The Axis of Time shatters under the combined pressure of all the psychics Apocalypse abducted, restoring the reality he used them to destroy and scattering them back into it.
Mostly.
Rachel couldn't have held back, refused to back up Xavier, let Apocalypse destroy the universe so he could rule a new one—but neither does she want to go back to what she left. Perhaps that's why she flies out only into void, a darkness that is everywhere and nowhere and nothing. She looks around and for half a heartbeat sees the timestream from outside, a brilliant skein of color so bright and chaotic it stabs at her eyes.
As soon as she perceives it, she's in amidst it, streaming wind and water, electricity, flame lashing her, drowning her--
She casts about for something, anything familiar, not too familiar, living minds like the ones she was working with seconds ago.
And Rachel is good, bitterly good, at finding.
Family, maybe… Does she have living family anywhere, can she reach a past where it hasn't happened? Did she glimpse someone who looked like the pictures of her mother, in a bridal gown? Are there versions of her in these timelines nearby? She reaches out, lets them run through her fingers, breathes them in. The thought brothers crosses her mind. Brothers, why? Where are you? Why aren't you me?
"Mother Askani." (Who? Does that sound familiar?) "Of all you could call out to, you chose me?"
Well, honestly I can't explain that myself.
"Are you lost? Confused? SUFFERING? It would be well deserved. A fitting punishment."
She winces. Lost, very. Confused, sure. She's suffering less than usual, although she is distantly aware this isn't sustainable, that she's already survived the timestream unprotected longer than she should.
She can't deny deserving punishment, but she isn't going to seek it out.
"Rachel- it's been a while. I'm.. With the X-Men, at the mansion. Can you tell where you are? I can't help you if I can't find you."
Her heart thuds so hard it hurts and her laugh is ripped away as it comes out of her mouth. I'll find you. It's what I do. But not for anybody else now, it doesn't have to hurt anyone now, she won't.
She breaks into reality again, tearing out of the sky, and plows almost immediately into the grass.
Whoever finds her finds a dazed, too-scrawny redhead in a spike-studded red skinsuit.
