I.
There was a sound like distant thunder, but very close – almost right beside Raven.
She lifted her head from her pillow and looked around sharply. When she saw the boy standing there she sat up very quickly, scooting across the mattress until her back came up against the wall. That hurt – there were bruises back there, he had hit her – but she was used to hurting, and at the moment the pain didn't seem all that important.
Strangely, she felt less afraid than she thought she ought to be. Not very surprised, either, that the boy was somehow here.
He was lanky, thin but in a way that denoted strength. Raven had an instinct for how bodies were put together, and she could tell at a glance that those economical, tightly-coiled muscles would be very, very strong. His hands and feet were very big, and that reminded her of a large-breed puppy whose body hadn't quite grown to fit its paws yet.
And he was red. Really and actually bright red in the same way that she was really and actually blue.
Maybe that was part of the reason why he didn't scare her very much, though there was such an air of menace to him – of danger curled just below the surface, ready to spring.
The boy was watching her while she watched him, studying her with that one unbandaged, icy blue eye. He cocked his head to the side and asked, "Girl, why are you crying?" His English was heavily-accented, and though she might have mimicked his voice exactly she did not know enough of the world to judge where he had come from by that accent.
"I'm not," she said, swiping ruthlessly at her eyes to dry them. "I never was crying."
Raven glared at him as fiercely as she could and the boy shrugged, seeming to accept her words. He sat down on the edge of the bed, draping his hands bonelessly over the sharp angles of his knees. Raven drew her own legs in suspiciously, knees against bellybutton, taking up the smallest possible space.
"I'm Raven..." she said tentatively.
He looked over at her, eyebrow cocked. "Azazel."
She grinned at that, a wide and toothy grin. "That's a strange kinda name."
Azazel puffed out his narrow chest. "I am 'strange' kind of person," he said gravely.
"Yeah," Raven said. She scooted across the bed until she was sitting beside him. "Me too."
"There is word for us," Azazel said, as pleased as if he had coined it himself, rather than simply reading it in the journal. "There is word that I am only learning today." He paused for dramatic effect and said, "'Mutant.'
"Where I am coming from, there is no such word... only code word, and he is changing every weeks. But Mutant. Is very good, yes?"
Raven nodded uncertainly. She wasn't sure that she actually liked the sound of the word... but it was much nicer than some of the names her father had used for her.
Azazel's tail was swaying carefully between them, and Raven stared at it. The tip looked very sharp.
She concentrated for a moment, and then a second tail snaked out from behind her to wave slowly next to Azazel's. It was exactly the same shape as his own, but slightly smaller and blue instead of red.
Azazel gave a bark of surprised laughter, and Raven raised one finger to her own lips, shushing him. "He'll wake up!" she whispered, a note of panic in her voice.
Azazel frowned, cocked his head to the side as though listening. He was quiet for a long moment, but then he seemed to dismiss threat in favor of returning to the topic at hand, though now he kept his voice low. "But you have tail!" he said.
"Not most of the time..." she said. She had never had a chance to explain herself to someone else before, and she found herself suddenly flummoxed as to how to do it. "I just... decided to have one right now. That's what I can do – I copy people. I can... I can look like anyone I want to. For a little while... makes me tired to do it too much."
Azazel was nodding emphatically. "It is the same from me. When I..." he trailed off, frowning, apparently hunting for a word. He snapped his fingers. "When I move," he said at last, in obvious concession to a limited vocabulary.
"Move?" Raven repeated uncertainly. It took a long time for Azazel to find a way to explain his ability in a manner that she could understand, but once she did her expression turned wistful. "Wish I could do something like that... I'd just go as far away as I could."
Azazel opened his mouth to respond, but then something caught his eye. Raven realized almost at the same instant what it was that he had seen, and tried to hide her arm behind her back. But he reached out and caught her by the wrist, just above the crescent-shaped gouges that marked her forearm. His grip was not painful but it was unrelenting, and he drew her arm closer to his face, studying the cuts.
The bruises, of which there were many, didn't show much against the blue of her skin – but the marks where her father's fingernails had dug into her skin hard enough to draw blood were very visible.
Azazel let go of her arm. "He is father of you?" he asked, and now there was something very, very dangerous in his voice. His hand crept down to the side of his hip to touch the hilt of the long knife – A sword? Raven wondered with astonishment – that was sheathed there. She hadn't noticed the weapon before.
