Disclaimer: I own Jessy Hudson and the new character.

Author's Note: This is meant as a sequel to "Winter in Westchester", so you might want to read it to understand better, but you don't have to. It kind of explains itself, I think.

Archive rights: Oh really?! Hey, you want it, you got it. Just ask me first. You know where I am- the freezer.

Second Author's Note: Okay, this is kind of angsty, but I don't think I crossed too many lines in my run for glory.

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Prologue
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I've been told the candle burns brightest right before the end. I guess maybe I should believe it. After all, everything was best right before my end, right?

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I graduated that Thursday with honors and a full life ahead of me. I wanted to be an air-traffic controller at O'Hare, and I had the brains for it.

Sean and I were in love and planned to get married after he finished college and I finished service in the army. Sean always laughed at that, saying that it should be the other way around.

So, we went out separate ways to live out four years without the other. Initially, I thought it would be easy. I was on base in Pensacola, Florida, and he was studying at NYU.

After the first year, I couldn't remember what Sean sounded like. I rarely had a chance to call, I was always too tired after drilling. I tried to remember what it was like being in his arms and hearing him say he loved me. When I couldn't, I would clutch the tiny peridot-studded ring on the third finger of my left hand. Sean knew that peridot was my birthstone. During these little rituals, I was usually crying. I was still eighteen and this was hard.

The second year passed drudgringly slow. I remember almost nothing of it except Christmas break, which Sean and I spent together at home in Milwaukee.

The third year... that was the last year I served, unable to stay in the military once I was found out as a mutant. I didn't mean for it to slip, hadn't told barely anyone in my life (not even Sean) until that night a bunch of us soldiers got drunk. The minute the others heard my confession, they sobered up, watching me giggling with disgust.

I remember the entire week before it slipped. I was accepted as 'one of the guys' despite the fact that I was different for another reason (I was born this way, they said, and it wasn't my fault). But apparently it was my fault I was a mutant. No; shouldn't think of that now. Being bitter doesn't bring Sean back.

Sean had called to tell me a surprise he had been keeping for an entire year; he was allowed to skip ahead a year and he would be graduating the next month.

I was ecstatic. This meant he could move down to Pensacola and we could be together a year early.

I was floating on clouds and my candle was the brightest it'd ever been. I could be with the man I loved in less than four weeks, I had a whole base of friends and I had enough experience to take the test at the FAA Center in Oklahoma City and see if I had the potential to get a job.

I told this to the guys and they invited me for a drink (although I was underage, that didn't matter) for the first time to celebrate.

In retrospect, agreeing to go wasn't the best idea. But then again, the truth alwasy has a way of getting out, doesn't it? I used to be Christian, but I couldn't believe tat if God was so fucking loving he would've let me hurt like that.

Well, maybe this whole ordeal brought me ONE good thing.

The next thing I knew, I was being court-martialed for subordination and plotting against my fellow troops. That was their way of saying I was bad for hiding my mutation, though that would've kept me out of the service anyway. I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't.

I was also accused of going AWOL that night when I got drunk. Suddenly, all of the guys had been on base that night, playing cards. And suddenly, because of a faulty gene, I was an outcast for the second time in my life.

That fact had been hard in high school when I had no one that would understand and commiserate. This time, I told myself, I would have Sean and my parents to tell me I wasn't in the wrong. Ha, I was so deluded.

My parents disowned me as soon as they found out (which didn't matter much; by that time I had changed my name and dyed and cut my hair). That hadn't hurt the most, though. Sean had.

The news had reached Sean three days after the court-martialling by way of my only real friend at the base, Amy.

Amy hadn't been mad at me for something I couldn't control. As I sat on a bunk in the barracks, picking up my stuff and loading it in a duffel bag to go, she simply sat next to me and asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"

I had been holding the tears in all this time, all my life, I guess. Even during the shunning and the absence of my sister in high school, I hadn't let a single tear fall. I remembered that adults didn't cry, but the simple question Amy had asked in all honesty was too much, and I let the tears drop, along with all the defenses I had built up over the years.

I sobbed and shook in Amy's strong arms. She patted my soft black hair, my favorite feature about myself, and my sobs turned to sniffles.

Then she leaned down and whispered, "I'm one too."

