Heroes: Book III

XIII

I watched the black, ugly mass of pain collect in the palm of my hand. It drew out from the veins of Peter's leg, all bent out of place and facing the ground at a wrong angle. I wished I could have actually healed him, restored the bone and sheets of muscle tissue back to their former glory. But the pain was all I could care for. His head settled deeper into my lap as his injury went numb.

I dissipated the black pain out into the air and away from us. My fingers still burned, though, as a reminder.

"I'm sorry I can't do more," I whispered stroking through his hair, "Did I get all the pain?"

He groaned a bit and tried to give me a smile, "Yeah, you got most of it. Thanks."

"Good," I promptly thumped him on the side of his head.

"Ow."

"What were you thinking? Taking on Apocalypse by yourself? You almost died. And if you died..." I shook the thought from my head.

He smirked up at me, "I was trying to look cool."

I rolled my eyes, "You know you move too fast for anyone to see you right?"

"Yeah, but I would've known."

I heard Hank mutter something from behind me. Something dropped in my chest, like a sign that something was really wrong. My mind flashed back to Mystique, suffocating in the cruel grip of Apocalypse. She saved Peter. She saved my whole world.

"Can you hear me?"

Push. Push. Push. Push. Blow.

"Raven. Raven, can you hear me?"

Hank pushed down onto her chest again, his blue paws for hands desperately compressing down against her heart. He tried to transfer some of the air from his lungs into hers.
No use.

I touched my hand to her forehead. It burned like the houseplant. Like Lorna's formally-dead goldfish.

"She's almost drained of energy," I whispered as I began rubbing my hands together, concentrating the entirety of my energy into the palms of my hands. They began to glow a golden color like the sun.

"__, no. Can't that kill you? Transferring that much of your energy?" Hank warned, about to pull my hands away. I kept growing the ball of energy anyway.

Peter's hand weakly grasped at my arm, "Firefly, don't. Please for once don't be yourself and just be selfish." My hands faltered.

Maybe I'm not all that much of a hero, because there was a brief moment where I considered it. I could've just shrugged my shoulders now that I knew Peter was alive and let Raven deal with the sacrifice of her choice to save him. But then I felt the power swirling around beneath my skin and I knew that I had it for a reason and the reason was presenting itself right here and now: I have these powers to save people from pain...darkness...death.

And to neglect them would let death win.

Before Hank's hand could latch onto my arms I quickly pressed them down onto Raven's chest, just above her heart. And all at once my energy flew from my fingertips, into her body, draining me down like a battery. The pain was unspeakable, a feeling of third degree burns, of embracing the surface of the very sun. I could hear Peter shouting my name behind me, trying to move to me with his leg holding him back. Hank even tried to rip me away, to disconnect me from Raven but it was no use. The energy was too strong, already flowing into her with an intensity beyond even my control. He went flying from the sheer force. I couldn't pry my hands away.

And when it was all over, when I had sacrificed my energy to her as a gift for saving the person I love beyond all time and space...
Everything went black. And quiet.

I could only see long enough to know Raven's eyes had opened again, and Hank was running to us, and Peter was cursing at his broken leg and now his broken heart.

I didn't know where I was after that. It was somewhere where the past and the present and the future were all just piled up on each other in this heaping mass. Time wasn't structured. I was free-floating through the universe.

I was ready to go. For real this time. Beyond all of the vivid mirages of color and now into whatever lied beyond time.

But I felt a sudden heat. A bout of fire, whipping out into the air. And all of the darkness that I had sensed before, all of the misery that made the earth tremble and my hands shake with fear was all obliterated by a cosmic force. I sensed it all beyond my body.

Jean, let go...

Jean. She did it. She ended Apocalypse.

Her energy radiated further than the material world, off to the oblivion I was floating in. She was a lighthouse, calling me back, shining a path back to them all, back to my body. When I thought it was all over, there she was. Giving me a second chance.

I fought off the darkness, following the light all the way back until I could feel my heart pump again. And my lungs gasp for air.

And I woke up, reborn.