Black

Raven couldn't stop crying.

She knew crying was a sign of weakness, knew that Erik, where ever he was, would not approve. She didn't care.

Charles Xavier was dead.

To say that she and her foster brother had a complex relationship would be an understatement. Since the 1960s, they had been on the opposite sides of a long bloody race war that had claimed hundreds of lives. The Brotherhood on one side, the X-Men on the other. Faces had come and gone in that war, each generation giving way to new pain and death but three constants had always remained: Erik, Raven, and Charles.

Part of Raven had known that would never last. Erik and Charles did not share the mutant ability that made her practically immortal. She had always known that one day the British boy she had secretly crushed on and the German man she lusted after would one day slip away quietly in their sleep.

But this...this wasn't what she had expected.

During her time in protective custody, the FBI had kept a close eye on what news she could or couldn't see. The ink on her immunity deal had barely been dry when they had whisked her off to a safe house in Wisconsin and after they discovered she had double crossed them, suddenly the FBI agents didn't feel particularly like running to the store to get her a news paper.

She didn't hear about Charles' death or Erik's depowerment until two weeks after San Francisco. Getting captured had always been part of the plan, losing her powers was not and she had to deal with the loss of her mutant abilities and the loss of Charles at the same time.

All these years later and Raven had only barely recovered from both experiences. Her powers had returned, slowly, but they did come back. So the strange sense of dread that came from the knowledge that she was once again "Mystique" had lessened the ache of Charles' death. She had been far to busy hating herself for enjoying life as a human to truly mourn Charles Xavier.

So Raven made the mistake that thousands of hardened souls had made before her. She assumed that denial was a form of acceptance.

But here, now, standing over his grave...Raven felt the full weight drop onto her shoulders. Years of memories, tears, laughter, hatred, love, all of it coalesced into a ball and smashed into her chest with the force of a hurricane. She fought to stay on her feet, desperate to keep some shred of dignity, but her body was a raw nerve and she instinctively wanted to curl up in a ball to protect herself from years of pain. Her body started to shift involuntarily passing through a kaleidoscope of different forms until the muscles relaxed into the plain blue scales of her natural form.

The world fell away until it was just Raven and her grief.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Raven knew who it was by the sound of his voice and she braced herself when she heard the "snikt" of unsheathing claws. She didn't move, didn't say anything.

"God damn it, I'm talking to you-"

Raven felt his hand pulling her roughly to her feet and suddenly she was facing him, staring into the familiar face of the man they called the Wolverine.

And when he saw the tears in Raven's eyes, Logan was utterly speechless.

****
"And so there I was, standing in the boy's locker room, surrounded by a naked soccer team, wearing Charles' pants around my ankles." Raven laughed as she took another sip from her beer.

"And what happened next?" Logan asked, totally enraptured by her story.

"I played in the game, as Charles," She replied, "I had three assists and scored two goals."

They both laughed and to everyone else in the bar, they were a pretty blonde and a rough looking man having a night out on the town. But the reality was anything but romantic. This was simply a détente between two deadly forces, one subtle and one unstoppable. There was no way this could last.

But at the moment, Logan didn't care. He was too busy trying to wrap his mind around the new light that was being shed on the legacy of Charles Xavier. A brash, brilliant young man who made a mistake that drove away the one girl who desperately wanted to be more than "like a sister."

Professor X wasn't all knowing after all.

"It's hard to imagine Chuck as a drunk college kid." Logan said wistfully, "Wish I was there."

"For all you know, you were."

That response earned Raven a funny look from Logan until she tapped her forehead to remind him of the Wolverine's defining characteristic. He had no past.

"What is that like, by the way? To live for centuries and remember almost nothing."

Logan shrugged, " What's it like to never age and never have an identity?"

A silence settled over their table, the truth of their relationship poked through the diplomatic calm and for a moment, they remembered they were enemies.

"You claimed you loved him, but the first time I met you, you nearly killed him." Logan raised an eyebrow as he searched the facade Raven called a face for a coming lie.

"I loved Charles Xavier enough to knock him unconscious so he wouldn't get in the way." Raven said, this time speaking in the hard cold voice of Mystique, "Toad and Sabertooth wanted to rip him limb from limb and they were well on their way to convincing Erik to cross that line."

She could tell Logan didn't like that answer, his eyes grew cold and raw. "So you did it for his own good? That's the story you're sticking to."

"I was protecting him from himself." Raven shot back, "Erik would sacrifice anyone for the cause, even his only friend."

"Some boyfriend you got there. He even sacrificed you."

"Part of the plan," She said, "Erik is married, we haven't been lovers since 1976."

Logan's voice was a cold growl, "You put an old man in a coma."

"You put an old man in the morgue," She tilted her head for a look of fake curiosity, "Or was it a coincidence that they found the most powerful man in Japan with claw marks in his chest."

Raven sighed as Logan's body language changed into the start of a combat stance and she realized she was trying to start a fight on purpose. Three hours. That was the maximum length of time she could go before trying to push someone away. It as almost pathetic. "We're damned aren't? Doomed to fight forever."

It was a sobering thought but for some reason it earned a loud guffaw from Logan. "Lady, do yourself a favor, find yourself a purpose in life other than being a mad man's arm candy."

"I am not Erik's arm-"

Logan held up a hand and stopped her, finishing his sentence as he rose from the table, "Otherwise, you'll never be happy... and you look like you need to be happy."

It was the nicest thing someone had sad to her in a long time.

The End