prefers_magneto (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
prefers_magneto) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
themutanthood2014-11-17 02:51 pm
prefers_magneto) wrote in themutanthood2014-11-17 02:51 pm
Entry tags:
A New Page | Voicetest/PSL
[Assuming the conversation we sort of played out on Plurk occurred.]
It hadn't been easy, convincing her to work with him again, travel with him again, be on his side again after Paris and Washington. She knew how far he was willing to go for their cause - any means necessary - because it had always been that way. What she had to understand was why he felt there had been no other solution and that killing her had been far, far from his first choice or preferred course of action. The last resort to prevent a genocide: it was the only thing that could have driven him to such a desperate measure.
With it now clear that that won't and can't help, there's no chance of it happening again. But would he trust that in her shoes? He'd been extremely honest, both when he was doing it and afterwards. He never lied to her. Not ever. He'd never had to; she's the one he trusts.
The only one he trusts completely. The only one who ever knows the whole plan. He needs her. Of course, once committed to do the job, she's given it one hundred percent of her focus and determination. They're alike in that way.
He's still not completely sure of where he stands with her personally.
He's silent as the car speeds along the almost empty highway in the dead of night.
It hadn't been easy, convincing her to work with him again, travel with him again, be on his side again after Paris and Washington. She knew how far he was willing to go for their cause - any means necessary - because it had always been that way. What she had to understand was why he felt there had been no other solution and that killing her had been far, far from his first choice or preferred course of action. The last resort to prevent a genocide: it was the only thing that could have driven him to such a desperate measure.
With it now clear that that won't and can't help, there's no chance of it happening again. But would he trust that in her shoes? He'd been extremely honest, both when he was doing it and afterwards. He never lied to her. Not ever. He'd never had to; she's the one he trusts.
The only one he trusts completely. The only one who ever knows the whole plan. He needs her. Of course, once committed to do the job, she's given it one hundred percent of her focus and determination. They're alike in that way.
He's still not completely sure of where he stands with her personally.
He's silent as the car speeds along the almost empty highway in the dead of night.
no subject
She should be grateful, really, that he's not a good guy. It meant a bullet in the calf and a worldwide coming out the likes of which no one else should ever experience (Hank. God, the poor guy), but she's alive.
And in the car with him, against her better judgement, but wholly in line with her stupid, deeply-hidden feelings.
Raven lets that silence drag out, and it's only the quiet rippling crunch of her form shifting from the pretty blonde she usually wears to her own deep azure that tells him she's at least going to hear him out. After all, she could just get out of the car at their destination and melt into any crowd she likes.
"You're an asshole. I hope you know that."
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But he's never pretended to be the good guy. He's the guy that does what needs to be done, when everyone else lacks the stomach or the balls or the ability to see the big picture. He'll be the bad guy, but he won't be the guy who stands idly by while his people are rounded up and destroyed. Not again. Not ever.
He glances over when he hears her change. He can't help himself. Her remark prompts a breath of a self-deprecating smile.
"I know."
He glances over again. "But you missed me," he suggests. He raises his eyebrows. "Maybe a little?"
no subject
The only light in the car is from the dash, and from the very rare approaching vehicle, but it's enough that she notes the glinted reflection in his eyes as they shift towards her. She's never been sure if he likes her true form better than watching it occur, but she knows he watches it. Maybe he really had been sorry. Whatever, it's a moot point, now. They have her DNA, and god only knows what they intend to do with it. Killing her wouldn't have actually solved anything if Trask had got his hands on her corpse.
"Yeah, maybe," she says in a low voice. "But that faded pretty quick in the circumstances. I'm still pissed at you."
For at least another day. Or hour. Or however long suits her. Or not at all. She hasn't decided.
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He does know what he has to do, though. He'd gained access to the Sentinels in Trask's own backyard without her ability to transform, and with Trask in prison, his first order of business was going to be tracking down any samples Trask Industries had from her and any records of what they'd learned from them and taking them back. With, he hoped, her help. And he'd put them in her hands and what happened to them then would be up to her.
