Raven didn't…dislike Frost, exactly, but neither did she like her. The woman didn't make it easy in any case; speak so much as a word to her and she fixed you with a look that all but flayed off your face and skull to pick apart your brain, and was possibly doing it mentally at the same time. She also seemed to have only two moods, self satisfied and quietly grouchy, and it was sometimes hard to tell the difference between them. Hell, it was understandable; she had the dubious honour of being the temporary right hand woman to the man who'd killed her own boss, after all. Also, Raven suspected that Erik had given Frost a much harsher rebuff than he had her, possibly right through a wall - though she was very careful never to think this in the telepath's presence, as years of living with Charles had taught her all the tricks of the trade. She also knew too well that Frost, unlike Charles, would have no problem with manipulating her or causing her pain, so she never picked a fight or spoke to her at all if she could help it, and kept out of her way.
She kept out of Angel's way, too. At the start it was because her former…current team mate's wings had been healing and she hadn't really wanted to be bothered, as she moaned in pain on a bed in whatever hideout they were currently using. Now it was by choice rather than necessity. Hypocrite most definitely, but she just couldn't forget the way Angel had left them, getting poor Darwin killed in the process, however unintentionally. Spoiled and raised at least part of her life in the lap of luxury Raven might be, but she'd chosen to give up luxury and go into danger and uncertainty, while Angel had signed up for wiping out most of the earth's population in the most destructive way possible, just so she could live like a queen. Or all right, not just so, there was that whole 'with us or against us' speech Shaw had made, not to mention the dead bodies scattered all over the place at the time, but the living like a queen thing was still a big part of it. All the different outfits Angel paraded around in all the time, and the things she bought with the money that Raven was able to obtain from Shaw's bank accounts, were the proof of that.
Raven understood why she'd made the choice. In such a situation, if Charles hadn't found her in the kitchen long ago and Shaw had approached her like that, she might well have done the same thing. But there was still enough of Charles in her that she couldn't look Angel in the eye yet, and didn't know if she ever would.
She didn't even know if Riptide spoke English, and didn't really want to find out.
Azazel did speak English, though with a heavy accent. But out of all the people in the world he was definitely the very last one she wanted to talk to, and not because of the trite warnings about those 'Commie bastards' that had filled her childhood and adolescence. He really honestly scared her, not that she'd ever give him the satisfaction of showing it. She'd look at him and remember explosions of red smoke, and the wet crunches as bodies hit the ground from impossible heights, men screaming and squelching as the blades were shoved into them, the way he'd choked that guy and danced him around like a puppet at the same time. She'd close her eyes and see him holding Hank down, preparing to drive that forked tail into her…her friend's eye. She also remembered how she'd fooled him, though, and that made her smile, though again never where he could see.
Erik was just…Erik. He'd talk to the others as Magneto, but when he was certain Frost was gone and the others were settled down the helmet would come off, and they'd sit or lie together in silence. He still hadn't asked to be forgiven for what he'd done to Charles, and she hadn't offered to forgive him; and he hadn't thanked her for coming with him and she hadn't said that she was glad she had. That, without any discussions or decisions, was their punishment. But they'd hold each other, fully clothed on his part, and sometimes she would cry and sometimes, sometimes, she would feel wetness on her forehead, although that might just be sweat and not anything else.
Most of the time, when she wasn't being shown a photo or Frost wasn't projecting an image into her brain or Erik wasn't coaching her in crucial phrases, supplemented occasionally though unwelcomingly by Azazel, We need you to be him, This is where you must go and what you must do, This is how you must sound, Here's how you say it authentically in French/Spanish/German/Russian, or when she wasn't walking into banks and other places and getting hold of all the resources that Shaw had squirreled away all over the planet before the government could declare him legally dead, she would sit still and just look at herself.
A lifetime of hiding herself away couldn't be truly overcome with a few declarations of beauty, and after the elation of Erik's kiss had finally worn off and she'd succeeded in shocking Charles, she been all too quick to put her clothes back on. Now she trained herself to go without them for good, physically and mentally. The mental thing took surprisingly little time – why should human standards, in the end, hold her back? - and she had fond memories of walking in on the others having breakfast that first time. Angel had sworn admiringly. Riptide had choked on whatever he was eating. Azazel had, for once, actually acted surprised. Erik had smiled, for perhaps the first time since the beach.
The physical thing was taking more time because, guess what, there was actually were several good reasons homo sapiens, and now homo superior (something Erik had come up with) wore clothes; one of which was that without clothes, you often got pretty damn cold pretty quickly. As she well remembered, and was now discovering again. It was strangely pleasurable to just sit and explore her body and what it could do, trying to make adjustments not just to her appearance but to her actual, true form. She experimented until she could focus on the individual nature of each skin cell and scale, on the layer of fat beneath her skin, on the processes of her organs. If she'd thought before of how her body reacted to the changes she constantly put it through, she'd merely been scratching the surface.
She didn't realise that she had sat unmoving for an entire day until Erik woke her from the trance of investigation late in the evening. "I was thinking in every cell I have," her voice sluggish from disuse, rippling with the echoes of others before she got it under control. "Not just in my brain. I travelled through my skin and my blood. I camped for a while in my heart. I could change one skin cell and leave all the others unaltered, if I wanted. There's so much, Erik." She'd gotten so much control over her body, but then she lost control of her eyes yet again and tears started.
She quickly got to the stage where she could walk into even a cold room and not feel the chill for a while at least, or stand under the baking hot sun for hours and not raise a sweat, or get burnt. She soon became interested in her bone structure and whether she could alter its density. One time when Frost asked her a question she forgot for a moment how her voice was supposed to sound, and then wondered fleetingly if it mattered. She decided that, for now, it did.
And when she wasn't doing all that, she was missing Charles. Alex too, and Sean. Moira, a bit, though she'd never really gotten to know her that well, the woman was so enthralled with Charles. And Hank. But most of all Charles. She wasn't brave enough to call the mansion, there was too much chance that it would be one of the boys and not him. And she said to Erik only once, just before one of the few arguments began and they didn't speak of it again, "If my spine were damaged, with what I know now perhaps I could heal it. There are people who can read minds and fly, and, and shoot energy out of themselves and teleport and there isn't one fucking person in this whole world who can heal him oh oh god-"
That was the way the first few months went.