Thank you very much to Stormkpr, A Lake Elohcin, rasa and shad for reviewing, and to everyone who has faved and alerted it. Second chapter's up!
Storm awoke with a pure cold splash of fear soaking every inch of her body. She scrabbled at the heavy thing covering her, and struggled when someone took hold of her hands firmly.
"Storm, this is Beast," his deep voice told her gently. "You are out of the Danger Room."
"T-the ceiling!" She forced the words past the pain in her throat - couldn't he see it falling and pressing and squeezing all around her?
"The ceiling is exactly where a ceiling should be, my dear, and shows no signs of moving. Look." She felt her hands being lifted and moved around. "There is space all around you, enough space for someone twice your height."
She opened her eyes with difficulty and squinted around. The infirmary. Beast was right. Relief went a long way to calming her down.
"I did it," she whispered.
"What did you do?"
She tried to tell him, but sleep wrapped her in cotton wool and floated her away.
Beast had gone to contact the Professor, who was visiting Moira in Muir Island, when Rogue began to come round. So it was up to Jubilee to run over to Rogue and try to stop her removing her oxygen mask. This was made infinitely more difficult by the fact that she still wasn't wearing her right glove. Swallowing down her nerves, Jubilee leant in and said as clearly as she could,
"Rogue, hi, um, this is Jubilee. Please, don't move your right arm. Not at all. That's this one," she tapped the corresponding shoulder quickly, "because you don't have a glove on and I'll just be more problems for Beast if you absorb my powers and knock me out, ok? Please?"
Rogue must have heard her, for she only reached up for the irritating gas mask with her left hand. Jubilee took hold of that one and gently put it back by her side. "And don't fiddle with that. It's oxygen. It's good for you." Rogue mumbled something in response. It sounded a bit like "Storm". "She's fine," Jubilee ventured. "Beast had to clean up a couple of scratches, but that was it. She's asleep, but she already woke up a bit, and she knows she's safe now."
More breathless mumbling.
"You shouldn't try and talk, Rogue. Wait until you're stronger, then you can tell Beast or the Professor all about it." She lifted up the bedcover - it had slid down when Rogue fidgeted. Beast had used the hole in her uniform as a starting point to rip it open down to the sixth rib, creating the required space to apply the defibrillators diagonally either side of her heart. As a result, her left breast was exposed, stained red and white by a blistered burn over the heart. It looked a little like a popped balloon - the droll appearance belying the fact that it was both very dangerous and potentially very embarrassing for Rogue to have that much skin uncovered. Two very good reasons for Jubilee to avert her eyes and carefully cover her up again.
With Rogue drifting back into sleep - or unconsciousness, she didn't know the difference - Jubilee felt that it was safe enough for her to return to bed. Her head was absolutely killing her!
"Have you talked to any of the others?" she asked drowsily when Beast returned.
"Yes; Gambit, is on his way as we speak. I asked Scott and Jean if they would so kind as to detour the Blackbird to pick up the Professor. I trust Scott will fly as fast possible, so travelling at approximately Mach 4 they should be back here in about four hours."
"What about Wolverine?"
Beast raised both hands in a defeated fashion. "As ever, Logan is a law unto himself."
Jubilee's attempts at sleep were helped mightily when Beast, despite her continued assertions of perfect health, gave her a sedative. She slept happily and deeply, but only for an hour, as she was woken abruptly by the sound of slamming doors and running footsteps and a familiar voice.
"Mon dieu! Rogue!"
She opened her eyes to see Gambit hurrying from the doorway to Rogue's bed. Rogue opened her eyes and turned towards him immediately. Their outstretched hands had very nearly touched before Gambit noticed her lack of a glove and snatched his hand back just in time. That seemed to jolt Rogue into normality, because she pulled her hand away as well and whispered mockingly,
"Calm down, tiger. Anyone would think you were worried about me."
