Her son had wanted her to stay out of his life. Deep down she knew that she was a terrible mother and that she didn't deserve the love of her children, but it was never something she could consciously admit to herself. Love was a weakness, she knew that, had tried to teach the Brotherhood boys that too for all the good that had done her, and yet here she was, sitting on a beam of the church that her son had moved into, her heart seeming to squirm in her chest at just the sight of her boy.
It was just the shapeshifting she told herself, her heart was a mere tenth it's normal size, compressed and reshaped to match that of the bat whose form she held. She'd been slipping into the church every weekend during her breaks from being Val Cooper, the National Security Adviser, flying in through a missing pane of a stained glass window and watching her son from the shadows of the rafters.
It angered her in a way that he had found such solace in Christianity. If the Catholic priest in the village where she was born had succeeded in burning her at the stake then Kurt would not even be here...perhaps if she told him the story it might shake those convictions? She'd already planned out the avenues of argument that she would use, the delicate manipulation that would be required, she just hoped that Xavier hadn't poisoned Kurt's mind beyond the point where she could sway him.
Taking wing, the bat flittered to the window and out of the building, circling back round and landing behind a corner of the building. A moment later an old man, around eighty, slightly stooped with the craggy face of one who'd seen many long years, emerged. Stooped against the chill of the evening, Mystique made her way to the Church door and slipped a finger into the lock, manipulating the digit until the lock clicked open.
Huddled against the chill of the evening, the 'old man' shuffled inside, closing the door behind him. Turning, to walk up the nave the old man paused at the obvious signs of habitation and called out in a quavering voice. "Hello, is anyone there?"