Her chest was pounding as she neared towards her big brother. Something
was
definitely askew about him, and although she wouldn't admit to it to Jesse
when he asked
her, it was obvious by her tone of voice. She examined him closely, and
could easily tell
that he had been beaten and broken. Her heart took gigantic leaps in her
chest.fearing
for her best friend's life. Deep inside, she had a gut feeling that Jesse
would be okay
eventually, yet he seemed so weak, so much more feeble than the sweet,
funny, macho
guy that she'd come to know. Pulling herself even closer towards Jesse,
she surveyed the
damage that had come to him.
"Oh, God, Jess." was the first thing that came out of her mouth, and it was an instinctive remark. However, it was the exact thing she had to tried to keep herself from saying, as not to bruise him any worse. Laying heavily onto the wall, he had propped himself up against the corner so he could watch out the low-end window. Eyes were heavily dropped and it seemed he'd gone through Hell and back. His skin, that was normally smooth and pink had turned rough, and tinged brown with dirt. Along with mussed hair, and his clothes now loosely thrown about him, she almost didn't recognize him. But when she looked into his face, he shined those baby blues up at her, and forced a smile onto both their faces by saying:
"What, don't think I'm up for the Most Handsome Man in the Universe Contest
just yet?"
"Not yet, but heck, in a day or two, you may be ready for the World's Best Trailer Park," she giggled back at him, and he grinned. There was nothing in this room but a pile of bundled curtains, an old rug, and a leaky roof. "This isn't the ideal living space, is it?" she joked towards him.
"Not exactly," he said, "but considering the circumstances, I think I did alright."
"Oh, and what were the circumstances?"
"Oh, you know, the usual: horror driven situation in which y'all rely on me to save the day," he said, trailing off. It was evident by his tone of voice that he was trying to avoid telling Emma what had happened. "But I think it's more important now if we can find a way out of here, and back a safe house."
Laughing at his first statement, it grew into a flashback of when he had rescued the team at Genomex.before she and Brennan had joined the team. Emma knew not to pressure him any further about what had previously occurred. It was obvious he wasn't willing to. So, instead she tried to keep his spirits up by directing the conversation away from the car accident.
"Yeah, I suppose you're right, we do take you for granted. But must you always look like a Nazi in those GSA uniforms when you do?" It was a private joke between them, one that always prevailed to put a smile on their faces. Jesse couldn't help but chuckle, and they continued their small talk as Emma tried to use the curtains and help clot the blood that was dripping off his left arm. Distracted by the conversation, Jesse was forgetting about the pain he was in. Using one of the drapes that had been strewn about the floor, Emma was tender towards him as she wrapped Jesse in it. He was shivering so badly, she could only look at him with pain in her eyes.
Taking great pains to keep the conversation away from what was actually occurring, Emma encouraged some small talk. Although they were both burning with hunger and shivering from cold, they managed to keep a good spirit about things. Taking rags she had found in the corner, she wrapped them around Jesse's many cuts and scars. She first dusted them off, and thought about washing them. Except, she wasn't sure how safe the water in the place was. She dampened them a bit, and decided to bind them together. With every wrap getting tighter, an occasional groan would seep through Jesse's ever-present smile.
Knowing Jesse couldn't fall asleep, she tried to do things to keep him awake. Nothing was working, but then again, there wasn't much to work with. She struggled to find the slightest bit of entertainment around the room, but there wasn't any to be found. Heaved with disappointment, she sat on the ground with a bad temper, exclaiming,
"Now, if only we had some light, I could make some shadow puppets." Jesse tried his best not to laugh at his friends goal, but the entire situation was hilarious to him. His eyes slowly began to darken, however, when Emma said those 8 words that he had dreaded to hear, but knew were coming:
"Jess, what happened? Where are Brennan and Shalimar?"
He sighed for a moment, but decided that now was as good a time as any to tell her, even though he didn't want her to know.
"C'mon Jess, I need to know," she encouraged. "We need to get out of here."
"Well.I don't know exactly how to begin," Jesse told her, "So I guess I better just start with the last thing you remember." He looked over at her, and scaled her with his eyes. "What's the last thing you remember?"
