Who: Betsy and Raven. Where: The Danger Room. When: Monday, 21st of February. What: Raven puts Betsy through her paces in a simulation that has an upsetting surprise, and then there’s bonding. Rating: PGish. Status: Complete.
The simulation Raven had come up with was going... okay. Betsy knew she had made mistakes, though a few she’d caught on her own and corrected. Things like letting herself get backed into a corner of some sort, or when she’d gotten a face full and her mouth hadn’t been closed all the way. Ew. But she was getting better.
She was starting to feel tired -- they’d been working at it quite a while, after all, and it had been getting progressively more difficult -- when something caught her eye. Or rather... someone.
Betsy stopped, her breath catching in her throat, and stared. One of the infected was her boyfriend. She’d recognized him immediately. She felt her heart hammering hard in her chest, and it took a moment for her to remember it wasn’t real, it wasn’t him. Regardless, the surge of emotions had distracted her enough that she was overtaken, and she went down hard. She was less concerned with those attacking her as she was with twisting to keep her eyes on the approaching form of her boyfriend.
Even though it was like a nightmare come to life seeing him like that, when the simulation flickered and ended, Betsy felt a heavy, almost suffocating wave of loss. She remained seated on the floor where she’d fallen, dropping her head into her hands as she tried to pull herself together, telling herself silently over and over that it wasn’t real. It wasn’t him.
---
Betsy had been doing relatively well. The program wasn’t overly complicated, but it covered a number of things that Raven had noted the girl needed to work on. She’d fought her way through most of the levels quite well. With each level came a new set of challenges, and Raven hadn’t entirely expected Betsy to make it past the final one. She’d given the girl a warning that the simulation was going to be taxing, but she had a good feeling that Betsy wasn’t going to be expecting the twist at the end.
Maybe it was cruel, but it was a reality that the girl had to be ready for. People you loved were attacked, and if they were lucky they didn’t survive it. If they weren’t lucky... they didn’t care if you were their girlfriend or sister or mother or child. None of that emotion existed, and if you were unable to realize that and deal with the threat, you were dead.
Betsy, in the scenario that they were running, was very much dead. She’d frozen and the swarm had descended on her immediately. Raven had been backing her up for earlier levels, taking out the odd threat as it popped up, but she let them advance until the last second, at which point she ended the simulation. Rather than saying anything right off the bat, Raven stood behind the girl, waiting to see how she handled the encounter.
---
Feeling Raven behind her, Betsy finally got to her feet and turned to face her, expression almost accusing in that moment.
“Why did you do that?” she demanded, voice a little uneven. “It was... that was completely unnecessary.”
It was clear Betsy was upset. Even if her face hadn’t been white and grief stricken, her body language screamed it. Every muscle was tense and her hands were clenched into fists at her sides. She hadn’t been prepared for that, mentally. She had been so thrown by seeing him that she had just shut down, and now she felt sick with it. She couldn’t stop seeing him like that in her mind’s eye, couldn’t stop thinking that he was out there somewhere, infected. Her eyes were beginning to sting and she had to fight to keep her composure. She didn’t want to cry in front of Raven, but really, she supposed this moment had been a long time coming. She’d spent the last year so obsessed with finding him again that she hadn’t mourned the fact that, realistically, she’d lost him. Now... well. Now it was starting to feel all too real.
---
Raven had expected nothing less than Betsy’s response. The girl was visibly distraught, and Raven didn’t let any emotion creep onto her face as she stood in front of the girl. It sucked. It wasn’t the kind of thing that anyone ever wanted to see, but it was something that had to be seen. The odds of her boyfriend still being alive were so very slim, and she was so heavily in denial of that fact. It would help her to stop being so delusional just as much as it would help her to be prepared in case she did run in to him - or someone else she knew - out in the world.
“It was absolutely necessary,” she replied. “Those things out there were people once. Some of them may have been people you know.” Granted, the odds of finding all of Betsy’s friends and family from back home wandering mindlessly looking for an arm to gnaw on were pretty slim, but the fact remained. “If you freeze up out there, it’s not going to shut off. You’ll die. Like him.”
---
“He could be-” she started automatically, voice vehement until she cut herself off. She’d been about to argue that since she had lived, it was possible he had as well. But... it felt fake now. Unbelievable. She squeezed her eyes shut turned her head to the side. The hand she raised to press over her mouth was ineffectual in holding in her grief, and she could feel herself breaking down however much she was struggling to avoid it.
She didn’t want to, and yet she found herself turning away from Raven to lean against one of the walls, biting into her lip as the tears began to fall.
