Charles Xavier (Earth-21399)

Early Life
Charles Xavier was born into wealth, the only child of Brian and Sharon Xavier. From an early age, Charles took a vested interest in science – his parents encouraged this, unaware that Charles was secretly motivated by a desire to understand his emerging telepathic powers.

Brian Xavier died in a workplace accident when Charles was eight, and Sharon married his coworker, Kurt Marko, two years later. Kurt took an immediate liking to Charles for his scientific curiosity and gentle demeanor – almost as quickly as Cain, his son from a previous marriage, began to hate Charles for being the object of Kurt's affection.

When Charles was sixteen, his telepathic powers went haywire and he found himself linking his mind with Cain's, experiencing his stepbrother's feelings of loneliness and pain. With this revelation, Cain came to believe that Charles had been using his gift to brainwash their father. Once the link was severed, Cain took up a baseball bat with the intent of killing Charles. However, Kurt intervened at the last minute, overhearing Sharon pleading with Cain, and was accidentally killed by his son. The traumatized Cain was swiftly arrested and imprisoned, swearing revenge on Charles as he was dragged away.

Meeting Erik Lehnsherr
Charles graduated from Harvard University with a degree in biology, gradually gaining more control over his abilities along the way and even falling in love with one of his fellow students, a Scottish doctor named Moira MacTaggert. After completing his doctoral thesis, Charles began traveling the world in search of other people like him. One of his stops was Symkaria, where he and Moira volunteered to provide humanitarian aid during the civil war between the ruling Sablinov family and communist revolutionaries supported by the Soviet Union.

It was during the war that Charles first met Erik Lehnsherr, who worked at a psychiatric hospital treating his fellow Holocaust survivors, and the two became fast friends after Charles discovered through his telepathy that Erik was also a mutant. The two confided their powers to each other and debated the social implications of mutation.

A group of communist-affiliated mercenaries under orders from “Black Tom” Cassidy soon attacked the hospital where Charles and Erik were working. Erik fought off the mercenaries using his powers, allowing Charles and Moira the chance to escape. However, on their way out, Charles and Moira were ambushed by a second group of mercenaries, who took Moira away to their base.

After telepathically locating Black Tom's base, Charles set out on a rescue mission. Erik accompanied him, as the mercenaries had caused the death of his daughter. The two eventually located their target in an old Nazi base storing gold bars. During their rescue mission, Erik had the mercs at his mercy and attempted to execute them, but Charles prevented this with his telepathic powers, noticing that his stepbrother, Cain, was among them. Deciding his and Charles' worldviews were incompatible, Erik promptly left the base, taking the gold with him.

Fleeing Symkaria
Charles and Moira took Cain into their own custody, with Charles promising to help his stepbrother heal their wounds back home. But as the three of them were leaving Black Tom's base, they came under fire from Symkarian military forces, forcing them to flee into a nearby cave system.

While wandering the caves, the three found a vast chamber adorned with ancient writings. During their investigation, Cain noticed a small red stone amid a pile of other rocks and instinctively grabbed it. As he did this, the stone erupted in a flash of red light and transformed Cain into a raging beast who attacked Charles and Moira, collapsing the cave system around them in the process. Charles and Moira managed to escape, although the falling rubble crushed Charles' legs, leaving him unable to walk again. Cain was buried in the cave and presumed dead.