"Don't!" she said. "Please don't hurt him, okay?"
He growled at that, but his hand came away from the blade unwillingly. Azazel crossed his arms over his chest. "You want to leave from here?" he asked.
"Yes," Raven answered, without the slightest hesitation. As soon as she had said the word she realized how desperately she really wanted it. "I want... I wanna go with you. Can I? Please?"
Azazel got to his feet in one smooth, fluid motion, like a cat rising from a nap. "Then we will go," he said.
II.
The door to Raven's room was locked, but after all that wasn't a difficult problem to resolve; Azazel simply teleported to the other side of the door and opened it for her.
Azazel had a sort of horror of locked doors – the idea of having one's freedom of movement curtailed in that way, of being trapped, was something that he could only imagine, but the simple thought of it was enough to leave him in a cold sweat. He did not understand how anyone could live under such conditions, but the fact that Raven had been forced to only multiplied his anger against her father.
That rage, black and murderous, was something that he was trying with a great deal of difficulty to keep in check, though only for the sake of the girl. Had things been up to him he would have gone downstairs and cut the old man's throat.
But she did not want that, so instead they had simply resolved to leave.
"Back to the house of Xavier – that is where we will go," he had told Raven.
Raven worried at her lower lip. "But what if he doesn't want us?"
"He will," Azazel said, with more confidence than he perhaps felt. But he quoted the journal from memory to prove his point: "'I cannot believe that I am the only one. There must be others like me – other Mutants. I need only to find them.' He is waiting for us."
"But what if he's mad at me – because I broke in?" she insisted, miserably. "Or what if – what if he's ascared of us, Azazel? He doesn't look like us... he's all normal looking, he might –"
"Then I will think of somewhere else," he said, more gruff than he meant to be. The truth was that he was still reeling badly from the events of only a few days before, when his entire life had been blown out from under him. He felt overwhelmed, in much too far over his head. He needed help, he felt, almost as badly as the girl did.
At the moment, he was pinning his hopes on the belief that the Xavier boy might provide it. He did not know how to proceed otherwise.
But he saw that his tone had frightened her, which he had in no way intended to do. "You mustn't worry," he said, as much to reassure himself as Raven. "I will look after you. No one will hurt you as long as I'm here – I promise this."
And there was so much hope in those yellow eyes, such a desperation to believe what he had said, that Azazel resolved to live up to that promise or else die in the effort.
III.
Raven led the way down the stairs and toward the front door.
Azazel had tried to go first, but she had told him, "I know the way," and had gone ahead before he could argue.
He was half a step behind her, a guardian shadow, but she winced at the way his heavy boots made the floorboards creak. She herself moved in almost complete silence on small bare feet.
They came to the front hall. The front door was at the other end of the hall, and between them and it, the entrance to the living room. Through that open doorway, she could hear her father snoring.
She stared down the hall, looking at the triple-locked front door with sudden, desperate horror. "I forgot," she hissed in anguish.
"What?" Azazel asked her.
His voice was loud, and she whipped around and reached up to put her hand over his lips. She shook her head violently.
He had that knife, and Raven believed that he knew how to use it – there was dried blood on the blade – but she just didn't think Azazel really understood how dangerous and unpredictable her father was.
Azazel had told her a lot about his life at the childrens' home, and though things there had been run in a very strict way, Raven did not get the sense that Azazel had felt as though he had been mistreated there. In fact, before very long it had come to her that he wasn't at all afraid of the adults in his life... an idea which she had barely been able to wrap her mind around.
He had been in training to become an assassin – one word which Raven hadn't known, the meaning of which he had explained to her in very blunt terms and without any sense of shame. And though this struck her as a very frightening course of study, the casual violence that had marked her own life – the confusing accusations, the impossible demands, the inexplicable cuffs and kicks – seemed to be entirely absent from his own.
If Azazel had known hungry days, it was not as a punishment but simply because there was no food for anyone. If he had suffered bruises it was only in the course of a training regimen that was meant to make him stronger rather than to keep him small and scared.
He seemed entirely without fear, and if her assessment in that was not entirely accurate, it was nonetheless true that Azazel was not taking the threat that her father represented at all seriously.
And that was, she knew only too well, dangerous.
She looked back at the door.
It was locked. She had forgotten that somehow.
It was locked and it was locked tight and she didn't know where her father had hidden her lock picks.
Raven turned back and looked at Azazel.
