But I am, but I am a carefully laid plan

[shifting_skin]

The taste of ozone lay at the edge of her tongue, the faint pull of muscle and skin knitting too slowly back together at her calf keeping the rush of days just past firmly in mind.

Having found herself from one step to the next transported from the beginnings of a chase she had come to find familiar through the halls of one lush hotel and into an entirely different setting of one, Mystique had thought little of the consequences of her actions and pulled the door closed after her. One shape had melted smoothly into another at the sound of voices approaching, the skin she had worn as her only for so long one she pulled over herself then out of habit and without thought. Gone were the blue skin and red hair, the yellow-gold eyes lacking the human whites that people so preferred. Gone too was the shape of a lobbyist she had borrowed for the sake of a key and a room charged to an account that was not her own.

When a pair of strangers had rounded the corner, swept up in their own conversation and too busy to notice her as they passed, she stood the same blue-eyed blonde young woman she had lived as so long before.

The hotel had made little less a mystery after two days within its walls, an ear kept ever open for anything she might learn in overhearing the conversations of others. The others spoke easily of strange worlds beyond the doors studding the walls of the hallway. Those that served behind the desk had handed her a key to a room of her own with no question of how or why she had come to be there. She had moved through those days with little more than skimming the surface of everything around her, unsure of what to make of the collection of people who walked and lingered through the many bright-lit rooms, less sure of what to make of herself.

She had been drawn in her uncertainty to the massive library, the shelves heavy with books and comfortingly familiar in that same feel all libraries held within their walls of words and of knowledge and of quiet. She stood then fingering the edge of a book's cover on a shelf before her, a smile pulling at her lips as she considered the twisted sense of humor chance had had in her fingers catching over the gold lettering of its title.

The Metamorphosis, indeed.

Comments

[vampire_shield]

Bella had tried to stay away from the library for a few days. At the rate she was going, she'd read her way through it in a few more months here. If a door didn't open to the Library of Congress or something after that, she'd have to start re-reading and that wasn't nearly as much fun now.

She'd known she wasn't alone in the library, she'd heard the other person's heartbeat, and the breathing, but she was leery of approaching. That it was a human was sure, but there was something off about the scent. Something that kept her on guard.

"Have you read it before?" she asked, keeping her voice low.

[shifting_skin]

Caught in her thoughts and having followed them down paths that had led her far from Kafka and the strange brittleness of his writing, Mystique very nearly startled at the sound of another's voice so close. Her head turned sharply to the side to catch the speaker, a young woman she recognized nothing of, in full view before she caught herself and attempted to smooth down the sharp edges of the way she moved. Smiling then was a small lie but one that allowed her to mask much of what could have easily become an overreaction she could not have recovered from.

"I, uh-" she swallowed, then smiled a touch wider with a little more ease, slipping into an old role with more ease than she had expected to find in a skin she had tried to shed so long ago. "I did, actually. It was-" she blew out a breath through her nose and gave a small shake of her head. "I expected more. I mean, he wakes as a monstrous bug and he's worried about getting to work on time?"

The story had been one she had overheard discussed more times than she could have counted, the coffee shops and restaurants around Oxford full to the brim with students eager to discuss their studies and vie for the lead of their group by proving how better learned they were than their friends. For all that had been said of it, she had expected to find something more...well, just more, and had been left disappointed and eager to tell Charles only how much.

[vampire_shield]

Bella quirked a half-smile. "Yeah, it's not exactly an uplifting, feel-good sort of story, is it? I read it in high school and walked around in a funk for days after. But I guess the leaves-you-skipping-with-joy stories don't make for good discussions or something."

A little laugh this time. "Didn't help that we went from that to Grapes of Wrath."

[shifting_skin]

The book had become little more than a proving point in her world. Had she had any thought other than that Charles' world of academia he loved so dearly was not for her, staring at the pages of Metamorphosis and wondering how anyone could react to having been transformed into a monster with so little emotion and so much attention spent on punctuality and work matters would have surely been it. Kafka, she had to think, must surely only be read by people who really and dearly wanted to be able to boast that they enjoyed reading Kafka.

The pages of the monster locked in a room and fed on occasion between bouts of locked doors and whispered conversations had been a little too familiar, but otherwise been nothing she might have pointed to as actions she might relate to. And in its whimpering end she had been left with only a dull taste in her mouth.

"Were they trying to bore you away from reading?" she had to ask. "I don't know why they insist on dreary and drearier."

