update, 1/12/2016, explained in the A/N of Chapter 8 of Prometheus: Arya, originally from Carlsbad, California, is now from Glen Island, New Rochelle, NY.

Chapter 4

Even before back-up came, Arya was positive that everyone—or maybe most of the people—in the facility were already dead. And why wouldn't she think that? Everywhere around her and her remaining group of friends, there were bodies; bodies unmoving, bodies crushed beneath huge chunks of rubble, bodies drowning in little pools of blood.

Darwin's dead. Why not think everyone else was dead too?

The whole team was mourning him. He had been a great guy. Arya hadn't even been able to spend an entire day with him, and yet she knew that he would never have given up on them. He would have been with them if they won the war, or even if they lost. He wouldn't have left them.

And that was why Arya wanted to defeat Shaw.

She wanted to defeat him in the way because he stole Angel away from them; because he killed Darwin, their friend; because he went against every good Charles and Erik were trying to accomplish; because he was corrupting mutants. He was feeding them lies, telling them things would get better if they did this or if they did that. Would things really get better? Would the world really become a better place if they started World War 3?

The answer was obvious, and yet Arya couldn't get herself to wrap her mind around the fact that mutants, her kind, were being so stupid. Did they really believe Shaw? Arya wanted to know, because if they did, she would make it the point of her life to get them to change their mind. But then, supposedly, that's what they were doing, right? They were trying to stop them, stop Shaw. The downside was that they had to do it by force, brute strength. They had to hurt them.

Arya didn't want to hurt anybody. All her life, that's what she'd been trying not to do. And now she was back in the fray, in the battlefield, a gun practically being kicked over to her by the enemy.

Her thoughts had taken a dangerous turn, and she was thankful that Raven startled her out of her reverie.

"Hey," she said, putting her hand on Arya's leg. They were sitting on the cement benches just outside of the facility. To their right, there were Alex and Sean—the first looking very dejected while the latter was asleep—and to their left, there was Hank. He hadn't said a word that day, not even before the attack.

"You okay?" Raven asked, pulling Arya out of her thoughts once more.

Arya shook her head, frowning deeply. "Not really."

"Yeah, well…" the blonde clasped her hands in front of her, twiddling her thumbs as she stared down at them, her face contorted into a frown. "Aren't we all."

Silence passed over them once again and Arya decided that she had to keep herself busy, or, at least, distracted. And as she saw nothing else she could do, she stood up and started pacing.

During her time walking around, the supposed back-up came and started cleaning up, some of the bigger ones with guns and muscles making their way back into the building. After all, maybe some had survived. Arya let them pass her by. They were waiting for Charles and Erik, not for the back-up.

She walked around piles of rubble, sometimes kicking small pieces if her mind was being considerably tricky.

Whenever she passed a dead body, she would grimace and walk up to it, kneeling down to look at the nameplate before standing up and walking again. She'd repeat the names over and over again in her head, and it worked, for a while. Eventually, though, one of her teammates finally noticed the lack of meaning to what she was doing. In this case, it was Sean who noticed, and he was supposed to be asleep.

"What are you doing?" he said groggily, rubbing his eyes.

After thinking about it, Arya shrugged. "I don't know."

In her ears, she sounded like a child. But apparently, to the others, she sounded like someone who was depressed and confused and forlorn, as they all threw worried glances at her direction from time to time.

After a while, Arya finally stopped pacing around, partly because her mind was getting strained from remembering so many dead men's names and partly because the looks her friends were giving her were starting to get irritating. When she sat back down next to Raven, her friend didn't waste any time to hesitate on asking her a question.

"How'd you do it?"

Arya turned to look at the blonde sitting beside her, confused. "Do what?"

"How did you cure him?"

When she found that she was dead serious, Arya jumped down from her own private cloud nine, slowly sinking back to earth. For a moment, she didn't speak. She thought about the question, and then the answer, and then just settled for a simple "I don't know" phrasing, because she really didn't.

Raven stared at her. "Was that your mutation? What you did to Azazel?"

"I guess…" Arya looked down at her hands, fiddling with her sweater, and thinking. "It never really worked like that before."

"What do you mean?"

