Raven eventually tracked Erik down to the beach. Although it was a sunny day, a stiff wind was whipping the waves into a froth, sending skeins of loose sand fluttering along the bay. Erik was sitting just beyond the line of palms fringing the beach, cross-legged and imperturbable, a large wooden chest beside him.

"Good afternoon Mystique," he said as she approached.

"Hey," she replied. She watched him for a while, expecting him to speak. He didn't. He rose to his feet and began to limber up, as if preparing for a workout.

"So, you said you wanted to speak to me about 'my role'?" Raven could hear the defensiveness in her own voice. Although Erik had apologised – in his own oblique way – for his condescension the night before, she still felt that she had a lot to prove to him. She didn't want him to think she was just a nineteen-year-old girl with a chip on her shoulder who had only ever been in one real fight.

Which is a pity, she thought wryly to herself, since that would be exactly what you are.

Erik hadn't responded to her not-quite-question. Instead, he had reached into the chest and extracted something, something which he now tossed to her. She caught it on instinct, easily.

It was a gun.

She almost dropped it, captured it gingerly between finger and thumb before it dropped onto the sand. It was a small, snub-nosed, surprisingly heavy.

"Gee, Erik, you shouldn't have. Really."

He smiled with half his mouth.

"Don't say I never give you anything." He lifted his arm, and suddenly he was sighting down a gun at her. She forced herself not to display any alarm.

"What gives, Erik? Waiting 'til Azazel's out of the way to bump me off?"

The other half of his smile came and went, so fast it might have just been the shadow of a cloud.

"I don't want to hurt you, Mystique. I don't want any of our people to be hurt." She ducked her head at his heartfelt tone. Then jumped half out of her skin when without warning, he shot the sand in front of her.

Raven dropped her own gun clumsily, shrank back in bewildered terror. Erik closed the distance between them in four long strides, then backhanded her hard across the face. She sprawled into the sand.

"But we're at war. People will be hurt. People will be killed." He was pacing back and forth as she got to her feet, an angry complaint on her lips. This time, when the blow came, she was ready for it, parried his arm on the downswing – but she wasn't expecting the roundhouse kick that took her legs out from under her.

Again Erik levelled the gun at her as she lay on the ground; she rolled aside instinctively just before the next bullet hit the wet sand with a meaty thud. Erik paced around her as she struggled to her feet, still talking. His voice had a disconcerting calmness to it, which made the situation feel even more unreal; but there was a look in his eyes that sent adrenalin pumping through her system, a fanatical gleam that made him seem unhinged.

"There's no room for fear; for error; for hesitation; for weakness of any kind."

Without warning, he threw himself at her, his hands scrabbling for her throat. She elbowed him sharply in the ribs, heard him give a grunt of pain, stamped hard on his toes as she wrenched herself out of his grasp. As he began to raise his weapon hand, she lashed out, kicked him hard in the stomach. He rolled his weight back with the kick, righted himself and nodded in approval.

"Good. Your instincts are all good. You're a fighter, deep down inside, more than most. Like Azazel. Your mutations are obvious, meant you had to learn to defend yourselves much earlier than the rest of us." He feinted a blow at her face, but she saw through it and put the full weight of her own punch to his exposed jaw, knocking him flying. She blinked as Erik spat blood onto the sand. Had she really just done that?

"Erik. Stop it. I get the point. You don't need to do this-" But her words were cut off when Erik dashed a handful of sand in her face, took advantage of her surprise to lock his arm around her throat and throw her over. She felt her spine jar with the impact of her fall, then doubled up as Erik kicked her in the belly, hard. If she had been human, her ribs would be broken. As it was, she was bruised and winded. As she choked, drowning in the air that refused to be drawn into her lungs, Erik spoke in a strangely absent tone.

"But I do, Mystique. I do need to do this. I have to be sure, that when it comes to a fight, that basic instinct to survive will triumph over any other learned urges – mercy, kindness, love. I need to know that when the future of our race depends on you, you have it in you to do whatever it takes. No matter what – or who – stands in your way." He put his head on one side, smiled mockingly. "Tell me, Raven, how old were you the first time your so-called parents tried to kill you? What did you do? Did you fight back? Or did you cry and plead, run and hide?"

She threw herself at his throat with a scream of rage. It wasn't a considered move, and he deflected her easily, pushed her back onto the defensive with a shower of well-aimed, clinical blows. Before she knew it, she was going down under his onslaught, found herself in a no-holds-barred wrestling match on the sand with a man who was twice her weight and pure muscle. He was still grinding out his monologue between punches.

"No- weakness. No- mercy. Can't allow it. Never again. Never- again."

A moment's hesitation was all that it took. Raven lost her grip on Erik's weapon arm, and suddenly the snub-nose of the gun was pressed against her forehead. His fevered eyes bore straight into hers, almost pleading in their intensity, their crazed fervor. He really means it, she suddenly realised, going icy cold. He's going to kill me.

She wasn't sure he could even hear her when she began to beg.

"Erik, please! Stop this now!"

He shook his head helplessly, his teeth grinding with tension. His finger clenched spasmodically but inexorably on the trigger. Mystique felt her skin writhing furiously, instinctively seeking a shape that would allow her to escape the threat-

-and then Erik jerked back as if he had been stabbed, sucking air between his teeth with a sharp white sound. He dropped the gun clumsily, backed away from Raven so fast he fell over the wooden chest. They both lay there, about ten feet apart, the gun between them on the ground like a wordless rebuke, breathing heavily. After what felt like a long time, but was probably only about thirty seconds, Erik stood up, picked up his gun, and deliberately unloaded it onto the sand. Raven didn't move, still trying to steady her breathing. She couldn't understand why Erik had relented at the last moment, or why even though she was the one who had just nearly been shot, he was the one who looked like he was bleeding from some internal wound. He was trembling where he stood, a muscle in his jaw jumping uncontrollably. He visibly steeled himself, and then he looked her in the eye.

"You'll do."

And with that, he turned on his heel, and walked unsteadily back toward the house, the disarmed gun hanging loosely from his fingers. Mystique opened her mouth – to call him back? To tell him he could go to hell? She wasn't sure. Before she could decide, he had disappeared into the trees fringing the beach.

Tentatively she pulled herself up to her feet. Her knees were like jelly, and her heart was pounding sickly in her chest. She realised now that she had no idea if Erik had really meant to kill her. But she knew for sure that in that moment, she had genuinely believed he had. And somehow, she had found a way to stay his hand. But what?

She could feel blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. Kneeling down on the sand, she leant over a nearby rockpool to wash it away – and found herself gazing into her brother's bright blue eyes.

With a dawning, horrified understanding, she looked down at herself and saw the familiar black and yellow jumpsuit encasing Charles's torso, Charles's legs. The way he had looked the last time he had his legs. Without her even making a conscious decision, her mutation had taken refuge in the one form guaranteed to throw Erik off – the form of his lover on the day everything they had built together had been irreparably damaged by Erik's own hand.

With a shudder, she shook her brother off, returned to her own blue-scaled skin. She pulled her knees up to her chin, wrapped her arms around her legs and squeezed herself tight, trying to quell the trembling that suddenly took her over.

Well, I guess that I just proved myself – for what it's worth, she thought. I've shown that there's nothing that I won't do, no line that I won't cross, to stay alive. She put her head down on her knees and gave a deep, shuddering sigh. Erik will have to let me in to his army. But will he ever forgive me?