"Heh. Me? Worried?" Gambit replied flippantly, but he couldn't take his eyes off Rogue and she was returning the favour. As usual, Jubilee found herself wondering why no-one had just locked those two in a room together and waited. Probably because it was more likely to result in Gambit being murdered with any spare furniture than anything constructively romantic.
"How's Storm?" Rogue rasped. Gambit spun around and looked at Storm, seeing her apparently for the first time.
"Storm?" he said disbelievingly. Jubilee edged her way into his peripheral vision and waved. He turned to her, looking stunned. "You too?" Jubilee nodded and suddenly, stupidly, she felt her eyes beginning to sting with tears. Looking relieved to be doing something that he understood, Gambit strode over to her and hugged her tightly. "Come now, ma petite, Remy's here now. What was this, three lovely ladies fightin' over Gambit's attentions?"
Jubilee gave a watery chuckle.
"No, Gambit, it was a malfunction in the Danger Room. Which I would have told you when I let you in, if you hadn't dashed off like that." Beast looked peeved as he entered the infirmary. Gambit shook his head.
"You tellin' me Jubilee was in there?" he demanded. Jubilee shook her head and moved away from the lessening hug.
"No, just Rogue and Storm. I ..." She felt her face turning red. "I was skateboarding indoors and it went a bit wrong and I knocked myself out."
Gambit made a very bad attempt to hide his grin.
"Still say it serves you right, sugar," Rogue said with the beginnings of a return to her usual spirit.
"Yeah, well." Jubilee stared at the bedclothes and turned even redder. Gambit still seemed agitated; she could see him quickly snapping his fingers one by one.
"So you saying Stormy went in there? Even after all the stuff her and Xavier's been doin'?"
"She was determined," Rogue cut in hoarsely before Beast could answer. There was a sudden rustle of bedclothes, and Storm said coldly,
"She can speak for herself."
Jubilee had the oddest sensation that every single person in the room had just tried to simultaneously move towards and away from Storm. The icy voice reminded her of the many times Storm had scolded her for transgressions. It was the tone she tended to use before frying or otherwise utterly obliterating an opponent. It was Storm's 'imperious goddess' voice, her angry voice and it struck a deep-buried 'bad-monkey' nerve in every listener.
But then there was the step forwards; the fact that claustrophobic trauma invariably left Storm scared and jumpy and tired. Whatever had happened in the Danger Room had forced a reaction from Storm unlike anything Jubilee had ever seen before, so she wasn't surprised to see that Storm looked as though her mind had been put through a paper shredder and stuffed back in the wrong order. She was pale and shaking all over, and it hurt to watch her desperately trying to piece it all back together to avoid embarrassment.
"You don't look so good, cherie," Gambit said softly.
"No worse than me," Rogue muttered, plucking feebly at the blood pressure monitor attached to her little finger.
"You always look good, chere," Gambit replied with a half-heartedly lecherous grin.
"Go boil your head, Cajun."
In the few seconds that it had taken Rogue and Gambit to have their familiar spat, Storm had somehow managed to stop the shaking.
"Thank you for your concern, Gambit," she said, and her voice still sounded like ice cracking underfoot.
There was an awkward silence. Then, in unison, Jubilee and Gambit demanded,
"What happened?"
Storm deflated. Rogue tensed.
"I'm inclined to wait until the Professor returns," Beast cautioned. He was hanging upside-down from the doorway. "The protocols that Charles recently imprinted into the Danger Room meant that it shouldn't have activated any sort of claustrophobic situation unless specifically programmed to by Charles himself. This feels like a very hazardous development."
Gambit looked around with the annoyed expression of someone who's last to catch on and knows it. "So that was what happened?"
"Yeah," Rogue answered. She struggled to sit up and intercepted Gambit's move to help with a fierce glare. The sheet slipped.
"Chere!" Gambit cried out, his eyes wide with something Jubilee had no name for. Rogue looked at him with confusion and a little contempt. Gambit lifted up the bedsheet and held it out to her helplessly.
Jubilee couldn't help but giggle. Rogue's expression began to darken.