Emma had to think hard to try and recall what was the last thing she knew happened. She scratched the back of her head, replying, "Well, I remember there being glass. Everywhere. I don't know if the windshield broke or what," she looked up at him, "but we definitely need to get some new glass." Jesse involuntarily laughed at her, while he strained to think. There was so much left to tell her.so much he still didn't know. He stared at the wall for a few brief moments, before returning his gaze towards Emma. She tried to stay as quiet as possible, hoping not to somehow change his mind about telling her. He let out another heavy sigh and began:
"Well, Emma.That glass was not only off the windshield but the other windows in our car as well. We had crashed into some invisible object in front of us, and totaled the car. But it was impossible to see it, or even foreshadow this event. I saw Shalimar look at something outside our window, and it seemed like she was about to warn us before it happened. However, it wasn't fast enough; we hit the entity head- on. Shalimar and I were still conscious and were able to get out of the car, while you and Brennan were lying there motionless," he said, grimacing at the mental image that he was able to recollect. He could still see it: there were twisted metal everywhere, bent pieces of the fender, and the doors had practically fallen off by themselves. And then there was his two-team members.friends.unawake.not knowing if they were dead or alive.He tired to shake them image out of his head, but no avail. He looked down to Emma, patiently waiting for him to go on. Emma didn't need to use her powers to know what Jesse was feeling inside. It was so evident, painted on his face like a portrait by Thomas Kinkade.
"Shalimar and I tried to fight them off best we could, we tried.we really did try," Jesse suddenly blurted out, and Emma cocked her head to study his face. She gently patted his knee, reassuring him.
"Who? Who were fighting? Talk slower." With that, Jesse tried to reconstruct his thoughts more accordingly. He didn't want Emma to think he was powerless, and how could he prove that if he couldn't even put a decent narrative together? Even if it had a not-so-great ending, or rather, beginning, at least he could put it together so he sounds sincere with his words. He swallowed hard twice, and then, without skipping a beat, continued.
"We had just hobbled out of the car, not injured whatsoever, maybe a bruise here or there.but we hadn't even gotten completely out of the car yet. And they attacked us. There wasn't any warning, no sign, nothing. They---"
"They, who? New Mutants? The Strand? The GSA?" Emma slipped in.
Jesse decided to finish his sentence. "They're not the GSA, that's for sure. If they were, we wouldn't be here now. Little is left to doubt that we'd be stocked up in some stasis pod having one nice, long nap.actually, that doesn't sound half-bad right now." Emma just smiled at him, and jokingly punched him on the shoulder, giving him the cue to continue with the story.
"Its not the GSA, and there's no way it could be The Strand. Nonetheless, it's a new mutant group of some kind, all right. But whatever it was they were coming for, they didn't get. However, they did get Shalimar," Jesse solemnly told her.
"Shalimar?!" Emma's voice rose with heightened excitement. Her friends were dropping like flies, left to right. How could Shal have been taken? she thought. Shal was the bravest, most physically skilled of any of them. How could she have been caught? If they could capture her, they could get any one of us.
"Yeah, while Shal and I tried to battle off these mysterious people, one of them must have had a tranquilizer gun or something, because before I had the chance to even notice she was getting slightly drowsy, they were trying to shove her away from my site. She fought hard; you should have seen her. I've never seen her get that way before, the adrenaline really must have gotten to her. If only.."
"If only what, Jesse?" Emma urged, trying to keep the conversation going. She fondled a loose thread on her skirt, trying to distract and keep herself from running out the door to find her friend. He looked at her with uncertainty in his eyes, and gently rubbed her left hand. Using his thumb, he stroked her knuckles, trying to smooth out the invisible wrinkles. "If only."
After a small moment of silence, he lunged into a rambling, "My God, Emma, you have no idea how hard I tried to get her back. I couldn't even tell they had her for a brief second, but even in that small split time, I charged at them, even becoming intangible for them to take their hands off me, in order to get to Shalimar. She looked so helpless, you know? I know It's difficult to imagine her like that, but she had this look of vulnerability in her eyes. You have no idea what I was going through. This feeling just came over me, like it was my duty to get her back. And I couldn't. No matter how hard I tried, they were always on me, keeping me back.
"I couldn't help her. I couldn't. By the time I even got around to thinking about how I could help Shalimar, not even enough time for my instincts to react, my head was given a face-to-face greeting with the cement," Jesse said, closing his eyes. "After that obviously, I don't remember anything. They did things that were surreal. They were inhuman."