[ourselvesalone]

Victor has been in the library for hours, whiling away his time in this familiar setting. He keeps waiting to hear anguished screams above him, feels his skin on edge as he awaits spiders, but nothing happens and soon his memories of a library such as this are replaced with this monotonous boredom; a welcome thing, after the tumult of recent weeks. His eyes glance up from his sketches as he watches the woman, curious to see what book she elects to choose.

He's always judged people by their choice in literature. Then again, Victor has spent a great deal of his life judging people for things in general. Literature, choice of hobby, pursuit of education, and more. It takes very little for him to judge one.

His eyes catch on the title (unrecognized, but curious) and he finds that he's stuck staring at her, quite certain that she will catch his eye and they will be locked in a gaze, leaving him unable to pry away easily without making small talk or conversation. "To her fair works, did Nature link," he murmurs, thinking of Miss Ives and how she had spoken words so close to his soul.

Silly of him, really, not to be suspicious then.

"Metamorphosis," he says. "I've never heard the title, but it makes me think of Wordsworth."

[shifting_skin]

It is not, no matter how little she might have liked to admit to being so sentimental after all that had happened between them, for herself that she had been drawn to the library. Not, in any case, out of her own love of well-thumbed pages, dog-eared corners or battered paperbacks tucked deep into her bags on her travels as if someone might take them from her were she any less than vigilant in their hiding. Those were ever-present details that had long ago faded into the background of her world, but not what had a hold on her then.

The smell of leather and old books, of that combination of paper and ink with a touch of dust around the edges would be ever connected to the memories of Charles. Of the hours she had lazed on a couch idly flipping through a book as he buried himself in his studies. Of the nights she had been unable to sleep and curled against his side with the request that he read to her. Her dear brother. Despite it all, she could not step into a library in any building on earth and not think of him there.

The sensation of being watched drew her attention away from her inspection of the slim tome at her fingers and nothing at all, her head turning on a calming breath to find the source of the eyes she felt on her.

Pale eyes with heavy shadows beneath, medium brown hair, lanky with a face a touch gaunt, no more than an inch or two taller than herself as blue or blonde. Cataloguing the details of him came without thought, as did watching him to assess what threat he was or was not to her.

"Wordsworth?" she repeated, brows lifting as she attempted to place the name - or, rather, to connect it to a work as she was certain she had heard it many times before. Even out at the fringes of Oxford life she had not been immune to their literary obsessions. "Ah, Daffodils, no." The flicker of accomplishment for having connected the two smoothed out with a flick of her eyes back to the faded little book in question. "This is..." for a second she was at a loss at how to describe it without coming right out and explaining how little she loved it. "German. Very German. Drab and dreary and unexplained."

[ourselvesalone]

His smile weakens slightly, to hear her speak of Daffodils, thinking of how the cre...how Caliban, his demon had spat those words at him, as if using Romantic poetry could ever be such a vicious volley of anger in his direction. He's not sure he will ever look upon the poem the same again and knows, for certain, that he will not find eternity within a daffodil. "Sounds like someone I know," he says, not specifying who because in the recent months, he's come to the friendship of many drab, dreary, and unexplained things. "And do you prefer it? The drab, dreariness?" Victor wonders, as if seeking out someone who likes modernity over romance.

[shifting_skin]

Mystique let her hand fall from where her fingers had caught at the very edge of the book's spine, turning her body to better face the strange man. The dated quality of his clothes was not entirely at odds with the overall sense of someone long lost, suggesting perhaps that the fragment of a conversation she had caught while looking over one of the gardens on the matter of time and worlds out of sync had not been as mad as she had dismissed it as being. She knew enough to be able to say Wordsworth had been a Romantic, but at that moment she would have been hard pressed to remember when exactly that had been. Even had referencing a poet done more than put an earliest date on when this man could have come from.

She could have lied, so easily. Said anything but what was on her mind when she looked at that title and remembered how disappointed she had been with its contents. How pieces of it had lingered unpleasantly after but served only to anger her further. "No," she told him, keeping a careful control of herself though she looked him straight in the eye and straightened her back as she spoke in an unconscious show of meaning exactly what she said. "I prefer the fantastic, the strange. The man in that book wakes a monster and does nothing but waste away in his room, and when he died he died unloved and unmourned, his family happy to see him gone."

For a second she remembered the feel of hands pressing her down, of water splashing in the tub as she had fought. The memory was broken by a sharp pang in her calf, a warning of having spent too much time moving and standing and not near enough allowing the injury to heal.

Her voice was milder as she added, "Why would anyone prefer to be defeated?"

