Part 11
Consciousness returned slowly like a newborn stream trickling down over mountain rocks in its way to the river, and Jesse was quite content to lie unmoving in the warm darkness until it gained sufficient momentum. Eventually, though, his mind started ticking over of its own accord, prompting him to a mental inventory that only served to bring him back to full awareness with a jolt. Running? What was that all about? Who had he been running from? His other mental messengers returned from their missions with news of aching muscles and sore feet, which only added to the puzzle, so with a groan of effort he forced his eyelids open to see if his surroundings might fill in the blanks.
Worried eyes greeted him through the shimmer of a force field. Brown eyes belonging to a blonde woman; hazel eyes gazing from under red bangs; more brown eyes... and he knew them all, didn't he? Somehow? He re-focussed on the blonde, feeling the tug of her concern, hearing her gentle questioning "Jesse?" and with a tiny snap that made him flinch involuntarily, the memory fell snugly into place.
"Hi, Shal," he murmured, voice rasping a little over his dry throat, and let himself bask in the warmth of her smile of pure delight and, for some reason, overwhelming relief.
Stretching physically brought confirmation of his earlier internal roll-call, and he had to close his eyes briefly against the awakened complaints of his abused body. When he opened them again the force field was gone and... Adam, right?... was looking down at him.
"How are you feeling?"
"You tell me," he countered, accepting help to sip from the glass of water being offered him. But with a vaguely amused shake of his head, Adam just responded with, "Uh uh – you first. Do you know where you are?"
"Sure, I'm..." He lay back and looked around the room properly, a small frown creasing the space between his eyebrows as he saw the owner of the hazel eyes hovering to one side, with another dark-haired guy crowding in behind her, looking for all the world as if he was preventing her from leaving. Brennan and... and Emma, his mind supplied, each accompanied by that sensation again, like an over-stretched elastic band snapping back to normal, though strangely Emma's name came with an additional undercurrent of unease that was at odds with the overall feelings of rightness he was experiencing. But he smiled anyway, seeing more relief flood their features.
"Jesse?" Adam prompted, and he re-focussed on him.
"Med-bay," he supplied. "I'm in Med-bay."
"Do you know why you're here? What's the last thing you remember?"
Here we go again... questions, questions, he thought with a flash of exasperation, though he could tell from Adam's expression that something serious was going on here, even if he didn't fully understand what. So, he shut his eyes and concentrated on nailing the elusive memory down, surprised to find himself breaking out in a cold sweat at the emotional impact of what he found there. Pain flared inside his head, a lightning sharp flicker of sensation stabbing at the surface of his mind, and he had to take a deep breath to control the sudden churning in his stomach. Fighting for an anchor in the maelstrom of conflicting feelings – fear versus security, loneliness versus companionship, alienation versus belonging - he stared up wide-eyed at the older man again.
"I was running – running away. From here – from you, from all of you! But why? That doesn't make any sense. Adam, what's going on? What happened to me?"
With a broad grin that seemed shared by everyone in the room, Adam turned back from the monitor he'd been checking and rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "It's all right, Jesse. We kind of lost you for a while there. Things are probably going to be a little confused for a bit longer, but it looks like it's all starting to come together in your memory again."
"But I don't understand..." he began, looking round the room at his friends – his family – as they converged on him.
"Don't worry about it," Shalimar insisted, squeezing his leg gently. "You're safe now - everything else will come in time."
"Yeah, just glad we got you back in one piece, man," Brennan put in with a grin, and Emma gazed at him with such intensity that he had the clear impression she was trying to send him a message without words that he thought he should be able to hear if his head wasn't quite so suddenly fuzzy. Despite attempts to stifle it, a yawn escaped him, his eyelids drifting closed of their own volition.
"You get some rest," Adam said, chivvying the others away. "We'll talk more when you're rested." But he was already asleep
**
A gentle scratching at the edge of his mind alerted Jesse to her presence before any physical clues presented themselves, and he braced himself for what could prove to be an awkward encounter. Of all of them, she was the one he'd seen least of in the past week or so, while he'd been working on stimulating his regenerating memory base with visual and other sensory experiences, completing the reverse domino effect she'd started.
