Bear Mountain, continued
The trail had found a long, even stretch along the ridge where the treeline opened on the western side and the Hudson Valley did its thing below — the river a grey suggestion through the bare trees, the opposite shore rising into the Catskills, everything in the patient, stripped-down winter palette that was either bleak or beautiful depending entirely on what you brought to it.
Ethan brought something good to it today, and the valley looked beautiful.
He was, quietly and with the specific bewilderment of someone who had not seen this coming despite having decent predictive instincts, trying to work out how he'd gotten here. Not here in the geographical sense — Bear Mountain State Park, Hudson Valley, New York, planet Earth, 1991. Here, as in: walking on a ridge trail with Raven Darkhölme's arm in his, the actual Raven Darkhölme in her actual form beside him, the November light doing things to blue skin and red hair that he was finding it difficult not to keep looking at.
He'd been in this world for thirty-nine days.
He ran this number again. Thirty-nine days.
Fast, said one part of his internal monologue.
Yes, but, said the rest of it, and gestured at the general situation without being more specific.
He focused on the trail.
Raven walked beside him with the ease of someone who had made a decision and was inhabiting it rather than monitoring it — the blue form moving through the winter air with the particular quality of someone for whom natural meant what the word actually meant. Her shoulder was close to his. The arm contact was light and entirely deliberate.
He focused on the trail some more.
The silence was the comfortable kind — the kind that had earned itself rather than defaulted into existence. Enough conversation had happened that the quiet was full rather than empty.
She broke it.
"What do you do?" she asked. "When there's nothing urgent."
He thought about whether this was the same question he'd asked her or a different version. "I don't have hobbies exactly," he said. "There's one thing I do almost every night, but I'm not sure hobby is the right word for it."
"What is it?"
"I go out," he said. "Find criminals. Take them out."
A beat of silence. "You kill them."
"The ones who qualify," he said. He'd thought about how to describe this enough that it came out without the defensiveness of someone justifying themselves and without the flatness of someone who'd stopped thinking about it. "I interrogate them first. Figure out who else is connected. Confirm what they've done and what they are. And then yes." He paused. "Anyone who isn't a primary target — guards, support people, anyone who might be there by circumstance — stays alive. Unconscious, but alive."
She was quiet for a moment, processing this with the attention she gave things that were actually worth processing. "You could have not told me that," she said.
"I know," he said. "You asked what I do. That's what I do."
"Are you asking if it bothers me?"
"I'm curious if it does," he said. "You can tell me honestly."
She thought about it. The trail curved around a rock formation and opened back out onto the ridge, and she thought about it through the curve and the opening, and then she said: "No. Not the way you might expect." A pause. "I've done things like that. And—" she said this with the careful honesty of someone who wasn't making excuses but was also being accurate "—worse things, in some cases. The conditions were different. The reasoning was different. But the action itself?" She shook her head slightly. "I'm not in a position to be appalled."
"Different reasoning, how?" he asked, and meant it as genuine curiosity rather than scrutiny.
"Survival, mostly," she said. "Protecting people who couldn't protect themselves. Sometimes things that were—less defensible, if I'm being honest about them." She said this without performing the honesty — it had the quality of something she'd examined and arrived at an accurate accounting of. "What you're describing sounds like something else."
"I just think certain people have made choices that have consequences," he said. "And I'm in a position to be one of those consequences."
"That's either very simple or very complicated," she said.
"Both," he said. "Depending on the day."
She was quiet again, and then: "It's naive."
"Okay."
"Also noble," she said. "Naively noble. The not killing guards part." She paused. "Most people in your position wouldn't bother."
"Most people in my position aren't in my position," he said. "I don't need to kill guards to accomplish what I'm doing. So I don't."
She made a sound that was approximately fair enough in a register that didn't use words.
"I'd like to hear your history," he said. "If you're willing."
She looked at him sideways. "Are you sure?"
"Yes."
A longer pause. The trail was quiet — no other hikers anywhere near, the enhanced hearing picking up nothing human within the significant radius he'd described. Just wind and the creak of bare branches and the distant sound of the river.
"I was born in 1934," she said.
He kept his expression and his pace exactly the same and said nothing, which was the right response.
"I spent a long time running," she said. "Being what I needed to be to survive. The form I was born in—" she glanced down at her hands, the blue of them against the grey November air "—was not something people responded to without consequences. I learned early that consequences were easier to avoid if I looked like something people expected." She paused. "I was alone for a long time."
He listened.
"I found Charles eventually," she said. "And Erik — Magneto. The first two people in my life who saw what I was and explained it rather than reacted to it. Who said this is a mutation. This is what it does; you can learn to control it." Something in her voice that was not sentimental but was the shape of something that had mattered enormously. "I learned to control it. I've been working with Charles since then — helping other mutants, the school, the work." A pause. "The relationship with Erik is more complicated now. His methods and Charles's methods have diverged."
He understood this more thoroughly than she knew, but he listened without indicating it.
"That's the condensed version," she said.
"I'd like the longer version eventually," he said. "When you're ready to tell it."
She looked at him. The yellow eyes with the morning light, doing what morning light did.