“I’m sorry. I...” she started, a sob cutting her apology off mid-sentence. She had been strong for a long time, and apparently the simulation had pushed her past her even her own tolerance levels. However pointless Betsy thought crying for her losses was, she was powerless to stop it.
---
Raven clenched her jaw as Betsy began to protest. He could be. But he probably wasn’t. Hope, to a certain extent, was definitely admirable, but Betsy’s blind faith in the impossible had crossed the line from simple hope to outright delusion. It seemed to hit her, though, and Raven remained silent as the girl closed her eyes and raised a hand to her mouth. When Betsy turned, Raven looked away. She had known that the simulation wasn’t going to end in Betsy thanking her for the lesson, but it didn’t make having to watch the girl break down any easier.
It was a step. A necessary step in making Betsy more equipped to handle the life that she was now being forced to live. Though Raven had been called as much countless times throughout her life, she wasn’t heartless. She understood that sometimes pain and sacrifice were necessary for good to come from it, but it didn’t make it any easier to watch. When a sob interrupted Betsy’s completely unnecessary apology, Raven stepped forward. She was sure that she was the absolute last person that Betsy most likely wanted to be anywhere near just then, and Raven had never been fond of or good at consoling distraught individuals, but there was nobody else.
“Don’t apologize,” she replied, voice far softer than usual, as she reached out and put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. Though Raven could fake consolation quite well, she’d never been good at it on a personal level, with people she actually knew. Even when Rogue had been younger, more often than not it had been Irene who took up that role. Unfortunately, Irene wasn’t there anymore. The best Raven could do was take on the soft edge that Irene’s voice had had and try to be something other than cold. Closing her eyes, Raven stepped closer to the girl, leaving her hand in place but making no move to do anything else just yet. If Betsy needed something more, she’d move in, but for the time being she was most comfortable with some distance between them.
---
The hand on her shoulder was unexpected, and Betsy wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with it. She’d been touched since she’d been there, but not in comfort. Not like this. She covered her face and turned towards Raven. She realized the woman probably wasn’t offering more than just that one gentle touch, but to Betsy, it felt like understanding. Even though Raven had been the cause, or perhaps just the trigger, to this, Betsy still reached for her. Hesitantly, perhaps, but she ended up with her hands light on Raven’s waist and her head bowed, face hidden against the other woman’s neck as Betsy fought to gain control.
She said nothing for a moment, simply stood and cried against Raven, however inappropriate it was. It didn’t seem to matter in that moment that they weren’t close, that they were hardly anything but trainer and trainee. Right then, Betsy needed comforting, and Raven was the only one there to provide it.
---
Raven had a habit of ignoring human suffering. Emotion, especially strong, rushing emotion, was something that usually only got in the way of the bigger picture and quite frankly, it was annoying. It was a fact of life, though, and as much as she tried to deny it, it was sometimes necessary. When Betsy turned and reached for her, Raven froze. It was unusual to say the least, and there was a good ten second pause during which Raven made no move to stop or encourage the contact. She could count on one hand the number of people who had cried on her like that in her lifetime, and it wasn’t something she was used to or particularly comfortable with.
Still, once she got over the initial shock and ever so minor jolt of disgust, she wrapped her arms around the girl, expression stoic as she just let her cry. Raven wasn’t at all able to bring herself to say the obvious trite consolations - that it would be okay, that she was sure he was fine. It wouldn’t be okay, and she was positive that he was dead, which had been the point of the entire exercise, and trying to retract that point, even for the sake of consoling the child, would be an offense to both of their intelligences.
So instead, she remained silent and expressionless, reflecting on the absurdity of her position. If someone had told her two years earlier that she would be standing voluntarily in the middle of the X-Men’s training facilities, holding a sobbing recruit to their little community, she would have laughed outright. Which of course brought up an excellent question. Had someone? As she stood there, she scoured her memory, trying to recall whether or not such a claim had come up at any point. Irene’s powers were less exact with distance, but occasionally she had smiled, seeing visions of something to come that amused her. She had always refused to elaborate, but had made it clear that it was because the visions were about Raven. Closing her own eyes, Raven swallowed hard, dragging her focus back to the present for the time being.
---
It was awkward for Betsy. Seeking comfort from others wasn’t something she was able to do easily anymore. In fact, when Raven just froze, Betsy felt a flash of humiliation amongst her tears. She’d been raised not to cry; her father had hated it, thought it was reprehensible to display intense emotions that way, especially ones which made one so very vulnerable. But when Raven’s arms finally went around her, the tension went out of Betsy some. She’d been resting her hands against Raven’s sides, afraid to reach for more, but the return of the embrace had Betsy sliding them around Raven’s lower back. She stopped fighting against her emotional display enough that the jagged, painful edge went out of her sobbing and she quited herself to taking deep, ragged breaths. Oddly, that she’d stopped trying to hold it back made it easier to control.
