We Live Forever

Chapter 1: The Beginning Of The End

7 years later (Winter of 1993)

Crimson's POV:

I woke up suddenly and saw my husband excitedly sneaking into our bedroom. He had a practically falling apart journal in his hands. He dropped the notebook on the bed and gently took off his glasses and set them on his nightstand. I looked down at the notebook and read out the hand-written title. 

"The Dreamstride?"

"Yes! It's something very exciting I've been working on."

Hank, now in his pajama pants with his shirt gone, carefully climbed into the bed. He picked up the notebook and flipped through several pages of extensive notes and diagrams. He finally stopped on a page and handed me the notebook. 

"You see this here? This is what I've learned from experimenting with different chemicals and mutant genetics, I think I've got something."

I moved my finger to turn the page and felt a sharp pain in my fingertip. 

"Ah!"

"Love? You're bleeding..."

I looked down and saw the small trickle of blood escape from the cut on my finger. In a state of pure shock and horror, I didn't move as the blood dripped off my finger and onto the notebook page. 

"It's just a papercut, right?"

"It still hasn't closed..."

"It'll be fine. At least I hope so..."

"We need to go down to the lab, and-"

"No. I'm not gonna be a science experiment."

"Well, we still need to tell Charles to get you off the mission team."

"No, nobody has to know."

"Crims-"

"No, Hank please..."

"I need you to be safe."

"I can handle myself, love."

"Just please be careful, for me?"

A Few Nights Later

I woke up to Charles in my head telling all of us to suit up for a mission. Hank blindly reached around the bed for my hand and eventually found it. Toegther we pulled ourselves out of bed and started to head downstairs. 

"Are you sure about this?" Hank questioned breaking the silence. 

"Yes, I can still do my job. The world needs us, nothing is going to stop me from helping."

"You can help in a safer way, you don't need to put your life on the line like this."

"You mean like what you do?"

...

"That's different!"

"How is it different?"

"I still have the beast, you-"

"Still have better hearing and fighting skills than anyone else here."

Tension hang in the air as we walked into the room where we all suited up. Scott turned over and looked at us with a curious expression on his face, Peter took notice as well. No one said anything, the only noise was the shuffling of fabric and the zipping of zippers. 

Charles finally entered the room with Erik in tow. The two glanced around the room. Erik gave me and Hank a strange look and then motioned his thumb across his neck. 

"Okay everyone, you tonight we have a cargo plane that has been taken over and we need to take it back. Hank will fly us over and then we'll jump onto it and find a point to enter. Then retake control of the plane. Simple enough?"