Disclaimer: don't own it, don't pretend to make money off of it, and don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.

Summary: Shalimar meets another feral, the two bond.

Spoilers: Cliffhanger, season 1 finale

1 Chapter 1

Sanctuary was a quiet place, the Zen gardens, the remote mountaintop location, and the underground chambers generally lent support to this feeling of calm. Calm was relative, though, with Gabriel Ashlock taking over the GSA and Mason Eckhart in stasis, things were tense among Mutant X. Tension was relieved, one way or the other, between the team members and each had their own unique way of dealing with it.

Brennan read, voraciously and constantly. He read everything he could get his hands on: novels, poetry, short stories, plays and non-fiction. He'd plowed his way through the bookshelves in Adam's library and was now slowly working his way through the literature in the Sanctuary computer. He found a quiet corner, near the staircase, and sat down and consumed books for as long as his duties allowed. He tried real hard not to think about what happened, his powers flying out of control, now they were mutating and who knew just how far things would go.

Jesse dealt with the stress another way: he ate. He was constantly hanging around the Sanctuary fridge, consuming whatever he could find. Intellectually, he knew that this was not good; food just released 'feel good' endorphins, but he just couldn't help himself. He compensated for the influx of calories by taking out his frustrations on the treadmill in the gym. Half the time he was tired and sweaty, the other half he spent chomping his way through carrots, celery, lettuce and other 'rabbit food' that Adam kept stocked in the house. Somehow the constant eating helped reinforce his solidity, he felt more solid if he was eating something, and he needed that after what happened.

Emma meditated. She was the queen of meditation. She'd found a new book on yoga and the body during Brennan's plodding through the bookshelves and spent half her time in a self-induced trance, discovering new and interesting things about herself and her new mental powers. Emma wasn't stressed per se; she was just a tele-empath. Her mental state was a reflection of the mental state of her teammates. When she found herself snapping and snarling at people, she had to stop and 'find' the source of the stress and usually went to help whomever it was resolve their issues. Hence she spent a prodigious amount of time in a trance locating and analyzing.

Shalimar was a feral. Stress was easy to resolve. All she had to do was kick some serious ass, preferably on a decent fighter. Failing that, a simulation was the next best thing. Her cat-like instincts were also beginning to take over her actions. She always had a tendency to like her food a bit on the rare side, it was just a cat thing, but not quite so rare that it was still moving. Lately she'd been eyeballing the lab mice that Adam kept for genetic experiments with licked lips. When that happened, she usually found something related to a cow and seared it just long enough to brown the outside and thaw the inside. People suddenly found new places to be when she sat down at the table. She was also slipping into an old habit: she was slowly turning nocturnal. While she was on the street it hadn't really been that bad, people were always up till all hours of the day and night, but when she woke up at Three A.M. fell asleep at noon and woke back up at six or so and went back to sleep at midnight it had a tendency to startle people. Adam said it was just her feral side trying to re-assert itself, so Shalimar just had to live with it, but it was doing some serious damage to her team relations.

'Speaking of team relations,' she thought to herself, 'here comes Mr. I- don't-have-a-clue himself.' She could smell Brennan a mile away, not that it was a bad thing, but she was still aware, painfully, of their 'almost- kiss' in the hallway just before she'd gotten captured by Gabriel. Everything had been perfect, the setting, the mood, and the silence, then Emma had to break in and ruin everything. It wasn't Emma's fault, she rationalized, things just happened. They seemed to be 'just happening' an awful lot, she'd noticed him trying to get her alone several times. She didn't know quite what to do about it, but could almost feel her hackles rising every time he approached her. That wasn't his fault either, she'd been getting that way around Jesse too, even Adam sometimes. It seemed the males of Sanctuary were doing something to set off her defensive instinct that she couldn't quite stop or control. It was causing some friction between everyone. Emma was doing her level best to smooth out the little trouble spots, like the professional peacemaker she was, but Shalimar kept getting a little more and more feral.

"Hey, Shal"

"Good morning Brennan"

"Um, I think its afternoon Shal. You look a little tired, are you OK?"

"Yes," she almost growled "Fine. Did you need something?"

"Uh, well I was just going to see if you wanted to maybe go for a little swim. I mean the water's nice and the weather is pretty perfect, so we'd have some fun."

"I'm half-feline Brennan; do you think cat's like water?"

"Well, some of them do."

"Not this one"

"OK" he huffed a little; Shalimar immediately felt a twinge of conscience. He didn't deserve to be snapped at; he was just trying to help.

"Sorry, Brennan, it's just… well… I'm just feeling a little 'catty' this afternoon all right? No water, no swimming, I'm just going to lay dawn in the sun over there and take a little nap. I'm sure it'll be better when I wake up, OK?" She pointed over to one of the padded benches, one of many scattered about the living area.

"Alright, alright, I understand. I'll see you when you get up, Ok?"

"Fine," she growled, this time unable to suppress the urge to be feral. She went to the bench she'd pointed out, half dappled in a ray of sunlight, and curled up on the edge, within the circle of yellow heat. She snuggled into the hard surface, shifting until she found a comfortable position, bathed in warm sunlight, and promptly fell into a light 'cat-nap', one eye open just in case.

Brennan watched warily as Shalimar settled, cat like, into the bench by the fountain. He made no bones about wanting to try and explore their relationship a little further, and he'd thought that she'd been responding to him, just a little bit, when bam! All of a sudden she was spotting him from a mile away and turning tail as fast as she could. When he did manage to catch her off guard it was almost as if he'd cornered cougar, she did everything she could short of physical violence to discourage his attention. He had no doubts that if he really pushed that she would, without compunction, try to hurt him. He'd spoken to Adam about it, telling him about their 'almost-kiss' and her apparent desire to explore that aspect of their relationship a little further. All Adam had said was that her feral instincts were coming to the fore and she seemed to be responding to the inherent desire not to be cornered by anyone, or anything.

He was sitting, brooding, and watching Shalimar sleep when someone tapped him on his shoulder. He jumped nearly a foot in the air, "Emma! What the crap! You were trying to scare me into next week or something?"

"No, I was just watching you watch Shalimar. You know it's not her fault."

"What's not her fault?"

"She's really getting into this feral thing, Brennan, she can't help it. It's twisting her up inside that she just can't return those feelings. She's feeling cornered, restrained, it's not personal, she just need someone who understands."

"I'm trying to understand, Emma, but it's kinda hard to do that when she won't hold still long enough to talk to anyone. Why does she have to be so damn anti-social?"

"She's a feral, lion if I'm not mistaken, they don't usually like to be around people. She's been a real sport about hanging with us, adopting us as her pack, so to speak, but with this mutation its kinda getting, well, a bit much." Emma sat him down on a rock, by the main fountain and took his hand. "C'mon, I know Shalimar better than anyone, I know she's feeling a little odd right now. We're all feeling a little odd right about now, believe me. You've just got to be patient, OK?"

"Fine," he grumbled, "I don't like it."

"You don't have to like it, Brennan, you've just go to live with it. You gonna be all right?" she asked.

"Yeah, great."