Moira, and she was one of the sorest point of the whole movie (why couldn't she be a genetist like in the comics? I sooo hate girl power), you made me hope for her and Charles to have a happy ending, you turned me into a shipper! XD

Your Charles is a real person, he's complex, he's tormented. He's good but he's also human, and when he has doubts about the school while talking to Moira he felt so real it brought tears to my eyes, he's so much more real than whatever version of him I've found both in the movies and in the fandom. Your explaination of his seemingly quiet acceptance of what happened to him in Cuba is realistic, Hank and Kathrine's concern for him was touching, his bitterness that slowly surfaces, his pain and grief while in captivity, that sad chapter when Erik find his on the floor and carries him to the shower, they're all wonderfully depicted. You almost made me cry, and I never cry for a fanfiction. Never ever.
Your Erik is a younger version of the Erik from "The trial of Magneto": less wise, and still far from Charles' dream, yet not the bastard some writers like to show. I can see your Erik promising a dying Charles that he's gonna take care of his school, just like in that wonderful comic: it's clear when he gives his friend the coordinates of the children Emma has found. Your Erik is just as complex as your Charles, though they remain so different from each other. He's an hypocrite, just like the Magneto from the comics, but he's not beyond salvation. I loved his concern for his friend when he takes him o the hospital, the way he stays with Charles, and then leaves him to Moira. His guilt for what happened in Cuba is so strong you can feel it through the computer monitor, and though if I were Charles I would never forgive him, I know Charles sees there's still something good in him, and their friendship is just too important to give it up. And Charles is just too good a man to hold on to grudge, even if it's deserved, and he's a better person than me, I think.
I loved all the moments between the two of them, it was probably a good thing that Erik decided to go along with Riptide's idea and kidnapped Charles: if he didn't do it, Charles would've probably kept hiding from his emotion for a lot longer, and it wouldn't have been good for him. My favourite moment of this entire story is when Erik gives Charles his wristwatch whithout thinking twice, albeit until that very moment he had used the lack of a clock as a part of his "torture": it seems such a simple action, but it is so deep, and shows just how much Erik actually cares for his friend, despite their opposite views.
And that "Do you think I wish to harm you, Erik?" "No," Erik replied. "That's what makes this that much worse." is such a beautiful line that I don't even know what to say. I'm pretty sure by the end of this review I'm gonna spill the tears I managed to hold while reading.

About the other characters: as I said I didn't like her in the movie. But your Moira, though different from the comics one, it a wonderful character. She's only human, but doesn't think twice before agreeing to helping Hank to look for Charles. It was beautiful when she cried in the car. And I was so happy for Charles and her when they were finally kissing and giving in to their love - so sad it couldn't go on. But she's at his side, and they will have another occasion.
The Brotherhood and the X-Men: I must confess that my knowledge of recent comics is a bit fragmented, so I'm not really sure about Azazel and Angel, but I think the others are true both to their comics selves and the movie version without it being weird. And I loved when you killed Riptide, that antire scene was wonderful! I just wish Raven had showed her love for her brother a little more, but I guess it's entirely possible that I'm the only one who sees them as that close. Still, it would've been nice knowing that Erik wasn't the only one closer to Charles in the new Brotherhood. Your Emma was the bitch she is in the comics, she's a strong woman, and a beautiful one, and that scene where she tries to seduce Charles is so sad and cruel... wonderful job with all of them!
The OCs: I loved Kathrine. Not so much the doctors of the hospital where Erik brings Charles, but I'm pretty sure the reason is my almost-fangirl-like love for Erik and Charles's friendship. I hated the foreman who's working on the mansion's renovations, and I think that was the feeling you were trying to raise, so I guess it's ok. Oh, and I smiled whn Bernie mistook "Charlie" as a dog XD
And there's so much more I'd like to say. The way you described Charles' condition was accurate and sensitive, the way you portraied his feelings was strong and touching; this story is also wonderfully written (something for which I'm really thankful, because reading something in a bad English is really hard when English is not your first language), your style is beautiful, every single word you used for this long story is there for a reason and is just the perfect word to project the right feeling.

I really hope you're gonna write some sort of a sequel to this story, because I was so addicted that I couldn't stop reading, and now that I've finished I wish I'd gone more slowly. I wish there were more writers like you, out there, people of are so good with their characters that if you were to ever write a slash story I would probably read it and love it, even though I really can't see Charles and Magneto like that.

Of my God, this review is huge! I apologize, and I relly hope I didn't bore you to death with my rambling... and I also apologize for any mistakes, as I said English is not my first language. Thank you for this wonderful story, thank you for your Charles and Erik. Whatever they are planning about XMFC sequel I'm afraid it could never compete with your fanfiction. Thank you for writing this story and sharing it with us.

Arianna

I thoroughly enjoyed this story, my friend, and everythinh about it, from the angst to the better times ish, were just captivating. I loved every moment of it. The headaches from staying up so late it produced, the immense pain in my neck and arm from hiding under the blankets just to read it. Thank you. It was all worth it. I promise. I thank you for being a tremendous writer. I'll have to read your book eventually. It looks really good. _

This chapter made me cry...your writing is brilliant and, I'm so glad I found it. :3 Great chapter, I loved it a lot, especially the finishing paragraphs...:')

I can't do it...not tonight...it's just five more chapters...but I can't see straight...i wanna read the rest! I hate sleep, sometimes, y'know? Takes the fun out of stuff. XD Anyway.

Was that a 'going bald' reference I spotted? XD JK JK. This story has to be the best I've read. The info on spinal injuries was most interesting. I've thoroughly enjoyed this so far! _