[centrally]

Scott hadn't been looking for the library when he found it, but — honestly, he's never looking for anything he finds behind any of the doors here. Besides his room and places to eat, at least. There's nothing wrong with his sense of direction, but he grew up in the same town where he was born and has never had much money for travel, so navigating brand new places isn't something he's used to. He doesn't hate libraries or anything, but he's never been the bookish type; that's more Stiles's and Lydia's job. Still, once he walks in he doesn't walk out immediately or anything. Curiosity drives him to look around, taking in this room, and considering that if he ever has to worry about homework around here, he at least knows where to go now.

It'd be wrong to say that he almost runs into Mystique, because his wolf senses can pick up her scent and the sound of her (her heartbeat, the rustling of her clothes and hair as she moves) from the moment he walks in. But he's not actively listening or anything — he tries to tune a lot out for others' privacy and his own sanity — so it's still a surprise when he crosses into another row and sees her.

"You come here often?" Then it occurs to him how much that sounds like a pick-up line, and he cringes. Good job, McCall. "I mean, uh — I've never been in here before."

Captain of the lacrosse team and werewolf he may be, but smooth? Never.

[shifting_skin]

The thoughts roused by the book at hand had been little more pleasant than the events of recent days, making it a line of thought Mystique abandoned without regret for the curiosity of the hotel and its inhabitants. She had had no intention of seeking out any particular person, of playing whatever role would be required by such conversations, but, as ever, fell to the old habit of people-watching with an ease that felt as if it belonged to so few other things.

It's a boy who caught her eye. Seeming to be no more than that at first glance - a boy who could not have been yet out of his teens, dark-haired and dark-eyed and giving off something of the impression of a puppy not quite sure what to do with itself when he spoke. Had she looked no deeper than that first layer, to take the measure of his height and build and form a rough estimation of how she might imitate it (the thought ever-present somewhere in the back of her brain when around others), she might have dismissed him with a polite smile and a non-committal answer and been done with it.

She hadn't spared much time for teenage boys even in the days she'd been a teenager herself, and cute though he was, but it was not then interest or physical desire that catches her before she can shoo him off. "I'm new. Just arrived," she answered, giving him a small smile as she tried to pick out what exactly read as strange about him. There was something. Something she could not quite put her finger on with only small movements and a trip over his own tongue to go off of.

[centrally]

He nods as she as she answers, unsurprised. Allison arrived recently, too, so it'd make sense if she weren't the only one.

"Welcome to the hotel, then," he says, then shakes his head and laughs self-consciously at the absurdity. "It sounds better than 'sorry about your luck.' Besides, it's not so bad around here."

It's not that hard to see what had appealed to Isaac enough to want to stay instead of going back to Beacon Hills. Back home is — more dangerous than ever, honestly, and they're still no closer to working out who the darach that keeps ritually sacrificing (murdering) innocent people is, even after almost becoming victims themselves. If it were up to him, Scott's sense of responsibility would have him going back in a heartbeat; but he's not about to abandon Isaac, nor Derek or Allison.

[shifting_skin]

She might have taken his words for the breed of politeness that was as bland as it was empty had he not looked quite so earnest with every word he spoke. As if the world weren't painted entirely in terms of grandiose schemes and life-or-death trials, grandstanding and broadcast footage sent round the world, but that the small things mattered. Even as the thought occurred to her, she wanted to laugh at the dramatic turn of her thoughts and her seeming inability to take much of anything at face value anymore.

Still, with a sentimentality she blamed entirely on being on the other side of a too long span run entirely on adrenaline and determination, she felt almost touched by the welcome.

As strange as it was for her to think, at least by way of the whirl and click of her own mind as she knew it, she thought he actually meant it. That he was being friendly for no reason other than that he was. "Thanks," she said, her lips curling into a small smile. "Even if I'm not really clear on where 'here' is. One moment I'm in D.C., the next," she made a vague gesture with her hand to indicate the hotel.

[thelostprince]

Unsurprisingly, he had a deep love of libraries; as of late though they had felt like a playmate that he had outgrown. Where once he would have spent hours, days, weeks, delving into the depths of knowledge here, he found everything too still, restrictive, silent. There was too much energy bubbling underneath his skin, and knowledge that came to him not in the form of words on paper but in a force that pulled his mind through space. There was knowledge that only existed in minds, hearts, and on tongues, never placed down in paper, never recorded. That meant it warped and changed; and Loki was fascinated by that, too.