"You said eventually," she said.
"I'm hoping there's an eventually," he said, with the directness he'd decided was the only honest register.
Something in her expression settled. "You're a lot," she said, and it wasn't a complaint.
"I've been told," he said, which was not true but felt like it might become true.
She tightened her arm slightly in his, briefly, and looked forward at the trail.
He thought about what to say next and decided on honesty because that was working.
"You mentioned being older," he said. "And asked if it bothers me."
"You said you expected it."
"I did. Some things you'd said added up to it." He paused. "It doesn't bother me. The opposite, actually."
"How is it the opposite?"
"Because it tells me your lifespan is probably substantial," he said. "And I'm eighteen now, which feels significant, but—" he paused "—I can feel what the sun does to me. Every day, it's different. Stronger. The cells are stabilizing in ways that feel like they're finding a permanent form rather than a progressing one." He thought about how to say the next part. "I don't think I age from here. Not in the normal way."
She was quiet, processing this.
"So the gap matters less than it looks like," he said. "And since I'm starting to like you mostly for your mind—" he paused at the mostly for a quarter second that she definitely noticed "—the rest of it is fairly secondary."
She walked for a moment in the particular silence of someone deciding whether to respond to what had just been said. Then: "Mostly."
"The blue was a contributing factor," he said. "I'll be honest."
The sound she made this time was unambiguously a laugh. Small, brief, redirected — but there.
---
The trailhead appeared below them as the route completed its loop, the parking area visible through the trees, the black GTO sitting exactly where they'd left it.
He felt her pace shift slightly as they came down the last section — the path narrowing, the trees thickening, the world closing back in from the ridge's openness. He felt it before he saw it: the subtle change in the arm against his, the slight gathering of something.
She shifted back at the treeline.
The brunette form assembled itself with the same ease as the blue form had dissolved — the practiced, total efficiency of someone who'd been doing this for decades, the transition so complete that if he hadn't been watching for it and hadn't had the senses he had, he would have seen nothing.
He knew his expression had done something.
He'd tried to keep it neutral and had mostly succeeded and had not entirely succeeded.
She was looking at him. "What?"
"Nothing," he said.
"That wasn't nothing."
He thought about being diplomatic and decided against it. "I just—" he paused "—would like it if you could be yourself all the time."
She held his gaze for a moment with the expression of someone receiving something they hadn't been sure they were going to receive. Something in it that was very careful and very open at the same time.
She didn't say anything.
She turned and walked to the car.
But something had shifted — he could hear it in the slight change in her breathing, see it in the quality of how she moved. Something that had been carefully maintained for a very long time had found a small crack in its foundation, and she wasn't addressing it directly, nor was she sealing it.
He filed this without comment and got in the passenger seat.
The GTO turned over with its particular sound, and they drove south toward Westchester, and the radio played something from the AM dial that neither of them turned off.
---
Xavier's mansion appeared at the end of the driveway with the comfortable solidity of a building that had been many things to many people and was fine with that.
They sat in the car for a moment after she stopped it, the engine ticking as it cooled.
"Day after tomorrow," she said.
"Day after tomorrow," he agreed. "I'll come to the mansion."
"I'll be in the back garden," she said. "I usually am in the mornings."
He nodded. He got out. She got out. They stood on the driveway in the late afternoon light with the specific quality of two people ending something they both knew was going to continue.
"Today was good," he said.
"Yes," she said. The word was simple and entirely meant.
He looked at her for a moment — the brunette form, the borrowed face, the eyes that were the same regardless of what the face around them was doing — and then he went, lifting off from behind the east wing once he was out of the driveway's sightline, gaining altitude into the grey November sky.
---
Raven Darkhölme sat in the GTO in the driveway for a moment before going inside.
She thought about the ridge.
She thought about standing on a trail in Bear Mountain in her actual skin with the November air doing what November air did, looking at a young man who had just said you're so pretty with the slightly lost expression of someone surprised by their own words, and the warmth that had moved through her at that expression specifically — not at the compliment but at the loss of composure, the evidence that she had caused it.
She thought about what he'd said on the walk down. I'd like it if you could be yourself all the time.
Nobody said that. She had a long catalog of the things people said about her blue form and I'd like you to be that all the time was not in it. The people who said anything close to that were the people who already knew her, who had come to it gradually, who had been through the process of adjustment. He'd been looking at it for six hours and had said it like it was the obvious thing.
She sat with this.
She was good — she was very good — at identifying when someone wanted something from her and what they were willing to present in order to get it. It was a survival skill that had been sharpened over decades. She ran Ethan Cole through this analysis with the honest rigor she applied to important assessments and arrived at the same place she kept arriving at:
He seemed to want, specifically, her company. The real version of it.
She didn't fully know what to do with that yet.
She got out of the car and went inside.
---
She made it approximately eleven feet into the main hallway.
"Raven."
Ororo Munroe had a specific quality of presence that made a two-syllable name feel like an announcement. She was standing in the hallway junction with Jean Grey and a young woman whose face was in the particular configuration of someone trying to look casual about the fact that they'd been waiting.