"Your uniform is somewhat ... compromised, Rogue," Storm explained. Even on her wan face, a smile began to creep. "I believe that Gambit is torn between enjoying the view and saving your modesty."
"Damn it!" Rogue grabbed the sheet and wrapped it firmly around her shoulders, but not before she had pushed Gambit so hard that he flew across the room and hit the wall next to Jubilee's bed with a crunchy thud. "Keep ya thieving li'l eyes to yourself, swamp rat!" Her face was bright red.
"My apologies, Rogue, in all the excitement I-I must have forgotten to provide - " Beast stumbled over an apology.
"Yeah, you did, fuzzball!" She glared at him. "Gimme ma glove!"
"Of course." Beast threw it to her. She picked it up and slipped it back on with quivering fingers. "Do you mind if I set the cameras to record this discussion, for the Professor's benefit?" Beast asked cautiously, reaching up to the surveillance camera set above the doorway. No-one objected, not unless Rogue's dark glower counted.
"Right then," she began sourly, "let's get this shebang over and done with. What happened was - "
"The c-ceiling." It sounded like a proclamation of doom. The sheer effort of saying it had almost knocked Storm out again. As all eyes turned to her again, she closed her eyes and shivered and turned her head away from them all. Feeling just as bad as if she'd caught her crying, or naked, or something, Jubilee turned back to Rogue. It took Gambit coughing loudly and pointedly before Rogue could be distracted from staring helplessly at Storm.
"That," she confirmed at last. "We were at about ... what, stage three of the session?" Storm made a very faint, muffled sound of assent. "Stage three, when the ceiling started'a come down."
There was no sound or movement to draw her attention, but somehow Jubilee ended up looking at Storm again. Her eyes were screwed shut and her hands were bunched into fists.
"Honey, you shouldn't have t' hear this," Rogue said in a frustrated voice. Storm opened one eye and gave Rogue a sharp look. Resigned, Rogue continued. "So, the ceiling started to sink. Storm using her powers on it only made it sink faster, but that was ok 'cause that got it down to a level where I could grab a hold of it." She shut her eyes briefly, and Jubilee was reminded that although Rogue was a member of the X-Men with all the fitness that entailed and the constitution of an ox, and that right now anyone would look healthy compared to Storm, she was in fact only just back to full consciousness after suffering a cardiac arrest. Just as she was about to say something to that effect, Gambit caught her eye and shook his head.
"No point, petite," he murmured. "Decision already made, oui?" Jubilee understood and nodded reluctantly. Rogue looked at the pair with narrowed eyes before returning to dividing her attention between Beast and Storm, as she talked.
"Right, I have a hold of this chunk o' building, no problem. Problem is, the alarm ain't doing what it's supposed to - 'cause I know I didn't program a falling ceiling and yet suddenly the ceiling's falling and the room don't think nothing's wrong." Her face was flushed with remembered anxiety. "Storm comes up with the world's most foolhardy, downright stupid plan that I ever heard of in my whole life - "
"It worked," Storm whispered stubbornly, her frozen grimace softening to allow for a curled lip.
"Yeah, at what cost, hon?" When there was no answer, Rogue sighed loudly. "The plan was that she used her powers to make the ceiling come down and squish us both, trusting to the damn room to trigger the alarm then. Damn self-sacrificing streak. I wasn't happy, at all, but then the decision got taken away from me completely when the ceiling split in half and the half I wasn't holdin' carried on down."
Jubilee wondered whether she had imagined that the wind outside had suddenly picked up in ferocity.
"Understandably, Storm loses her head when it gets low enough, and out comes enough of a tornado that shoulda ripped the roof off. Sends me flying. Still, roof's showing no damage, and I'm scared that if I leave Storm over there she'll really be crushed."
"Was that how I hurt you?" Storm turned to face Rogue, her voice hoarse. Rogue put on a fake bravado.
"What makes ya think I'm hurt?"