She looked up and met Raven's eyes. Maybe I should tell her, she thought to herself. Maybe it would help. It never helped before. It didn't help when she went to therapy after the accident. It didn't help when she had told Chloe all about it. It didn't help when she prayed, and it was actually the first time she prayed, so why would it have helped? Maybe it'll help now.

Arya clung onto that like a lifeline, and was still holding on when she spoke. "Before, when Iwould touch people, they would… they would be in pain."

Raven was silent for a moment. "Arya, you don't mean that literally, do you?"

"I mean that very literally, Raven," Arya said, letting out a humorless laugh. She raised her gloved hands and put them up in front of her face. "Why do you think I wear these?"

"I'm so sorry…" Arya looked up to find a sympathetic smile on her friend's face, and for the first time in a long time, she was thankful.

Arya smiled back. "Thank you." Then she slunk back down into the bench, suddenly very tired.

Her eyes were drooping when Raven spoke again. "Arya…" She looked up when her blonde friend trailed off, and almost gasped at what she saw.

Raven's skin was pure blue, scaled and glistening under the sunlight. Her hair, previously blonde, had turned into a beautiful shade of dark orange, almost red. Her eyes were yellow, the pupils dilated like a snake's. Maybe most people would have thought that Raven was hideous, and ugly, and frightening. For a moment, Arya thought that as well. But then she remembered the kindness this woman had showed in the day she had known her. Arya looked again and found that she was very beautiful.

"Raven…" Arya gasped, just before a smile lit up her face. "You look—"

"Hideous, I know."

Arya frowned. "That wasn't what I was going to say."

Raven offered a sheepish smile that must have been her excuse for a sorry—one that Arya accepted—before placing her hand on Arya's. Arya wasn't as surprised as she expected herself to be to find that her skin was just as warm as it always was.

She looked up and found Raven's eyes boring into her, what seemed to be a pleading look on her face. "Please?"

Arya stared at her for a few seconds before understanding what her friend was asking for. "Oh… alright, I guess…"

Hesitantly, she pulled the gloves off of one hand and raised her hand to touch Raven's face, knowing that she just wanted to see. For a moment, she was afraid. What if she would hurt her? What if her powers wouldn't work with someone like Raven? Arya grew petrified as she remembered what happened the last time she touched someone. But maybe her powers only hurt normal people, humans. It was a good theory; one Arya was willing to test.

She finally placed her hand on Raven's cheek, and without even trying, her mutation started its course.

From the skin of Raven's cheek, blue slowly turned into pale flesh. The effects branched from there and made its way to Raven's eyes, turning yellow into a beautiful brown, much like Arya's. Then her red hair turned into a normal hue of black.

Arya laughed in glee, meeting Raven's eyes and nodding at her. "You're beautiful," she said. Raven's face lit up in a smile as she laughed as well, but the moment was cut short by someone calling her name.

"Raven!" The unmistakable accent in the voice told Arya that their two superiors had finally arrived.

She dropped her hand from Raven's cheek as Charles appeared behind an overturned cab. Almost immediately, her features reverted back to their normal state. Raven shifted into her blonde form and flashed Arya a smile before standing up and running up to Charles.

"Are you gonna tell me how you did that?" a familiar deep voice asked. Arya turned around to find both Sean and Alex staring at her, creases above their eyebrows.

She shrugged. "It's my mutation."

The two didn't say anything after that, but Arya was vaguely aware of their eyes piercing into the back of her head, and maybe even an extra set.

When she raised her head, she found Erik leaning against a pile of rubble to her right, next to Alex and Sean. He was eyeing at her as well, and his gaze was stonier than either of the younger boys'.

Beside him was the brunette Moira MacTaggert, though she seemed more interested in the low exchange going on between Raven and Charles.

"We've made arrangements for you to be taken home immediately," the telepath said, his statement quick and blunt.

Arya wearily raised her head to look at him. "Seriously?"

He was about to say something when Sean beat him to the punch.

"We're not going home," he said.

"What?"

"He's not going back to prison." Sean glanced at Alex at the young man beside him as he said this.

"He killed Darwin," Alex said, raising his voice. Now, Arya didn't know much about him, but she knew that he was closer to their fallen friend than any of them were.

"All the more reason for you to leave." Charles looked down at him with stern eyes. "This is over."

