And now I am home
-x-
The first time she went to see him again was right after everything had settled down from the Cuba incident. She had disguised herself as a gardener just in case, but she wasn't aiming to be seen at all. She just wanted to check in and make sure he was doing alright after having his legs taken away.
Knowing the best hiding spots around the mansion came easily enough thanks to firsthand experience. She was able to duck behind a hedge near the edge of the property, her approach silent. Across the field, she could see him rolling along next to Moira down the driveway towards her car. They were chatting and came to a stop near the fountain. Raven couldn't help the small twinge of jealousy that curled in her throat. It had become second nature since meeting the other woman, though she knew at this point she had no right to feel jealous. She had left him willingly. And besides…it wasn't like there was any competition in the first place.
Raven let out a small sigh, the leaves in front of her face ruffling slightly. Neither person across the way could hear her, she was too far away, but she still didn't want to give them any chance of discovering her.
She continued to watch them, unable to move away. Even from this distance she could see that, while he was now in a wheelchair, he looked healthy, and for that she was glad. However, her eyes could still pick up the slump in his shoulders, as though a heavy weight had now been placed there. It made her remember back when he had been immersed in his schoolwork, all the stress he had dealt with, how he would sit hunched over his desk as he poured through his texts and wrote paper after paper. Somehow this felt worse. Moira didn't seem to notice, and Raven supposed that to the untrained eye Charles looked perfectly fine. But she was not fooled. She grew up with him, she had been by his side every day since they had met. She knew Charles better than anyone, including Moira MacTaggert. She was his oldest friend, and she used to be the only one.
But not anymore.
Leaves crumpled under her fist as she restrained herself. She needed to calm her thoughts, otherwise he'd pick up on them and realize she was there. She focused back on what they were doing.
Moira was leaning down to his level, her hands on either side of his chair. Her face was so close to his and Raven squashed the longing in her chest to be in her place. Charles leaned forward, his fingers gently urging her closer as he placed his lips on hers.
Raven almost looked away, as that was the last thing she wanted to see. She had always been used to his extensive love life, and the long list of women he'd entertained, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt every time. However, this time she didn't turn away. Before she could even move a muscle she noticed his other hand reach up to his own temple.
Oh.
Raven knew what he was up to and waited. After Moira had left, her memory of the mansion's location wiped, Raven continued to stay until Charles returned inside. When the door shut behind him, she finally decided it was time to go.
And without a trace, she was gone.
-x-
It was out of curiosity and boredom that she found herself back there. It had been a couple of years since she had last seen the mansion, last seen him. During that time she had been busy - discovering more and more mutants, freeing them, and helping them, all while standing beside Erik. She would have liked to say that she was completely happy, but that would have been a lie. As much as she agreed with him on how mutants should be received by society, there were just some things she couldn't accept about his way of getting there. He was ruthless, his point of view hardened by his difficult past. He was almost fanatical in his dealings with people, to the point where even her morals were challenged. While she didn't necessarily agree with Charles's stand on being docile and discreet, she sometimes thought it was better than Erik's brutal method of showing just how superior mutants were to the 'homo sapiens'. Sometimes - just sometimes - she could see the ideals of Shaw reflected through his decisions, and those were the moments that frightened her the most. Those were the moments she questioned herself and whether or not she had made the right choice.
That was also when she missed Charles the most, despite her best efforts to the contrary. It was after a particular grueling mission that she found herself back in New York and, with some downtime on her hands, she decided to pay him a careful visit, just to see how he was doing. She'd be in and out and he'd never know. Just a glimpse and she'd leave, she told herself.
But that was before she glanced through the window and saw him. Shock reverberated through every part of her body and agony followed right after.
He was a broken mess. The boy she knew, the man he had become, was nothing more than an empty shell now. She had seen the fallen sign on the way in, she had seen the overgrown lawn and the decay of the grounds, but she hadn't thought…she had never expected it to extend to him.
He lay on his bed, asleep in a tangle of sheets around his body. She could not see his chair anywhere in the room, but she could see a syringe and rubber band on top of the dresser next to him. Her gut caved in, the feeling of being sucker punched was prominent. How could he? How had he fallen this far?
Her palm flattened against the glass, the urge to go in so strong at this point it was a wonder she didn't just fall through the barrier between them. He began to stir and she froze, the urge melting into one to flee. But her legs wouldn't move, and she held her breath as she waited to see if he would see her.
But he didn't wake; he merely turned over in his sleep and was now facing her. She exhaled the breath she'd been holding at the sight of him.
