Here's the next chapter. I really enjoyed working with one of the more obscure X-Men.

Disclaimer: Nothing Marvel is mine.

Chapter Three

"He doesn't register on Cerebro," Charles said on the phone. "So he is either shielding himself telepathically or he isn't a mutant."

Douglas leaned against the wall, tugging at a curl by his ear in slight frustration.

"If he isn't a mutant, than what is he?" he reasoned. "I watched the guy change form without even really realizing. I was with him for thirty minutes with my dictionary before he started speaking Norwegian fluently. He's learning it off of the Doctor Who subtitles. He just needed a flimsy but implicit connection between written and spoken word. That's a rapid learning curve that I've only seen in myself, Professor. So what is he?"

"You know we are not alone in this universe," Charles said, "and you said yourself that you've only seen this kind of language in Asgard. Draw your own conclusions."

"You think he's Aesir?"

"At present, that seems the best explanation."

"What's he doing here?" Doug asked. It wasn't that he hadn't had the same suspicion that Xavier did, but it was a bit startling to think that a Norse god was sitting in the hospital room next door watching British sci-fi. "What am I supposed to do?"

"The same as you set out to do, Douglas. He is still someone in need of aid."

And the Professor hung up. Doug looked around hopelessly, and then went back into the patient's room. The television was off, and the patient was reading what appeared to be Harry Potter. Doug grinned, and in Norwegian asked, "Good book, Matt?"

He smiled, and nodded. Matt had decided to dub himself so after the name of the actor who played the latest, and his favourite, incarnation of the Doctor. It suited him, in a way, and made addressing him much easier.

"The healer Alfeid gave it to me this morning," he said softly. His Norwegian was ridiculously fluent, but still carried over some of the odd declamatory syntax of whatever it was he originally spoke. "It is a book of wonders."

"That it is," Doug said with a little laugh. "I remember reading that when I was a kid."

And going crazy because the spells aren't actually in any language, he thought with a smile.

"Maybe I have read this before," Loki said.

I don't know if they have Harry Potter translated into Asgardian.

"What do you remember of your life before, Matt?" Doug asked, wondering even as the words left his mouth if this was the best way to broach the subject. Matt put the book down, and shook his head.

"Very little," he said softly. "Sometimes, when I think hard, I can remember small things, words and colours. But they seem so faint to feel imagined. Half-forgotten dreams. Nothing feels real to me except for here. I wish I could remember if I had a family, or a home, but it seems to me that all my life I have been sleeping."

He shuddered slightly.

"I wish never to sleep again," he said, reverting to his original language, and then looked up. "Can you help me?"

"Matt, I'm just a linguist. I don't know how I could help," Doug admitted.

"Sometimes they talk about you," Matt said. His green eyes moved back and forth on Doug's face, as though he could read him. "They say that you're part of an organization for... people like me. People who don't belong."

"The X-Men," Doug said with a hint of resignation in his voice. "Matt, I can honestly say that the X-Men were both the best and worst things that happened to me. And maybe that's because it wasn't for me. Look, I was just a kid who was really good at languages. My talent, my... power was never really visible compared to the stuff that people think of mutants doing. Like my friend Kitty; she needed help controlling her powers, she had serious issues with floors and walls. She found it there. She didn't find a normal life. Few people who join the X-Men do."

"I don't even know what normal is," Matt said.

"Well, maybe you want to, before you think about the X-Men as a viable lifestyle choice. It's like high school, only with more superpowers and murder," Doug said. "It's not really a safe environment for someone who's recovering from trauma."

He saw Matt's look, and sighed.

"I know what it is to want to belong, Matt. You can have that here. We can arrange for you to have a life here, for you to go to college and learn the skills you need to contribute to society."

"And what then?"

"Then you can live the rest of your life without even the slightest fear of deciding the world's fate," Doug said. "It's a blessing. Trust me."

Matt nodded softly. Mostly, he seemed convinced, but Doug could see in his shoulders the kind of disappointment that needled and hungered.

Doug spent only a few more days with Matt before he deemed the guy proficient enough in written and spoken Norwegian for his age group. Matt was also good enough to commit a great deal of his native tongue to Doug's database. Doug was pretty much ecstatic; he'd needed a newer, more secure code for encryption for a while, and Matt's language would more than fit the bill.

With Professor Xavier's financial assistance, Doug had arranged for Matt to move out of the hospital, into a small bed and breakfast run by a lovely lesbian couple who were happy to spare the basement room for the amount of money being offered. Matt would also gain employment there, for bed and breakfast had needed an extra hand in the kitchen for some time now. This was a tentative start to the productive life Doug sincerely hoped Matt would get to lead.

They'd set him up with an occupational therapist, to help him compensate for the lifetime he'd lost in his accident.

Matt wasn't ready for Doug to go. It showed in his shoulders and eyes, but he said nothing.

"Here's a couple of numbers for you. That one's my direct line, and that one's to Agent Phil Coulson. If you feel threatened in any way, call Coulson. He'll know what to do," Doug said. "Unless, you know, there's a house fire or something. Then I'm pretty sure you can call emergency services."

"Thank you for your help," Matt said softly.

"No problem. It should be me thanking you. Your language is a true gift," Doug reassured. "Keep in touch, okay? If you need someone to talk to, I'll always be available."

Matt nodded.

"Douglas?"

"Yeah."

"You had a code name, when you were with the X-Men. You had to. What was it?"

Matt's slight obsession with the X-Men had only grown with his newfound access to the Internet. Doug didn't like to humour him too much with old war stories, but he was comfortable with answering harmless questions like these.

"It wasn't a code name so much as a nickname. I wasn't in action enough to really need something like that. But they called me Cypher."

"Cypher."

They talked for a little longer, and then Doug left to catch his train to the airport.