Without warning, Raven came to be.
She sat in a white room. Not so much white as the utter absence of color or shadow. In fact, she didn't think it was a room at all. It was an overwhelming expanse of nothing, a desert of space without beginning or end.
She looked around her and absentmindedly touched her collarbone. She wasn't wearing the blue, textured skin and red hair she was born with, but the smooth white skin and blonde hair she liked to disguise herself in with her mutant powers. Her dress was white as well. It was sleeveless, satin, and came down to her bare ankles, with a chunky silver belt hooked loosely around her waist.
She sat, covered and surrounded by unnatural white, and for some reason was not concerned. She remembered this place. She'd been here before, but when, and why, and how many times?
Her calm shattered when she heard a sound from across the impossible desert.
A newborn's cry. Her newborn.
She rushed towards the sound that echoed from everywhere and nowhere, but she knew exactly where it was. She came to a white bassinet with a sheer lace canopy. From it cried her baby, wailing pitifully.
She picked him up, feeling his weight wiggle in her arms, and a crushing pain squeezed her heart. It was her child, but at the same time it couldn't be. She'd given him up years ago. He'd be a young man by now. She knew her baby's face was there... it had to be there... but as familiar as it was to her she couldn't force herself to see it.
It cried still, like a tiny mewling ghost.
She tried to keep her voice from breaking as she cooed, "It's okay... it's okay... Mommy's right here."
Raven changed, transforming into her natural cobalt blue skin. The precious specter stopped crying and settled into contented gurgles.
She suddenly felt a presence behind her. Two strong hands tenderly grasped her shoulders, pulling her backwards against a firm chest. Something as strong and flexible as a boa constrictor... a tail... coiled slowly around her leg.
"Hello, lisichka," whispered Azazel into her ear, sending a longing chill up her spine.
She turned around to face Azazel, her former lover, the father of her child, as whole and lifelike as if he hadn't died two decades ago. Yet, unlike her baby, he was not a faceless ghost to her. She remembered every detail of him; piercing eyes of robin's egg blue, crimson red skin, thick black hair slicked back to show his widow's peak, the scar across his left eye.
She regretted never asking him how he got that scar. She'd never get to know the truth.
With that thought, she realized that she'd had this same dream over and over, feeling the joy and pain of seeing all that she'd left behind, of those who'd left her behind, and waking to bury the dead and bottle her emotions all over again.
"Why are you here?" she asked.
Azazel looked sadly at the bundle in her arms. "I'm sorry, dragaya, but I must take him."
"Take him where?"
She looked down at her child, but he was gone. She held only the blanket he'd been wrapped in.
When she looked back up, there stood her grown son next to his father.
Kurt Wagner. The name his adoptive mother had given him.
He was a small, lanky young man of nearly 21. Even though his father dwarfed him in size and his skin was dark indigo blue instead of red, they shared an obvious resemblance. Even the spades of their tails were shaped the same.
His face was much too familiar for even her stubborn subconscious to filter out. He glared at her with red-yellow eyes and furrowed tattooed brow, as if her own dream was angry for her conscious intrusion. His tail lashed angrily behind him and he bared his razor sharp teeth in a growl.
Raven decided to take charge of the situation.
"Kurt," she said, addressing her son authoritatively, "you're not going anywhere."
"I'm truly sorry," said Azazel, ignoring her, and he placed a hand on Kurt's shoulder.
Dread seized the back of her neck. She didn't know what she had to save him from, but she knew with the certainty of nightmares that if she didn't, she would never see him again.
She ran towards them, but her legs felt agonizingly slow, like they were churning through wet cement. Azazel teleported Kurt with a puff of smoke.
Instead of disappearing to another location like they would have in real life, Azazel and Kurt appeared in another plane of existence that opened up directly behind them; another dimension exactly like the one they were in before. They teleported again and again, opening another dimension each time and leaving an expanding hallway of mirrored universes in front of them.
Raven reached out to them hopelessly. She struggled to make her legs move faster, screaming as Azazel and Kurt teleported exponentially farther from her reach.
The scream, however, was not her own.
Author's note: I will try to update every Friday, or at least every weekend. Also check out my tumblr (pantiaraevokovitch, blog is called Ventilator Literature). The story will be there, too, plus poems and things, plus if I ever get any followers there I might start doing those reader x character fics I've seen... tumblr is new territory for me so I'm sorry if I sound like an old woman. Thanks for reading!
