Title: Lost Child
Disclaimer: None of the characters with the exception of Lila belong to me. All others are the property of Marvel and whoever else has a claim on them.
Jubilee was staring that the ceiling, wondering when the powers that be would allow her to go back to her own room. She missed it, as odd as it seemed. There was some security with the knowledge of being able to lock herself somewhere, where no one else could just walk in without her knowing. Never mind that half of the people in the house could easily rip the thing off its hinges, not to mention blow it to kindling, they wouldn't unless they thought it absolutely necessary. The professor told them once he was up to his ears with paying for damage done to the mansion because someone was in a tizzy about their relationship.
She shifted, feeling the crisp fresh sheets under her. Hank had allowed her to stand that afternoon for one reason and one reason alone: Because the sheets needed changing. Despite that, she had enjoyed her moments of freedom before she was condemned to lay down again. Thankfully, the IV had been removed, leaving only an ache and a faint red dot to mark its presence. Now she could relax a little more, without having to worry that a wrong move would cause the thing to yank out of her arm.
She was drifting again when she heard the faint sound of the doors opening. Her eyes snapped open immediately, though she didn't stand up. Too many mornings of being kicked for being sluggish to wake were fresh in her mind. The footsteps stopped just short of her bed, and she caught the faint smell of jambalaya. Gambit.
"Gambit know you awake, P'tite," he said, and she heard the faint scrap of a chair as it was pulled closer to the bed. "T'ought you might like something to eat, no?"
The rumbling of her stomach gave her way, and Jubilee turned to face him, "So, whats up, Cajun?"
Gambit set the tray he was carrying on the moveable table before positioning it close enough to Jubilee so that she could sit up and eat. "Not much, wonderin when Remy get his partner in crime back."
Jubilee smiled at that, something that none of them had seen for a very long time. She was remembering when they went on a prank spree against the prank master himself: Bobby. In two weeks they had him almost in tears, and they'd won a free pizza and movie night from him. "You have to talk to Hank on that one. He seems to feel that I can't do anything but lay in bed and collect bedsores." Gingerly, she sniffed at the plate of food, "They give you free reign with this? Or did Storm watch you."
Gambit shook his head, " I snuck into de kitchen early dis mornin just for you."
"Cool." Unlike everyone else, Jubilee loved Remy's cooking, even though it made her eyes water, and on occasion brought about uncontrollable sneezing fits. She ate quickly, wondering what Hank would say if he caught her eating anything but the low salt, high calorie diet he had her on.
"When dey be letting you out a here, Jubes?" Gambit asked as he watched her eat, pleased when the spices brought some color to her cheeks.
"Hank says tomorrow, with regular check ups every other day for a week. Translation of that means in another week, if and only if he has to leave the lab on a Twinkie run."
Gambit nodded. The few times he'd spoken with Hank in the past few days he'd been extremely worried about leaving Jubilee in the lab alone. After some prodding he'd revealed that it was less for some unknown medical emergency suddenly arising than the fact that she would have ready access to sharp objects.
Charles was sitting in Michael's for ten minutes when the small clock in the corner hit 8pm. He'd never believed in being punctual, he felt it was an out. He had believed in being early by at least ten minutes. That gave one just enough time to appear as if they were settled and calm without too much strain.
"If I didn't know you any better, I'd say you were almost fidgeting,"
It took a considerable amount of control of his part to keep from jumping. He knew that voice, better, perhaps, than he had known any in a long time. "Hello Lila," he said without turning.
Charles waited, as first a whit clad arm, then the rest of the woman's body, came into his line of vision. Ten years had passed since he'd seen her, ten years that left almost no mark on the smooth face. It was a plain face, by most standards, with nothing spectacular about the set of the cheekbones. The eyes were perhaps a little too large in a heart shaped face, a light sherry that at times seemed to border on gold. Of average height and build, she could easily disappear in a crowd, with her fair skin and brown hair, that was at the moment pulled up in a rather severe bun.