He looked so tired. His hair was longer than it had been the last time, and he now had a light beard coating the lower half of his face, though that didn't disguise the gauntness of his cheeks, nor the dark circles beneath his eyes. His skin was still slick with a light sheen of sweat and his clothes looked like they hadn't been washed in days. Even in sleep his brow was furrowed and his expression troubled. He looked exhausted and she felt the sharpest tug in her chest as she looked upon her oldest friend and what he had become.
It got to the point where she couldn't look at him for another second, her heart feeling like it'd been run over with every moment she stayed there. Instead she wrenched her gaze away, landing on something near the doorway.
It was a photograph.
It was of her.
A gasp tore from her throat and she was ready to force her way inside when the sound of footsteps coming from around the corner of the house caught her off guard. She immediately transformed into that of a gardener she remembered from their childhood, hoping it would suffice in fooling whoever it was.
It was Hank.
"Excuse me? Can I help you?" he asked, his posture and voice rightfully apprehensive. She was glad that he was so protective of Charles like this, glad that someone was still taking care of him, though remembering how Charles looked she wondered if Hank was doing such a great job.
By this time she had moved away from the window, as though she'd never been near it in the first place, so it wouldn't look even more suspicious.
"Yes, I'm looking for the owner of the house. I'm here to offer my services for lawn care." Her foreign hand gestured to the landscape, "It looks like you need it, sir."
Hank's expression never strayed from its hard line. "No thank you, sir. We're fine. Now, if you'd please leave the property - you're trespassing."
Raven nodded, keeping her head down, "Of course, sir. I didn't mean to offend." And without a glance back at the window, she walked away from Charles again. She couldn't even try to look at him without tipping Hank off, who watched her like a hawk, but even still she'd never forget how he looked, wasting away in the house that they'd grown up in.
It wasn't until she made it back out onto the road and into her car that she'd hidden that she realized she'd been crying. She wiped her eyes and started the ignition, swearing to herself that she wouldn't come back here again, not if she could help it.
She just couldn't take seeing him like that again.
-x-
The third time was years later, almost fifty by her count. They'd been through so much by that point, though their relationship had never been repaired. Her and Erik still stood at the opposite side of Charles in the spectrum of things, and she had made a point to distance herself as much as she could over the years. It had worked. And during that time she had buried her love and her memories of him, squashing any type of affection she felt or anything that would cause her to miss him. She tore out that part of her life and built one of stone and anger. She became a soldier, and now here she was - battle weary and alone. Her mutation was gone and Erik with it. He dropped her like a stone as soon as it had been taken from her, despite the fact that she had protected him from the cure. She hated herself for believing he might have stayed, considering everything they'd been through together, though she still wasn't surprised. She had nowhere else to go, and for only a moment did she wonder if Charles would accept her back into his home before dismissing the thought. There was too much bad blood and she couldn't make herself crawl back after all these years.
But that didn't matter now - nothing did anymore. It was a little after the Alcatraz incident when she found out what had happened, and by then it was too late to even crawl back.
Now, she stood at his gravestone.
It was intimidating and cold, so unlike the man it memorialized. His profile was etched into the marble over his name, his expression serious and so drawn and she wished, not for the first time, that she could see his smile again. As the first tear fell, she felt the many years that were wasted begin to crush her.
She was truly alone now, she realized as she dropped to her knees. So much time gone, so much that should have been done, and now…nothing. She had nothing. She was no longer a mutant and she no longer belonged anywhere. She was right back where she started.
And the boy who had saved her the first time was dead and gone. Her heart felt like it was being ripped to shreds and she continued to allow herself to cry, knowing she couldn't stop now even if she wanted to. This was the first time she had cried in years, never letting her emotions show, always being the soldier Erik needed, that the mission needed.
But she wasn't a soldier anymore.
She wasn't even Mystique anymore.
She was just Raven.
But she didn't have her Charles anymore. In her lifetime, she had been tortured, she had been on the brink of death, she had been used, she had been lied to, and she had been abandoned by the people who claimed to love her, but this…this was worse than any of that.
Because Charles had never left her. It was she who had turned her back on him, and now she could never take it back, she could never make things right.
"Excuse me?"
Raven jerked to standing position, roughly swiping at her eyes to hide the evidence of her sorrow from the stranger.
But it wasn't a stranger, or at least the person wasn't unfamiliar.
It was one of his students - the girl who could walk through walls, the shadowcat.
The girl hesitated, obviously not recognizing her because she would have contacted one of the senior X-Men by now if she did, but still wary of the 'stranger'. Raven was impressed by the girl's cautiousness but amused nonetheless that she was unrecognizable anymore by her human form. Had it been that long since she'd worn this disguise? Though it wasn't even a disguise anymore, just who she really was. She withheld a sigh and waited for the girl to speak.
Before she even opened her mouth, the girl glanced over at the grave Raven stood in front of, realization dawning on her young face. She studied Raven's face sympathetically.
