3 months earlier
Raven closes her eyes as Azazel gripped her hand, against Hank's judgmental gaze, Madeline's grief. She closes her eyes and disappears.
She always shuts her eyes tight when Azazel teleports them. The 'journeys' seems to take no time at all, no matter how far they are travelling, but the sensation of those seconds – a piercing, total cold, a suffocating stillness and silence – has quite convinced her she has no desire to see what there is in that world between worlds only the her lover can access at will.
And so she keeps them closed now, only opening them when a cool salt-scented breeze alerts her to their new location. She takes in the moonlit beach, the star-pocked sky.
"Where are we?" she whispers. Azazel matches her tone, nods approvingly at her caution.
"Florida. Is place called Wacasassa Bay. Very quiet. Good for hiding."
Azazel leads her from the shore beyond a line of palm trees that fringes the bay. From their shadow, she can see a clapboard house built over an inlet, three stories high, with a single hurricane lamp burning in an upstairs window.
She glances questioningly at the red mutant. He holds a finger to his lips.
"Erik. He won't sleep until all of us are accounted for." She takes a moment to enjoy that, that easy unconscious us that, as far as Azazel is concerned, already includes her. She doesn't suppose everyone will be so accepting, wonders who else in the little house comprises us.
As if reading her mind, he indicates the lamplight with an jerk of his head. "It is best I think if you wait here, while I go and speak with him about you. He will be angry at first, certainly. I will come back for you when this is past."
She tightens her grasp on his hand, and takes hold of his arm for good measure.
"Like hell you will. This was my idea – you're not going to take the blame. And anyway, I've got a piece of my mind to give that guy that's been a long time coming." Azazel grins back at her wolfishly, clearly enjoying her defiance. He presses his lips to hers in a rough, boisterous kiss that leaves her breathless.
"Khorosho, moya tigritsa," he says at last. "We will go now." And with another crack, the beach and the trees fade away, and Raven opens her eyes to a dim, damp-smelling room, and Erik's tired face, his expression turning from worry to relief to surprise to rage in even less time than one of Azazel's teleportations.
"Azazel, where have- Raven? What the hell are you doing here?" Without waiting for her to answer him, Erik turns on Azazel furiously. "How dare you bring her here? We talked about this. She stays where she is. This is no place for her!"
"Excuse me? I am here, you know. If you have something to say, say it to me." The German rounds on her, and she takes a step backwards. This isn't the Erik she has gotten used to over the past year, softened by Charles's love, from whom the worst she could expect was an acid remark. This is the Erik she had almost forgotten, the Erik she had first met, who was dark and dangerous and capable of anything at all.
Indeed if anything, he is worse now. The former Erik could be deadly, yes; but most of the time he had worn a slick skin of poised sarcasm, had carried himself like a well-oiled weapon. The man looming over her now has no such polish to him. His eyes are raw and red like open wounds; everything about him - from the deep lines round his mouth to to the white knuckles of his fists – communicates a ragged, rough-edged rage.
"Christ, Erik, you look like shit," she murmurs involuntarily. Azazel stiffens, steps between them. But then, to her surprise, Erik begins to laugh. It is a bitter, broken-glass sort of laugh, but nevertheless, it holds the ghost of his former suaveness, as does the single elegant eyebrow quirking derisively at her.
"Lovely to see you too, Raven," he says, sits back down in the bust-up wicker chair he had been in when they entered the room. Azazel relaxes, lounges against the door, as if preparing to enjoy the show. Raven finds she likes him even more for that – his confidence in her ability to hold her own. Or perhaps it is Erik he has confidence in – in his ability to prioritise her value as an asset over his sense of guilt over taking her from Charles.
"You might as well sit down," Erik says, indicating a low, battered wooden box loosely covered in sackcloth, doing duty as a bench. She perches on the edge reluctantly, always having preferred to stand, to stride. He knows that of course. Hence the offer of a seat. Damn him for that, she thinks. And damn him too for sitting there in sardonic silence, obviously expecting her to get embarrassed and start making explanations or excuses. Well, to hell with his game-playing.
"You know why I'm here, Erik. You should never have left without asking me in the first place. You need me, need anyone who can help you win this war. I'm in."
He is already shaking his head.
"Raven, I do not need you. I have soldiers. Azazel, and others. You are the last thing that I need right now." She knows that is supposed to hurt her, is angry that it still does. Her instinct is to hit back, hard.
"Why, Erik? Because I remind you of how you walked out on Charles?"
He twitches, and she is dismayed to see how painfully effective her barb has been. Those wounded eyes darken, and his mouth twists down.
"Mention his name again," he grinds out slowly, "and this conversation is over. Understand? Over."
She hesitates, and then finally nods. Erik visibly forces his face to unclench, visibly pushes the pain back down somewhere deep inside himself, where it can change into anger, ferment into something that he can use. By the time he speaks again, only a jerking muscle in his jaw gives any indication of the howling well of pain she has just uncovered, the well he is slowly bricking up with rocks of rage.
"As I was saying: I have my army. And it is growing. Everywhere we liberate our brothers and sisters, we gain new recruits, eager for revenge. The very gifts that made them of such – interest - to their human captors are now turned against the oppressor. These are the kind of people I can use, Raven – people with real fire in their bellies, real hatred in their hearts – people whose wrongs cry out for retribution. You're just a child, Raven, a pampered child. What have you got to offer us?"