My tears stopped and I look up at her, thinking that my hearing must've been yet another defect in my persona. She was telling the truth, and I could've laughed, had my heart not been breaking.

In fact, I think I smiled, a rarity since the whole thing had started, but I don't remember. All I really remember is that, for the first time since my sister had left, I had someone who understood, who wouldn't judge or patronize me.

And that was exactly what I needed.

I asked a question I don't remember, adn she nodded, then turned to look at the open room. We were alone, and she raised her arm. Before her fingers appeared a beautiful swirling vortex that reminded me of all the pictures I had ever seen of the milky way. Every color of the rainbow was there, and soft music played from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I know that it sounds confusing, but it's one of those 'you have to be there to understand' things.

It was beautiful, but after a few moments, she waved her arm and it all faded, little dots shinging before my eyes the only proof that it had ever really been there at all.

"Sean called."

That shocked me out of my reverie, and I looked up to her, knowing somewhere in me that he wasn't going to be coing to Pensacola early. Something in her tone, I guess.

"Did you tell him?"

"Yeah."

"And?" I asked. I might as well not have.

"I'm sorry."

I would've cried, hell, I should've cried, but at that point, all the tears had pretty much dried themselves out.

"S'okay." came from my numbed lips instead. The rest of me was screaming that it was NOT fucking 'okay', but my brain wasn't really working at that point.

She understood, and gave me a hug before leaving. My candle went out.

A few days later, I was gone. I couldn't go home to Milwaukee, where there were parents that refused to believe they had ever had two children, let alone three, I couldn't stay in Pensacola where I had become, theoretically speaking, a whipping boy, but I could go to New York, where my last vestiges of my old life still lived.

When I got there, Sean and I had a nasty fight where he took the peridot-studded ring and called me so many names for 'dirty mutant' that I thought he could make an encyclopedia on hurting those who loved you.

I got a hotel room in another part of the city where there was no chance I could come in contact with Sean, and I silently sat. During that time, which was a few days, I comtemplated all the ways that I could end my life. Then I remembered my sister.

She had tried suicide's hand several times before mom and dad kicked her out and told me all the hideous details. It made me sick to the stomach, and, for the second time in as many days, I found myself kneeling over the porcelain throne as my stomach rejected my peace offerings.

As much as I had hated that she told me the details when I was younger, I silently thanked my sister now.

I guess I just never could deal with physical pain like she could.

Then, I remembered where my sister had gone. New York.

I got a little better and I even managed to leave the hotel room the next day. I searched my mind for more of the details she had given me, she had told me her whole plan on how to live alone in the big city.

My brain started working. The locket. The address. Connections were made, and I finshed the locket out of my front jeans pocket where I had kept it all these years. I hadn't even opened it since I met Sean, remembering her instructions that she would always be my last leg, but only that.

I looked in. One side held a photo of us with out baby brother Mark, the other side the address.

I spent the whole day looking around the city and finally came up to a shabby apartment in the Bronx. I couldn't imagine my sister, the wandering, beautiful soul she was, living in a heartless dump like this. There was none of that big city charm to it, only a depressing air of solitude.

I walked up and buzzed apartment 420A. She had giggled when she told me the apartment number. I couldn't imagine her giggling now. No one answered. So, I buzzed the neighboring apartment.

Someone rang me up without asking my identification and I went up to fnd my sister's old neighbor standing at the door to 420A. She simply handed me a letter and told me I could go now.

Walking down the street, I opened and read the letter.

Little brother,

I knew you'd come to get this sooner or later. I instructed Tara to call me at my new number when you did, and I have a few directions for you. Just walk to the right for two blocks and stand at the gate to the zoo there. I'll be there in a bit.

Love,

Jessy

I did as the letter asked and waited. It began raining and I looked up to the sky as I stood in my military uniform. They had stripped me of the only medals I had, but it was still a damned impressive article of clothing. Ten minutes later, a red truck pulled up. I broke down from al the emotions that flooded me at that moment, emotions I had no idea even lurked within me. Hate, pain, fear, love, betrayal, hope.

When a man got out of the truck and said, "Your sister sent me," though, I think my candle re-lit.


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Alright, that's where I'm gonna leave the prologue, I hopes you enjoyed it people! ^_^

Also, r/r if you want me to keep going! I have a lot of stuff to put up, but it's up to you!