Raven was standing by the window of a high-rise hotel room, gazing down at the headlights of the traffic crawling across the Golden Gate Bridge. One hand rested on her belly, which was so huge now it practically hung over the sill; the other was pressed against the small of her back, trying to knead away the sharp pains that had been plaguing her for the past few days.
She had been stunned by the toll the pregnancy had taken on her body, the body that had served her so well all her life in spite of her initial lack of appreciation for its unique features. Raven was used to being able to do what she wanted when she wanted, be what she wanted as required. The pregnancy had changed all that, shackled her into the same bloated shape whichever skin she donned, introduced her to previously unfamiliar sensations – swollen, aching breasts and ankles, backache, exhaustion.
It had all been so frightening, more so because she had no way of knowing what was normal for her – all the maternity guides Azazel had brought her were for human mothers-in-waiting, didn't cover the questions her mutation prompted. Even having the baby, something which ought to just happen… Would it be enough for her to simply manifest a… point of egress? How would she know when was the right time? How would she feed the baby when it came? And other questions, darker ones, borne out of Raven's own fears and Erik's dark forebodings: What if I can't love it? What if I love it too much? What if I can't protect it? What if…
Raven had never given much thought to her own mother before now; she could barely remember the woman, although she did remember that the day her father locked the bathroom door and tried to force her head under the surface of the water, her mother had done nothing to stop him. She had thought that that simple fact answered all the questions she might ever have had about the woman who had given her life. But often now she found her thoughts revolving fruitlessly on speculations: had she been scared too? Had she ever loved Raven? What would she tell her now if she were here?
Azazel sympathised with her anxieties, but he could not share them. He had an unshakeable confidence in Raven, and in nature's power to find a way. "When time is right, you will know what to do. You will feel it, angel moy."
His certainty had been her mainstay in the last few months. Like when she had been so anxious because she hadn't felt the baby move, even though she was well into her seventh month. All the books said you should feel something at least by 20 weeks or so. But Azazel had simply said "Our baby is perhaps so comfortable he doesn't need to move. If he wants to, he will." And when at last, she had felt a strange, weightless fluttering, he had grinned broadly, his rough red hand resting tenderly on her belly, and whispered "See? He swims."
She felt the same soft flutter now, and patted her belly lightly in response.
"Hey there," she whispered. "Are you ready to come out yet? I'm dying to meet you…"
Raven sucked air in between her teeth as the pangs in her back stepped up a notch, followed by a shuddering spasm in her torso unlike anything she'd ever felt. She sank down on the window seat, trying to breathe through the pain, feeling increasingly frightened as it continued to intensify. A sharp whimper escaped her.
Azazel, who had been reading in a chair in the next room, exploded into being next to her with a plume of red and black smoke.
"Siniy ved'ma? Are you alright?" She gripped his hand, managed a thin, wan smile.
"I think – no, wait, I'm sure – ow! – that our little one is about to make an entrance!" She had expected him to be pleased; but his face was suddenly serious.
"You are hurting." She nodded, patted his hand.
"I'm supposed to I think, don't- OW!"
Raven doubled over, clutching her belly. Tears started in her eyes. "Get me to the bed," she gasped through gritted teeth. "I need to get down-"
Before she could even finish speaking, he had scooped her into his arms, put her on the bed as gently as if she were made of glass. She didn't feel like glass – she felt like she was a knotted coil of barbed wire, sharp with pain and tension. She rolled over and hauled herself onto her knees, clutching the bedhead for support, panting the way she had seen women do in hospital soaps. The discomfort got worse, and then another contraction rocked through her. She screamed.
"Mystique!" Azazel was standing over her, as close to panic as she had ever seen him.
"Something isn't right." She ground out through her gritted teeth. It shouldn't hurt this much, not yet-" Another contraction. Another scream. And then they both heard the muffled crack, as Raven hunched forward, felt a dreadful ripping sensation, followed by an awful hollowness. She clutched frantically at her empty belly.
"Azazel, he's gone, he's gone!"
Azazel went pale.
"No. No. Is not possible. He can't go where he doesn't know!"
Their eyes locked, and she found herself staring into blue pools of helpless terror. The still, horror of that moment spun out endlessly, and then with another dull crack and a thudding blow deep inside her that drove Raven into a screaming ball, the room exploded into pandemonium and pain.
"He's here, he's here, he's here," she sobbed, hugging her belly, ecstatic with relief. The pain was constant now, the contractions secondary to the erratic kicking of her terrified baby. "I have to get him out somehow," she hissed, tried to gather her strength, her power to her, to create an opening through which to deliver the squirming ball of pain inside her. Then she felt the wetness on her thighs.
