JUBILEE: Welcome back and Happy New Year! For those of you who still remember any New Year's overindulgence, I'm sure you'll sympathize with Melusine as this chapter progresses. You all remember Melusine, don't you? The mysterious mutant who tumbled off a building and into the lives of the X-Men, and who came conveniently equipped with her own beach house in the Bahamas? Last episode she starred in an interpretive dance that gave ideas to several of the X-Men, including Rogue, Scott, Jean, Gambit, and myself! (pauses)
ZELDA: What?
Ju: I don't believe it. I just made it through a whole summary without an interruption. It's just … I don't know … I feel …
Z: Incomplete?
Ju: Terrific! I AM THE STAR!!! BOW BEFORE ME!!! (sparkles fountain up from Jubilee's hands)
Z: While Jubilee demonstrates her power *cough* suffers from delusions of grandeur *cough* let me remind you the X-men are not mine. Also, much thanks, and this lovely home-baked cookie, go to Sarah for reviewing! I like the old characters, too (as you can probably tell!).
Ju: And last but not least: welcome to adultville, boys and girls. In the words of Buffy Summers, "we're talking violence, strong language, adult content." Don't say you haven't been warned. (sparks shoot off in all directions)
Z: In other words--limey freshness! Yipe! DUCK! And watch out for flying citrus!
PART SEVEN: AN ITCH YOU CAN'T SCRATCH
Throb, throb, throb. Melusine massaged her aching temples but to no avail. The headache she had simply refused to go away. And she knew, from experience, that no amount of healer's power could get rid of it, either. The pain she felt was the direct result of pushing her psychic abilities too far, leaving her mind raw and open to the pulsing thoughts of every individual who'd arrived to celebrate Chaharia. Not that she hadn't expected to suffer a little, creating an illusion of that force and magnitude. But she'd been sandbagged, sabotaged by her own unreliable mind, when she'd removed Erulifa's mask. Maybe if she tried pinching the bridge of her nose … With her free hand she reached for the bottle that someone had thoughtfully left on the table.
"You should watch out for that stuff. It's almost two hundred proof!" warned a voice. Melusine raised her head. "Lali," she managed. "I see you're not changed either," said the girl who had danced the role of the goddess Neema. A pained look was Melusine's reply. "Poor baby," Lali said with no sympathy. "Actually, I came about your friends. My brother's attached himself to the littlest one—what's her name, Celebration? And that tall one with the glasses—he's with that older redhead, right? But what about the other two? Especially the smaller one?" It took Melusine a moment to process that Lali was talking about Wolverine. "What do you think?" she continued.
Melusine drew in a deep breath as she inadvertently picked up on Lali's thoughts, so much more graphic than her questions had been. "Yeah, sure, whatever," she muttered, waving her hand in dismissal. Gritting her teeth, she managed to prod Lali enough to get her to leave the little hut that was serving as her green room, but the effort brought tears to her eyes. Wolverine! As if! Melusine took another long swig from her bottle, considering. Nothing was going to take away this headache, and it was only going to get worse the longer her mind remained open to the general public. But there was one way to alleviate the pain; well, two, if you counted the bottle she held in her hand. In any case, she and Logan had unfinished business from their tango at Riccardo's. Decision made, she automatically reached out with her mind to locate him, only realizing her monumental error as the clamor of a hundred minds threatened to overwhelm her. And one voice was stronger by far than all the rest …
***
"Scott!" Jean's voice was halfway between a reprimand and a sigh. "Jean," he ever so slightly mocked, his hands continuing their feverish roaming of her body. We're practically out in the open, she scolded. Scott stepped them a little further behind the palm tree that was screening them from the clearing. "Better?" he whispered in her ear, before proceeding to kiss it, slipping his tongue into its crevices then gently teasing her earlobe with his teeth. Jean's senses reeled, as much from the physical sensations as from the vivid thoughts she was reading from her lover. "Scott," she tried again.
He pulled back from her, face gilded by moonlight. "I," she began. "Shh," he murmured. She searched his face, meeting the blank smoothness of his ruby-quartz glasses, raising a hand to his flushed cheek. "Jean," he groaned softly. "I love you. I want you. I can't think of anything more wonderful than us, here, now." His hand reached up to hers, slid down her arm, and skimmed down her side. She drew him back to her for another kiss, moaning as his devious, devastating hand found the slit in her sarong and slid up her thigh to brush lightly across the front of her silky panties. "Besides," he gasped, as her pleasure backwashed through their link, "can't you just make anyone who comes by go away?" Jean answered with a throaty laugh as she called on her telekinesis, bracing herself as she wrapped first one leg, then the other, around Scott's hips.