"Because I can name exactly how we both got our wounds right up until ... what you're saying, and no bruise puts you in bed, Rogue, or explains your uniform." Storm's voice was faintly reproachful. "So was that what I did to you? Battered you about with the winds?"
There was a terrible, deafening silence. It was broken by the unmistakable sound of rain pattering against the windows. Remembering the blue skies and white clouds of an hour ago, Jubilee urgently tried to catch Beast's or Gambit's eye.
"Rogue." It was part command, part plea. Rogue sighed again and passed a hand quickly over her eyes.
"Nah, it wasn't. I ran to reach you before the ceiling could cause damage. I grabbed onto you, and ya panicked."
"What did I do?" Storm's tone was terrible, made all the worse by the fatigue that could be clearly heard underlying it. Gambit moved closer to Rogue's bed.
"You got me with a lightning bolt straight in the chest," Rogue said finally. "I s'pose it musta stopped my heart, or else they wouldn't be there." She waved listlessly towards Jubilee's bed. Bending over made Jubilee's head feel as though it was overflowing with bruised blood, but she persevered.
Saw the defibrillators.
The rain was deafening now, pounding on the windows, and she could hear wind beginning to howl. As the colour drained anew from Storm's face, her eyes began to intermittently flash white.
"I killed you." It was only the quietest cousin of a whisper, but in the thick silence of the infirmary it was loud and clear. Lightning suddenly blazed outside.
"Storm!" Jubilee found her voice mingling with Rogue's. Storm ignored them both, turning instead to Beast with fragile poise.
"I would like to be alone, Beast, if that can be arranged." Without waiting for a reply, she went on, "And I would imagine sedation would be - a wise idea." She gasped mid-sentence as her eyes seared white again and thunder crashed outside.
"Certainly for your own sake, if not for ours," Beast said quietly, dropping back to the ground and selecting a syringe from a rack on the wall next to Jubilee's bed. "Will the isolation room suit you, my dear?" Storm nodded and held out her arm for the needle. Beast injected her quickly and efficiently, then lobbed the used syringe neatly in the waste bin. With a murmured apology, he scooped her up in his arms and headed for the isolation room.
There was silence in the infirmary. The disturbed weather gradually faded, as elsewhere Storm slipped into sleep. Rogue huddled further under the bedcovers and shot blazing looks at Gambit for every step he tried to take towards her. Jubilee curled up in a ball under her own covers, and waited anxiously for the growing tension in the room to break. Even if it wasn't the only thing that got broken.
She still jumped when it happened.
"Why me?" Rogue demanded to the world at large, banging her fist on the mattress. "Why is it always, always me who lets her down?"
"Huh?" Jubilee immediately hated herself for the inarticulate reply, but, seriously, what? "You haven't let her down, Rogue," she replied cautiously.
"Course I damn well have!" Rogue snarled, turning her teary eyes to Jubilee. "I shoudn'ta let her do her stupid plan! Hell, I shouldn'ta let her come in the danged Danger Room in the first place!"
"She made the decision, chere," Gambit told her firmly.
"Yeah, but that didn't mean I had t' go along with it!"
"Well, I wouldn't have fancied stopping her," Jubilee commented. It was a fairly transparent and flippant ploy to try and change Rogue's mindset but it was also the truth. Storm's mind was notoriously difficult to change once it was made up. "And what other time have you let her down, anyway?"
"Oh, I dunno, kid,"Rogue said viciously, "how about the time when I left her t' deal with a bunch of gun-toting freaks and they shot her full strength and she was in hospital for a week?"
"But -"
"Or the time when Magneto trapped me, her and Cyke in that chemical place and the wall fell on her and I couldn't stop it, and then I needed t' revive Cyclops so all I could do was pull her out-"
"But that was all you needed to do!" Jubilee shouted. She felt her face going red; she hadn't meant to be so loud. Just, she didn't want to see another person lose their grip today.
