( Backdated Spam for Alex )

[Public Video]

[Charles is in the garden, which he still has very reliably looking after since Ivy's departure with the assistance of several others. There's not much to do with most of the ordinary outdoor plants right now, what with it being January, but it's still a nice place to come and think and make sure the snow hasn't hurt anything too badly.

He's been out here for a while, properly bundled up with a wool coat and fingerless gloves, but his cheeks are red and his skin's pretty pale, so obviously it's still pretty cold outside. Still, he looks cheerful and genuinely excited when he launches into what he has to say.]

While farmers and herders had understood the benefit of selective breeding for thousands of years, the actual mechanisms governing inheritance were almost completely unknown. After people began to develop more sophisticated microscopes and started studying cells, they became more interested in discovering how a trait is passed from parent to offspring, and the first man to get it more or less right was a relatively unknown monk named Gregor Mendel. He crossbred pea plants, and his work helped scientists finally understand how hereditary actually works. [So basically, it's awesome.]

I know it's a bit early to plant peas out in the garden, but I thought it might be fun to try and recreate his experiment in the spring, if anyone's interested in seeing some very basic genetics in action. We could start a few plants in the greenhouse, first, and move them out here once it gets warmer.

[Private to Steph]

[This message comes after he's come back inside, and he's more or less gone from enthusiastic science geek/teacher to calm, supportive voice of reason. He wears many hats.]

I'm sure you're aware, but Dr. Banner asked me to touch base with you after the holidays if I hadn't already heard from you per your agreement to begin speaking to a therapist. Since I hadn't, I thought it might be time to touch base.

[Filtered from Alpha, Riddick and Creed]

I've got Rogue. I'm bringing her to the infirmary, and I've been able to flush out Alpha's handiwork. She should be back to normal once she wakes up.

And for the record, I'm more than willing to do the same for anyone else who's been affected.

[Private to Ned]

Any luck determining who the remaining victims are?

[Spam for Raven, backdated to after Zane's been healed]

[Once Zane is out of the woods and taken care of, and Charles finally feels like he can leave him to recuperate without feeling like he's abandoning him, he heads back to his room to wash up and change. He throws out the sweater - actually, he's almost considering throwing it over the side, because even if he could get all the blood off of it, he doesn't want to wear something that feels - and looks - more like a bandage now than an article of clothing.

He's so tired of this. He just wants his little circle of people to be safe, to stop having to deal with the reality that they're probably never going to be, no matter where they are.

It's an exhausting reality.

Once he's cleaned up, he throws on another sweater and just takes a moment to breathe, rubbing his temples with the pads of his fingers. This entire thing is just one giant headache, and he wishes it was less of a liability to just reach out and immediately find the other damaged people.]

[Spam for Touko]

[Charles heads to the library when Touko's shift is ending, just as Anya requested, and he's not... really sure what he's getting himself into. Obviously what Alpha's done to her needs to be reversed, but Anya's not wrong about how traumatic it can be, when you might like the person you were now more than the person you would have been without the tampering. It's not a simple matter of knowing that someone like Rogue or Riddick would be better off not getting homicidally angry.

Fortunately, it doesn't take long to find her.]

Ms. Fukawa? I was wondering if I could talk with you for a minute.

[Private to Zane, later]

[So. You're not on his item anymore. Which means either you've been reassigned, or.]

I have a potentially strange question to ask.

[Spam for Erik]

( oh, adhere to me for we are bound by symmetry )

[Public]

[Charles looks a little frazzled - his hair's a little messier than usual, and he looks drained - but smiles, clearly at least a little enthusiastic.]

Well, this has certainly been an eye opening experience thus far. [He raises a hand, and a couple metal things carefully lift off the desk and start rotating in the air at about eye level with him. So you can probably guess whose powers he ended up with.

Eventually, the novelty's going to wear off, but for the time being, being able to experiment with something new is pretty cool.]

I'd appreciate hearing from anyone else who's found their powers swapped with anyone else's. [Zane, Alex, Jean, etc. :|] And if anyone needs help, I have had some experience with helping people learn to control their abilities, and I'd be happy to try to lend a hand with this.

[Private to Marsh]

[And this point, the metal objects have all clunked back down on the desk because THANKS, ZANE, but Charles still looks pretty calm and unflustered by the day's events thus far.]

I hope I'm not being a bother, but I'm Charles Xavier - Zane's warden. I know we haven't met, but Zane's told me you might be able to tell who's switched abilities with him, and I was wondering if you'd mind giving us a hand.

[Charles is sitting at a desk in his room, dressed in one of his usual dark blue sweater/lighter blue colored shirts combos, and over all looks very put together, even though he's sort of been chewing over making this post and how he wants to say all of this for a while before actually turning on the video feed.]

My counterpart during the breach worked for the secret facility in Bargewell, trying to rehabilitate mutants and aliens who could learn to cope with and control their abilities and pass for human among a normal population. [Which isn't a secret to some, but will be news to others.] He honestly wanted to help them, and thought the facility was a safer place to adjust, away from people who might think to cause them harm for being different.

Because- [And it's silly, to have to hesitate before saying this, because he's certainly not hiding what he is or what he's capable of.] He was a mutant, too. And he lived his whole life terrified of who he was and what he was capable of, and what might happen if anyone ever found out about what he could do. He spent his whole life being afraid because he thought there was something wrong with him for not being "normal".