***
Gasping, Melusine grabbed onto the door frame, fighting to keep her footing. Her insides felt like molten lead—hot, heavy, burning. She whimpered as other random flashes sliced through her mind. A hit from the bottle helped to bring it under control and she was able to finally step out of the hut, into the clearing. Logan was still sitting with Jubilee, Rogue and Gambit, a full plate of food next to him. She took another step forward, into crushing disappointment, as Lali crowned Logan with a red garland, marking him as her own. In dismay, she shook the bottle in her hand, coming close to crying as she discovered it was nearly empty. Grâce á Dieu, though, I know where they are keeping les autres.
***
Logan rolled over and took a deep breath of the fresh sea air. The sun was hot on his front, birds were calling, and he'd slept better than he had in weeks. But being out of doors was always that way for him. He stood, brushed the worst of the twigs from his hair, and ambled into the clearing to find the rest of the team. "Logan!" called Rogue, waving him over towards a table loaded with breakfast. Biting into the tart flesh of the fruit she offered him, he realized someone was missing. "What happened to La Splendida?" Rogue rolled her eyes, nodding toward the burnt-out bonfire.
A wretched Melusine was sitting on the ground, knees drawn up to serve as a pillow, her blonde hair curtaining her face from the morning light. "What happened?" he repeated. Llera, on his way to her with a bowl that steamed a foul stench, answered. "My sister Lali found her on the beach, with those." A trio of empty bottles stood a few feet away. Logan whistled. He'd only dared to drink one bottle of the villagers' homemade alcohol, and that knowing his healing ability would keep him from the worst of its aftereffects.
A loud crash and three French words that made Gambit blush marked Llera's success at administering his cure. "What about her healing power?" Jubilee asked, wide-eyed. "At a guess," Jean tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as she activated her lecture mode, "her current mental state makes it extremely difficult for Melusine to muster the control she would need to successfully reverse the damage the alcohol has caused to her system. Which makes a persuasive argument for an involuntary system, such as Logan's." Five pairs of eyes obligingly fixed on him; he bowed, smirking. "Thank you, Doctor Grey."
"My, look at the time," Scott announced mildly. "We've got to get back to the house if we're going to be ready to leave when Storm gets here with the Blackbird. C'mon, everyone into the Jeep." A short flurry of activity, and everyone was loaded. Except Melusine. Scott looked at Logan, who looked right back at him. The two men glared at each other for a moment, until, under the force of a raised eyebrow from Scott, a grumbling Logan went to give her a hand up. She was almost in the Jeep before she recognized what it was. "Non, I can't," she protested, her pale face going even paler. "C'est impossible."
"It's the only ride home," Logan pointed out.
"Rather walk," she mumbled. Logan shot a dismayed look at Scott. Why does it always have to be me? the leader of the X-Men wondered. "How far is it on foot?"
"Only two hours," said Llera. "Well, one normally, but …" he shrugged.
"Scott, she can't go by herself," Jean prodded.
"I'll go!" Jubilee volunteered.
"And I will be glad to escort her home," added Llera.
Melusine swaying on his arm, reeking to high heaven of incompletely processed alcohol, it suddenly occurred to Logan that, without Jubilee along, it would be Scott and Jean, and Rogue and Gambit, and himself in the Jeep. "Guess I'll go too," he said.
***
They'd been walking for nearly fifteen minutes, Jubilee and Llera chattering excitedly as they went ahead, when Logan decided he might as well have some conversation. "Want to tell me what happened?"
From the incoherent explanation that followed, he was able to piece together that she had been trying to keep up with the alcohol using her healing power, but somewhere in the third bottle, she'd gotten confused. "No one's ever finished three entire bottles on their own, not for fifty years," confided Llera, who'd dropped back to check on Melusine. "It takes a strong stomach to drink one bottle. Or an unquiet soul, my mother says."
Logan took a longer look at the woman struggling along beside him. Sure, the ground wasn't bumping along at forty klicks, but he had to bet walking in Melusine's condition was no hell. He swallowed, wondering if he wasn't going to regret this later.
"Might help to talk about it."
