onepassingnight | 001 - A Passing Storm

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001 - A Passing Storm

A dream without Charles is a rare thing, but she has his essence with him. She's stretched out on the lawn, his cat curled up next to her stomach and purring loudly. As she looks up in the sky, the clouds form the distinct shape of people she's known. The dark clouds are Charles' mother and step-father. Her own parents. Everyone she's always been afraid has ever wanted to hurt her or Erik. But then the skies lighten and she can see the good people, too. She can see the professors who all thought Charles was a little odd, but who recognized his brilliance, she can see the young man who always asks her for a cup of coffee when she picks up the newspaper. They're all there for her to see.

Soon, the clouds are changing into other people and things. She watches as a purple dragon chases a blue butterfly through the clouds. They slide in and out of the other clouds and she's sure she even hears the dragon roar, though she could be mistaken by that. She must be mistaken by that. She must also be mistaken when the dragon begins to look a lot more like Cain than any animal. She curls her hand a little in the kitten's fur when the dragon starts flying lower and lower and closer to her. Does he mean to eat her? Is that to be her punishment for abandoning him in favor of Charles? The clouds start to darken again and the wind begins to howl. Lightning cracks against the sky and her hand tightens even more.

And then, just like that, the dragon/Cain catches the butterfly and swishes away again. Her hand eases as the skies turn back to normal. When she finally lets go, she's shocked out of her reverie by the kitten pouncing on her stomach. Before she can do anything about it, the kitten runs off.

She gets up after a minute and follows in the direction of the kitten, calling after her. "Blueberry. Blueberry!" She's not sure what she'll do if the kitten's run off somewhere, especially since it's her fault for hurting the poor thing. Relief floods her when she sees the kitten sitting by the door as if she was just waiting for someone to let her in. She's licking down the spots of fur she can reach that are still sticking up from Raven's tight grip. It takes her a moment to realize that Blueberry is not alone.

"Oh, hello."

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"The soldier of..." Raven began before the other words really hit. "You know Charles?" That surprised her. She was fairly sure that she knew all of Charles' friends. Mostly because she was pretty sure he didn't have many.

"He's..." How did one describe her brother that didn't use the words telepath, mind, or reader? "He has dark hair and is about so tall." She lifts her hand up and offers the woman a rueful smile. It was hard trying to describe him in ways that didn't have him looking like 90% of the population of any given place.

Mercury has no such tact these days, and besides, she's much more interested in power than appearance. "A telepath," she supplies while Raven avoids it. What she wouldn't give to have that kind of ability herself.

"Although I'm not one, I'm interested in that sort of power." And, she'd dare say, Charles is equally interested in hers. Which begs the question...

"Raven Xavier. If you're related to him," are the genetic mutations he talks about, hereditary? The cat is forgotten for the moment and Mercury glances sidelong at Raven, considering. "Could you also have power?"

Raven's heart starts pounding in her chest. She's supposed to be taking care of her brother. She's supposed to keep him from spreading the knowledge of his talents to everyone else. She forces a smile on her face and realizes she's going to have to have a very long talk with him, soon.

"I'm sorry, I'm not really sure what kind of tales he's been telling. I have to remind him that there might be some people who take him seriously."

Though the question is why she takes Charles seriously. Did he do something that would make her believe in him?

Her look in return gives no clues. The truth is, it's so much easier to give things away in dreams. She can understand that desire to be honest, to be all of who she is. She refuses to live life compromising a part of herself, now.

So Mercury doesn't begrudge Charles his secrets, or keeping or spreading them. She believes him, because she's lived a life used to different powers around her. She does consider Raven's answer. Loyalty, or ignorance? She decides to play with believing the latter.

"So you didn't know?"

"Didn't know what? That Charles tells stories? Of course I knew. I am his sister." Raven reaches down and picks Blueberry up. Her fingers absently run through the kittens fur, trying to set it back in place as she wonders just what this woman knows. Is it anything concrete or is it just stories? She can play off the stories, though apparently she seems to absolutely believe the stories.

"Really, you shouldn't put much stock into what he says. I'm sorry he's got you believing in all of this."

