It was an unusual mutation. Not altogether… useful, one might say. At least, not for the one possessing such ability.
"It could be used to disorient the enemy. Maybe."
Emma cast Mystique a disdainful glance and Mystique, still a child at heart despite letting her first blood over a year ago, blew the Frost queen an exuberant raspberry. Angel giggled. Riptide smirked. Erik and Azazel were decidedly unimpressed.
Erik cast a sidelong glance at Azazel. At least, he assumed Azazel was unimpressed. Despite working with the man since leaving Cuba, Erik didn't really know him all that well. His face just never seemed to change shape, with either smile or frown.
Sighing, and unequivocally not acknowledging the slight sting of nostalgia Mystique's antics pinged in his heart, Erik pinched the bridge of his nose, put upon comment of, "We don't even know what 'thinning the mind' means, Mystique," going mostly ignored.
It was just as well. Erik was exhausted and hungry. And lonely, snuck through his mind. He quashed it viciously. He and Charles made their decisions on that beach. There was no going back, even if he wanted to.
And he wanted to rarely. Liar, his brain hissed.
Erik jerked to his feet, effectively silencing the not altogether friendly banter happening around him. He glared what Mystique and Angel had termed his Steel Magneto glare, while searching his pockets for cash.
Once found, he tossed it onto the table and growled, "Someone go get Chinese. We'll deal with this latest mutant later."
Emma's drawled, "Sugar," followed Erik out of the room and he cringed. He really hated that woman. As he turned, the thought of, it appears one telepath cannot be traded for another, at least in company, flitted across his mind.
Emma merely arched one of her perfectly plucked, blonde brows, and continued, "What if the X-Kiddies get to her beforehand?"
It felt hot. Erik literally felt heat explode within him and he hissed, eyes narrowed, "When have they ever gotten to a mutant before us? When, where, have we seen them? We haven't even heard word of them. The mansion seems silent, the times we've checked. How, exactly, Ms. Frost, do you expect dead men to beat us to the punch?"
He was slavering, he could feel the hot spittle barely clinging to his lips, could smell it as he breathed like an angry bull.
Mystique shifted in her seat, eyes dropping swiftly to cover her shimmering eyes. The same guilt that festered, ignored, inside of Erik's belly dwelled in her as well, he knew. But not just guilt. Sorrow.
They'd left them to die. They took the only teleporter's hand, and they left them to die. Not even on purpose, he'd whisper to Mystique, behind closed doors.
Everything was fraught that day. Intense emotions and betrayals, desires to be free. Raven took her out, Erik embarked on following his beliefs, and it didn't occur to them that the only plane Charles had was crushed – until two weeks later, when no one was spotted at the mansion.
It was unfair of Emma, picking at that wound, unfair and uncalled for and for a brief, insane moment, Erik eyed her necklace.
"Comrade."
Azazel's voice was firm, soothing. Erik took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let it wash over him. He took another and another, feeling the rage settle just beneath the surface, where it always lived.
Eyes popping open, Erik tried smiling serenely. He could tell it was anything but reassuring but he soldiered on, saying, "I apologize for my outburst. I must be more tired than I thought. Don't bother with getting me anything to eat. I'm just going directly to bed."
He nodded quickly, jerkily, before he turned on his heel and neatly fled the room.
Mystique watched as Emma self-consciously rubbed her neck, and a streak of vindictive satisfaction shot through her. She'd never got on with the woman, hating the way Frost comported herself as superior to the younger women. And how she made cheap shots about Charles and the rest.
They weren't supposed to be enemies, Magneto's and Charles' groups, but Emma sure seemed to want them to be.
Angel rubbed soothing circles on Mystique's shoulder. She glared at Emma and whispered, "That was uncalled for. Look, we fought them – or at least, I did – because Shaw scared me. I didn't enjoy it, but I've always been good at self-preservation. But Charles was kind to me when so many people weren't. He was the first person to tell me I was beautiful not for my body, but for my wings.
You shouldn't talk like that of the dead. If they are." Here, she turned to Mystique and smiled sympathetically. "I still have my doubts. If Charles is anything like Emma, he'd have gotten them off that beach."
Mystique sent a scathing glare at the woman in white and said with a great degree of satisfaction, "He's more powerful than she will ever be. But he was shot in the back, Angel. He was near unconsciousness. And I left him there. What kind of sister does that? Even if you have problems with a sibling, you don't just… leave. Do you?"
Angel opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She looked chagrined, like two halves of her were warring. Mystique waited patiently.
It was a slightly accented Spanish voice that answered. Sympathy laced Janos' tone, but there was a bit of steel underlying it. What he said made Mystique feel like Raven again, curled up in a corner of her room after angering Charles.
"I thought you were just another recruit, when you left. When I learned he was your brother, I could not believe it. I lost a little of my admiration for you, I must say. I have always believed in going one's own way, but never without making sure family was safe first. I am sorry, senorita."
A delicate snort echoed through the room and was quickly followed by the scraping of chair legs across tile. Mystique glanced over at Emma as the woman stood regally, nose held high and proud.
"As heartwarming as this little tête-à-tête is, I think I'd rather be elsewhere." She grabbed the money and turned on her heel. "Don't bother. I know your orders."
The group watched in silence as the odd woman out left the house. Then Angel sniffed.
"I don't know why she's with us if she can't stand us. She certainly doesn't share our ideals."
Azazel broke his peace with a short, "She wants power. She knows Magneto is the way to get it."
Angel squeezed Mystique's shoulder before removing her hand and settling back into the cushions of the dinette set, arms crossed over her chest.
