Heart of Iron // MHA

1. Hanuta

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Raven Darkhölme had lived a long life, one full of regrets and isolation.

She was one of the earliest known individuals to possess "quirks" as they're known today, but she's been on the receiving end of alternative names for centuries.

A shapeshifter of blue skin, she's been called a monster, a witch, a freak, and, in the most common vocabulary, a mutant.

Despite the ridicule and numerous attempts on her life, she wasn't someone who sought to hurt needlessly and had even tried to use her intelligence to help others.

For a paycheck, of course.

One of her attempts to help others was a fortunate encounter with an Austrian woman named Irene Adler, who simply wanted to understand the nature of the strange dreams she had written down into diaries before eventually going blind.

Their meeting would end up fated, though, as the two fell in love and even inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to write the novels of Sherlock Holmes as the two women investigated a string of murders they were confident were linked to the infamous Jack the Ripper.

Raven and Irene would eventually reunite in New Mexico in the United States of America and raise their adoptive daughter, Anna Marie, until Irene's death.

Anna would be an eye-opener for the blue-skinned woman, however, as she was also a mutant with extraordinary abilities.

Anna's growing up and joining her enemies combined with her wife's death would only leave Raven cold, and she would stop caring about helping others and only help herself.

She would become a criminal in the Wild West, where she would have another fateful encounter with a fellow ageless mutant named Logan before parting ways on bad terms in Kansas.

She would then have a long history as an anti-Germany agent and assassination during the Second World War. An unfortunate history she would have with several other mutants and several close allies and friends.

By the time of the twenty-first century, it became inevitable that the existence of mutants would become public knowledge and their rights were called into question.

With a jaded mind, she would stand at the forefront of the fight for equality as the dreams her former lover had written down quickly became prophecies. Decades of blood and violence would slowly come to mean nothing as the twenty-first century faded into the twenty-second and the mutant population would come to dominate the planet leading to a different war altogether.

Vigilantes and Criminals.

Heroes and Villains.

The very same people she bled for eventually became entities of comics made flesh while she outlived everyone else she cared about, as even those she and many others thought immortal would find their death in some form or another. The few that did survive would part ways with each other, their presence being nothing but a reminder to themselves of the violence they endured.

They sought greater pastures, and in Raven's case, peace. She had witnessed the centuries-long struggles that needed to take place for equality and had participated in almost every one of them. Women and racial rights, freedom of love and speech, and now mutant rights have been achieved.

Even if all wasn't equal, she knew that not everything would be. For the first time in centuries, she could relax freely without having to disguise herself as someone else.

The only thing standing between her and that peace, that freedom to sleep in until noon and be able to take her kids to school were the ghosts of her own making.