[harleenzel]

[cerulexns-blog]

' What do I do all day? Why I paint my nails and read US Weekly cover to cover.         Didn't you know? '

[oftheatomrp-blog]

RAVEN DARKHOLME | MYSTIQUE 

Age: 26 (Appears 20 on all legal documents) Occupation: Model Status: Undeclared Mutant Abilities: Shapeshifting, Superhuman Agility & Agelessness 

Raven Darkholme has always been a survivor, mostly because she was forced to be until it was all she knew how to be. Her abilities manifested when she was a young girl, and Raven ever the adaptor was quick to control them causing her family to fear their own daughter. Her natural blue form showed itself – scaly, yellow eyes, to her family, she was hideous, and they attempted to kill her prompting Raven to run. She wore a variety of different disguises whilst on the run, whatever would get her what she needed, when she needed. She grew up quickly on the streets, and Raven has always been ashamed of the lengths she went to to survive, but has never apologised for always doing whatever she had to.

Her desperation came to an end upon stumbling upon the home of Charles Xavier. She hadn’t thought much of it, only that the place was large and appeared to be owned by people of wealth - and wealth to Raven meant an abundance of food and valuables that wouldn’t be missed. Disguised as the woman of the house, Raven slipped inside with skills of silence she’d acquired over the years. He found her by the fridge, a boy who couldn’t be much older than she was, a boy she attempted to convince she was his mother only for him to see right through it and reveal to her that like her, he had spectacular abilities. She was adopted by the boy’s stepfather and grew to become his shadow, his closest friend, his sister in every sense of the word.

Raven was the protective type, constantly getting into fights with her adoptive brother Cain whenever she discovered he’d done anything to cause Charles hurt. Well into their teenage years, she was the type to disapprove of any girl who might look his way which tended to look more like jealousy than protectiveness. As time went on, Raven became more aware of Charles’ status as the golden child, and just how different she was to everyone else. As a child she’d found solace in the fact that much like her, Charles was different, a mutant just like she was. But she got older, she got insecure, and it seemed to her that everyday her skin got bluer, and she got uglier. Together, she and Charles worked on a disguise and whilst her brother simply wanted to shield her from what the world would think of her, Raven always felt that he wanted something a little bit less hideous to look at.

Following the death of her adoptive father Kurt, Raven travelled to England with Charles where he studied at Harvard and she took up a job waitressing. It was a simple enough life, and though Raven was intelligent beyond her years, she was happy to spend her days working whilst Charles studied, always feeling the lesser of the two but never allowing it to get to her. They were always the happiest days of her life – where no one knew her name, she was simply a faceless girl taking orders and supporting her brother and best friend in his studies. He graduated, and Raven followed Charles on his travels, she followed him wherever it was he wanted to go. And that was just the way things went between she and Charles.

From there, things began to spiral out of Raven’s control. Her life became a media affair once Charles became one of the most recognisable faces in the world. He was the professor, the TV sensation, the genius, and now the CEO of Xavier Corporations. Meanwhile, she became known as Charles Xavier’s pretty blonde sister. Nothing more, nothing less. The media pounced on her, creating images for her, putting words in her mouth, and Raven’s insecurities grew worse everytime a magazine deemed her as ‘beautiful’. They printed her name in every story, and they never used her real face, and though Raven’s disguise was impeccably well managed, she would always know who she was beyond the golden curls and blue eyes. She was ashamed of herself, but never shy. The world knew her as Charles’s brassy sister, the one who had an answer for everyone, the less intelligent one, living off of her brother’s fortune and charitable nature. Wanting to be more than a personality - a sister - Raven went into modelling despite her insecurities and began to make more of a name for herself, working part time whilst Charles remained the brains of the two.

Though she remains to be Charles’s best friend, the pressure tends to get to her, causing a decent amount of tension between the pair. Raven knows she’s smarter than the image she puts out to the world, she knows she’s better than what the stories print her to be, but she allows it all to happen anyway and remains bitter toward her celebrated brother at times. She’s proud of him – proud beyond words, and there’s nothing in this world she loves more than Charles Xavier, but there’ll always be that jealousy. The jealousy that he’s respected by almost everyone they meet, jealousy that he doesn’t have to hide his real face from the world. And as much as she supports him, she’s unsure she’ll ever agree with his stance on peace between humans and mutants – she’s unsure if she wants to.