Blood was pouring from between her legs, drenching the white cotton of the sheets, the thick waffled wool of the coverlet. For a moment, she was almost hypnotised by it, watching it well up and spill over from each dimple in the weave of the blanket. Then it her like a blow – she was dying. Her baby was dying. Something had been torn loose when he had teleported away in fear. She was watching both their lives soak into this bed in this hotel room. She turned desperately to Azazel. He was staring at her blood with a sick, fascinated look on his thin face.
"I need a doctor. Azazel. AZAZEL! You have to fetch me a doctor now." He was shook his head violently.
"I cannot leave you."
He fell on his knees next to her beside the bed, pleaded: "Don't die. You cannot die. You must not die."
The terror in his voice was palpable, infectious. Gathering the last of her waning strength, she clutched his arm, smearing the sleeve of his black suit with her own blood.
"If you don't get a doctor for us NOW, we're BOTH going to die."
She shook him as hard as she could, appalled by how weak she was, by the fading of the baby's struggling motion inside her. She looked into his shock-glazed eyes, saw him focus on her face.
"You can do this. You have to. For our baby. Go."
He gave her one last agonised look, squeezed her hand until her knuckles cracked, then vanished in a puff of deep red smoke. Before the cloud had even dispersed, he was back, holding a white-coated, middle-aged man with huge plastic-rimmed spectacles up by the scruff of the neck. Azazel threw the astounded man towards the bed.
"Help her. Help baby. Help now. If they die, I kill you."
The man stared at Raven lying on the bed, sky-blue with blood loss, almost hyperventilating, and then slowly turned round and took in Azazel. He opened his mouth to scream. Azazel backhanded him hard across the face.
"Nyet. Do not scream. Help." The man had gone down on his knees, spitting blood, and now began to gibber helplessly.
"Oh God, oh God, I've sinned, I know I've sinned, please God help me, our Father, now and at the hour of our death, now and at the hour of our-"
Azazel kicked the whining doctor in the ribs, seized him by the throat and held him above the ground. The man kicked uselessly at air, choking, his eyes bulging. One of Azazel's short swords had appeared in his hands out of nowhere; he jerked it threateningly at the man's mid-section, his blue eyes blazing with fury and fear.
"You are DOCTOR. You heal the sick. She is sick; heal her. Or I gut you like fish and find other doctor who will!"
Azazel dropped the man unceremoniously to the floor. He pulled himself up to a kneeling position next to the bed, still whimpering. Raven put out a trembling blue hand, grabbed the sleeve of his white coat. He flinched violently.
"Please," she rasped, caring nothing anymore for her dignity, for 'mutant pride'. "Please help my baby." She sank back on the pillow, spent, shut her eyes. "Please."
The man's expression went blank, and he seemed almost to be running on automatic as he sprang into action. He turned to face Azazel.
"Get boiling water, clean blankets, a clean sharp knife. Do you have any alcohol?" Azazel nodded. The man's blank expression shuddered for a moment, then shook his head hard as if to shake away a mosquito. "Bring that as well, to disinfect the knife. Quickly. I have to stop this bleeding somehow."
Raven shook her head limply.
"Not me," she gasped. "The baby, help him…"
"Ma'am," the doctor said, his gaze flickering across her face and then fixing upon a point just next to it. "If you die, your baby will die. Please let me do my job. I'm very, very good at my job."
The next half hour or so passed for Mystique in a blur of agony the like of which she had never known before and never would again. At some point she had blacked out, and when she came to, the bleeding had stopped. Azazel had made to turn his back when the doctor had cut into her, then forced himself to turn around, to watch the blade going into her flesh. The child had been pulled out of her, a surprisingly meaty-feeling tug, and it was as though something fundamental was pulled away from her spirit as well. A section of her soul, she knew, would now always reside in the tangle of wet, furry blue limbs and tail the doctor held up in his arms, the torn umbilical cord trailing uselessly after, severed by her little son's maiden teleportation from the womb. He was limp, silent. She began to sob.
"Is he dead? Why isn't he making any noise? Is he breathing?"
The doctor was not listening to her. He was staring at her son with an almost devout revulsion on his face.
"It's blue," he said, as if this were the most important thing. She smacked her fists into the mattress in impotent fury.
"Azazel!"
Her lover (who had been staring transfixed at the child) cuffed the man on the back of the head, lifted the sword.
"Why baby is not crying? Help him now."
The doctor laid the infant down on the bed, put his ear to the tiny chest.