Rogue was doing slightly less well at the casual.
"Welcome back," Jean said, with the tone of someone whose telepathy was giving her a summary she found interesting.
"We heard you went on a date," Rogue said, losing the battle with casual entirely.
"Where did you—"
"Logan told Bobby," Storm said. "Bobby mentioned it. The mansion has limited news cycles."
"It wasn't—" Raven started, and looked at three faces receiving this opening with identical polite skepticism, and stopped. "It was a hike."
"In a different face," Jean said. "Which means you were testing something."
"Who is he?" Rogue asked. "Is it the one who punched Logan through—"
"Yes," Raven said.
"The one whom Logan said was operating at approximately half power when he did that," Storm said. "That one."
"Yes."
The three of them processed this in their various ways. Rogue's expression did something complicated that resolved into a specific kind of impressed. Storm went through a rapid evaluation and settled on warm. Jean went through several things quickly and settled on a slight smile that suggested she'd already assembled more of the picture than she was saying.
"Come in," Storm said, gesturing toward the sitting room off the hallway with the gracious inevitability of someone who was doing this regardless.
They went in.
Raven sat in the chair near the window — the same sightline logic she applied in every room — and looked at three women arranging themselves on the furniture with the energy of people who had questions and had decided they'd waited long enough.
They started simultaneously.
"How did he—"
"Was it actually—"
"Did he know it was—"
Raven held up a hand.
They stopped.
She looked at them. At the genuine interest in all three faces — not gossip-interest, not entertainment-interest. The interest of people who cared about the person they were asking about.
Something in her chest that had been very organized for a very long time made a small adjustment.
"He recognized me," she said. "In a completely different face. Immediately."
A beat. "How?" Jean asked.
"Heartbeat," Raven said. "And scent."
Rogue made a face. "That's—"
"I know what it sounds like," Raven said. "I didn't mind it." She paused. "I don't know why I didn't mind it. I should probably mind it. It means he can always find me regardless of what form I'm in, which is objectively—"
"Sounds like he'd never lose you," Storm said, gently.
Raven looked at her.
"Continue," Jean said.
She told them about the hike. The drive up, the car, the conversation. She edited for length and kept the specifics that mattered. When she got to the ridge, she paused.
"He asked me," she said, "if I'd be more comfortable in my natural form. He told me exactly how far away the nearest person was and said he'd warn me if anyone came close." She looked at the window. "So I changed."
The room was quiet.
"And?" Rogue said.
"And he was quiet for a moment," Raven said. "And I asked so? And he said he was flabbergasted." She paused. "He said I was pretty." Another pause. "Shyly. Like it surprised him to say it."
Storm made a small sound.
"He wasn't performing it," Raven said, to preempt the question. "I know what performance looks like. He was genuinely—" she searched for the word "—surprised by his own reaction. And then he was slightly embarrassed about being surprised." She looked at her hands. "I think that was when I took his arm."
Jean Grey had the expression of someone whose telepathy was not in use and who didn't need it.
"Then on the way back," Raven said, "before we got to the car, I shifted back." She paused. "He noticed. His expression did something he didn't want it to do." She looked at the window again. "He said he'd like it if I could be myself all the time."
The room was quiet for a different reason now.
"Raven," Storm said, with the warmth of someone who meant it completely.
"I didn't respond," Raven said. "I don't know what I would have said." She paused. "We're meeting again the day after tomorrow."
Jean was looking at her with the expression she wore when she was reading a room without actively trying. "It went well," she said. Not a question.
"It went—" Raven thought about the right word. "Perfect," she said. "It went perfectly."
Storm was smiling. Jean was smiling. Rogue was doing something that was trying not to smile and losing the effort.
"I'm happy for you," Storm said, simply.
"I'm happy for you too," Jean said. "Also slightly—" she paused "—it must be very interesting to meet someone who can't be read."
"He seems to have that effect," Raven said, and the corner of her mouth moved.
Rogue was quiet in a particular way, as if someone was holding something. "He sounds—" she started. She stopped. She looked at her hands, gloved as always, the barrier between herself and everything. Then she looked up, and her expression was open rather than the managed thing it usually was. "I'm glad you found someone like that," she said. "I really am."
Raven looked at her. "Thank you, Anna."
---
She thought about a man on a trail, saying you look so pretty in the voice of someone who had not planned to say it.
She thought about the day after tomorrow.
She thought that she was, possibly, for the first time in quite a long time, looking forward to something that wasn't a mission or a task or a problem to solve.
She thought that this was very strange and also very good.
---
Ethan flew south over the Hudson, Manhattan assembling itself ahead on the horizon, and ran the day in his head with the thoroughness of someone who had developed a strong appreciation for thoroughness.
The morning. The lobby. Her arm in his. The ridge. Flabbergasted.
He thought: This could not have gone better.
He thought: the agent tomorrow will be entertaining.
The city came up to meet him, and he dropped into the approach pattern he'd developed for getting back into the hotel building without being observed, and the plan for tomorrow formed itself in the practical part of his mind that was always running something, and underneath it, the rest of him was doing what it had been doing since the ridge.
Looking forward.