green with envy → xmen [on hold]

13. thirteen

chapter thirteen • 13
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"Raven, come home"

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After the first crack at the Cerebro after Charles' little talk with his older self, Charles found Raven at an airport, ready to go off into a plane. He went into a ladies mind that was a metre away from Raven and turned to her.

"Raven, stop," Charles made the older lady say. "Stop running."

Raven turned towards the old woman, her mouth agape. "Charles?" Then she looked around the room for us. "Where are you?"

"Back at the house, where you should be." the old lady replied. "I need you to come home."

"I know what I need to do," Raven got up and walked away.

Charles then made his way into some guys head. "If you kill Trask, you'll be creating countless more just like him," he said as Raven walked past him.

"Then I'll kill him too," Raven walked off.

"Those are Erik's words, not yours," a teenage boy told her.

Raven bumped into a flight attendant and dropped her passport. The two of them bent down to pick it up when the flight attendant looked at Raven. "The girl I grew up with wasn't capable of killing," the girl said in a monotone voice. "She was good, fair, full of compassion."

Raven froze for a few seconds, letting Charles' words sink into her. "I have compassion. Just not for Trask. He's murdered too many of us." Raven snatched her passport from the girl's hands and then walked off.

"She's not letting me in," Charles said. "I'm barely holding on, I'm not strong enough yet."

Raven walked through the airport and looked up, only shocked to see Charles standing just metres away from her. But it wasn't him, it was a spirit version of him.

"I know what Trask has done. But killing him will not bring them back. It will set you in a path from which there is no return. An endless cycle of killing. Us and them until there is nothing left. But we can stop it right now, you and I. You just have to come home."

Raven just shook her head. "I have to." Raven mimicked. "You haven't changed at all, Charles. Like I said, I know exactly what I have to do." And with that, Raven walked straight through Charles' spirit and away.