Raven doesn't want to move, but she will if she has to. She and Charles can go travelling for a few years. In the background, the thunder starts to rumble again.

"If they're just stories, you don't need to be concerned with it. Isn't that right?" With this comfortable evasion (after all, she's so very sure; she's even warned a Charles before not to use his powers when they play chess), Mercury glances away, further into the house.

"However," she adds after a moment. "I think if someone has that sort of power, just if, they should be proud to be everything they are."

She looks back at Raven, directly now. "I certainly won't hide mine." She does keep her identities separate still in waking life, but in the dreams they mesh and meld - and in both, she wants to show her strength.

Edited 2012-01-30 22:45 (UTC)

There is a difference, Raven thinks, between not being proud and being cautious. Caution is what has kept her and Charles from ending up as lab rats. At least after his step-father was out of the equation. She refuses to let that happen for a second time and if it means that she has to keep his powers under wraps from people, she'll do that. Of course, there's Moira, but she wants to use his abilities to help. Charles has looked inside her and sees no malevolent intent and for Raven, that's good enough. But that's Moira and Raven doesn't know who this...

This...

Won't hide mine?

"What are you talking about?" The blue strikes her again and the idea strikes her that maybe that's as much illusion as Raven's blonde form is, but that would be impossible. She's never found or heard of anyone who can do the things she can. Even Charles' talents lie in another area.

She goes for something even more obvious - to her - first. With just a turn of her head, the air temperature suddenly seems to drop, and just like that, the kitchen is ringed with icicles clinging all around its edges, like the border of a wallpaper. They glitter proudly in the light.

Mercury turns back to Raven and grins. "Don't worry!" she says and, as if this could be the only surprising or worrisome part, "There won't be water damage."

The icicles are left to hang there. It's not precisely a world-shattering display, but her smug expression suggests she believes she's at least made her point. Mercury acts as if they're nothing particularly out of the ordinary beyond that. She did mention she was the soldier of Water.

Edited 2012-01-31 03:07 (UTC)

Raven takes one step back and then another and she's clutching at Blueberry again. With the clouds, the world had been shifting to her own mind, but this is the mind of someone else and It has no place in her world. At least no place that she's ever thought of. Maybe Charles really has revealed himself to this woman and, if so, then she can see why, even if she doesn't like it.

"How can you do what you're doing?" She knows how she can do the things she does. She just can. She's always been able to, or at least has for as long as she's been able to remember. It's the same with Charles. Can this woman be the same way?

It's both the same, and very different. Her powers are as much a part of her as theirs are part of them; but she wasn't even aware of them until she was fourteen. Perhaps she could have used them sooner if she'd known, as it was something born inside her in the distant past.

"This is who I am," she says, to express that intrinsic innateness. "I was born with this power over Water. To play with ice like that isn't any different."

There's something Raven feels she should be remembering, something about Charles and his diving into the water, but she can only focus on what's right in front of her. Someone who has power over water. That does sound an awfully lot like the things she and Charles could do. They don't have the same power, but they do have power.

"You control it well. You were never scared that someone would find out what you could do?" That is probably her greatest fear. Not just that someone will find out. That the wrong person will find out and things will go back to the way they used to be.

It was very different for her. She used to be cautious for the simple sake of having that secret to share with friends, to bring them closer and bind them all together. Now, what does that matter?

Their powers had been mistrusted by the people of Earth a very long time ago, but only a few years ago, Sailor V had made newspaper headlines as a heroine. And while it might be prudent to keep such things from their enemies, their enemies had already known from the start.

Besides, she joined them.

"I'm not afraid," she says clearly. "Besides, don't you think I blend in more than this normally?" It's a hint at the truth.

That piques Raven's curiosity and though she is curious, she also has to know. Did she remember something about Charles finding someone like him? Or was that some figment of a dream? She's never imagined finding someone just like her. Having someone who has powers is about as close as she thinks she'll ever get and it's enough for her. But now, the possibility...it's compelling.

"I don't know. You could not want to blend in." She isn't sure why someone would want to do that, but it is a valid option.