Yet in the stillness that could bring to him boredom there was peace, also. The books grounded him, kept him in one spot, even though his mind was still allowed to fly about unhindered. It was calming. His quarters were too small for him but the library was the right size, its twisting depths affording him a maze he could get lost in. His fingertips danced idly over the spines of several books and when he turned the corner he found a young woman who did not seem to be searching for anything in particular, to him; actually she struck him as doing the same thing he was.

"An old friend, or simply an acquaintance?" he asked, of the book in her hand, not bothering to see which one it was, certain that he did not know it anyway. In a place where worlds collided, even he did not think he had a good grasp of most of the literature, though all stories were repeated, somewhere down the line, in other universes.

[shifting_skin]

In the great, wide expanse of the world there were thousands of libraries. Hundreds of thousands, if not more, and each one filled to the brim with books. There among the endless pages and the universal rule only of silence in the library, it was not the desire to feel the paper beneath her fingertips or bury herself in faraway worlds but that of wanting to be close to what little was left untainted of her past. There had been a time when such places were stifling, her hours there spent wishing only that she might be able to walk unafraid out in the world, to play with other children without the fear of what might happen were she to be discovered as inhuman. Eventually the Xavier library, and by extension most libraries she had come across, had come to symbolize refuge rather than prison, home rather than alien landscape.

A decade had passed since she had slid her hand into Erik's and left Charles and the beach and all else in her wake. As all the great potential for camaraderie and purpose fell away, her cause faltering as they had fragmented and drifted apart, she had found herself slipping into libraries on all corners of the earth and simply finding a place to sit for awhile. To think, to watch, to let herself be soothed by the smell of paper and ink and dust.

The question slid to her on smooth tones, as if polished to a gleaming shine in an accent that sparked no immediate recognition. She answered, "An acquaintance" without looking immediately for the speaker, though the oddity of that accent might have pulled her attention away from the book even had it been one she favored rather than mocked. Her fingers caught at the cover and tugged it an inch off the bookshelf before she realized what she had done, her eyes caught on the towering figure before her, her chin forced to lift to look over the sharpened angles of his face, the brightness of the green of his eyes, his pale skin and inky black hair. "I would not recommend it," she added.

[thelostprince]

He leaned into the shelf, slightly, so that his cheekbone brushed the spines, and he smiled at her faintly. There was something about her. Whether it was a strange hyper-awareness that the Tesseract was giving him or simply the fact that, at the moment, he decided to pay attention - he couldn't say. But he picked up on something, as he had Ruby, when he had finally let his senses focus on her.

"You're different," he said. It was not an invitation to discussion, or even a question. It was truly, simply, a remark; he noticed it, there was no need for anything else. What was different about her, he wasn't sure, and he did not have the urge or urgency to try to figure it out. He didn't care. He may also be completely wrong; but that was not important to him.

Anyone else might have smiled, teased, perhaps asked for a reading recommendation. But Loki was not feeling particularly flirtatious, and he respected the solidness of the woman before him. He had no idea of what kind of person she was, of course. But right then she cut a nice figure, steady and iconic, and he always responded well to that. "It's like being in a crowd, isn't it?" he remarked. He was almost certain she would understand him. The voices of the books were pressing in on them, clamouring, insistent. Not for the first time Loki wondered if he was as mad as everyone said he would become, but he brushed it off. He had a hearty imagination. All creative minds did. To think that he must be mad because of it was arrogance in the extreme.

[shifting_skin]

Had she been listening to sound only and not meaning, she might have been caught entranced by the sound of his voice, the shape of his words, the quasi-melodic stringing of them all together. But in the meaning of what he said, those very first two words, Mystique froze. The action itself was as unconscious as her quick glance down at herself as if she expected to find a gap in her morph, as if she had not worn this shape and that face a hundred thousand times before and found it almost as easy as walking around in her own shape. She knew without looking that her disguise was secure. That the easy placid shape of her emotions then had not torn a hole that might have given her away.

Her eyes widen fractionally before she can help it, before she shutters her expression with one more friendly but bland. There was a part for her to play, even as she got the sense (irrational, though it might have been, she did not know) that his razor gaze saw right through her. "Oh?" She asked instead, pressing the book back into place as if such things mattered in the least right then. "Why would you say that?"

