For disclaimers, please see Chapter 1.
Jesse steadied Brennan as he sat down onto a kitchen chair. Jesse moved to another chair and slumped into it, leaving his hand on Brennan's shoulder. "So what's up?" he asked.
"You look like hell, Jess," Shalimar answered, putting cups of coffee in front of them.
"Give me a break. I'll shower later." Images rose in his head of his hand on Brennan's shoulder, and then of him and Brennan naked in the shower together, Jesse's touch sliding all over Brennan's body. Jesse gasped slightly.
"Anything wrong, Jess?" Emma asked, a smile curving her lips.
Jesse groaned and rubbed his hand down across his face. "Nope." He now regretted admitting his feelings about Brennan to Emma while he had confessed his other fears and worries to her in the computer room. Of course, she had already known, or so she said, but would never have spoken to him about it until he made the first move. Now, however, Emma's smile clearly indicated she was okay with initiating "conversation" about it – and sending him images to back it up.
Shalimar stood up from the chair she sat in and walked over to confront Brennan, pulling his chair back from the table and then stepping in front of it. "There's one little thing that we have to settle first," she said, her words dripping promised pain. "Want to tell us about the hologram you made of Jesse, Brennan?"
Brennan's eyes widened and he looked over at Jesse. The younger molecular looked down, not meeting his gaze.
"Hologram?" he asked, trying to buy time.
"Emma? Catch him up, would you?" Shalimar asked sweetly, too sweetly.
Emma hesitated, but she knew this had to play out before they could move on. A small psychic orb hit Brennan on the forehead, and he gasped. Emma had included their own feelings as they watched the video, as well as Jesse's defeated acceptance of Brennan's behavior.
"I'm sorry," he exhaled. "I just… I just had all this energy, and the whole thing with Jesse in the prison – I can't let it go."
"So you decided to beat my little brother into a bloody pulp night after night?" Shalimar raged. "You thought it would be okay to attack my family?"
"It was just a hologram," Brennan started to justify, but broke off and stared at Shal.
"Doesn't matter," Shalimar answered. "What?" she asked him, confused by his stare. Brennan didn't answer.
Jesse leaned over and looked at her. "Um, Shal? Your nipples are showing."
Shalimar blushed crimson and fled to a corner of the room, her arms wrapped around her stomach. "Why does this keep happening?" she wailed.
Emma walked over to sooth her, leaving Brennan and Jesse alone at the table. Neither of the men knew what to say.
Finally, Brennan spoke. "I'm sorry, Jess. I know it was wrong. I just couldn't stop it. It was just a way to deal at first, you know? I didn't like that fact that I lost at the prison, and I was all juiced up from the steroids. I just needed to hit someone, to take out my anger."
"Rhoid rage, Brennan? I could understand that, but you've always treated me like shit. That's why… that's why this didn't surprise me." Jesse looked up at Brennan, deliberately shaking off his old, sulky demeanor. "I won't take it anymore, Brennan. Things are different now."
Brennan glanced at the hand that still rested on his shoulder. "I know," he breathed. "I'm sorry. I'll try to stop being such an ass."
Jesse felt confidence radiating through his body. He felt the new dynamic between them, the old one sloughed off like old skin. He glanced at his empty coffee cup, and stood up from the table, breaking contact with Brennan. He walked to the counter and picked up the carafe to pour himself more. He turned back to the table and noticed Brennan had tensed up in pain.
"Don't try, Brennan, do."
He walked back to the table and poured each of them more coffee. He set the carafe down in the center of the table and took his seat, his hand once again reaching out to touch Brennan and calm him.
Brennan looked at him, a small amount of anger in his eyes for the pain Jesse caused him by walking away. Jesse held his gaze, his eyes boring back down into Brennan's. An understanding passed between them, and Brennan dropped his eyes first.
"It's your emotions, Shal, it's got to be."
"What?" Shal couldn't stop staring at her stomach.
"Just now, I could feel you go all maternal about Jesse. Remember, you were talking about your little brother, and how Brennan couldn't hurt your family? You were the mother lion, Shal – ready to defend her cubs. It's just like your eyes – they flash yellow when you go feral."
"Then my claws should be out, Emma, because I'm ready to rip him apart." She glanced over at Brennan and saw him speaking softly with Jesse.
"Unless you know that you don't really want to hurt Brennan, deep inside."
"Oh no, I want to hurt him."
Emma looked at her.
"Okay, maybe only a little. But he needs to be taught a lesson!"
"Just like a mother, wanting to teach her cubs a lesson or two."
Shalimar sighed and looked up at her. "This is ridiculous. I can't have my body just randomly change based on my emotions."
"You'll just have to practice, Shal. You can control how your eyes go feral, right? You can switch that on and off at will. You'll just need to practice. Look down now."
Shalimar did, and saw that her nipples had vanished.
"Okay, so think about your claws now. Focus on them. Try to get them to come out."
Shalimar tried and then looked at her hands. "Nothing."
Emma broadcast a picture of Mason Eckhardt into the feral's mind, and her claws immediately extended.
Shalimar smiled, flexing her new weapons. "I really like these."
"You'll get the hang of it, I promise," Emma soothed.
They started to walk back over to the boys, when Shalimar stopped. "Em? What else do you think changes?"
When the girls had rejoined the boys at the table, Shalimar asked, "I really want to know, Brennan. Why would you do that?"
"I can't explain, Shal. I just needed to."
"It's alright, Shal. No harm done," Jesse soothed.
"No, Jesse, it's not alright. If we're going to get passed all of this, we need to be honest with each other."