Emma was silent for a moment, unable to respond. Jesse, instead, took a breather, squinting his eyes and try to hold back some of the reoccurring images that came up into his face. It all came back so clearly now---why? "Why? Why must I go through this again?" he said to himself, eagerly trying to rid the images of the car wreck, and Brennan lying, unmoving, on the side of the car. Emma, he remembered was also unconscious, had been somewhat blank from his memory. He remembered that like a plaything, she had been slung onto the outer side of the window, not bleeding but had turned a pale blue in color. She was sitting in the front passanger seat, and one arm had been mashed against the side of the dashboard. Her other arm had been twisted into such a shape that resembled an S; it seemed to be fine now, he couldn't imagine how much pain it had probably caused her. Yet, something seemed wrong. Now that he thought about it, the placement of Emma's comatose body seemed awkward. "It's not poss--" he started to think, but Emma brought him back to reality.
"What happened next, Jesse, after they knocked you down?" She asked in a soothing voice, and instead of looking at her with a prolonged look in his eyes, he changed his manner drastically, telling her the next events as if they were statistics, or even old facts he had just happened to recall:
"After they knocked me down, my world went black. I remember waking up later-it couldn't have been more than a half an hour most---and feeling as sore, almost as if I'd hit myself by my own mass. It took me a while to get up; I could barely move. It took most of the strength in me to get back to the car." He paused briefly, trying to remember. "I saw you and Brennan lying there, and figured it would be best to get out of there. I would have called Adam on the ComLink, but it was gone." Flashing his rough, tan hand at Emma, she noticed the narrow white line that had once kept his ring. She nodded, and he moved on.
"Then, after remembering approximately where we were, I started to look around. Most of the shops and stores around here have been abandoned, because Shalimar had wanted to take the shorter, easier route to get to the club. She had said she and Brennan been through here before, and knew where they were going. I slowly began to recall that there was a deserted market store just around the corner, maybe two blocks off. Since this part of town has been basically uninhabited, no one saw me. It didn't take me too long to get here, but," he said, casting a small grin out the side of his face, "You aren't as light as you look." Emma smacked him on the shoulder, and chuckled at the small joke. "Hey! You can't say that to a woman! It's like asking for the death penalty!"
Jesse shook his head, smiled a bit and moved on. "Not too long after I got here, maybe 10 minutes, Brennan stirred. Don't worry, he was all right. A tad drowsy, perhaps, but fine. He woke up asking all the usual questions, 'what happened?' 'where am I?'. You know, typical things."
"Yeah, but I'm sure that, as opposed to me, you answered him when he asked you!" Emma interrupted.
"Heh, well, at the time I didn't see any reason not to. We both checked up on you afterwards. Boy, are we lucky that Adam had given us that lecture on on- the-spot recovery care. But don't tell him I said that," he said, with a smirk. "Apart from what you can't already tell, bumps and bruises and such, we discovered you were in critical condition. Your pupils showed us that you could have died had you not awoken within five hours," Jesse swallowed uneasily. He had almost forgotten how much that had tugged on his and Brennan's heartstrings. Losing her would never be something he could do, not for anything.
"When Brennan realized the shape you were in, he immediantly charged out of
here, looking for Adam. His ComLink had been taken as well, but the blood from his fingers must still be on there. I know my fingers had bled, so Brennan thought that Adam had no idea of our situation. With the exception of being tremendously sore and minor damage to his left forearm, Brennan left me here with you, having me watch over you and to recuperate. His mind also seemed to be preoccupied with Shalimar's whereabouts, as well. He figured that if he could get to Adam, he could find Shalimar, help you, and then find out who the hell these people were." Jesse gulped. He hadn't talked to anyone for that long a time, or that much, before. He wasn't used to these one- sided conversations in which he controlled. He searched Emma's eyes for a reaction, and finding none, he gently massaged her shoulder for reassurance. Her face showed shock, as if she was dumbstruck with what had happened to her team. Instead of asking her to respond, he leaned his back against the brick wall, and slowly blinked.
Emma sighed, and her eyelids felt heavy with sleep. There was so much to think about, everything that had happened-how it was that she had been 'asleep' through all that. But even more so was that she could tell by the strain that Jesse's voice in certain parts of his conversation, and the almost-tear in his eyes, took that he didn't like for other people to know how defenseless he could be when it came to his friends. And it wasn't because of his pride, either.it was the feeling of not being able to help when those you loved are harmed. A way he had felt his entire life, one that he thought he could be able to shield himself from.
Jesse had yet to fall asleep, and she leaned against her best friend. Blinking slower and faster, she was overwhelmed with exhaustion and her breathing was slowing to a more even and unhurried pace. Although Jesse was dreadfully tired as well, but he had so many things on his mind, like Brennan and Shalimar, it seemed impossible to sleep. He let out an uneven sigh, which Emma could recognize immediately. She patted his leg soothingly, and they both tried to sleep leaning against each other. She stared back into the nite, and was silently whispering to herself the possibilities of the next day. When they seemed to be too much, she decided that sleep was the only thing that could get her into the next day. It was still and quiet, and the room was filled with dark blues and black shades of light.
