DA Revelations

Episode 13 – Gone but Not Forgotten

Chapter 1 – The Broken Doll

Jessie,

Don't worry when Hank hands you this letter on my behalf.

Everything is fine. I just don't like goodbyes, even if it's only for a

little while, so I wrote this letter for you, and asked him to give it to

you when I've left.

I have to go away for a little while; there's a place called Muir Island in Scotland, and the doctors there want to help me get better so I won't have the hole in my chest any more. They have this

awesome machine that they say can completely heal me up – how

cool is that?

But it means being away for a while, for about a month...

and when I come back I'll be good as new. I won't be able to get in

touch from where I'll be but the month will fly by, then when I get back

I'll take you for ice cream and we'll catch up on everything I missed.

Don't give Kitty a hard time, and don't worry about me while I'm gone and try not to miss me – I promise I'm coming back.

Gambit

Jessie Crowell felt like she might have looked over the letter a hundred times; there were only so many words in it she understood, and some she knew but couldn't put the written word to the sound. Words like cool and awesome and promise she knew. Especially promise. It was there, written in black and white. He had promised to come back, regardless if he said it or not.

It had been a week already; but a slow one at that. The days had dragged on, even more than they ever had before she'd even known Mr. LeBeau. Now that she did, the hours dragged like days and the minutes dragged like hours.

And there was that odd feeling...like something had suddenly been ripped from her; like someone had come up and torn one of her arms off and left her bleeding like something from the Family Guy cartoon she'd crept down stairs at two am to see on Fox.

That was the feeling...she couldn't explain it exactly, but whenever she wasn't near Mr. LeBeau it felt like something was missing and she was unsure of what that was. Maybe it was that sometimes she felt they were alike, as if they shared the one mind. Sometimes, she was even convinced she could feel what he felt; being in his presence she always knew exactly how he felt even if he was making a brave face and pretending like he was fine.

Why do adults always have to pretend to be okay when they're just NOT? She wondered as she folded up the letter and put it in her drawer. She hadn't spent much of her life in the presence of adults up until coming to the institute. There had only been five adults at the orphanage, and she felt as if she rarely saw them other than in the classroom where they were just statue-like emotionless teachers who loved to yell.

She'd never really had the chance to see how adults interacted with each other until coming to this place and it had been such an eye opener to see how complicated and strange adults were with each other. Their friendships, their romances, their bickering...it was so much more complicated than being a kid.

There was so much to take in; she'd been watching for days before Mr. LeBeau had left suddenly without any warning. He was one person, then he was another, ranging from mad to sad to normal and back.

He reminded her very much of a doll that Professor Xavier had given her upon her arrival to the institute. It was a battery operated thing that would laugh when it was tickled, crawl on it's own, and talk when it was hungry, it even cried when it wet itself; she'd been playing with it near the upstairs banister of the grand staircase in the foyer and accidentally dropped it where it'd landed on it's head.

Ever since that fall, the doll had acted so strangely that she'd had to take the batteries out of it because it was so utterly disturbing to her. It would cry, and blink it's mechanical button like eyes, then laugh crazily out of the blue and say 'bottle'. Sometimes it's voice would take on an odd deep tone then speed up in the way that the characters on Alvin and the Chipmunks spoke.

Needless to say, she never played with that doll any more...it bothered her far too much and for the longest time, she'd even forgotten she ever owned it. She'd been too embarrassed by having been careless enough to break it in the first place, and feeling somewhat scared of it that she'd hidden it and avoided ever talking about.

And seeing Mr. LeBeau lately; she suddenly remembered that doll. He was just as erratic and unpredictable; he'd seem happy then be sobbing uncontrollably.

Mr. LeBeau wasn't a doll though, and she couldn't just remove his batteries and stick him to the bottom of her toybox and hope that perhaps eventually the problem would just miraculously fix itself.

With a sigh she moved over to her toybox, the life-a-like doll was buried at the very bottom, it's face slightly pushed in by the heavier toys ontop. As she pulled out, it's face started to inflate a little, one eye was closed as if it had been welded shut while the other rolled up, looking at her with an almost drunken expression that gave her a shiver.

She removed the batteries from her small vanity mirror that lit up, and she placed them into the doll, and pushed the back panel in place, and smoothed down the tiny blue t-shirt. She flicked the switch at the neck, and the doll come to life, limbs whirring as they moved, head turning from side to side slowly and deliberate, it giggled, the began to howl.

She sighed and she hugged the plastic thing to her chest, shutting her eyes tightly and tried not to let herself be bothered by it's behaviour. "I'm sorry," she whispered to it.