That he did not draw himself up and make the most of his lanky body, prove the inches he had over her in a show of force she had become long familiar with, gave her little to go on by way of familiar action. He did not mark himself out as a threat even as he had set her off balance with a few words. Did not move closer but leaned into the bookcase as if he belonged as much to the books and the bindings as any other thing in the library. Though she remained a touch more cautious of him than she might otherwise have been, she settled somewhat as he continued to speak and the words echoed within herself. She had not ever heard someone say so, had not been able to put a finger on the feeling herself until it felt as if it clicked into place with the words he chose. "It is. That's exactly it."

[seeorseem]

When he sees the book her hand has landed on, he stifles a smile with his fingers tugging on his lower lip, unable to keep all of it in. The sound hits the air and he manages to keep a neutral face, thinking that she probably won't partake in his inside joke so easily. Carefully, though, Eames takes his time appraising her.

She'd be the perfect distraction for anyone with eyes. Cataloguing each feature takes time, but what he really wants is to see her in motion, which means engaging her. "Are you looking for something to read? I've a few recommendations," he offers, leaning his weight forward in his seat.

[shifting_skin]

The low, throaty notes of the laugh that sounded from behind her were incongruent enough with their surroundings to have Mystique dropping her hand from the book she had been eyeing, turning instead to find the source of the sound.

As little explanation as she had had for how she had come to be in the hotel or what she was supposed to make of it beyond a keycard in hand and a strange, slim piece of tech she had been assured was a phone, there was an easiness to her movements then that had been wholly lacking through the urgency of recent events. Her body had been wired tight for too long, primed for war and what very well might have been a suicide mission, requiring then a certain amount of focus to slow her reactions, to measure her breaths and lean her hip against the bookshelf as she crossed her arms beneath her breasts and met him look for look.

He was not a tall man, neither long nor lean, though she did not get the impression of fat in the look of him as much as of the bulk of heavy muscle. Neat, every inch of him, from his combed and set hair to the shine of his shoes. Something not entirely at odds with the lilt and accent of his voice. "Maybe," she said, "What would you recommend?"

[seeorseem]

Eames watches the fluidity of motion, capturing the curl of each hair, and he's so caught up in studying her that it takes him a moment to realize that she's looking at him with much the same intensity, something that makes Eames laugh softly. To think that he's on display for her is a rather complimentary thing, after all, given that he's quite vain and thinks himself rather handsome. "I'm a theatre buff, at the heart of it," he confesses. "I enjoy slipping into the roles. And, of course, my loyalty has to lie with the good bard, Will Shakespeare," he says.

"The Tempest," he says. "I quite like that best. It's filled with sprites, creatures, impossible things, and mad dreams."

[65th_victor]

Having a newborn meant a shockingly little amount of sleep. Not that Finnick minded. He would have sacrificed far more than a little bit of sleep to be able to know that his son and wife were both safe and well.

In any case, he had taken to grabbing an hour or two of sleep in the library when he was certain that Tristan and Annie were fine for a little bit. Maybe not the most conventional of methods, but it was always quiet. The only downside was that, ever since his own Games, he had been a light sleeper. (He was always amazed by any Victor who slept well.)

So, when someone else entered, he did sleepily stir from where he'd been tucked neatly into a corner. He raised his head, running a hand through his hair, and looked over at the young woman who was standing nearby. He blinked for a moment, letting his eyes refocus. There was something strangely familiar about her -- Katniss. But ... not. The hair was wrong, of course, and she held herself differently. But there was no denying that there were plenty of other aspects that were uncannily similar.

He was too curious to do anything but stand up and cross the short distance. Leaning against the bookshelf, he looked down at her, pasting on a well-worn flirtatious grin.

"Have we met before?" he asked.

[shifting_skin]

How long had it been since she had last been able to tuck herself into the corner of a library, the weight of a book solid in her hands, her knees drawn up to curl her feet beneath herself, and not had the fear of discovery lingering at the back of her mind? Had it really been so long as ten years? More? Dressed in leather and dark woods and shelves teeming with books with titles split between the familiar and the unknown, the Nexus' library could have stood most anywhere on earth and fit no less well there. She had visited dozens over the years, drawn to the quiet and the solace and lost herself within their walls for hours on end, stretching out her fingers for a connection to the life she had left behind with a beach and a man and the smell of copper and salt air on her tongue.

Her fingers itched to pull one of the books from the shelf. To take it into her hand and play it prop to the easiest illusion of a reader, innocuous and rarely disturbed, no matter the location or the circumstances. She had discovered easily that no matter what shape she wore, people were hesitant to bother a body with their nose buried in a book. The anonymity of it was an indulgence, but one she believed she had wholly earned.