Raven feels her face getting hot, anger and humiliation warring for supremacy as his scorn washes over her.
"That isn't fair. You know that I've always agreed with you – that we can't trust the humans, try to coexist. I'm committed to this. I've been training for this. I can fight; and I can do things no-one else can do, get places no-one else can go-"
Erik cut her off with a peremptory wave of his hand.
"All the training in the world isn't going to make you ready for this fight. You need to feel the anger in your bones. Are you really ready to fight for real, Raven? Are you ready to kill?"
Raven had jumped to her feet, opened her mouth to shout an angry affirmative – but now the words lie heavy in her throat, refuse to fly. She wants to say yes, yes, I'm ready – but suddenly, faced with the thought of killing, she is no longer certain. She can almost see Charles's disappointed face, the sad shake of his head. In her mind's eye, of course, Charles looks the way he did before everything went to hell – a dapper British gentleman with kind, calm eyes. The fact that person doesn't exist any more should make it easier to turn her back on him. But it doesn't. Her shoulders slump.
She's been silent too long. Erik stands too, turns his back on her dismissively.
"Go home, Raven. Ch- people will be worried about you. Go back somewhere where you can do some good. You're no use to me here."
She thinks of going back to the mansion, to all the heartache and hopelessness there, and feels her lungs empty, her throat close up. She opens her mouth to protest – but how? – when suddenly, Azazel is standing beside her.
"Tovarisch. If you send her away, I will go too."
Erik wheels around, too alarmed to be strategic. Raven feels a pang of jealousy, that her worth as a soldier can be dismissed out of hand, but Azazel's cannot. But mostly she feels a swell of gratitude for the red man by her side, for his willingness to throw his lot in with hers without question or hesitation.
"What are you talking about? You're needed here. I thought you believed in the cause, in what we're trying to do." It isn't in Erik to beg, but the desperation in his voice is clear. Azazel simply shrugs.
"She stays. Or we both go."
Erik turns a furious look on her.
"You see the trouble you're causing? If you're serious about wanting to help, leave now and tell him to stay." Before Raven can respond, Azazel speaks again, this time with a dangerous coldness.
"She does not tell me. You do not tell me. I say what I will do. Nobody else. You want me to stay, you let her stay. Eto tak."
Erik looks from one to the other, frustration and calculation warring across his face to no avail, finally giving way to defeat. He grits his teeth, fixes the red mutant with a reproachful glare.
"Fine. On your own head be it. She's your responsibility. You brief her, you train her, and if anything happens to her – it's on you, understand? And the first time she screws up, or hesitates, or puts any of us in danger – the very first time, understand me – she's out. With you or without you, I don't care."
Azazel nods, conciliatory in victory.
"It is better this way. You will see this in time. She is powerful, tovarisch. She will be valuable to us. I know this. I know her. She has much to learn, yes. But we can teach her this. What she can do, what she is, we can teach no-one."
Erik scoffs, still clearly furious.
"I'll believe it when I see it." He glares at Azazel. "I'm going to bed. I want you to brief the team on last night's mission tomorrow at 8. If you're still here, of course."
Azazel simply nods agreeably, oblivious or impervious to the savage sarcasm. His equanimity seems to provoke Erik more than defiance would. He turns on Raven, hisses bitterly:
"Cat got your tongue? At least you seem to have finally learned when to keep your mouth shut. You'd do well to remember that in the coming days. Just keep quiet and keep out of my way, Raven."
The stinging slap of these words rekindles her anger as he stalks away. She opens her mouth and is shocked when a voice she doesn't recognize comes out – a resonant, rippling voice that seems to speak with a thousand tongues, all at once.
"Mystique."
They all jump, even Azazel. She snatches her hand away from her mouth, where it has instinctively leapt, as Erik turns around. She sucks in a breath, swallows, then speaks.
"My name is Mystique now."
It is her normal voice again, but something about its tenor has changed. She sounds almost as dangerous as Erik does. He blinks, then nods almost distractedly.
"Fine. We all have code names anyway – except Azazel." She glances at the red man, then back to Erik, who shrugs. "It's safer that way when we're on missions. The others all call me Magneto now." Raven's eyebrows shoot up to her hairline.
"Magneto?" Erik scowls, and colours.
"Hey, it's your stupid idea. I had to come up with something, and that was the first thing that came to my head. It does the job."
Raven represses a giggle, which dies in her chest as she remembers that night at the CIA compound, flirting with Hank, making up silly names. It was only much later, after Cuba, when she was seeking to make a break with her human disguise, that she had begun to tentatively go by Mystique for real. It had never really caught on at the mansion – some of the children had picked it up at first, but Charles had stuck stubbornly to Raven, and everyone else had taken their lead from him, in that as in everything else. It strikes her that it is only now, away from Charles, that she has a chance to really make the switch from the name her human parents gave her, before they tried to kill her, to the one she has chosen for herself.
Erik shakes his head.
"Very well then, Mystique. Welcome to the Brotherhood of Mutants. Get some rest now - you're going to need it. Tomorrow, you're joining the war."