To be honest, he wasn't surprised she'd stayed away, though he was still uncertain of her true reasons. Guilt, said Shalimar, while Brennan assured him she was just giving him the space and time she thought he needed to get all the pieces back together. From Adam he'd gotten very little beyond some technical stuff about inadvertently disabled memory engrams that she'd managed to jump-start into action again, but he was remembering quite enough about his recent past to know there was a lot more to it than that. And he could understand why she wouldn't want to talk to him about it – hell, there was a lot of stuff in his head right now that he wasn't sure he would ever feel able to discuss with anyone either.
She was closer now, he thought, though still hidden from sight, so he greeted her softly without turning, hearing her slight intake of breath.
"How...?" she queried as she moved forward from the shadows to slide onto the seat beside him, and he flashed her a wry grin.
"Some sort of weird side-effect from having you in my head," he told her. "Adam says it'll fade, but... well, let's just say you wouldn't win any games of hide and seek with me right now."
She blinked huge pale eyes at him, then looked away, the silence lengthening to uncomfortable proportions until with a sigh he broke it. "It's OK, you know. Everything's coming back just fine."
"I know," she said with a half smile that faded too quickly. She rushed on, though, as if afraid if she didn't speak now she never would. "Jess, I need you to understand..." but he stopped her with a raised hand and a snort of suspiciously bitter-sounding laughter.
"Yeah, well, that's the problem, isn't it? We all need people to understand - who we are, why we do the things we do... to see us as we see ourselves. And all without us having to come flat out and tell them... But life for most of us doesn't seem to work that way. The ironic thing is, though, that you're the only one of us who can actually do that - understand totally without words. If you choose to..." He looked sideways at her, ice-blue gaze catching a stray reflection of light from the pool below. "If you'd asked me not to say anything about what you did out there, I wouldn't have," he continued softly, and a little sadly. You should have known that, he could have added, you didn't have to take away my right to make that choice for myself. But he didn't need to say it out loud - they both knew the charge was there.
And she had no real defence, at least none that really made any sense now. After all that had happened she could only vaguely recall the instinctive urge that had driven her to invade his mind, and now that she'd revealed at least some of her inner fears about her burgeoning abilities to Adam she realised how unnecessary the whole thing had been. Jesse was right. She should have known he'd understand, that he – that all of them - would accept and not judge.
"It's what friends – *partners* – do, isn't it? Back each other up? If we can't trust each other, who can we trust?" he finished, telling her by his use of her own term that he now remembered everything that had passed between them out there.
She caught his eye briefly then sighed. "I know," she repeated. "And I'm sorry."
A long moment passed while she waited for his response, almost holding her breath until, with a small smile, he said, "Yes, I know you are. But like I said, it's OK. I guess we both learned some stuff about ourselves that we weren't really expecting, huh?"
Leaning hesitantly towards him, she slid her arm through his and rested her forehead lightly against his shoulder. "Definitely food for thought. I just hope the lessons didn't come at too high a price." Then, as quietly as she'd arrived, Emma pulled away from him and slipped off into the darkness.
Jesse let her go, absently flexing his mostly healed bare feet as he stared down into the water, mind returning automatically to the matters that had been pre-occupying him before her appearance, like fingers to a persistent itch.
The warring emotions he'd experienced when he'd first woken up were less combative now, but the dichotomy still existed in him, exacerbating the nagging feelings of inadequacy and insecurity that had been plaguing him since his powers had jumped to their next level. On the other hand, the brief period he'd spent as an exile, albeit without understanding the real reasons why, had left its mark too, the terrible loneliness of having nowhere to go, no one to go to, no one to care... And he knew that wasn't something he wanted to experience again in a hurry.
Newly released memories flooded through him; good times spent with Shalimar, with Adam and the others, laughter and warmth and friendship, battles fought and won together, problems overcome. He knew he still had issues, things he needed to resolve for himself, but at least, for now, he had a place to belong. A home.