"Speaking of honesty, Jesse," Brennan jumped in, "would you like to explain why you did this to me? Is it just so that you could be in charge?"
Jesse looked at Brennan in confusion. "Did this to you?" Jesse lifted his hand from his shoulder. "I haven't done anything to you except take away your pain, but if you don't want that…"
Brennan immediately seized up, electricity sparking along his fingers and in his eyes. "No, please." Jesse hadn't meant to hurt Brennan, he just reacted when accused. He quickly put his hand back, draining the charge from the electrical mutant.
"Okay, we all need to get on the same page here. Everybody, close your eyes," Emma instructed. "Now!" she ordered, when no one did so.
The eyes of her teammates closed, and then Emma closed her own.
"Now you can open them."
Shalimar asked the obvious. "So, what was that for?"
Emma replied, somewhat furtively. "We're in my mind now. We're all linked."
The other three looked around the kitchen, disbelieving. "We're still in the kitchen."
Emma looked at a wall and it morphed into a video screen. "No, we're not. And we don't have time to read the book, so we're gonna watch the movie instead."
"I'm guessing this isn't a new ability, so are there any other secrets you'd like to share, Emma?" Shalimar asked.
"Let's not go there, unless everyone wants to share? We can put all our secrets up on the big screen, if you'd like."
No one looked comfortable at the thought.
"I thought so. Besides, we don't have time. First things first, let's take care of this whole hologram thing. Brennan, let's start with the prison. Take us through it."
The screen shimmered as Brennan thought about it, and showed a prison cell from his perspective, as if they looked out through his eyes. The sounds of prisoners yelling filled the room, and they all felt rage boiling with them.
"Emma, what's going on?" Jesse asked.
"We're feeling what Brennan felt. We're going to relive the whole thing – they'll be no doubts as to what happened and why."
Brennan looked at Emma, panic in his eyes. Emma got a flash of Brennan masturbating in his cell, his hormones in overdrive because of the steroids. She carefully filtered that before it reached the screen. "Just what happened between you and Jess, Brennan. Focus on that."
Relieved, Brennan's eyes lost some of their intensity.
The screen shifted to the fight, and both of the women as well as Jesse gasped as they felt Brennan's intense rage and need to win. He needed to beat Jesse into the ground. Need to declare his superiority, his supremacy. They relived every moment of it.
When the screen dimmed and the rage cut off, they sagged into their chairs, emotionally wasted, all except for Emma, who as a psionic had more reserves.
"Brennan, show us the first time you used the hologram. I don't think we need to see each time."
Brennan squirmed, but complied.
The screen wavered again and they felt Brennan's memories of the electricity shooting beneath his skin, crawling everywhere, invading every part of his body.
"It was this bad weeks ago?"
"Yeah," Brennan admitted. "Looking back, that was nothing compared to how it feels now."
"I'm sorry, man," Jesse said, squeezing his shoulder slightly.
They watched as Brennan programmed the hologram, saw him tweak the stored image of Jesse. They all had stored patterns in the computer – for whatever the need. They often used Jesse's hologram as a rescue dummy, while he went off to grab leftover pizza or something. Jesse never seemed to get his fill of pizza.
Even though they watched it, felt it, relived it after a fashion, none of them understood why Brennan created the program. They all felt the need to go fight Jesse, but the reason behind it lacked clarity. Brennan had answered honestly when he said he didn't know why he did it.
Emma stopped the screen. "I don't think we need to see the rest, do you? Something pushed Brennan to this, and I have an idea what it might be."
Emma looked at the wall again, and it became a door, a door with a padlock on it, and caution tape strung across it. The door had a label on it marked "Jesse", which had been clawed partially away. Dents marred the surface, as well as bloody handprints.
"You've been blocked, Brennan. Just like Jesse, just like me. I suspect we all have been. And this one's big."
"What do you mean?" Brennan asked.
"It's hard to piece it all together, Brennan. But I suspect that when you were all jacked up on the steroids, your mind was going crazy. As you fought with Jesse at the prison, it kept coming up against this block. It obviously has something to do with Jesse, and your mind kept hammering away at this. You obsessed on destroying this barrier, which became Jesse out in the real world."
"So, hurting Jesse was my way of attacking the barrier?"
"Like I said, I'm just speculating, Brennan. You had all this energy streaming through you and you needed an outlet. The barrier, and Jesse as its embodiment, became that outlet."
"So why is it still there? Can you open it?"
Emma looked at the barrier. "Maybe, but Jesse has blocks just as strong that are threatening to break open and overwhelm him. We need to do this slowly."
"But this isn't my fault?" Brennan asked.
Emma made sure that everyone in the room felt the guilt Brennan had over what he had done to Jesse.
"No," Shalimar whispered. "It's not your fault."
Brennan looked at Jesse, who smiled. "Don't think this gets you off the hook for everything else, Bren… 'fantasy workout' my ass."
Brennan smiled back. He didn't know why, but he suddenly felt hope - hope that all of this would work out okay.
Author's Notes:
Feral's Revenge and Marie Crosby - thanks for sticking with this story. I appreciate it.
Daniel-lover-0013 - welcome! I'm glad you have enjoyed it so far. Thanks for reviewing!
So... no shower scene yet, that's the next chapter. I'm making some minor edits to it to make it a little more hot and steamy...what good is a shower unless it is hot and steamy, right?
Oh, one last thing - Shal's emotions and her new powers - that isn't a tribute to Charmed. Her eyes seem to flash when she is angry, ready for battle, etc., and there seems to be an emotional component there. Don't worry, I won't have Emma start saying things like "Your powers come from your emotions..." blah blah blah. I wouldn't do that to you.