Hell Hath No Fury, 9/7, morning: Irene and Raven

[Destiny]

As many times as she read the letter left on the kitchen counter, its message did not change. And never mind that she was reading it with her powers, not her physical eyes -- that was the point. If Irene kept reading Rogue's letter, reading and reading and reading it in her shaking hand, eventually she would end up in a timeline where her daughter had not abandoned her.

Had betrayed her.

Had betrayed them all.

Her hand seized about the letter, crumpling it and then hurling it as she spun toward the wall. <The ungrateful little bitch,> she spat, reverting to German in the privacy of their home (the home that the girl had rejected! After all that they had done for her!) and to profanity that tasted better in her mouth than the saltwater bitterness of tears.

She leaned a hip into the counter to support herself and put a hand to her face. Her cheek was cool and still dry. She would not cry. She would cling to her shock and her anger, and with Raven, she would figure out where to go from here. And the sooner she could ignore the pain of her breaking heart, the better.

[Mystique]

There weren’t enough words in any of the languages that Raven spoke to communicate just how incredibly angry she was right then. The shattered vase in the corner of the living room was the beginning of what would undoubtedly be a large amount of property damage. Every passing second made it harder and harder for her to not head to the vault, grab a gun and head out to find the little traitorous bitch.

As she made the phone call to Blindspot, her normally calm voice was audibly trembling with the effort to not instruct the woman to completely erase all of the girl's memories. It was more important, though, to make sure that she remembered just how thin the ice she was walking on was. Once the order had been given, she slammed the phone down, pausing for a brief moment before picking it up again and smashing the receiver on the wall.

How could she? After all that they'd done. They'd opened their home to her. Treated her as if she were their own, taught her more about everything than most children would ever learn and how did she repay them? She deserted. Left them to join the enemy.

<The ungrateful little bitch,> Irene spat from the next room. Raven laughed bitterly, yanking the cord free from the wall and sweeping the shattered remains of the telephone into the trash. Disappointment in her children seemed to be just another fact of life, but she had honestly never expected it from that one. How could she? They had been careful to plant just the right ideas in the girl's dense little head. They'd made it so she relied on them, so she owed them enough to last multiple lifetimes.

There was no excuse.

<Blindspot is intercepting her,> she announced as she finally re-emerged from the bedroom, turning her head to sneer in the general direction of the room which was no longer being occupied by her daughter. Any ounce of regret that she'd felt over giving up her biological children had been completely forgotten the second she read the letter. A letter. The little cunt had taken the time to write a fucking letter. Two letters, actually. Eyes on the crumpled piece of paper that Irene had thrown, Raven shook her head, fingers still itching for the trigger of one of her guns. <How could she?>

[Destiny]

Raven's bitter laughter next door jangled against Irene's nerves, but she understood the reaction. She embraced it, even if she wasn't to the point (yet?) where laughter was in her arsenal. She was still spitting mad, twitching with the bloody impulse to track Rogue down, to understand why she had done what she had done, and then, with ineluctable finality, to make her pay for it.

<Blindspot is intercepting her,> her partner said when she came out of the bedroom. Irene nodded grimly. That decision would protect the Brotherhood, a consideration that had to come before personal revenge. She reached deep within her to pull up the proper coldness and use it to lock away her angry, boiling frustration. Once, that mantle of ice had been a second skin, before Rogue's melting influence. Never again. Ice she was and would be from now on. She had learned her lesson.

<How could she?>

And icily Irene replied, <Because she was weaker than we thought. With this move, she might have saved us the trouble of putting her down later.> She paced away from the kitchen counter, past the crumpled letter (she didn't give it a second glance), and paused with hands lightly tented on the dining table, staring out the windows. <I could find her, Raven. You could find her. I don't trust what she will do or what she will become, outside our control. What should we do now?>

[Mystique]

Raven had been betrayed before. Multiple times. Enough times that she rarely allowed herself to make actual connections with other people. It was just a fact of life. Everyone was looking out for themselves before they could even begin to think about the people around them. She did it, constantly. It was one of the things that had enabled her to live as long as she had, but there were certain lines that you did not cross. She would never, in a million years, betray Irene. Until the girl had left, she'd felt the same way about her daughter. She hadn't expected it. Hadn't even dreamed that it could happen.

She really should have known better.

<Because she was weaker than we thought.> Raven scowled, somewhat upset with herself for having too much faith in the child. <With this move, she might have saved us the trouble of putting her down later.> Raven looked over at Irene, tilting her head slightly. She was right. As the woman moved across the apartment, Raven quietly seethed.

<I could find her, Raven. You could find her. I don't trust what she will do or what she will become, outside our control. What should we do now?>

As much as Raven wanted her revenge, she understood that revenge really was a dish best served cold. As much as it would have made her feel better to kill the girl right then, it would have more of an effect psychologically if they waited. Let her get comfortable and think that maybe they weren't going to kill her. Maybe even give her time to really believe that they still loved her. Raven's sneer intensified as she tried to ignore the fact that she did. Goddamn, she needed to kill something.

<Let her go,> Raven replied shaking her head. <Let her think that she's safe. For now.> Beyond the intense gratification that killing her after she'd settled in and decided that her life was on the right track would bring, there was the mission. They had a very important task to see to later that day and they couldn't let their unappreciative child get in the way of that. <Tonight goes on as planned. We can't tell the others of this until after. We've worked too hard to let this get in the way.>

[Destiny]

Irene didn't see anything outside the windows beyond the table; her eyes hadn't passed stimuli to her brain since she was a teenager, over a century ago. What she saw, instead, was possibility in her mind's eye: the solid certainty of the neighborhood around the warehouse, the flickering chances of weather changes (even her gift couldn't track such a chaotic system), the dim unlikelihood of the old brownstone hotel two blocks distant finally collapsing under its own termite-eaten weight.

If she pushed the sight out a little further, she saw Rogue. On the road. On the run. That was how we found her in the first place, she reflected, clenching her fists on the tabletop. Once a coward, always a coward. Always a traitor.

She could find the girl easily, with just the merest touch more of precognitive exertion. And then . . .

<Let her go,> Raven said. <Let her think that she's safe. For now. Tonight goes on as planned. We can't tell the others of this until after. We've worked too hard to let this get in the way.>

Irene sighed, shoulders falling and hands relaxing. She lowered her head. Shook it. Raven was right: tactically, strategically, pragmatically. The mission was more important than any runaway girl. The mission mattered. Rogue, for now, did not.

She turned back to her partner and squared her shoulders, lifting her chin with pride's stiffness. <As you say,> she agreed. <In the meantime, I must report my fault in this situation. I didn't see it, Mystique, and I should have.> The use of code name spoke to her seriousness; she would not hide behind their long years' companionship, even while she angrily racked her brain to figure out why she had failed to foresee the defection. Had Rogue's movements, guided by the erratic pressures of her absorbed presences, been simply too chaotic to predict, like the weather? Or was Destiny losing what sight she still held as hers?