[Charles almost wishes they had the buffer of something like a drink or a chess game (or both) while having this conversation. It made it easier to talk about serious things when you could pass it off as being casual statements and observations and questions instead of wandering into very personal territory for both parties.

And he doesn't really talk about his life before Oxford. It wasn't that it was particularly traumatic or awful, but he knows he didn't really have the best childhood possible growing up, and he prefers not to spend too much time thinking about that part of his past. It's behind him, and he'd honestly never considered moving back to Westchester until they'd needed somewhere to go after the attack on the CIA facility.

He hasn't even really talked about it to Erik, although part of that is more because he feels uncomfortable complaining about his childhood when he grew up comfortably, with a living-if-distant and not quite affectionate mother and a sister, while Erik was alone and hurting and had to fight for everything that came to him.]

My mother was the same way. [His father, less so, but he'd died when he was young and Charles couldn't really remember if it was something he'd impressed on him too much.]

Although I suppose it's a bit different when everyone expects you to eventually inherit the family business. I was just expected to be polite and generally seen but not heard.