"Stay here," she told him.
IV.
Her father was lying on the couch, an open newspaper resting over his face like a tent.
Raven could see the keys dangling from one of his belt loops, hanging from the same hip on which he still wore the gun.
He always had that gun. She was just starting to wonder if it was because of her.
She stood in the doorway for as long as she dared, wanting to be sure – to be absolutely sure – that he was really asleep.
But she didn't know how long Azazel would wait out in the hall for her. What if he decided to follow, and came in here clomping on the floor with those big boots, and woke her father up? Or, an even worse thought – what if he got tired of waiting, and left without her?
And one more thing – the longer she waited, the greater the chance that he might just wake up on his own. Raven didn't want to find out what would happen if he did that and found her out of her room without permission.
She moved forward with a sudden decisiveness that was fed on panic, and bent over to unclip the keyring.
The newspaper crackled like thunder as her father reared up like a vengeful god and caught her by the wrist. The keys slipped from her hand and skidded across the floor.
He yanked her closer to him, pulling on her arm, drawing her up onto her tiptoes. "Just what do you think you're doing?" he demanded, his voice soft and dangerous.
His grip on her wrist was hard. It was hurting her. "Please," she said. "Daddy, please – I just want to go away. Please just let me go away so nothing bad happens."
The grip became much tighter. She could feel the bones in her hand grinding against one another. "Are you threatening me?" he asked.
Raven jerked backwards, trying to pull away from him. It was the first time in her young life that she had really thought to actively resist him, and to her astonishment she found that it was almost ludicrously easy for her to break his grip and come away free.
Her father, too, looked dumbfounded... but only for a moment. Then his eyes narrowed and he lurched to his feet, reaching out for her.
Behind her, Azazel spoke from the door. "Get away from her," he said.
V.
Azazel knew what he looked like. He understood that his appearance was frightening to vulgar and superstitious minds.
Now he meant to use that to his own advantage.
He moved to intimidate – to terrorize – stepping into the room with his head jutting forward and held low on his neck, glaring with pale eyes out from under his heavy brow, lips curled maliciously. His knife was in his hand and he held it at such an angle that the light reflected off the blade.
"The hell are you?" the man demanded.
Raven had not taken her eyes off her father. Her back was to Azazel, and she seemed somehow frozen. "Raven, come here," he said.
It had not yet come down to killing or being killed, though if not for the girl's objections Azazel would not have hesitated to make an end of the man who had hurt her. At that point, they might all still have walked away.
Then the man reached out and pulled Raven to him, pressing her against his chest and locking his elbow across her throat. His other hand drew the gun.
"Have it your way," Azazel growled lowly in Russian, for his own satisfaction, shifting the blade in his hand. Then he teleported.
Azazel appeared a few feet behind the man – his aim was not as good in those days as it would become – and charged at his back.
The man was quickly, though – astonishingly quick. He whirled around, using Raven like a shield, putting her between himself and Azazel's blade.
There was not enough time for Azazel to teleport, nor could he halt his own forward momentum. He veered to the side instead, diverting his course, and the man turned with him and lashed out with his leg, delivering a vicious kick to Azazel's ribs.
He hit the ground shoulder-first and slid across the floor. Raven's father turned the gun toward him and squeezed off two rounds, but Azazel wasn't there anymore.
Azazel was standing at the man's side, and the blade was against his throat. "Drop gun," he said. He pressed the knife against the bare skin of the man's throat, letting him feel the bite of it. "Drop girl."
Raven's father raised the gun in one smooth movement and rested the barrel against her temple. "I'll do it," he promised, and Azazel looked into the man's eyes and saw that it was true; there was nothing there that cared for the girl or her fate. "Drop the knife and back off."
There was a coppery taste inside Azazel's mouth.
He took a step back.
The sword dropped through the empty air and clattered to the ground.
Azazel was gone.
VI.
When Raven felt the barrel of the gun settle against the side of her head she had gone all icy inside. She froze, in her body and her mind and her heart.
And when her father finally lowered the gun, the first two thawed out but her heart stayed cold.
There was no doubting the way things were after something like that happened. There was no pretending that he loved her.
His arm was still across her throat. Raven shifted quickly, twisting her jaws up like those of a hyena she'd seen in a picture once, and bit him as hard as she could.
The pistol came up again, striking her against the side of the head, and then there wasn't anything but darkness.