"I know."
There's a long silence, then he looks at her sidelong, always taken with the striking elegance of her appearance.
"Why did you talk to me at the train station? You had the drop on me. You had a weapon. You could have killed me and evened the score."
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"I got the drop on you because I'm good," she begins, and it's true - and his fault. Already flexible, she'd been holding back, hiding behind a pretty façade to please others, no matter how much it bothered her… and then his constant compliments, stated simply and plainly with no agenda, kept getting to her. So she'd accepted herself as herself, and joined him - and then he went to jail. And Raven became Mystique in truth; no longer playing at Goodies and Baddies, but training hard to become a woman to admire and be wary of. His fault. "And killing you would only have pleased a momentary need for vengeance."
After which she might have been legitimately remorseful, and would have grieved for him. She shifts slightly, her seatbelt irritating a scale on her hip.
"I know I could have. But this isn't about evening the score, ok? It's bigger than that. I wanted to know why, that's all."
And it had been a shitty, shitty reason, from her perspective - and even more so when she considers that he still effected the outcome they were trying to avoid.
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And he knew she could be better without the pressure to be like people she's better than.
He glances over. Keeping your eyes completely on the road isn't as crucial when you can feel where other cars are.
"I didn't want to hurt you. That man from the future - Logan - he told me what they did to you. That they would capture you and torture you and then build a weapon out of you that we can't defeat. And all of it was wrong. I didn't see another way. But I was wrong. I should have told you what I knew. You were always good at seeing all the ways."
His eyes return to the road.
"But I forgot. It had been a long time."
A heavy pause.
"I almost escaped once. That was when they started carrying the plastic guns."
Another pause.
"I thought you might come."
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Tensing slightly in anticipation of his response, she has to bite her tongue to not snap at him about how uncharacteristically short-sighted he'd been… and then he admits it, and she relaxes a fraction. At least he can acknowledge and accept his mistakes, even if it doesn't really mollify her all that much.
"I nearly did."
She'd been watching the Pentagon for months, carefully planning an infiltration and extraction… but it hadn't eventuated.
"But while you were a guest of the President, there was a war. They were using our people." She looks directly at him, about to use his own words as her justification. "The needs of the many outweighed yours. Your location was absolute, and you were safe."
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He glances at her, but looks immediately back to the road. "It was a little shocking the day that door opened and Charles turned out to be behind it instead of you."
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She stretches her neck.
"My point is that you're shit at subtle."
Which is pretty essential when trying to pull a fast one on the military.
"I was coming to you next, but I was distracted by Trask."
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Yes hello here are repressed feelings and too many words
She'd have been worried the whole thing was a set up if she hadn't heard the sincerity of the sheer dismay and panic in the guards when the empty cells were discovered. Sharp ears had picked that up just as she'd slipped into the tree line, bringing up the rear of their group.
So... a success, all in all. One of the teen girls had given her looks of hero worship as the group was ushered into the waiting windowless van. It had continued the whole day and a half they drove away, except when the girl was sleeping. That was much easier to bear than the awkward, grateful flirting of one of the younger guys. She shut it down quickly but kindly, and made sure her own naps while Erik drove were taken next to a pair of older men, who gave her their brief but sincere thanks then left her alone.
But the other half of the Rescue Team was Erik. And he's just as attractive a man as she is a woman, and that fact was not lost on any of their charges. Raven spent thirty-six hours hearing whispered conversations about his hair and his eyes and his smile and his shoulders and his bravery and cunning and daring and power and hands and smile and eyes and ass and eyes and smile and she pretended the near-silent verbal ogling really wasn't able to be heard over Erik's careful recruiting of the adults, but watching one of them actively offer her lap as a pillow had her jaw tensing. She didn't speak as she drove her final shift. She didn't comment on the heavy-handed flirting as she parked the van at the rest-stop on the outskirts of a no-name town. She pretended not to hear the blatant invitation to do something other than rest during that hour. Most of all, she pretended none of those things were bothering her in the slightest, and as she carefully turned the hero-worship from Janice into a goal for independence and control of her own abilities, she also didn't have to focus on why she was pretending not to be bothered.