"He was a great man, wasn't he?"
The corner of her mouth twitched as a bitter smile tried to make itself known. Of course he was a great man, but he was always more than that. He used to be her everything.
"Yes," she answered finally. "He was."
"Did you know him?"
Raven swallowed the lump in her throat. Memories she had suppressed long ago flooded through her mind now, and she clenched her jaw as sadness overtook her once more.
"Yes. I did."
The shadowcat looked at her curiously, but Raven ignored her as she turned around and began to leave.
"W-wait!" the girl called after her. "How-?"
"I only wanted to see his grave," Raven cut her off. "I just wanted to see it and say my goodbyes; I was never going to stay long."
The shadowcat stayed silent and Raven continued walking. She was not interrupted again and she did not look back once.
But the image of his tombstone would be forever ingrained at the forefront of her mind and she would never be able to forget.
Charles Xavier, her best friend, was dead, and now the world seemed a little less brighter.
-x-
When she went back to the mansion the fourth time in fifty years, it was because she couldn't believe it and she had to see for herself.
He was alive. Charles was alive.
She had no idea how he had managed that, but she wanted to confirm it as reality; no matter what she had to do, she had to see him. She just needed to see him and then she'd leave - that was what she repeated over and over in her head like a mantra.
It was Erik who had informed her of Charles's revival. It was a couple of weeks after her mutation had returned and she had been out for a walk when she caught sight of him in the park. He was sitting at one of the benches, playing chess. She had wanted to confront him, maybe even hurt him, but ended up joining him for a game instead. It was after she beat him that he had told her about Charles. She didn't believe him at first, thinking he was just being cruel, which she would never put beneath him, especially since she had been mocking him during the game for being cured, but he had promised he was telling the truth.
So she set out to confirm it.
She snuck into the mansion as a teenager, with no one the wiser. She blended with the masses and easily made her way to his office. Before reaching the door, which she knew was open, she transformed into the shadowcat, knowing the girl was probably close to him and wouldn't be questioned for her presence.
She stepped forward into the doorway and felt her breath catch.
It was him. It was really him.
Since he was sitting in his wheelchair, face turned from her as he gazed out the window, she took the time to take him in. It still amazed her how much he had changed over the years: his dark head of hair completely gone, his skin older and with more wrinkles than she remembered and he seemed so much more weary after all these years . But some things were the same. He still wore those classy suits. He still had that warm smile and bright piercing blue eyes. He still held that unshakable hope.
He was still her Charles.
She began to step back from the room, satisfied with seeing him for just a moment, but his voice caused her to halt in her tracks.
"Kitty? What can I help you with, my dear?"
His voice wafted over her and she couldn't help the warmth that filled her. She quickly remembered the girl's voice and answered.
"Oh, it's fine- nothing that can't wait until later, Professor." She smiled before trying to leave again.
"Raven."
Her entire body froze, a cold trickle of fear at finally being caught went down her spine. She didn't turn around.
"Raven, I know it's you."
She still didn't respond, frozen with confusion and anxiety, unsure if she was really welcome.
"Please, look at me." His voice was tinged with desperation, with hope. She made her decision to move. Closing her eyes, she began to rotate, her skin rippling to where, when she finally faced him, she was in her natural form.
She glanced over at him, nervous to his reaction. It had been so long since she had seen him, face to face. So many things unsaid, ruined, during that time. What if he hated her? Could things really be fixed? She doubted it, somehow.
But then he smiled at her. He looked so relieved and happy to see her, so much that she had to lower her eyes.
"I-I just wanted to see you. To see if it was true," she finally spoke.
"Will you stay?"
Her eyes flickered up again, unbidden hope swelling in her chest. He was still beaming over at her, his eyes almost glowing with happiness. She almost knew the answer already, but she had to ask.
"Do you want me to?"
His face softened, "I've always wanted you to, Raven. To be honest, I've been waiting years for you to come back."
She hesitated, not willing to believe that everything could be fine so easily and so quickly.
"You've always had a home here, Raven." He sighed wistfully, his gaze traveling all over her face, "Oh, how I've missed you, love."
Something clicked for her then, and she felt a smile spread across her lips as warmth seeped into her bones. For the first time in a long while she felt so happy. The world looked so much brighter.
And she had her Charles back.
-x-
So I had this idea randomly pop into my head this morning and spent the entire day writing it. I hope you guys liked it. I really wanted to write Raven visiting his grave after he died in X3, but instead of making her 'emotionless soldier that worked for Erik blindly' Raven, I wanted to infuse her with XMFC/DOFP Raven. I hope I wrote her IC, but remember, it's kind of a blend and how I kinda see her acting. Idk, regardless, I hope it's good and ya'll enjoyed it.