"Why did you leave when you did, Raven? You had to have a reason other than strife."
Mystique threw a half hearted glare at Angel, the only one in the group who refused to allow Mystique to forget where she came from by calling her by her given name when off-mission. It was a strange turnaround from the young woman who'd once left them all in a blink.
Silence surrounded the group as Mystique sat, formulating her answer carefully. She didn't want to cast aspersions on Charles' character, but she had to let them know the truth.
Sighing, and lifting her eyes from there they'd been glued to the table, Mystique looked around at two curious faces and one face that could be either curious or dispassionate. She had yet to learn how to read the red devil.
"He wanted me to hide who I am. I could never have alcohol when we went out for fear of my losing control and shifting. Even behind closed doors, I was always blonde and pink.
I asked him, once, if he'd date me like this, and he said, 'What? Blue?' Then he said he wouldn't date me because I was his sister. He never accepted what I really looked like, never accepted me."
A quick flash back to a little girl and a little boy, the latter staring at Raven's skin in awe, filled Mystique's vision, before fading like all the other good memories nearly have, tucking away in a corner of the mind of a girl who was no more.
"So I left then because I knew if I didn't do it right then, I never would."
Angel made a weird, half strangled sound before quieting. Mystique turned to her and arched a brow.
"Well, it's just you told me a lot about him concentrating like a mad man on his genetics thesis. Maybe he was just trying to clarify? Was he paying full attention to you?"
Raven's ire spiked and Angel must have noticed because she continued quickly, "I'm not saying you're wrong, but maybe… there was miscommunication? The way you talk, it seemed like you two just weren't communicating well in the end."
Raven growled hotly, "How can I misinterpret being told not to show my true self?"
Angel looked like she was going to answer, just as temperamentally, before she seemed to change her mind. She shook her head and shot a look at Mystique uncomfortably like pity, and shifted back into the squabs.
Silence filled the kitchen again, the only sound the tik-tik of the clock mounted above the doorway. Janos moved to scratch his jaw and Azazel's tail flicked like an agitated cat's. Minutes passed before they heard the front door scrick open.
As Emma's footsteps approached the kitchen, Azazel dropped a mysterious bomb that none the less made Mystique itch under her skin for reasons she really couldn't quite grasp.
"You dislike Frost inside of your mind, you and Erik both. You act as if mental privacy is a courtesy you have had all of your life, not as if it is a recent reaction to someone you find untrustworthy. And you repel Emma with ease. She could still get in without much trouble, but I wonder. Who is it that taught you to vacate a telepath from your mind? And why?"
Erik startled when Mystique slithered around his chair and plopped herself onto the edge of his desk. She smirked like the cat that got the cream, but Erik didn't have the heart to glower at her. She was getting good. Her natural form took to stealth like bird to sky and she enjoyed using it immensely.
It was nearly the only thing that made her smile anymore.
He stared at the cats yellow eyes, mouth quirked up in question.
Mystique sighed, and slumped. Her feet swiftly came up to fold under her on the desk in a display of superhuman flexibility. As she settled, she whined, "Why are Angel, Azazel, and Janos all of the sudden so supportive of Charles and the others?"
That name. Erik's shoulders stiffened automatically, his fingers grasped the rests of his armchair. Perhaps a bit harsher than he meant to, but in a bid to inflict the same pain that name pierced into him, Erik bit out, "Respect for the dead?"
When Mystique flinched and looked down, regret swamped Erik like a tidal wave. He sighed and went boneless in his seat.
"I apologize. That was… unnecessary."
Mystique whipped her head up, eyes slits and teeth bared, as she hissed, "Damn right, it was!"
Harried, Erik viciously ran his hands through his hair, ripping out a few strands as he went. A sting, barely, to a man who's been through too much pain already.
"What's this about?"
Mystique shrugged, letting a pout settled on her lips. Attractive lips he'd once kissed. The wrong lips he'd once kissed. Erik heaved a great breath, relaxing minutely as the air deflated him slowly.
"It's not actually quite so sudden, really. Janos questioned whether we were so different from the very beginning. Angel once asked me why we couldn't have become one group. Azazel said he wished he could thank Charles for stopping Shaw from massacring the world.
They're actually pretty decent people when not caving into their fear of a stronger power. Well, then there's Emma."
Mystique guffawed, then slapped her hand over her mouth, eyes wide.
Erik allowed the gentle smile that hadn't seen the light of day since the night before Cuba slip onto his face. "Charles wouldn't want you to stop yourself from being amused on his account, Mystique."
Mystique's demeanor changed drastically and swiftly. Erik gingerly checked his neck for whiplash as she whispered, "He's dead, Erik. The dead crave for nothing."
Erik's fingers dug into his neck, nails biting into the skin. The sting was all that separated him from releasing his power in a fit of grief and rage.
He counted to 10. Breathed deeply, slowly, through his nose. He shuttered those useless emotions, steel sheets falling all around them, boxing them in. He opened his eyes and said, steadily, firmly, implacably, "We'de finally gone eight months without mention of those people. They are no longer with us, and if they were, they would still not be with us. We will never discuss this again."
Steel girded his words and Mystique knew to never argue when Erik used that tone. He watched as she changed, once again, before his eyes, no mutation necessary. Her eyes became hard (Charles would be disappointed), her mouth firmed (Charles would despair), and she hopped onto the ground, the bearing of a soldier (Charles would weep). She nodded once, and left.
If Erik felt an ounce of regret for tearing Charles' little sister down and rebuilding her in Erik's own image, he refused to show it. There was no need to feel shame.