And of course, she's convinced that none of this was evident, because if there's one thing she's good at, it's showing a face to the world.
It's been a little over week since she accepted his offer to work with him again. Two days since they'd fled with their people. So the five intervening days should not have been enough to let all those old feelings and ease and noticing to come back.
Business. It was business.
Maybe there was a history, and they've been sharing a bed this past week, but right now, they were working together, and that was necessity. Anyway, he's been purely professional. Friendly, and supportive, and a partner
like they used to be, but professional.
She's blonde, here, the pretty distraction forming the memories of the cashier so he won't pay attention to the others, strutting around the tiny aisles and buying the closest approximation to real protein she can find in the mostly convenience-stocked rest stop cafeteria. But pretty and blonde is only the surface, and as she strides back out into the night to see Susan the flirt flipping her hair and giving every body language cue under heaven of her interest and availability, her natural strength has her gripping the cans of Coke in her left hand to the point the aluminum warps under her thumb.
She wants to punch stunning Susan with her long dark hair and wings and retractable fucking claws in her goddamned beautiful face and that reaction was not okay.
So she tosses a can
at her insteadto Erik. A projectile in the dark. He'll catch it."Caffeine. Not even you would have liked that coffee."
Six more hours, and they're at their destination, and they can let their charges go.
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But Erik is distracted, by then, by Raven's arrival.
"I've consumed some pretty terrible coffee," he tells her in his own defence. "I found a stash of ersatz after the war. If you haven't had tepid water filtered through ground acorns and sawdust, you haven't truly appreciated the coffee bean."
His Coke seemingly opens itself. So does Raven's.
Erik isn't, by any means, blind or deaf, but he's a uniquely single-minded man in his pursuits. He's focused on his mission to protect mutants fro genocide and on a personal note? He's focused on regaining Raven's trust and affection.
Susan, who would be endlessly useful as an ally, has only been addressed in the light of the former and, in the light of the latter, she's going rather unnoticed.
She doesn't seem to like it much, since she rolls her eyes in response to his attention shift.
*sob* the html... i am so sorry ;(
Raven is an advocate for female empowerment and women owning their own sexuality and desires. She also uses both of things as a weapon, a distraction, and a means to an end, herself - so she doesn't hate Susan for what she's doing. Hypocrisy is something she's long-since grown out of... no, this is the seething bite of unfounded jealousy. Punching Susan in the face will serve no purpose whatsoever except soothing something she doesn't like in herself, and since she's on the subject, she shouldn't even be feeling that. Sure, the stitches are out of her leg, now, but there's more to that wound than the physical, and it hasn't quite healed.
One eyebrow raises in response to the Coke popping open - thanks - and the comment.
"Imagine," she begins, in the sort of voice you'd use with an eight year old whose mind you're about to freaking blow with science, "if that could be re-used."
Oh, yes. That coffee was bad.
Susan is treated to a tired expression that might have been trying to be a smile, instead of anything else she's not thinking about. Fuck, rescue missions are effort.
"They have snack stuff inside, if you're hungry. Otherwise it's six hours til we stop, and we're leaving in ten."
Allies. Manners. Susan takes a hint, and moves towards the bright lights and the other mutants quietly gathering small amounts of snacks and freshening up in the ablutions blocks. She brushes past Erik as she goes.
Raven takes a loooooong swallow of Coke.
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He gestures towards the group in and around the rest stop with his Coke.
"I'm not sure any of them will stay with us. I don't think there's a single one with the stomach for revolution," he muses.
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Because it comes from a place where she won't subject him to that. Or something.
And for such an observant man, Raven notices he wears blinkers quite often. She's pretty sure Susan's not used to working that hard and not getting anywhere. Maybe the next six hours will be blessedly fucking quiet.
