Post by mystique on Sept 19, 2006 23:21:38 GMT -5
PART ONE: BIRTH
Leni Zauber checked into the Wyndham hotel in Washington D.C. on April 16th, 1962, finally back in the United States after a four year run in East Germany. The only way she had survived after being discovered in Magdeburg was to plead on the sympathies(or exploit the needs) of a vicious hired assassin named Victor Creed.
Stepping into a blistering hot shower, she scrubbed her scalp and skin mercilessly. She had nearly hated him. He was an ignorant, careless beast, needlessly violent and only partially sane. Something about him had made her smile all the same, enough to let him into her bed anyway. Only a woman in her line of work could reconcile feeling two completely different ways about the same individual.
She slept deeply that night, maybe for the first time in a number of years. Next week she would attend a secret meeting with her employers at the central intelligence agency, but for now she could rest.
+
Leni woke with an ache in her hips and her breasts. She was due for her cycle, and didn't think much of it as she made her way down seventeenth street, met with Mr. Loya and Mr. Jefferson, answering their questions before debriefing them on the information she'd sent to them months before. They dismissed her, handing her the key to a safety deposit box, with the promise to contac ther again should the need arise.
She was anxious to get home. Her apartment in SoHo was still there, they had assured her. Leni would become Raven again- at least until her next assignment. She thought she might get a cat.
+
The nausea would not subside, and Raven began to suspect things she would not admit to herself. Miserable and beginning to worry, she visited a doctor.
"Well of course you're pregnant my dear," The kindly older man said, patting her on the virtually nonexistent tummy. "Won't your husband be proud!"
She just stared at him.
+
She got a cat- a sweet orange tabby named Percival. And Raven made a few friends in New York- the city held quite a few more forward-thinking types that didn't balk at a woman choosing to have a child on her own. Did she know the father? Of course she did. Forward thinking didn't mean they weren't still a little old fashioned.
She knew him, but she didn't have a clue how to get in touch with him. Maybe she'd never see him again... hopefully she wouldn't. Something told her Victor Creed wouldn't make the best father.
The time came when she realized she was going to have to make some kind of plan for the birth.
+
"Of course I'm keeping it," she smiled at Eric, her arm in his as they walked through the late fall leaves in Central Park. He didn't agree; he felt a woman of 'her stature' shouldn't be chained to a home and a baby. Raven laughed and brushed a rebellious shift of dark brown hair behind her friend's ear. He had grown up into such a conservative young man...
"And what if it isn't a mutant?" He insisted quietly.
It hadn't really occurred to her. It was her child; that is what she knew. "Don't you think it's inevitable, with two mutant parents?"
"Perhaps... but what I know of you, my dear, is wasted on diaper changes and three a.m. feedings. Come with me to England. You would not believe the sort of connections I have made there."
Raven sighed, and kissed him on the cheek.
+
The pain was incredible as she leaned against the bathtub, pillows under her knees, trying not to moan loud enough to alert the neighbors. She had prepared for the birth as best she could, knowing she could not go to the hospital. It was all too common a practice to give women anesthesia during birth, and in going unconscious in such a way Raven would not have been able to control her shapeshifting.
In those days, the life of a mutant was far different. Raven had no friends to whom she could entrust her secret; and Eric had returned to Europe a month before.
Heaving quietly as the splitting pain made her wretch, she tried to breathe evenly, determined to remain conscious through each contraction. It wasn't easy as she felt the baby crowning, her entire existence focused on a ring of brilliant red and white in her mind. Arching her back to slip her fingers behind the baby's neck, she cried out into her arm until the infant was freed.
If the umbilical cord is around your baby's neck, either ease it over his head slowly or loosen it enough to form a loop so that the rest of his body can slip through.
She repeated the lines she'd carefully memorized step by step, using them as rungs on a ladder out of the pain and exhaustion she had nearly lost herself in.
Leaning heavily back on the wall, she dried the baby's face and wrapped him in a towel as quickly as she could, wanting to hear him cry, needing to hear him breathe. She cleared his mouth as the instructions had said, and tipped him over her arm, rubbing his back. Her eyes drifted closed as fatigue threatened to take her.
The baby screamed suddenly, a squalling, wretched sort of sound that could only be described by Raven as music. Her entire body shook tiredly as she held the infant close. Checking tiny hands and feet through teary eyes, Raven was relieved long limbs flushed pink after a few minutes outside the womb. Carefully opening the makeshift wrap, she laughed through another contraction. It was a boy.
+
There is a reason why newborns sleep as much as they do in the first few months of life, and Raven learned precisely why in the first 24 hours of motherhood. They were never more than a few inches from one another as she managed to get them both washed and changed into soft cotton gowns- hers a clean white, his a pale green. Together they slept through the day, his tiny body curled safely between his mother's breasts, both of them occasionally half-waking so he could nurse.
When she woke, her body sore and still aching from its exertion, she lay the infant on his back on the bed. Winter afternoon light was spilling onto the coverlet, and he frowned away from it, looking exactly like a grumpy old man. He curled his hand around her pinky finger, and she smiled down at him as he opened his eyes, dark slate blue eyes looking hazily up at her.
"Good morning, baby," she said, and kissed his soft head. He was perfect. She felt immensely lucky, blessed, charmed that they had both lived through their experience, all alone. Somehow, for Raven, it all fit.
She had always been alone, from the time she was very little. A few allies, one or two friends that drifted in and out from time to time. But most of her time was alone. Sometimes it was lonely, other times she enjoyed the solitude.
Raven realized as she looked down into her son's eyes, that she was no longer alone.
+
"What is your name, baby?" She asked him, watching his mouth work hungrily on her breast. She held his hand with her fingers as he grunted contentedly, knowing only that the familiar, warm voice was speaking again.
She thought of her young life. If her mother, who in the end had nearly succeeded in smothering her under a pillow in the night, had once held her young daughter in her arms like this. She wondered if there had ever been love like she felt for her son in her own mother's eyes.
"I promise to always take care of you," she whispered, her voice wavering. Everything seemed so much bigger, so much more important now, with her child to think of.
Someone had shown her kindness. An old man who had taken her in, given her a place to finish growing up. Who taught her to see her mutant nature as a gift, not a curse. She would name the baby after him.
And she would give her son his father's name, so that he had heritage. Roots. A foundation.
"Graydon Creed," Raven murmured as she lifted the baby in both hands and kissed his face. "I think it sounds handsome." Baby Graydon yawned. His mother chuckled. "What, you don't like it?"