It was her eyes, however, that startled. While their color was nothing out of the ordinary, the intelligence behind them was. For all her plain exterior, Lila McNeil was not one to be trifled with. They had shared classes in Oxford, both being psychology majors, though she was taking the class more for a lark than anything else. Five years his junior, she had begun her second doctorate in Child Psychology while he was still working on his thesis for his first Ph.D. Vaguely, he recalled their conversations, 'arguments' he corrected himself, that spanned several topics, and as many languages. The most he had been able to supply at the time were five, but she had surpassed him.
"I see you are doing well," Charles said, motioning for her to take the seat across from him.
Lila looked at him dubiously before carefully taking the chair, looking all the while as if she expected it to become a giant snake, " I can say the same for you, Charles." She answered, raising a hand to signal the waiter. "Two scotch's with water chasers," she said before Charles could.
He nodded at the waiter when the young man raised an eyebrow in question, "Still have to prove your abilities, Lila?" he asked teasingly, though there was something of wounded pride behind the words, "I would have thought we were beyond that stage in our relationship."
The look she gave him was comical, " I didn't know that we had sustained a relationship, Charles. Why didn't you alert me to this?"
Score: McNeil 1, Xavier 0, he thought wryly to himself, "You know what I mean."
The silence that enveloped the table lasted until the waiter returned with their drinks. "So, what is that has you desperate enough to ask for my help?"
Charles closed his eyes, settling his thoughts. "There is someone I was hoping you might find the time to help. Female, seventeen."
He could almost see the spark of interest that entered the woman's eyes, "Please continue."
Charles spent the next twenty minutes recanting what he thought Lila needed to know about Jubilee's case, trying to keep anything about the X-Men and her involvement with them to a minimum without saying something that could hinder her sessions with Jubilee later. When he finished, he felt as if he had been put through a mill.
Lila was staring at her scotch thoughtfully, "What makes you think that she would accept my help, when she already rejected yours?" She asked at last.
Charles sighed, " She once told me that the reason she enjoyed talking on the internet was because she didn't have to deal with the people she was speaking with on an everyday basis, they were simply people she could converse with for an hour or two outside of real time. I hope that she would see talking to you as something of a safe alternative to talking to me. Also, I think she would be more comfortable talking to a woman about something of this nature."
Lila nodded, apparently satisfied with his answer, "Its up to her when we begin." She said, "I'll keep my three to four thirty time slot open in case she decides she wants to talk, anytime." She swallowed the remainder of her drink and the chaser before standing, " It was good to see you Charles," she said shortly before walking away without a backwards glance.
Charles sat a few moments longer in Michael's. As deals with the devil went, this one appeared to be relatively painless.
//Jubilee?//
Jubilee awoke at the soft telepathic question, opening her eyes to the dimmed light of the Med Lab. The professor was a good distance away from her, enough so that she felt comfortable without truly thinking he was keeping his distance. A quick glance at the digital clock on the bedside showed that it was a quarter to ten.
"Professor?" she asked, the last vestiges of sleep quickly slipping off her, "What's up?" She watched as the professor slowly approached and sat up, running quick hands through her tousled hair.
The professor smiled reassuringly as he watched her, "There is something that I wanted to discuss with you, and I thought that it would be better to handle this sooner rather than later."
Jubilee turned wary, imperceptibly sinking into the bedsheets, "What?"
Charles saw her physical withdrawal, feeling it somewhere just below his heart, "I was hoping that you would want to talk about your experiences-"
"Look," Jubilee cut in, "I don't want to talk about it with you-"
"You wont have to," Charles cut in. "There is an associate of mine who would like to see you, Jubilee. You sessions with her would be from three to four thirty, whenever you felt like you wanted to talk. Anything you had to say to her would remain between the two of you. Nothing would get back to me or anyone else in this house unless you wanted it to."