She watches over her shoulder for a moment, til the woman is inside.
"Janice might," she offers quietly. "Once she's older. And maybe not revolution, but there's something to be said for gratitude, and if an effort is made to check in and keep in touch with them all without any expectation of reciprocity? That's the sort of thing that can breed loyalty. Eventually, they'll want to help. Plant the seed now, water it over time, and we'll have people on our side."
--is she babbling? There are donuts in the bag, and some jerky. He can have some, if he wants.
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"I suppose," he concedes. "I just feel like we've lost so much time already."
His fault, nobody else's. He made missteps. Why hadn't he brought Mystique to Dallas? He's been thinking about that on the long drive. She would have had his back. No way CIA operatives would've got close to him at such a delicate time. If he'd been less arrogant, they could have saved him.
They'd be in a much stronger position now; not just Erik and Raven, but as a race.
"But it won't be productive to rush things."
His eyes linger on her face for a moment, then drift to their charges.
"Some of them are much too young."
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"Maybe." Her Coke is tucked into her elbow and she fishes some jerky out before offering the bag to him. He makes her next point for her, anyway, and she nods. Rushing ruins plans that don't have back-ups.
Take Dallas.
Or don't, because hindsight fixes a lot of things, and clearly plots out all the outcomes of 'if only I had...'. And on that point, Logan came back in time already to alter an horrific future - one bad enough to have Erik shoot her. He didn't come back to save JFK. Ergo, while it would have been a coup? He wasn't the linchpin for the future of mutants.
Erik might have focus, but there's something in his gaze that has her meeting it unflinchingly, but also guardedly... and then she deliberately puts her own blinkers on. Business. Finish the job, then pick apart all the minutiae.
"Those are the ones you should cultivate. They'll remember who came for them, who helped them, who told them of a better way, and who let them live their life without pushing. They're the ones you'll want in a few years." She rips off a bite of jerky. "The others? They might come around. Maybe action after trauma isn't their thing."
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A New Dawn
He cleans up, gets dressed and watches her sleep for just a moment before slipping out of the room, determined to hunt and gather some breakfast. She needs to eat.
no subject
He’ll return to a room that no longer resembles a laundry, and a harried-looking “mother” doing an impossible yoga stretch.
Once the door closes behind him, Raven crackles back to blue, hands flat on the floor and one leg straight up in the air.
“Is this a frustration thing or a manly need to provide thing?”
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"I guess it's a being able to go outside thing," he admits. "I have a bit of trouble sitting in one room these days. No matter how well advised it is."
He looks over at her.
"I don't want to put you in danger."
Him going out with no real disguise does that.
"You'd think I'd be accustomed to sitting still."
He sits in one of the chairs, a little contrite.
"Sorry."
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“You don’t need to apologise,” she tells him, still upside down but swapping the extended leg for the other one. “Cabin fever is s thing, and you were in a plastic fucking box. I get it.”
Her foot flexes.
“I just worry that someone will recognise you. I don’t... I mean, I’d break you out this time , but— it’s just... We’re a team. At least tell me where you’re going next time?”
Because she doesn’t want to be alone again.
Her stomach growls and she rolls her eyes.
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"I left the tray with the coffee in the car."
He looks at her. Should he go out and get it?
no subject
“I’ll get them,” she tells him, her skin rippling and shifting until she’s once again the woman who’d rented their room. “You eat. Toss me the keys?”
no subject
But he won't start eating without her. He opens the two styrofoam boxes instead, setting cutlery next to each. Hers has a double serving of scrambled eggs, hashbrowns and bacon. His is identical, minus the bacon.
no subject
And she hurries, because that smells amazing and he got her bacon because he knows she needs four hundred kinds of protein and even the coffee smells decent as she makes her way back to their room, flicking the lock on the door once she’s back.
The one that smells milky is clearly hers.
Therefore the one that must be black as her mood when certain people wouldn’t shut up is his.
A blue hand sets it in front of him... and then she leans down to press a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth.
“Thank you for breakfast.”
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