Time

Summary: It's one and one half weeks later when she hears the news. Pure angst ahead. Major spoilers for X-Men: The Last Stand and minor spoilers for X-Men: First Class.

It had taken time. Time for her to gather what courage she had. Time she needed to get used to her new skin. Time before she was ready to face what she had done, what those others she had once been like had done, were still doing and now it was going to affect her, too, wasn't it? Because she wasn't like them anymore and they don't like her as she is, no one does, Freak.

One and one half weeks.

Time was what she needed to heal from the betrayal. His betrayal. One of the worst moments of her life, the time when she reached out to him for help because it was her when it should have been him, on the floor and human and it frightened her so much, but he abandoned her because of what she was, just like the humans so long ago, You're not one of us.

Eleven days.

It had taken time once she was ready, or as ready as she'd ever be. Tracking down informants took time. Finding those willing to talk to her, a human, had taken more time. But it was time to know. Time had seemed to slow down when she heard. Standing in a dirty alleyway, the street kid giving her a weird look, You don't know, where have you been all this time.

Two hundred sixty-four hours.

It had taken no time at all for her to find a bar. That was all she needed, to get so drunk she couldn't think of the time time time she had wasted, so many years gone and she'd never get it back. She'd never get another chance to fix it because she'd had so many chances, but now it was over because she had never taken the time.

Fifteen thousand, eight hundred forty minutes.

The amount of time passed since she lost him, the only real family she had ever known, for good.

Nine hundred fifty thousand, four hundred seconds after Charles Xavier's death, Raven cried.

Disclaimer: No, I do not own X-Men. Yes, this saddens me.

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