THE END
Consciousness returned slowly like a newborn stream trickling down over mountain rocks in its way to the river, and Jesse was quite content to lie unmoving in the warm darkness until it gained sufficient momentum. Eventually, though, his mind started ticking over of its own accord, prompting him to a mental inventory that only served to bring him back to full awareness with a jolt. Running? What was that all about? Who had he been running from? His other mental messengers returned from their missions with news of aching muscles and sore feet, which only added to the puzzle, so with a groan of effort he forced his eyelids open to see if his surroundings might fill in the blanks.
Worried eyes greeted him through the shimmer of a force field. Brown eyes belonging to a blonde woman; hazel eyes gazing from under red bangs; more brown eyes... and he knew them all, didn't he? Somehow? He re-focussed on the blonde, feeling the tug of her concern, hearing her gentle questioning "Jesse?" and with a tiny snap that made him flinch involuntarily, the memory fell snugly into place.
"Hi, Shal," he murmured, voice rasping a little over his dry throat, and let himself bask in the warmth of her smile of pure delight and, for some reason, overwhelming relief.
Stretching physically brought confirmation of his earlier internal roll-call, and he had to close his eyes briefly against the awakened complaints of his abused body. When he opened them again the force field was gone and... Adam, right?... was looking down at him.
"How are you feeling?"
"You tell me," he countered, accepting help to sip from the glass of water being offered him. But with a vaguely amused shake of his head, Adam just responded with, "Uh uh – you first. Do you know where you are?"
"Sure, I'm..." He lay back and looked around the room properly, a small frown creasing the space between his eyebrows as he saw the owner of the hazel eyes hovering to one side, with another dark-haired guy crowding in behind her, looking for all the world as if he was preventing her from leaving. Brennan and... and Emma, his mind supplied, each accompanied by that sensation again, like an over-stretched elastic band snapping back to normal, though strangely Emma's name came with an additional undercurrent of unease that was at odds with the overall feelings of rightness he was experiencing. But he smiled anyway, seeing more relief flood their features.
"Jesse?" Adam prompted, and he re-focussed on him.
"Med-bay," he supplied. "I'm in Med-bay."
"Do you know why you're here? What's the last thing you remember?"
Here we go again... questions, questions, he thought with a flash of exasperation, though he could tell from Adam's expression that something serious was going on here, even if he didn't fully understand what. So, he shut his eyes and concentrated on nailing the elusive memory down, surprised to find himself breaking out in a cold sweat at the emotional impact of what he found there. Pain flared inside his head, a lightning sharp flicker of sensation stabbing at the surface of his mind, and he had to take a deep breath to control the sudden churning in his stomach. Fighting for an anchor in the maelstrom of conflicting feelings – fear versus security, loneliness versus companionship, alienation versus belonging - he stared up wide-eyed at the older man again.
"I was running – running away. From here – from you, from all of you! But why? That doesn't make any sense. Adam, what's going on? What happened to me?"
With a broad grin that seemed shared by everyone in the room, Adam turned back from the monitor he'd been checking and rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "It's all right, Jesse. We kind of lost you for a while there. Things are probably going to be a little confused for a bit longer, but it looks like it's all starting to come together in your memory again."
"But I don't understand..." he began, looking round the room at his friends – his family – as they converged on him.
"Don't worry about it," Shalimar insisted, squeezing his leg gently. "You're safe now - everything else will come in time."
"Yeah, just glad we got you back in one piece, man," Brennan put in with a grin, and Emma gazed at him with such intensity that he had the clear impression she was trying to send him a message without words that he thought he should be able to hear if his head wasn't quite so suddenly fuzzy. Despite attempts to stifle it, a yawn escaped him, his eyelids drifting closed of their own volition.
"You get some rest," Adam said, chivvying the others away. "We'll talk more when you're rested." But he was already asleep
**
A gentle scratching at the edge of his mind alerted Jesse to her presence before any physical clues presented themselves, and he braced himself for what could prove to be an awkward encounter. Of all of them, she was the one he'd seen least of in the past week or so, while he'd been working on stimulating his regenerating memory base with visual and other sensory experiences, completing the reverse domino effect she'd started.
