tigerundercover

Raven had spent her first few months back on the island in constant motion, wandering aimlessly around town, unable to stay still in one place for more than maybe an hour at a time without getting antsy. She'd spent most of 2016 on the move after all, and that kind of forward motion was a hard habit to break.

But when she'd finally managed to stop, she'd apparently gone into full reverse. She hadn't left the apartment to do more than steal food from the diner downstairs since her work shift on Tuesday.

She could swear she used to have hobbies. She used to do things that weren't walk or eat. Or watch endless seasons of melodramas on Netflix while playing tap games on her phone. Hell, hadn't she been the one to tell Jono to just stop procrastinating and do his thing?

And yet, here she was. On the couch. A hospital drama blaring too loud from the television, and a breeding farm of adorable monsters singing from her phone. She liked the noise. Human voices, especially, her favorite scenes were the ones where all the doctors shouted at each other at once. The quiet of her last couple of months in the mountains seemed to be a million miles away, an entire lifetime, and she wondered now how she went from October to December without any company. The quiet was terrible. In the quiet she had to listen for all the things that weren't creeping up on her, the things that would never creep up on her again. In the noise the only thing she listened for was which doctor was sleeping unethically with which patient, who was secretly who's long lost sister.

She was getting hungry. She wondered if she could talk one of the servers downstairs into bringing her up a sandwich. One more episode and then she'd try. This one looked like it was going to end on a cliffhanger.

[open to the roommate or anyone else who might stop by!]

Alright. Raven had put this off long enough. It was time to stop pretending everything was okay and actually confirm that everything was really okay.

She called Charles.

"Xavier residence,"

"Becky," Raven said, smiling down the line. "Hi, it's Raven. Is Charles available?"

"Raven, honey! We were just talking about you. Let me find him." There was a rustling as Becky muffled the receiver with her apron. "Master Charles, Raven is on the line for you!" She never did that very well.

Raven would have held her breath if Becky hadn't wanted to make small talk while they waited. At least the serving staff at the Xavier house still wanted to talk to her?

Then, finally, the was another rustle, a few clicks, and her brother's voice.

"Raven. We haven't heard from you in awhile."

She choked, pressing her hand to her mouth, and wishing the tiny phone was a little bigger so she didn't feel she might break it if she clutched it too hard.

". . . Raven? Is everything alright?"

She opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. He sounded worried. He sounded like he cared. He sounded -- like everything was perfectly normal, except for the part where she wasn't talking at all.

"You know I can't read you from there, Raven, you have to actually speak to me."

"You promised never to read my mind," she said, her voice hitching.

"Yes, well, when you're too upset to speak, sometimes I don't have a choice, do I?" It was a friendly sort of teasing, and the tension drained out of Raven with a rush so hard she burst into tears.

Eventually, he got the story out of her. The weather machine, the breaking of time and space, her living in the vents, then becoming a Soviet agent -- and the strange other Charles and the words he'd said in the swamp. Charles listened to it all with his usual patience and quiet calm that had gotten her through so many rough nights when they were small, when she'd first come to live with him and was still afraid of everything that moved. And then he'd geeked out about the physics of such an event until she was choking on giggles instead of sobs.

Any Raven who didn't have a Charles was a lesser Raven, to be sure. And if she fell asleep with her phone still cradled against her head, well. It wasn't as though she hadn't done stranger things.