3 weeks later

Raven was down in the gym, working a bodybag as if it had done her personal wrong. With every punch, she sought to banish an image she knew that if she couldn't exorcise, would rob her of her sleep tonight, the sleep she needed to be strong, to do what she needed to do.

Charles at the kitchen table late last night, after he thought everyone had gone to sleep, reaching for a second bottle of whiskey, blinking away tears.

Punch.

Madeline heading up to the sick bay for the third time this month, looking pale but determined, off to donate a kidney to a sick six-year-old human.

Punch.

The hurt on Hank's face when she had refused his cure. The disgust on Hank's face when she had turned blue. The dismay on Hank's face when she had kissed him up in the lab. The look on Hank's face whenever Maddy came into a room.

Punch. Punch. Punch. Punch. Kick. Punch.

With a grunt of exhaustion, she fell onto her knees in front of the swaying bag, smacked one last punch into the mat in frustration.

Everything was wrong; nothing had really changed with Charles's operation, yet everything was different. She had thought, all of them had thought, that when he had appeared at the breakfast table one morning as if he had never been away, with Erik grinning like a Cheshire cat, that everything was going to be alright.

But although Charles was back, went about his daily routine, dispensed the careless kindness that was his signature, there was something missing behind his eyes. What that something was, she couldn't have said, but she felt the want of it nonetheless. And last night, when she had come across him in the kitchen all by himself, drinking alone, choking back tears with seven-year-old scotch, she had realized what that thing was: hope.

The drinking worried her. Charles had always had a tendency to overdo the sauce. That was to be expected, she supposed. His parents had both been heavy drinkers, even before his father died. After that, his mother Sharon had climbed into the comforting embrace of a bottle of vodka on an almost permanent basis. Charles had grown up with alcohol, and in time had taken to it with the same puppyish enthusiasm he brought to all the pleasures of life, encouraged by his mainly English social circle (the English seemed to pretty much live to drink, in Raven's experience) and his seeming immunity to hangovers (a perk of his mind's mutation, he had hypothesized to her laboriously, one evening when he was deep in his cups).

But he had never drunk like this before – drunk to excess to sleep; drunk to forget. It frightened her, and frightened Erik too. The main practical problem was that when Charles was drunk, he lost some of his control over his ability, could accidentally project his emotions onto other people. Some of the children had begun waking up in the night sobbing heartbrokenly, but when she sought to comfort them, they couldn't explain why. She had tried to talk to Charles, but when she had, the thin skin of composure he had stretched over his pain visibly strained. She couldn't bear to be the one to make it break.

Raven sighed. She hadn't realized, until it had evaporated, how much she had defined herself against her brother's positive nature. His hope had allowed her to be cynical; his faith had given her room to entertain her own doubts. Now she felt as if the ground had gone out from under her.

She was considering giving the bag another seeing to when suddenly the air cracked and Azazel appeared right in front of her. She forced herself not to jump, not to let her face show her alarm.

"Azazel? What are you doing here?"

The smile on Azazel's face fell off the second he registered her expression.

"What is wrong with you?" he asked. She blinked.

"What do you m- it's none of your business! What do you want?" The bright blue eyes darkened; the red man's thin mouth turned down, tugging at his scar.

"To see you, siniy ved'ma. Always, only to see you."

She blushed, feeling an obscure sense of shame. He had only ever been polite to her (always excepting their first meeting). It wasn't fair to take her sadness and frustration out on him. But what was fair? She blew air out through her nose.

"I'm sorry, OK? Things are just – difficult round here just now. It isn't a good time." He put his head on one side.

"Not good time? What not good time?" She wearily outlined to him the situation with Maddy, the procedure, the failure. He took it all in, and then he shrugged.

"So nothing changes. This is bad for Xavier, yes, but why for you?" She rolled her eyes.

"Because I'm scared, alright? I'm scared he isn't going to cope. I'm scared that everything's falling apart. I'm scared for Maddy too – I think she's going to do all these operations as some sort of penance – it's only a matter of time before something goes wrong, before she gets hurt. I'm scared that-" Raven stopped abruptly, put her hand over her mouth. "I don't know why I'm telling you all this."

Azazel didn't comment, vaulted lightly onto a pommel horse where he sat cross-legged, careless of the creases he was putting into his immaculate suit.

"What is point of this being scared? Things will happen, or things will not. Scared will not change it." She stared at him incredulously.

"What, you've never been scared?" He shook his head.

"No."

The simplicity with which he said it rang of truth. She looked at him curiously.

"Why not?" He shrugged, flicked his tail absent-mindedly.

"For what should I be scared? No-one can hurt me." By way of demonstration, he snapped to various points around the room, returning to his cross-legged perch with a cloud of red smoke and a singed smell. "I think I understand why people are afraid. But I have no reasons for this. So I don't know what this is like."

Raven imagined, briefly, what that might be like – to be utterly fearless. She leaned against the pommel horse, looking up sideways at him.

"Weren't you afraid of Shaw?" Azazel gave her an offended look.

"Of course not. He was powerful, but he could not do what I can. He needs me. He knows he cannot control me. And so he makes it worth my while to help him; he tells many lies. I was perhaps foolish; but not afraid, never."

She turned these thoughts over in her head for a while. He didn't seem to feel the need to fill her silences with idle talk. He was staring at her quite openly, however, taking in her every curve and feature.

She decided to return the favour, examined him minutely, the perfect tailoring, the deep red skin, the silky, wild black hair, the roguish scar the cleaved a path from his eyebrow to the middle of his left cheek. Finally she met his gaze, allowed herself at last to acknowledge that what she saw in his startlingly pale blue eyes went beyond lust. Oh, that was there as well of course; but it was more than that. He looked at her as if she was something rare and wonderful – almost with awe.

"You are so very beautiful," he said. It wasn't flattery, she realized. He was simply stating the facts as he saw them. Her mouth was suddenly dry. Hank's voice sounded inside her head. It behooves me to tell you… your natural blue form will never be deemed beautiful. Azazel's gaze seemed to transfix her like an awl. She turned away, walked towards the mirrors that lined one wall of the gym.

"Where do you go when you aren't here?" she asked, partly for something neutral to say, partly because she had always wondered. He shrugged.

"Wherever I want. Anywhere I want. Many places. Before I came here, Istanbul. I wanted to see Bosphorus. And so I went."

The air cracked as he disappeared, then with a pop he was standing right behind her. He put a red hand on the base of her neck, a gesture of possession so confident it took her a moment to notice, to mind.

"You want to go somewhere, siniy ved'ma? I can take you. Anywhere you ask." His voice was hoarse, caressing. She turned around, faced him down. He was so close she could smell him – a spicy aftershave overlaying a cool, smoky smell, like a bonfire on a winter's night.

You've never been with anyone when you're yourself.

The thought popped unbidden into her head. His hand was still on the back of her neck. His thumb slowly traced the line of her jaw. She forced herself to keep her eyes open, to meet his gaze. He drew his breath in sharply.

"Siniy ved'ma?"

"No," she said. His face fell.

"No," she repeated, reaching up tentatively to run her forefinger down his scar. "I don't want you to take me anywhere."

When he kissed her, she felt like water in the desert – not loved, but needed, desperately. They fell together onto the mat floor, and Raven gave in to the inevitable, let Azazel take her away from her self, from her fear, for a time.