No one competed with him after that, and Arya took it upon herself to do so. "Darwin's dead, Charles," she said, meeting his gaze when he turned to look at her. "And we can't even bury him."

Beside her, Sean and Alex bowed their heads, and Arya spared a glance to find Raven doing the same.

"We can avenge him."

Arya's head snapped to the side, to where the bold statement came from.

Erik looked at her austerely, seemingly pleased with what he had just said. Did he really mean it, thought? As far as she knew, they couldn't even use their powers correctly. How were they going to defeat someone as strong as Shaw?

Charles wasn't happy. "Erik, a word please," he said, striding past Erik. The other mutant followed behind him, leaving the rest to wait for the verdict.

They all looked on at the two conversing, obviously more experienced mutants as they spoke, exchanging brief words. Arya found herself hoping that Erik would be able to dissuade Charles, change his mind. He had told her that they would teach her. She was not going to back away from that option so easily now that she discovered what her powers could really do.

She straightened up when Charles finally turned around, and barely bit back a smile when he said, "We'll have to train, all of us, yes?"

Along with the others, she nodded in approval.

"Well, we can't stay here," Hank said, the first time he'd spoken that day. "Even if they reopen the apartment, it's not safe." He trailed off, biting his lip. "We got nowhere to go."

Arya turned her gaze to Charles. She could see that he was trying very hard to hide the smirk behind a tough mask of seriousness. "Yes, we do," he said.

It was a little after noon when they arrived, and needless to say, Charles' family was indubitably rich.

The mansion was huge; a more appropriate word for it would have been boarding house. There were more than a dozen bedrooms—which seriously was very surprising because they were all located on the top floor. It was where they had been shown to first. And get this; the rooms already came with bathrooms. Bathrooms with bath tubs. After the rooms, they really just made their way down from there: the kitchen, the living room, the gym, the shooting range, the Game Room (Arya overheard Alex and Sean snickering about it behind the group), the laundry room, and the bar.

Raven told them that outside really wasn't much anymore. "There's a swimming pool, a pond, basketball court, the field… and that's about it."

The others stared at her, mouths agape. Arya grinned.

Throughout the rest of the day, Charles let them do whatever they wanted.

Not much to her surprise, Sean and Alex immediately made a run for the Game Room. Arya couldn't really blame them, remembering that there was a pool table and dart boards inside.

Arya was slightly disheartened when Raven told her she was going to go for a swim. Of course, the blonde asked whether she'd like to join her or not. Arya answered by telling her that swimming wasn't really her thing, which must have seemed odd considering that she'd lived near the shore. Raven let her go anyway, telling her to enjoy herself before walking off.

Arya stood in place for a moment, running through her thoughts. What do I want to do today?

Drink, a voice in the back of her head told her, and it wasn't Charles. She grinned, shoving her hands in her pockets before walking briskly down the hallway and to the bar.

Maybe she should have taken a long bath first, but that could wait until the end of the day. Until then, Arya had some fun ideas she'd like to try out before the war started, as she assumed that as soon as she was in it, there wasn't going to be a way back out.

After dinner, there was an initial meeting in the living room. All in all, there were seven of them. Arya was confident with that number, confident that they would stand a chance against Shaw if they had the proper training.

Primarily, the meeting was just Charles explaining to all of them what would be happening the next few days. "You wait; do whatever you want, until I call you." They were going to have sessions one by one with Charles and Erik, solo sessions.

Arya looked around her and saw everyone else bouncing in their seats in excitement, while Arya just sat there and thought long and hard about her mutation. What could she even do with it? Why would she need to train with it? All she really had to do was touch a mutant and their genes would turn normal, they would turn human. And if she touched humans…

She stopped thinking. When she raised her head, she found Charles staring intensely at her. And she knew that look. Suddenly, Arya felt defensive. She imagined the make-believe webbing around her brain once more, her mental defenses. Stay out of my head.

The professor looked mildly shocked. After that, he told them all to get to bed early, as tomorrow was "going to be a very taxing day". Arya couldn't help but wonder how it would be for her the next day.

That night, Arya fell asleep easily after she tucked herself into bed. But closing her eyes and letting her mind drift wasn't enough, and soon, a world of dreams and nightmares descended upon her.