After a pause, she began. "I dream about ma petite soeur," Her voice, quiet and tired, carried a distinct French-Canadian accent. "Marie-Thérèse. She 'as jus' t'ree years when I leave; only ting I was sorry to leave behin'. When I start for Papa John, 'e hask me what I want, and I tell him, to find her. For two year, he look, den one day he come to me, she is found." He saw her smile as she tucked the three tiny braids behind her ear. "Dat, that day," she corrected herself, "I start packing. She was still in Montréal, going to school. Two weeks later, I arrive. Get off the plane, catch the bus right to the house where she lives with my father. I get there, the door, it's open." She faltered, haunted purple eyes looking somewhere other than the verdant jungle that surrounded them. "Inside, jusqu'au porte, she is there, lying on the floor. Her blood everywhere. I try, I try with my power to save her, but there is nothing left. Only then do I look inside her mind, to see who has done this. But it is too late for that too." Silence fell between them, not a companionable one, but one Logan was comfortable with. When she was ready, she would take up the story again. "The police, they knew nothing. Only that she was one of many young girls killed every year. They look, but they cannot find him. So I look myself."
"Did you find him?"
"Oui," she answered, a satisfied, determined expression settling on her face. "I find him. But the police, they will not."
"You killed him?" C'mon, she barely comes up to my chin! He got the sharp end of a glare from her blood-shot purple eyes.
"You don't believe me?" Melusine drew herself up to her full dignified height of five feet, four inches.
Logan snorted. "Darlin', from what I've seen so far, you may be a talented dancer, but you're definitely a first-rate liar. Isabella." They broke from the jungle cover, onto the road only a few hundred feet from the beach house, Melusine fuming quietly all the way.
***
"Tell me/how does it feel?/how should I feel?" Music blares from the enormous sound system that totally dominates one end of Les X, the newest and hottest club in town. She abandons herself to the rhythm, dancing solely for the pleasure it gives her, a joy untouched by any other consideration than the now. She looks up, and sees him. Tall, blonde, beautiful beyond imagining. He smiles, and she smiles back, dimly aware that in that moment, the world has moved beneath her feet. She steps forward, and slips, falling, falling, smacking into the ground with a shock that shatters her soul in horror as she pulls her hand away from the pool of blood. Her sister's blood. She screams, and he laughs at her, from across her sister's body. "Don't you know you're too late? But then, it's always been too late."
"Non!" Melusine gasped, snapping awake in one hideous disoriented instant. "Sorry about the turbulence!" Scott called from the cockpit of the Blackbird. Melusine took a deep breath, sneaking a glance at the other passengers, trying to calm the frenetic hammering of her heart. No one seemed to have noticed her abrupt awakening, and, from the calm mental atmosphere of the jet, Jean hadn't picked up on her nightmare, either. She ran her trembling hands through her hair, hardly noticing as her healing ability banished the last of her hangover.
"Coming in for approach," announced Storm. The jet dipped through another air pocket and Melusine tumbled back into the dreamscape, falling, falling, windows rushing past her, hitting the ground, afraid to look at Marie-Thérèse, dead beside her. Jean turned in her seat and Melusine frantically threw energy at her psychic shields. She wasn't ready, not yet, not for Jean.
Logan wrinkled his nose as the acrid scent of fear winged its way through the cabin. Now what? he wondered. Sure, this ain't been Cyke's best flight, but… He sniffed again, identified the base odour, and casually looked behind him to his left. Sure enough, Melusine was rigid in her seat, hands clenched on the armrest. He grunted. Didn't figure her as air-shy. The Blackbird touched down, and though he'd expected Melusine to dash for the exit, she remained seated. "Welcome home!" Hank called from outside. "Everyone have a good time?" At last, Melusine appeared in the jet's hatch; empty-handed, she walked blindly past a startled Beast, stopping in front of the Professor.
"Please," she begged, swaying from the strain of maintaining her shields, "I have to know. What I'm remembering. Whatever it takes. I'm ready."
END OF PART SEVEN
ZELDA: Well, what did you think?
JUBILEE: I just wanna know one thing. Are you gonna get that girl for calling me Celebration, or what?
Z: That's it? That's what you thought? You didn't feel sympathy for Melusine cause she lost her sister, or bewildered by her fragile mental state or, or, or (throws her hands up in the air)
Ju: Well, I guess I learned it sucks to be a telepath. And it's cool I got to walk home with Llera.
Z: ARGH! (stalks offstage)
Ju: Heh heh heh. I love doing that. Now you! Out there! You, the one reading! Yes, you, don't think I don't see you trying to hide behind that monitor! Do you want to know what's going to happen next? What's going on in Melusine's whacked out mind? Whether Zelda will write any more of these citrus scenes? Want a cookie? Then review! Why? (The whole area is suddenly lit up with sparks) BECAUSE I AM THE STAR AND YOU WILL BOW DOWN BEFORE ME!!!!