"'tite's right, chere," Gambit risked injury by putting a hand on Rogue's squared shoulder. She shivered and didn't say anything. Exchanging a encouraged smile with Jubilee, Gambit continued, "Stormy's an X-Man. She don't need a babysitter. She'd be real angry if she knew you t'ought you needed t' protect her."
"Not protect," Rogue protested feebly, "just ..." She trailed off with a heartfelt sigh. "She's my friend, Remy!"
Gambit put his other hand on her other shoulder and squeezed. "Den dat's ok, cherie. You be friendly. Help her outside fights, if dat's what she wants. Like Xavier. And do that shopping t'ing you girls like. But she ain't your responsibility on the battlefield. Stormy ain't no-one's responsiblity."
A shadow blocked the light coming through the infirmary door from the corridor, and a gruff voice said,
"Damn right she's not."
"Wolverine!" Jubilee cried. Swinging her legs around, she sat up on the edge of the bed. But, "Whoa," the movement woke her slumbering headache, which began pounding away gleefully. "Ow." She pushed her knuckles against her forehead in an attempt to fight back. "When did you get back? Where were you? Why didn't we hear you coming in?"
Wolverine looked at her in silence for several seconds, shifting the small bag he was carrying from one shoulder to the other and sniffing the air with loud inhalations.
"You got a helluva bruise coming up there, kiddo," he said with a slant of his lips that could have been a smile. Jubilee went red. Again.
"Yeah. Skateboarding," she mumbled.
"Ok." He seemed to immediately dismiss her. The smile fell from his face as he turned to look at Gambit and Rogue. "Either of you lovebirds fancy tellin' me why it smells like Storm's gone nuts and why Rogue smells fried?"
"No."
Gambit automatically let go of Rogue's shoulders as she wriggled around until her legs were on the floor. She drew the sheet tightly around herself. "No," she repeated. "Not again." Her eyes sparked with directionless anger. "Beast can tell ya." She got to her feet. Within a heartbeat, Gambit was hovering, poised to catch her when she stumbled. Which she did. With one arm looped around Gambit's shoulder and his arm tight around her waist, she looked at Wolverine with blazing eyes and said in a velvety voice, "Get outta my way, sugar."
Without a word, Wolverine drew aside and watched the pair as they stumbled past him.
"Watch it, Cajun," he muttered to Gambit. Jubilee's lipreading skills failed her for Wolverine's next words; they looked like 'She's a batship'. A bit of brain application decided on "She's in bad shape" instead.
"Oh, you t'ink so?" Gambit snapped - Jubilee only needed her ears for that! "Gambit is handling it, mon ami!" He waved one hand awkwardly behind his back and called, "We see you later, petite."
"Good luck," Jubilee called in reply, then immediately felt stupid. Why had she said that? Gambit didn't seem to mind though; he chuckled and shouted back along the corridor,
"Merci; Gambit gon' need all the luck he can get."
Woverine dropped his bag on the floor with a loud thump. Still staring after Rogue and Gambit, he asked Jubilee, "You all right, kiddo?"
"Yeah," she replied staunchly, because she always tried not to show weakness in front of Wolverine.
"Uh huh." He didn't seem convinced. "You be ok here on your own if I go and find Beast?"
"Yeah," she said again. He left without another word, before she had a chance to tell him that Beast was probably somewhere around the isolation room. Oh well. What were his heightened senses for, after all, other than tracking?
It took Jubilee precisely forty six seconds to decide that she did not like being alone in the infirmary. It wasn't the being alone that bothered her particularly. It wasn't even the fact that dusk had begun to fall outside and some of the shadows the dying sun cast were weirding her out. It was more because she couldn't stop herself assuming that something else would happen. Someone else would pop in. Some else would lose their temper. She would have to explain herself again. Tension wasn't doing her head any favours.
She decided to go and do something even less favourable to her headache; get to the normality and cheery brightness of her room and blitz through a few video games. Chew some bubblegum. Lots of bubblegum. Just sort of pretend that the past few hours hadn't happened.
All opinions welcome :)
xMhax