Memento Mori

19

"Were you scared?" It had been silent on the jet since boarding, everyone had clearly got nothing to say. Even Peter for once was silent. It was like everyone knew in some small way of what they were going into, chaos being the foremost thing. It had been silent, eerily so until Jean nervously spoke up. She was sitting between Scott and Raven. Upon hearing her question, Raven turned and looked at her. Jean did look rather fearful of this all, it could easily be admitted that deep down all of them were feeling something akin to fear. "That day in D.C., were you scared?" Jean asked, her question evidently didn't mean to the here and now.

"No," was the rather short response which Raven gave, she might as well be honest here. What was the point of lying to the girl? "But I was scared on my first mission. I was on a plane like this, with my friends." Raven said, she did glance over to Liesel who just smiled awkwardly. Friends and them may have been pushing it a little, but she got the sentiment and meaning. "We were about your age, we called ourselves the X-Men. Your brother was there," she managed to lean forwards slightly to look at Scott. "We used to call him Havoc, he was a real handful but when it came down to it, he was very brave." She paused just remembering what Alex was like when he was younger, he was a proper troublesome person.

"What happened to the rest of the kids that went with you, the X-Men?" Kurt piped up in a low tone. He sort of dreaded to hear the answer, with the wistful tone Raven was using, it was pretty evident what happened.

"Hank, Liesel and myself are the only ones left. I couldn't save the rest of them." Raven glanced at Liesel, she shut her eyes and inhaled deeply. "We couldn't," she corrected, Liesel's eyes slowly opened and she looked over to her. She nodded slowly, appreciative to have some of the credit. "I told you, I'm not a hero." The small fan following which she had, didn't truly know the struggles or what Raven had done to achieve all she did. She had done bad things, yes, for the sake of what she deemed good. But she was uncertain whether a hero would do such a thing.

"Well, you're a hero to us." Jean said, turning her face to look at the blonde who seemed quite adamant on trying to deter the redhead. "Seeing you that day on TV, changed my life." Jean admitted, Raven slowly looked over, a confused look on her face listening to Jean's honesty.

"Mine too," Kurt may have had few things when on the road, but a television was always around.

"Mine, too," Peter said, stopping popping his bubblegum for the sake of taking part in this rather serious conversation. "I mean, I still live in my mum's basement but, you know, everything else is...it's pretty much the same." Peter said, sniggering a little over his own words, earning smiles and quiet laughter from those around him as well. "I'm a total loser." He easily admitted, he got a look sent his way by Liesel, she just smiled and shook her head.

Everyone fell into relative silence then, what more could be said when there was so much hesitance hanging in the air? The light which was coming through the large windscreen slowly darkened; what was bright, clear blue skies was replaced with darkening clouds; grey, gloomy, specks of light could only just break through the density of this storm that they were flying into.

The turbulence made the jet rock, the sensors within the cockpit suddenly bleeping and going off. Everything that was happening outside, was effecting everything built into the jets machinery and equipment. Hank did his very best to steady the controls, beside him Moira did the same. Even from the corner of his eyes he saw her look over a little hesitantly. Being the pilots, they of course had the first opportunity to see what was waiting for them. Debris, sand, building material, anything and everything was being hauled up and into the air. Great arches of dark black whipped and curled across the sky, and amongst all of this.

"Seventh wonder, twelve o'clock," Hank said as the pyramid was nearing ever closer. Because of the lack of light, it was just situated heavily in shadow. It made the structure look more menacing and imposing, which in a way meant it somewhat fulfilled its duty.