Dark Tomorrow

Chapter 4: Past Hope

~One Year Later.~

"Are you Helen Sampson?" Jesse asked the young woman with wild black hair and startlingly blue eyes. She looked at him, her head snapping towards him a movement like Emma often did, and he was struck with an image of the same woman running away from a group of the GSA agents. He blinked. "That's your mutant power, huh? You're a psionic?"

"Yes, I think so. I think I'm telempathic, like Emma, who I spoke to earlier." she nodded, looking frightened. "She said Mutant X could save me from those men. Please help me."

At that moment Brennan came running into the basement, followed by two of Ekhart's men. He turned around at the last minute, formed a ball of electricity in his hand and flung it at both of them.

"I suggest we leave now." He said in a flat voice. "There are more of them."

Jesse nodded. There had been days when Brennan had been eager to fight all the GSA agents and floor them one by one. But now, it had been a long time since Brennan had felt the thrill of a fight. Just over a year, in fact.

Don't go there, Jess - he warned himself. Only pain and grief lies in that memory.

"Come on, Helen," he said, trying valiantly to smile light-heartedly. What was the point anyway? She was a telempath. She could probably sense his heart. He shot a look at Brennan and then said: "We'll take the back way." He pointed at the back wall of the basement.

Helen was confused. "But that's a wall!"

Brennan folded his arms. "You're forgetting we're all mutants here." There was just a hint of a smile on his face, and it hurt Jesse to see the irretrievable sadness in his best friend's eyes.

He phased the wall and Brennan, he and Helen moved out, escaping to the Double Helix and making their way to a safehouse where Helen would be deposited.

***

Adam was working feverishly on something in the lab when Brennan and Jesse stumbled in at midnight. Jesse had just massed without intending to, and Brennan had seen it, and they were both wondering what was wrong.

After a thorough scan, Adam simply smiled and said: "You have a slight fever, Jess, that's all. The rise in your body temperature is causing your powers to flare without you even trying. You just need a days' rest, and a pill-" he handed Jesse a tablet from a small container. He gave Jesse a fatherly grin. "Now go off to bed and get some sleep."

"Do you even sleep anymore, Adam?" Brennan asked, although it was ironic, because sleep rarely found him anymore either. "What are you doing in here anyway?"

"Nothing." Adam said, a bit too quickly. "Nothing much." He tapped a key on the system so that the data on the screen faded.

Brennan glanced at Jesse, who just shrugged, and then they both turned and headed off to their rooms. Outside Jesse's door, Brennan said quietly: "If Shal was here, she'd have tucked you in and made you chicken soup, and refused to leave your side."

Jesse looked at him. Brennan was the only one other than Jesse who still talked about Shalimar and still confessed that he missed her like crazy. Adam never mentioned her name - it was as if his first child had never existed. And Emma - well, it was hard to say what Emma felt anyway - but she had kept to herself for most of the past year, and never talked about Shal either.

"God, I miss her, Brennan." Jesse mumbled softly.

Brennan gripped Jesse's shoulder for a second. "I know you do, Jess. So do I." He swallowed the horrible lump in his throat. "I can't believe I never - I never told her that I - I loved her. I still do. More than anything else." He blinked. "Do you think she forgives us for losing her, Jess?"

"I don't believe she'd have ever blamed us," Jesse smiled slightly. Tears shone in his eyes as he said: "I just don't want to think about how much pain she must have been him, or how scared she must have been - wondering where we were and why we hadn't come for her yet."

"I still can't believe she's gone." Brennan said angrily, banging his fist against the wall. "Adam and Emma - they act like she was never even here. They haven't stepped into her room in months, even though they never forced us to pack away her things. But late some nights, if I close my eyes, I can almost hear her crying out to me in some dark corner of her mind and my mind. It's like she's crying out for me to go to her."

Jesse shook his head. "She didn't deserve what she got, Bren. She was so beautiful, so young and such an amazing person." He blinked back the tears. "I guess I should get into bed; don't want to get really sick." He muttered softly. "G'nite, Bren."

"'Night, Jess." Brennan mumbled thickly.

They went into their respective bedrooms and locked the doors.

In the lab, Adam Kane resumed his search on Max Reyes and continued his probing into his own history with Max, searching for some answers to the questions that had formed in his mind a long time ago. Tears threatened to overwhelm him, but for the team's safe and for Shalimar, the child he had lost, he had to be strong.

Brennan Mulwray fell into a restless sleep in the early hours of the morning. He dreamt for the first time in weeks, and she invaded his dreams for the first time in months. Again, he felt the tears of grief stain his face, and the hollow ache and longing in his heart grow as he heard her voice, soft and fading, cry out to him over and over again.

In his room, Jesse Kilmartin lay away with his face in his pillow. He had never been able to come to terms with the loss of Shalimar, and he didn't think he ever would. But it was only in the morning, when he realized his pillow was soaked and his eyes were red, that he knew exactly how much pain he was in.

Two doors away, Emma DeLauro had a terrible nightmare where her lost best friend was crying and suffering extreme pain and screaming for release from the small, cold metal cage she was trapped in.

They all knew that the dead could not send messages through the mind. They all knew that the dead could not feel anything in their hearts or their minds. It was a fact they had known all their lives.

So it was strange, they thought numbly through their consuming grief, that even a year after her death, the cage and the voices and the terrible pain seemed to be in Shalimar's mind.

TBC.

A/N: So sorry for how long it took to update this chapter, but I had a movie premiere to go to (**bet you guys never guessed I was an actress! ;- )**). Anyway, hope you guys enjoy this chapter; more will be up soon. Please R&R, thanks!!!!