This is a piece I have made for my Tumblr account, mystique-exclusive. tumblr . Please visit all Mystique fans.
Raven Darkholme, sister and mother, villain and sometimes...hero. She felt like she never fitted in, that she was always going to be left out because she was different. Never belonging. She felt like she was never special like so many told her, she felt like a freak.
That's why she took different shapes because for a while, even for a short while, she felt like that she was someone else. But not anymore, with the cure came the cold harsh truth that she was human but also, that she was unloved by so many. She used to be able to shift into someone who had a family or was loved or was at least not hated as much as her. But she couldn't anymore, she was alone.
Fully alone.
Erik said he loved her and that's what kept her alive during those dark years after Kurt went missing and Azazel with him. But she could see in his eyes when he left her naked and alone that he only put up with her. It wasn't love. It was convenience for him to replace the body guard that vanished and his allies that died. Because she couldn't die. Not really….not physically anyway.
Raven had no one, not a soul, that would trust her with their life. Even her own children hated her with a passion, a passion that raged like a fire with them that often she felt like she would burn from their stares. Her brother, although death had claimed him, would hate her for what he did to her.
She killed him.
Raven always watched, never interacted with beings except for the day she met Charles Xavier, he was a kind soul and that was evident in almost everything he did, he wanted the best for everyone but mostly...for her. His death was not because of Jean Grey, no, because she wasn't there. That day she left him she saw in his eyes that she would take a part of him with her and never again would he be able to remake that part of him. That love and trust. He would hold people at arms length, maybe trusting, maybe…but never for the way he did for her. His sister, not his blood but in love. His unconditional need to help others was never quenched, it never was, but somehow it expanded and made him reckless, made him try to help every living soul on the face of the earth and put himself at risk. Maybe if he saw Jean for what she was, a bomb, he would have left then and still be alive.
But he wasn't. It was her fault.
Raven had dealt with that guilt when she was told so harshly by government agents that Charles, who she asked to call for the first time in years, was not going to answer because he was dead. She didn't let them see her cry but when she got to her government provided home she couldn't stop. Then when she fell into fitful sleep she dreamed of dying, of making it as painful as possible but then the reward at the end of the light made it all worth while. Then she woke again and wished to be dead again, just to see his face again. Not all her dreams were as beautiful, sometimes she dreamed of his death, of him on the beach, of his face and it yelled at her with all of the people she loved but hated her.
The best dreams were when she was dead and she could be with him again.
She took a razor to her wrist that day. The day of Charles' funeral. And she felt alive as she saw his face beyond the light, she reached for him, blood dripping down her arms and onto the floor, but she didn't care. She could see his face, his beautiful young face, his gorgeous smile, the lack of wheelchair. That part of himself that she stole years ago.
It made her happy for the first time in a long time. She was no longer Mystique, master assassin, warrior, solider, she was just Raven who was returning home for the first time in 50 years.
6 months later
Rogue and her newly founded brother Kurt walked the gardens of the Xavier estate, a cold chill making them hug their coats closer to themselves, their boots leaving footprints behind in the snow as they approached their destination. They stopped and stared for what felt like an eternity at the graves of Jean Grey, Scott Summers, Charles Xavier and Raven Darkholme. Kurt reached out and grasped for his sisters hand. Kurt sniffed and flicked away a tear from his furred face and Rogue squeezed his hand in comfort but stared at the grave at her first mother.
Raven Darkholme lay buried next to her brother, the one of very few wishes that Charles had written in his will, that he and his sister shall be once again in death. Rogue couldn't be helped be reminded of her and Kurt's almost similar story, he the biological son and her the troubled child adopted. Not joined by blood but by love. Rogue did not cry like her brother but instead placed a single white rose the color of her hair on the grave, almost invisible in the white snow.
"Raven, we love you. You might have wronged us but you will always hold a special place in our hearts." Kurt whispered to the headstone which held nothing but her name and the words she whispered to her children.
Mutant and Proud.