𝐒𝐖𝐈𝐅𝐓 (X-Men ~ Peter Maximoff)

The End of an Era

Jennifer offered a bittersweet smile, hoping that it would offer some consolation. (It didn't.) "It's a long story but there's not enough time to explain it all right now. I just wanted you to know I was okay."

It was true. Jennifer seemed to live in an hourglass, where time always ran out just as things started to make progress. Shouting echoed through the stadium, incompressible orders being fired around, emphasising Jennifer's point. Raven was being hunted once again.

"We should get out of here before they catch up," Raven suggested, clamping her hand around Jennifer's wrist and starting to move away, but the seventeen year old didn't budge.

"It's you they want, not me. I'll get out of this, but you should leave now."

The blue skin between Raven's eyebrows crinkled as she frowned. Her train of thought was all over the place, and she couldn't concentrate for long enough to put everything back in place. The girl standing infront of her was not the same one that had been embarrassed and intimidated when they first met, and it wasn't the girl that had been trying too hard for Erik's approval either. No, Jennifer Jones was something far different now, and Raven wasn't sure what to think about that.

"You followed me here, dropped a bombshell and now you're leaving again, with no explanation? You don't get to do that. Not to me."

Jennifer suddenly became very interested in her scuffed shoes. She had had this conversation three times already and not once had she thought to change her approach. Was there a better way to do it anyway – a way of letting someone understand what was going on in a calm and collected manner rather than giving the person a heart attack and then leaving five minutes later.

Good news was that there were only a few more people left that she could surprise now, but the bad news was that once again time was running out, the sound of nearing footsteps serving as a reminder that they were already on borrowed time.

A breeze rippled through the walls, bringing with it the sound of rustling paper. Miraculously, unscathed by the carnage, sat a table with a few loose forms and paperwork stacked on top of it. Jennifer couldn't help but grin at her luck. Looking back, her idea wasn't all that brilliant, but in the circumstances she felt like a genius.

"Here," she started, moving over to the table and quickly scribbling on the back of a form, careful not to place too much weight on the table in fear that it would collapse. The blue ink was running dry, but it lasted long enough to serve its purpose. Happy enough with the legibility of the words, Jennifer passed the sheet of paper back to Raven. "My address and phone number. Whenever your free swing by or something and we can talk. I'll tell you everything you want to know. I'm sorry that's all I can do right now."

Raven folded the paper and shook her head. "It's enough." Voices started around the corner, calling on the urgency of their conversation. "I should go. I'll find a phone soon."

Jennifer nodded, glad that at least something had gone well. "Okay. I'll be waiting."

She went to wave goodbye, but Raven was already picking her way through the debris at a superhuman pace, disappearing around a corner in only a few seconds. It didn't make sense, how quickly life went by. You spent so long in anticipation for a single moment, and then that moment happened so suddenly that you wondered if it even happened at all.

The footsteps that had been nearing for the past five minutes suddenly ceased. Jennifer spun on her heel in response, ready to act lost and send the secret service present in the opposite direction to the way Raven had gone, but much to her surprise, and relief, there were no armed soldiers or guards behind her. In their place stood Hank and Charles, looking suspiciously clean and put together for two people that had just been in a fight against ten foot tall robots.