She knew she should let go. She should step away and apologize for presumptuously crossing a boundary that would have made her uncomfortable had someone else crossed it with her. Though she and Raven had, of course, been in close contact plenty while sparring, this was obviously a completely different sort of contact, and Betsy hadn’t asked permission.
But... she hadn’t been hugged in a very long time. The last person she’d been close to like this was the very person that had her breaking down now. That thought reminded Betsy of how scared she used to get at night, and how his arms around her was the only thing that let her sleep. Without him, though, she’d had to learn to be strong on her own. She’d had no other option. She’d forgotten how it felt to look to someone else to soothe her.
Finally, taking a deep breath, Betsy released Raven and stepped back, cheeks now tinged red with embarrassment as she rubbed the tear tracks from her face.
“Sorry,” Betsy said, then paused to clear her throat. “I guess I wasn’t prepared to see him like that. Or for the suggestion that he’s...” There was no point not finishing her sentence. They both knew it was likely the truth. It just took Betsy a moment to work up to the word. “Dead.”
---
Raven rubbed Betsy’s back briefly, opening her mouth before realizing once again that she had no idea what to say to make anything better. It wasn’t going to get better. She couldn’t fix the fact that Betsy’s boyfriend was dead any more than she could fix the fact that Irene was dead, or that any of the other people who had meant something to the members of the colony were dead. The best she could do was try to get Betsy to just get over it, and that meant letting the girl actually live with the realization.
Betsy seemed to calm down at least a little bit, and as she pulled away, Raven took a small step back herself, again keeping her face blank. As the girl apologized, Raven shook her head. As much as she really hated emotion, especially the kind that involved bawling on near strangers, it really was something that couldn’t be helped. “I’m sorry you had to see it... but it’s a reality that you’re going to have to face eventually.”
She fell silent then, debating whether or not she really needed to explain anything further. Generally, she wouldn’t... but the game was hardly the same anymore. With a small sigh, she reached into a pocket in her hip and pulled out a photograph, which she held out to the girl. It was old but in relatively decent shape. Irene was seated at a table, smiling at something to the left of the camera. Raven cleared her throat.
“Irene.” She nodded at the photograph. “That photograph was taken in Salzburg, 1946. A few months after the outbreak, I returned to my apartment and she was gone. Ninety three years together, and she was just... gone.” Shaking her head, she added, “Sometimes you have to accept that things happen, and that if you sit around waiting and hoping and existing in an empty space, you’re not helping yourself or anyone else.”
---
Taking the photo carefully, Betsy looked at it, at the woman in it. She was beautiful, and Betsy knew immediately that this had been Raven’s partner. She didn’t even need to say it. After all, she carried the picture in her pocket, just as Betsy carried her own photo in her pocket of her lost love. She had known that she was most definitely not the only one who had lost someone, but this just... made it very real in a way she hadn’t ever quite felt before.
Ninety three years. Betsy’s heart ached for Raven, and she looked up at the woman’s face, holding the picture out to return it to her. That she had lost Irene in such a way, never quite knowing what had happened, and had still managed to continue with her life showed a sort of strength Betsy didn’t know if she possessed. Her respect for the woman, despite her questionable past, was only growing.
“How did you... move on? I can’t stop obsessing over what if,” Betsy admitted softly, watching Raven with an expression of hope, as though she thought maybe the woman had some secret, some answer, something that Betsy could do to make herself feel better. If there was some magic thing that would help her move on, she wanted to hear it, because she couldn’t quite see how she was going to even begin to do that on her own.
---
When Betsy returned the photograph, Raven gave her a tight smile, glancing at it for a second before tucking it back into the pocket and then melting the edges of the pocket seamlessly to her body again. There was no real reason for carrying the picture. Raven knew what Irene looked like, down to the last freckle, but there was something to be said about having tangible proof that Irene wasn’t just one of her created forms. At Betsy’s question, Raven frowned slightly.
“Moving on perhaps isn’t the best way to put it.” There were some things that you couldn’t just pick up and actually move on from. She had no way of knowing the full extent of Betsy’s relationship, but in her case at least... Raven knew for a fact that there would never be anyone else to come along with whom she could possibly share a bond like the one she’d had with Irene. “But you have to keep going. You can’t worry about ‘what if.’ You have to worry about what is.”