Jubilee considered the professor's words. On one hand she felt like if she talked to anyone it would make her memories that much more real and inescapable. On the other hand she desperately wanted to talk to someone who she wouldn't have to look at, who wouldn't be there whenever she turned the corner.
Charles could almost feel the moment the decision was made, "When do we start?"
Two weeks later Jubilee was staring out the window of Lila McNeil's office, watching the subtle swaying of the trees of Central Park. The professor and Hank determined that the only way she could make the long trek into New York was if she had sufficiently healed from her ordeal. The office was high enough to give the sense of being above the chaos of the streets, but not so high that the tranquil park seemed unattainable. The whole office reminded her of the professors, with only a slightly feminine touch. The carpet was a deep, soothing blue, as were the pictures that were thrown seemingly haphazardly around the walls. The office gave a sense of being in someone's home, something that she thought would only want to make a patient talk more.
The whole thing sickened Jubilee within five minutes of sitting down.
They'd had a brief introduction, then sat in silence for ten minutes. Jubilee gave Lila kudos for not trying to push and ask a question. When she froze the professor out he often tried to get the conversation to take another turn, but not this woman. She sat, 'cool as a fuckin cucumber' Jubilee thought as she turned her blue eyes back to the psychiatrist.
"So, what's up with you and the professor?" she asked, testing the waters, "You two an item once or what?"
Lila smiled to herself even though no sign of it showed in her face, at least the child was beginning to come out of her self induced silence, "You could say that, but we decided to part ways."
Jubilee snorted, "You and every other woman in his life." She murmured, though she made sure that her voice was loud enough for the other woman to hear, then louder, "So, what is it that just rubs all his women the wrong way? I mean, he seems like a nice enough guy, nice body, not hard to look at."
" I cant speak for any other women whom Charles might have known, but we were compatible only in social settings."
"Couldn't get it up, could he?"
That question caught Lila off guard, and she floundered for the barest of moments, then tightened her resolve. If she wanted to be blunt, fine.
"Actually, that was the least of our problems. The very least. Charles has…stamina, to put it mildly."
Jubilee scowled. She was sure that she'd had the woman pegged right, that she would crack when she threw something like that out. She'd seen her share of what she came to term as 'do-gooders', people who wanted to help but didn't have the slightest clue what the real world was like. Who would crack the first time someone pushed.
"I think its time we tried to focus on why you're here, instead of trying to discomfort me," Lila said when Jubilee turned her head to look out the window once again.
"I'm here because everyone I live with thinks that I'm a mental case," Jubilee answered without taking her eyes from the window.
Lila raised an eyebrow, "I thought you were here to talk about a recent trauma that occurred. Whether or not you are a 'mental case'" she inherited the words with as much bitterness as she could before continuing, "Is something that I am not qualified to say without further analysis." When Jubilee didn't answer, she continued, " I understand that you had a miscarriage a few days ago, and were unaware that you were pregnant."
"You know how I happened to get pregnant?"
"Would you like to tell me?"
Jubilee didn't answer.
For the next week, that was how things progressed, an alternation between the silent treatment and attempting to find a button to press. And Lila had to admit that the woman, for all her youth, as an adept at that particular pastime. Every detail, from the lack of a wedding ring to the colors she chose, became a topic for debate. Tactics, Lila knew, that were meant to keep her attention away from her charge and on anything else.
While Jubilee hunted for things about her to talk about, Lila watched her for insights into her condition. What she had learned from Charles was enough to make a blanket diagnosis, but she needed more than that if she was going to help. She watched as the young Asian woman shied away from males, only slightly, but enough to keep from causally touching them. Even the young blond man who dropped her off was not exempted from this behavior, though he seemed oblivious to it. When he helped her into the car Jubilee looked almost ready to bolt.
Lila sighed. A week, and they were little distance from square one, but she refused to show any signs of lag. She'd seen patients behave this way, had dealt with it in and out of training, and steeled herself. If someone was going to be run down, it wouldn't be her.