"There's a heartbeat, it's weak, but it's there. He's not breathing."
Azazel sucked air in through his teeth.
"You make him breathe!"
The man leaned over the baby. His mouth bunched in disgust as he lowered it to the child's, inflated Raven's baby's lungs with his own breath. He put his fingertips onto the little chest and pushed it gingerly in and out three times, then repeated the process more confidently. The silence seemed to stretch out for eternity, and then a tiny sputtering sneeze made the doctor leap backwards. Raven's child took a shuddering breath, and then began to cry, a thin, reedy, outraged cry that cut the cord tethering Raven's heart, let it fly free.
Azazel slumped against the wall, letting his eyes close for the first time since the doctor had lifted the knife. He sighed a sigh so heartfelt, so relieved, that Raven reached out for his hand even before she reached out for the child, gesturing to the doctor imperiously.
"Give him to me."
Wincing with distaste, the man put the squalling infant into the crook of Raven's arm. She peered into the tiny, furious face, saw her own yellow eyes gazing up at her, a miniature version of Azazel's tail wrapping tightly around her wrist. Azazel slipped an arm round her, reached out a tentative finger to brush the child's weakly waving fist. It opened, and clutched the red digit tightly. He breathed "Moya krov'. Moya zhizn'."
The child had stopped crying now, was gazing up at them both with a disgruntled expression. Mystique quickly manifested a nipple, offered it to him, went weak with relief as the boy began to suck. She looked up at Azazel, and smiled at him. Then her eyes cut to the doctor, who had been sidling toward the door.
"Azazel. He knows."
The man froze in Azazel's gaze like a rabbit in the headlights. With the same animal instinct, he instantly sensed his appalling danger. He sank to his knees, began to whimper and beg, sweat and tears streaming down his fat face, his nose running.
"Please. Please. I helped you, didn't I? I saved their lives! I did what you asked! Please, please, just let me go!"
Azazel hesitated. Raven knew that nothing dampened his bloodlust like cowardice. Azazel loved to fight, loved to kill – but he took pride in it, and there was no pride in ending the life of such a pathetic specimen, unarmed, on his knees, begging for his life. The best thing any opponent of Azazel's could do if he wanted to live was to throw down his weapon and beg for mercy. He looked at Raven now reluctantly. Her face hardened.
"He knows. He knows what we are, where we are. He knows about our child."
The man was trembling so hard he almost fell on her as her hobbled towards the bed. He clutched at her knee, clawing desperately.
"Please, please! I have a wife, a family! I won't tell anybody anything! They'd never believe me even if I did! Please! I helped you!"
Raven looked into his eyes for a long moment, then into the trusting golden gaze of the baby in her arms. She turned back to the doctor.
"What's your name?" she asked. He looked stunned.
"Pedersen. Arthur Pedersen." She leant forward.
"Dr Pedersen? Thank you for my life. For both our lives. I owe you everything."
The man nodded desperately, tried to smile, ending up with only a ghastly grimace. Raven continued, barely recognising her own cool, reasonable voice.
"But be honest now. If his father wasn't here to stop you just now, you'd have dashed my baby's brains out against the wall. Wouldn't you?"
For one moment of shocked recognition, the truth was written all over his face. He gulped, his eyes darting around in his head as if seeking some escape. Then he began to lie, to protest, to crawl away towards the floor, but it was much too late. It had always been too late. Raven looked up.
"Azazel?"
He disappeared with a crack, appeared again standing astride the mewling doctor, then plunged the short sword sharply through the man's heart. There was a gurgle, then nothing. Azazel jerked the sword out of the cooling meat that had been a man, wiped the blade clean on the white coat, then laid it carefully down on the chest of drawers.
He gave Mystique a look then she could not interpret, then seized the corpse's coat in one hand and disappeared. Almost before she could miss him he was back, alone this time, wiping his hands on his pant legs. He came to sit by her side, ran his forefinger down the side of their little son's now-sleeping face.
"Karolek," he said. Mystique glanced up at him. He had been teaching her some Russian baby names, and she remembered this one.
"Strong?"
He nodded. She gave a wan smile.
"It's a good name. He'll have to be."
Azazel pushed her matted red hair back from her face.
"Strong like you, siniy ved'ma," he growled.
He kissed her with a chaste, fierce passion. She kissed him back, felt the warm weight of their child in her arms, and felt – for the first time in what felt like years – completely safe. Complete.
She nuzzled her face into Azazel's chest, suddenly aware of how exhausted she was. She had almost drifted off into sleep when he murmured: "This name is also meaning 'Charles'."