To be honest, he wasn't surprised she'd stayed away, though he was still uncertain of her true reasons. Guilt, said Shalimar, while Brennan assured him she was just giving him the space and time she thought he needed to get all the pieces back together. From Adam he'd gotten very little beyond some technical stuff about inadvertently disabled memory engrams that she'd managed to jump-start into action again, but he was remembering quite enough about his recent past to know there was a lot more to it than that. And he could understand why she wouldn't want to talk to him about it – hell, there was a lot of stuff in his head right now that he wasn't sure he would ever feel able to discuss with anyone either.
She was closer now, he thought, though still hidden from sight, so he greeted her softly without turning, hearing her slight intake of breath.
"How...?" she queried as she moved forward from the shadows to slide onto the seat beside him, and he flashed her a wry grin.
"Some sort of weird side-effect from having you in my head," he told her. "Adam says it'll fade, but... well, let's just say you wouldn't win any games of hide and seek with me right now."
She blinked huge pale eyes at him, then looked away, the silence lengthening to uncomfortable proportions until with a sigh he broke it. "It's OK, you know. Everything's coming back just fine."
"I know," she said with a half smile that faded too quickly. She rushed on, though, as if afraid if she didn't speak now she never would. "Jess, I need you to understand..." but he stopped her with a raised hand and a snort of suspiciously bitter-sounding laughter.
"Yeah, well, that's the problem, isn't it? We all need people to understand - who we are, why we do the things we do... to see us as we see ourselves. And all without us having to come flat out and tell them... But life for most of us doesn't seem to work that way. The ironic thing is, though, that you're the only one of us who can actually do that - understand totally without words. If you choose to..." He looked sideways at her, ice-blue gaze catching a stray reflection of light from the pool below. "If you'd asked me not to say anything about what you did out there, I wouldn't have," he continued softly, and a little sadly. You should have known that, he could have added, you didn't have to take away my right to make that choice for myself. But he didn't need to say it out loud - they both knew the charge was there.
And she had no real defence, at least none that really made any sense now. After all that had happened she could only vaguely recall the instinctive urge that had driven her to invade his mind, and now that she'd revealed at least some of her inner fears about her burgeoning abilities to Adam she realised how unnecessary the whole thing had been. Jesse was right. She should have known he'd understand, that he – that all of them - would accept and not judge.
"It's what friends – *partners* – do, isn't it? Back each other up? If we can't trust each other, who can we trust?" he finished, telling her by his use of her own term that he now remembered everything that had passed between them out there.
She caught his eye briefly then sighed. "I know," she repeated. "And I'm sorry."
A long moment passed while she waited for his response, almost holding her breath until, with a small smile, he said, "Yes, I know you are. But like I said, it's OK. I guess we both learned some stuff about ourselves that we weren't really expecting, huh?"
Leaning hesitantly towards him, she slid her arm through his and rested her forehead lightly against his shoulder. "Definitely food for thought. I just hope the lessons didn't come at too high a price." Then, as quietly as she'd arrived, Emma pulled away from him and slipped off into the darkness.
Jesse let her go, absently flexing his mostly healed bare feet as he stared down into the water, mind returning automatically to the matters that had been pre-occupying him before her appearance, like fingers to a persistent itch.
The warring emotions he'd experienced when he'd first woken up were less combative now, but the dichotomy still existed in him, exacerbating the nagging feelings of inadequacy and insecurity that had been plaguing him since his powers had jumped to their next level. On the other hand, the brief period he'd spent as an exile, albeit without understanding the real reasons why, had left its mark too, the terrible loneliness of having nowhere to go, no one to go to, no one to care... And he knew that wasn't something he wanted to experience again in a hurry.
Newly released memories flooded through him; good times spent with Shalimar, with Adam and the others, laughter and warmth and friendship, battles fought and won together, problems overcome. He knew he still had issues, things he needed to resolve for himself, but at least, for now, he had a place to belong. A home.
THE END