"I have my own reasons for wanting to sometimes. That's also my choice," Mercury says simply. The nearer truth is that there are two separate lives she lives when she's awake; and she doesn't cross them.

"However, my power and who I am right now are important to me. I won't sacrifice them or put them aside."

"Sometimes you have to sacrifice things for the people you care about," Raven says simply. She's not sure where she would be without Charles, but she also doesn't really want to think about it. She made her choice years ago and she's never really looked back since. This is who she is, now, and she's happy - mostly - with it. That's not to say that she doesn't use her powers. She's had to on more than a few occasions. It's just that her first thought isn't how to use her powers, it's how to do what she needs to do with the least exposure to them both.

She wants to sneer. Even a year ago, she would have. It's more noble-sounding talk that never means anything because it's either a lie in the end, or it's useless and gets nowhere anyway.

But, these days, there are people she'd be willing to sacrifice for herself: the ones who've stayed by her. Somehow, the words to dismiss that don't make it to her lips.

It still comes as a caution. "Thinking that way can leave you unprepared to face reality."

"Unless you've already done it," Raven answers. "Unless you're already doing it." She could have her own life. She could leave Charles alone and she could go out and be someone else. Anyone else. But to do that would be to leave Charles in a world he can't cope with and, maybe just as importantly, a world that can't cope with him. She has no illusions about what would happen to him if she left. At best, he'd probably be locked up in some asylum somewhere. At worst? More experiments. Many more until either they killed him or he killed them.

"Believe me, I'm not thinking about some schoolgirl fantasy. I'm not Sleeping Beauty, giving up a hundred years in exchange for her Prince Charming."

Mercury smiles coldly. She likes someone seeing through fairy tales to the cold and bitter stories they are. She has no more patience with them; she was one of the ones killed by the tragic princess who couldn't live without the prince - or let anything else live, catching up everything and everyone else around her in a twisted Romeo and Juliet.

"You're interesting," she concedes. After a moment, she speaks further. "I don't have any sweet words like 'I'd do this for their sake', but there are people I fight alongside. Maybe it's the same."

"You must not have any brothers or sisters." Technically, she supposed, she didn't have any either, but she'd made Charles her sister. They were as much family as if they'd actually been born together. Or at least born two years apart, which was about the difference. "Because then you would. You'd do just about anything for their sake."

Especially after everything that Charles has been through.

[There's a moment before she answers, while the truth of her waking life wars with the feelings of her dreams. Ami, born as an only child, speaks through Mercury.]

I have one brother. And, I won't let go of him.

[Cloud, who she's even betrayed others for already - though her words are grasping and selfish rather than endearing.]

"Then I think you might know how I feel. I'd do anything for him." Raven looks in the house. He should be here already and it concerns her that he's not, but somehow, she's also not surprised. She's concerned. She's not panicked. If she were panicked, she wouldn't be out talking to this woman.

"Maybe more so because he's not a blood brother." She's not sure why she says that, but that, too, seems right.

The flash of similar thinking hits her with surprise.

"I understand that," she says finally, mildly for her. Cloud has no blood relation to her, but after everything they'd been through together, and the dreams where he did, they'd both gradually slipped into the habit of seeing things that way.

"I wonder if, growing up, I would have liked my mother to adopt a child to be my sibling."

"His mother didn't adopt me," Raven says simply. "Charles did." That's the truth, but the truth is far more complicated than her statement. He'd made sure that his mother and step-father believed that she was a part of the family. He couldn't change much, but he could do that. And, in return, she'd done her best to look after him. It had seemed like a fair trade at the time and now it's just the way things were.

"It's the first I've heard of a child adopting a sibling on his own," Ami remarks. The truth occurs to her as she says it: "He must have wanted you there."

For someone to want her with him so much that he went that far to make it happen... Raven is lucky. Perhaps even enviable.

"We wanted each other." It's probably more accurate to say that they needed each other. She needed to know that she wasn't alone and he needed someone to protect him from the monsters who were supposed to be the ones looking out for him. "So he made it happen."

Oh, totally fine. I love it.

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