The line of that thought was derailed for the approach of a man she did not know, her nails slipping from where they had just caught at the edge of a book's spine in preparation for tugging it from the shelf.

"I don't believe so," she answered, the words automatic for all the smile she allowed him and the purposeful laziness she kept in the set of her shoulders. It took sharp effort to keep tension from bleeding into her spine at his words, the opener one she knew could be either benign or anything but, as it did to look him over without exposing everything of her intent to inspect the details of him for reasons other than liking the curve of his smile. As nice a smile as it was.

He put her in mind of polished, pretty things, his handsome features seeming almost too smooth, his smile too well-worn. Between the shape of fit muscle clear beneath his clothes, his blonde hair and tanned skin, he put her in mind of nothing so well as one of a surfer in want of a beach. "Pretty sure I'd remember you."

[65th_victor]

He hadn't been wrong. She did look like Katniss. The similarities were uncanny, unbelievable almost. They made the pit of Finnick's stomach go cold for a moment, because he had seen too many mutts that had been engineered just enough to appear like those in the Hunger Games.

But the differences were unmistakable too. Her face was rounder, her hair a shade of blond he never would have imagined on Katniss. She held her herself differently. It might have been feigned comfort, but Katniss couldn't have even managed this. And he seriously doubted that she would ever pretend to put up with him when he was pretending to flirt with her. (He held his memory of their first meeting dear to heart, and had played it over again for Johanna when they had both sorely needed a life in the midst of the misery only the Games could cause.)

Still, he didn't let any of this show on his own face, just kept his mask easily in place, smile lazy but friendly. It grew just a little larger when she said that she was sure she would remember him.

"Finnick," he offered, holding out one hand to her.

[morethanhuman]

There were a hundred ways Erik's life at the Nexus was different from his life on board the Proserpina, but one of the most telling was how unaccustomed he'd grown to being surprised. The sight of Raven standing in the library, thumbing the pages of a book in pensive amusement, was a shock the likes of which he hadn't had since New Year's— since the first time he'd seen Charles in a wheelchair.

He stood frozen for the span of a breath, but before he could speak, she (possibly sensing she was no longer alone in the room) lifted her head and caught sight of him. The change that came over her expression was even more astounding, distrust and anger slipping over her features like a mask.

Erik drew back, startled. "Raven," he said, concern bleeding into his voice despite his efforts to keep it even. "Is everything alright?"

[shifting_skin]

No real thought went into her having caught her nails at the spine of the book, the weight of it almost inconsequential as it fell into the curve of her waiting palm. It did not come with the smallest grain of desire to read the book again, though totaling under fifty pages including its introduction and title page would have made the task one that would have taken up little of her time. She instead flipped idly through the pages and read nothing of the actual text. She was instead half caught in her thoughts, anchored only by the feel of paper beneath her fingertips, the smell of ink and dust.

Ten years spent on the run had sharpened the instinct to a brittle edge, the awareness of being watched one that crawled across her skin and drew her head up to see who or what her watcher might be. The movement was one done deliberately slow, a stab at casual action that failed her utterly when she saw who exactly stood staring back at her.

A mistress of disguise and subterfuge and she was in that moment certain everything she felt splashed clear across her face. No matter the few days she had been allowed between the White House lawn and seeing him again, every moment since Paris rushed back to her with all the subtlety of a bullet ripping through flesh and bone. Had she not been so overtaken with her anger she might have wondered over his startled his expression. Had she cared any less, she might have been able to step back and see the faint traces of time not yet drawn so harshly on his handsome face. "You are unbelieveable," she accused, eyes narrowing at his apparent disregard for all that he had not decided was important or at the very least what she supposed was his expectation that she might have forgiven him so quickly. If ever. "How could anything be alright anymore?"

[morethanhuman]

The seething fury in her voice didn't entirely hide the pain underlying it, or do anything to mask the torrent of emotion that flooded her face. But her accusation put Erik immediately on guard. His chin lifted, the better to see her from a distance as he looked her over again.

"Clearly something's happened to upset you," he said. He might have been observing the behavior of a stranger, for all the feeling in the words. "But I'm afraid I've no idea what it could be." Briefly he wondered if she was talking about Charles— and certainly he couldn't blame her for laying that at his feet— but something in her demeanor, the mulish clench of her jaw, made him think not.

Something he'd done to her, then. Which meant that like Charles, she was from a point in his future.

All of a sudden Erik wasn't sure he wanted to continue this conversation. Normally he prided himself on not running from confrontation, but now he found himself half hoping Raven would storm out without telling him a thing.