[He pauses, considering what to say next, because he can't help but think of Raven, and how he basically made her feel the same way because she was different, because she couldn't be herself without exposing what she really was, and it just wasn't safe to be parading around yelling "mutant and proud!" from the rooftops.

But he could have been more supportive. He could have told her she was always beautiful, no matter what color her skin was, and he's still not entirely sure he's ever going to have a chance to make up for that. Or ever see her again.]

I know I've had it easier than a lot of people with supernatural abilities. I've always had to hide what I'm capable of, but it's not like I have something physical to hide that marks me as different from everyone else, and so I've never felt like there was anything wrong with me, or been told that there might be or was.

But I have known people who have heard that said, and, worse, actually believe that's true after being told it for so long. And it isn't. There is nothing wrong with us for being different. We shouldn't have to be afraid, or ashamed, and we shouldn't have to hide. [Erik's words taste almost bitter in his mouth, and he has to take a breath before he continues.]

Obviously, we do, and me saying this here isn't going to change that, for those of us who come from worlds where that's the norm for people like us. But we aren't there now, and there's no reason to hide or be afraid, because there are people here who understand what you're going through now and what you've already been through before coming here. You're not alone.

We're no better or worse than people without abilities just because we can do things they can't. We're all just people. We're flawed, and we make poor decisions, but that has nothing to do with being able to read minds, or change our appearance, or use magic. It's time for us to accept what we are, and that's people, not monsters or supermen.

( Notes for Alex, Jean and Doyle )

[So, it's the year anniversary of Charles and Erik being on the Barge. Clearly, the best way to celebrate? Is to get completely wasted.

It's pretty apparent that this is an accidental post: Charles seems to have elbowed the communicator off the table by accident and for a moment, you're getting a good view of the ceiling of the pub and can hear Charles and Erik laughing somewhere close by, but off screen.]

No, no, I'm serious! It works, you have to trust me- [Charles keeps laughing as he leans down and scoops up the communicator, not noticing that it's been turned on and deposits it back on the counter, so now you can see both of them, even if it's still kind of a weird angle. They are both pretty clearly drunk and getting silly, although definitely Charles more so than Erik.] It's, you have to- No I'm serious, Erik, don't make that face at me, just listen-

[Erik is totally making a face and you need to deal with it, he is rolling his eyes and everything.] Come on, Charles, nothing you say will convince me that you have actually found genetics pick up lines useful.

[It's kind of hard to see from this angle, but Charles is making a face back, even though he looks like he's about five seconds away from cracking up, anyway.] Well, I was already in England, so you can't blame the accent.

No, I used to comment on their hair or their eyes or something and say it's a very groovy mutation, and explain that "mutant" is a compliment because mutation took us from single celled organisms to the dominant form of reproductive life on the planet. [He shrugs, still grinning sort of smugly and takes another drink.] Women like an academic.

[It's Erik's turn to laugh and be silly, shaking his head on the edge of the screen.] Emphasis on reproductive life, no doubt. And that works?

[Charles nods and puts his glass down, obviously trying not to grin.] Want to hear another one? I promise it's worked, you should use it sometime.

[Erik just gestures expansively: GO ON. Which is really just making Charles try to hold back laughter again, trying to hold himself together long enough to tell it and more or less half succeeding.]

If I were an enzyme, I'd be a DNA helicase. That way, I could unzip your genes.

[And there is a loud, LOUD groan, and Erik is waving the hand holding his beer about, half threatening to spill it all over, while Charles has completely lost composure and started laughing as Erik responds.] You're joking. You've used that? You must have been slapped at least once!

[Charles shrugs again, still basically giggling.] It gets a laugh if nothing else.

So much of what we just accept as a given about our physical characteristics is the direct result of adapting to better fit the environment we live in. Some of it's fairly obvious - having a roughly symmetrical body makes things like movement easier and vision more useful, that sort of thing - but some of the adaptations humans have made since the first homo sapiens was born are a bit more complicated to find specific cause for.

For example, eye color is generally considered a polygenic trait, which means that more than one gene pair is involved, versus just one, but blue eyes are the result of one very specific genetic mutation that occurred less than ten thousand years ago. That means there was one founder mutation that gave rise to everyone in Europe with blue eyes.

The trait spread rapidly across the European subcontinent, and while DNA generally gets shuffled and reshuffled each time a new generation is born, people born with this mutation not only have a remarkable number of other genetic markers in common, but this particular stretch of DNA remains so similar suggests that not only are blue eyes a relatively modern mutation, but also that evolutionarily speaking, the mutation had something to offer, otherwise the rapid spread and preservation of the DNA sequence probably would have been less pronounced and perhaps not even have been preserved to the modern era.

It's next to impossible to know what happened ten thousand years ago that made this trait beneficial to early Europeans, but it did, at some point, apparently have some desirable to offer evolutionarily. [He pauses for a moment, chuckling a little.] Or perhaps early Europeans just found blue eyes attractive.

[Private to Erik]

What do you think of David? [He isn't lying in a heap in a hallway somewhere, is he. :|]

[Private to Merlin]

Have you spoken to Arthur?

[Private to Arthur]

I have a favor to ask.

[Private to Barbara]

Do you have a moment?