“Irene knew when it was going to happen. She didn’t let me know that it was going to happen until after it had, but she knew... about all of this. I searched for her body, couldn’t find it. But every day you spend hoping for something that’s so incredibly improbable is a day that could have been spent making sure that you and everyone else who you know are still alive are safe.” It may not have been anything close to the answer Betsy was looking for, but it was the best she could do. “‘He that lives upon hope will die fasting.’ You need to find something else to drive you. Some other reason to get up in the morning that isn’t the slim possibility that you’ll find them.”
---
She supposed Raven was right. Moving on implied... leaving behind, in some way. No one should forget the people they loved, even if they were gone. She nodded at Raven, but it was clear Betsy hadn’t quite figured anything out. She was still contemplating those words, and still upset from the traumatizing encounter earlier. She felt sad for Raven, too, that she had evidently lost someone so important to her. The short time Betsy had known her, the woman had seemed self-sufficient to the extreme, and almost hard. It was strange to see her this way, mourning a loss and offering comfort. Betsy appreciated it, appreciated having someone to identify with. She wished she could be like Raven, at least in the way that Betsy would never have known Raven had suffered that sort of loss. Maybe if Betsy could just... act like she was okay for a while, act strong like Raven, she’d eventually feel like she was okay.
“It’s hard, to find things to care about. I’m trying to be hopeful for a cure, trying to make myself... useful and helpful on the route to recovery, but...” Betsy trailed off. But what? Everyone had lost someone or something or everything, and everyone carried on. They had to. There was no other choice. If she was going to begin coping, she might as well start now. Betsy stood up a little straighter and took a breath.
“Thank you. For trying. I’ll be fine. Really. I just... I was shaken up. It was... a very harsh way to bring up the issue,” Betsy said. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and then looked at Raven with an earnest expression. She was serious as she asked, “In the future, can we just talk, Raven? No more... traumatizing surprises?”
---
Raven knew that it wasn’t necessarily easy to find something else to completely focus your energy on. Even she wasn’t really content with where she was and what she was doing with her time. She knew that it was what she had to be doing, though, and that made a world of difference. When Betsy thanked her, then pointed out that the method of opening her eyes was a little bit more abrupt and harsh than was strictly necessary, Raven fought back a smile.
The girl knew about Raven’s regular methods at getting things noticed. She had always been very fond of large spectacles that did generally involve some sort of trauma. Sometimes it took a big shock to make people see something that was right in front of their faces, and while Raven did understand and appreciate the value of a good long discussion, she had always believed that actions spoke much louder than words.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she replied, letting the smile creep faintly onto her face. Really, she wasn’t sure that just talking would have been nearly as helpful in Betsy’s situation as seeing the man physically had been. A sincere conversation with someone whom Betsy knew was a violent, possibly psychopathic terrorist wasn’t the kind of thing that Raven really thought would be as convincing as the physical suggestion of his death had been. Either way, it was done and as near as Raven could tell, Betsy was about as good as could be expected. Bowing her head slightly, Raven added, “I will make a concentrated effort in the future to be less abrasive with any revelations.”
---
Betsy couldn’t help but find the reply a little amusing, and she let a little smile twist up the corners of her lips, even if the expression was tinged with sadness. She still couldn’t quite shake the ghastly image from her mind. Whatever else had come from it, Betsy thought she was definitely finished training for the day. The Danger Room was too realistic for her to cope with just then.
“Well, thank you for the effort, then. I appreciate it,” Betsy answered. She couldn’t really blame Raven for how upsetting it had been, after all. She understood that in Raven’s own way, she’d been trying to help, and Betsy didn’t really hold it against her. Not considering she’d comforted her the way she had when Betsy had unceremoniously latched on and cried.
“And thank you for... this. I think in the end it will have been good for me,” Betsy added then. “Though, I do apologize for breaking down. I haven’t... I normally try to avoid getting overly emotional.”
---
Raven nodded at Betsy’s thanks, not entirely sure just how sincere the girl was being. It didn’t matter. Raven knew that what she’d done was something that would help Betsy in the long run, and she was glad she’d done it. She decided that Betsy meant it, though, when she kept talking and then apologized for her behavior. Raven shook her head.
“Sometimes breaking down is necessary for building up again.” She powered down the room the rest of the way and gestured for Betsy to lead the way out. She’d definitely broken down at times throughout her life, and they were all absolute turning points. Every single breakdown had led to her becoming stronger in some way. “Emotions are tricky. Sometimes you can’t control them.”
Following the girl out, she turned off the last of the lights and closed the room down for the day. Betsy had been the last session before her open hours were over, and she didn’t particularly feel like sticking around to train on her own just then. She nodded at Betsy. “You did well. See you tomorrow.”