Raven stood with her hands on her hips, tapping her toe irritably into the soil until Azazel appeared with a crack beneath the willow tree that had become their customary meeting place.

He was immaculate and exuberant as ever. Nothing about his appearance suggested that he had been instrumental in a globally significant terrorist mission only hours before. His appearance lied.

Azazel was acutely sensitive to atmosphere (at least as far as Raven was concerned). The second he saw her expression, her confrontational stance, his ebullient smile disappeared.

"You have heard."

"Damn right I have. You better have one hell of an explanation prepared, or you can just poof on out of here right now and never come back."

Azazel shrugged, his tale switching back and forth defensively.

"For what I should explain? Erik and I were rescuers, yes? This is not hospital, Raven. These are not patients. They are prisoners, mutant prisoners, comrades. They are being tortured in that place, you understand? We free them. I have done this many times, saved children from places like this, brought them here to your professor." Raven turned on him.

"Charles told you where to go, who to save, precisely because you could get in and out without anybody getting hurt! You never killed people, Azazel! "

Azazel's face went carefully blank at this. Her eyes widened.

"I never said this. This is what professor wants to believe. In these places, always there are guards. And scientists." He spat deliberately on the floor as if the word burnt his mouth. "I do not have to kill these people. But if I can, I do. I like to kill them." He turned a challenging gaze upon her. "You know this. You know me."

Raven turned away from him, inexplicably unable to meet his eye. She felt, for want of a better word, naked. He was right, after all. She did know what he was – a fighter, a killer. She had tried to pretend to herself she didn't know these things, but she did. She had tried to pretend that side of him didn't excite her, but it did – that he was dangerous, savage, a law unto himself, subject only to his own code.

And if she was honest, his code was her own. Why shouldn't he have killed those he encountered on his mercy missions to asylums, prisons, secret facilities where mutant children were held and harvested for no crime other than being different? How could she condemn him for killing people who would do far worse to him if they got the chance?

As if reading her mind, he added "You would kill them too, if you saw what I see. Cbildren full with wires, with their brains cut up, electrocuted, drowned alive. These are bad people, Raven. They deserve to die - badly. Erik is more soft than me – he says we must kill them quick."

Her anger rekindled, burnt through her confusion like paper. She whipped round on him, eyes narrow with fury.

"How could you not tell me you'd seen Erik? That you were plotting with him to move on the facility? How could you lie to me about something like that?"

He had the grace to look slightly ashamed.

"This is not my choice. I tell him he should speak to you, that we could use you for this, that you are strong enough, that you are ready. But he says no, no, no. He says he won't take you away from professor. That Xavier needs you more. Erik told me not to say."

"And if he told you to jump off a cliff, would you do that too?' she hissed. He looked offended.

"He is a good man. He is clever. Good with plan, strategy. I listen to what he says because of these things. I am not lackey," he insisted, with a trace of pride at the unusual word.

It was that touch of pride, even in the midst of their argument, that broke Raven's anger at him. For all his lethal power, his skill at killing, in many ways Azazel was childlike. He dealt with the world simply, at a surface level –a result of the incredible freedom from necessity and exclusion from society his mutations afforded him, she supposed. It wasn't fair to expect him to second-guess Erik – Raven of all people knew how convincing he could be. She let her anger fall squarely where it was owed, at the metal-bender's door.

"That patronizing asshole!" she raged, pacing furiously up and down. "How dare he presume to just parcel me off to Charles's team, just to salve his own conscience, without even asking me!" Azazel let her rant on for a bit longer, clearly broadly in agreement with her theme. When she had run out of cursewords, he drew her to him, kissed her with the passion that never failed to light a fire between them, to bridge the gulf between their worlds. She kissed him back, trying not to think of the fact that the red hands running over her back had been snapping necks only hours before. Then she put her hands on his chest and pushed him gently backward, holding on to his lapels.

"Another time, screw Erik, okay? You tell me. You could have been killed." He began to shake his head, and she cut him off. "Shut up, OK? I know you think you're indestructible, but anybody can make a mistake. You'd bleed the same as anybody else if someone did somehow get a bullet in you. And I'd never hear about it, would I? How long do you expect that I'd wait under this tree, waiting for you, wondering why you didn't come?"

"Would you care, siniy ved'ma?"

The coolness with which he said these words made her flinch. She dropped her hands, looked up at him. His scarlet, scarred face had gone blank again, but she knew him well enough by now to know how much the question had cost him. Obviously her ambivalence towards their liaison hadn't gone over his head as she'd imagined.

This would be the moment to have The Talk, she supposed – to tell him that while she needed what he gave her, desperately, especially right now, she didn't love him, couldn't love him, would never love him as it was obvious he loved her. That she loved Hank.

Hank. Hank who hated his own mutation, and hers. Hank who had happily cut up Madeline to heal human children. Hank, who spent every night working late trying to manipulate Raven's own DNA to find the 'cure' for their species. Hank, who could barely meet her eye when they met.

She had loved him, loved him so much. Loved his innocence, his sweetness, his brilliant mind, his kind heart, his shyness, and his exquisite mutant gifts. And he had loved her too – until she showed him who she really was.

She bit her lip, looked up at Azazel. Azazel who had never tried to hide – not himself, not his desire for her. Azazel, who was willing to fight for their kind, to kill for them. Azazel who loved her for everything she was, who would never want her to change.

She lay one hand over his heart, cupped his guarded face with the other. She felt him draw a ragged breath before he met her eyes.

"Of course I'd care," she said softly. "You dope."

And when she kissed him now, there was something more than passion. She didn't seek to nail it down or name it – but they both knew it was there.