It was still dramatically cooler than Emma had anticipated the weather to be, and she was shivering. Her teeth clattered together, but she tried to quiet them unsuccessfully. Jesse pulled her closer to him to keep her warm, even though he himself had goosebumps running up and down the sides of his arms. Emma let out a small breathe, and the puff of white was easy to be seen. A slight quiver went down her back, although this time it wasn't the cold. The possibility of tomorrow made her shudder. She thought she heard a creak from outside the door, but reasoned with herself that it was the wind howling. When it happened two more times, she almost woke Jesse, but decided against it. Instead, she wormed her way into a comfortable sleeping knook, and prepared to fall asleep.
As Emma was about to fall asleep, sitting slightly curled and upright against the wall next to Jesse, Jesse suddenly jolted straight up, as if out of sleep and realization, his eyes gleaming white, and wide open, whispering ever so quietly,
"They're here!"
"Oh, God, Jess." was the first thing that came out of her mouth, and it was an instinctive remark. However, it was the exact thing she had to tried to keep herself from saying, as not to bruise him any worse. Laying heavily onto the wall, he had propped himself up against the corner so he could watch out the low-end window. Eyes were heavily dropped and it seemed he'd gone through Hell and back. His skin, that was normally smooth and pink had turned rough, and tinged brown with dirt. Along with mussed hair, and his clothes now loosely thrown about him, she almost didn't recognize him. But when she looked into his face, he shined those baby blues up at her, and forced a smile onto both their faces by saying:
"What, don't think I'm up for the Most Handsome Man in the Universe Contest
just yet?"
"Not yet, but heck, in a day or two, you may be ready for the World's Best Trailer Park," she giggled back at him, and he grinned. There was nothing in this room but a pile of bundled curtains, an old rug, and a leaky roof. "This isn't the ideal living space, is it?" she joked towards him.
"Not exactly," he said, "but considering the circumstances, I think I did alright."
"Oh, and what were the circumstances?"
"Oh, you know, the usual: horror driven situation in which y'all rely on me to save the day," he said, trailing off. It was evident by his tone of voice that he was trying to avoid telling Emma what had happened. "But I think it's more important now if we can find a way out of here, and back a safe house."
Laughing at his first statement, it grew into a flashback of when he had rescued the team at Genomex.before she and Brennan had joined the team. Emma knew not to pressure him any further about what had previously occurred. It was obvious he wasn't willing to. So, instead she tried to keep his spirits up by directing the conversation away from the car accident.
"Yeah, I suppose you're right, we do take you for granted. But must you always look like a Nazi in those GSA uniforms when you do?" It was a private joke between them, one that always prevailed to put a smile on their faces. Jesse couldn't help but chuckle, and they continued their small talk as Emma tried to use the curtains and help clot the blood that was dripping off his left arm. Distracted by the conversation, Jesse was forgetting about the pain he was in. Using one of the drapes that had been strewn about the floor, Emma was tender towards him as she wrapped Jesse in it. He was shivering so badly, she could only look at him with pain in her eyes.
Taking great pains to keep the conversation away from what was actually occurring, Emma encouraged some small talk. Although they were both burning with hunger and shivering from cold, they managed to keep a good spirit about things. Taking rags she had found in the corner, she wrapped them around Jesse's many cuts and scars. She first dusted them off, and thought about washing them. Except, she wasn't sure how safe the water in the place was. She dampened them a bit, and decided to bind them together. With every wrap getting tighter, an occasional groan would seep through Jesse's ever-present smile.
Knowing Jesse couldn't fall asleep, she tried to do things to keep him awake. Nothing was working, but then again, there wasn't much to work with. She struggled to find the slightest bit of entertainment around the room, but there wasn't any to be found. Heaved with disappointment, she sat on the ground with a bad temper, exclaiming,
"Now, if only we had some light, I could make some shadow puppets." Jesse tried his best not to laugh at his friends goal, but the entire situation was hilarious to him. His eyes slowly began to darken, however, when Emma said those 8 words that he had dreaded to hear, but knew were coming:
"Jess, what happened? Where are Brennan and Shalimar?"
He sighed for a moment, but decided that now was as good a time as any to tell her, even though he didn't want her to know.
"C'mon Jess, I need to know," she encouraged. "We need to get out of here."
"Well.I don't know exactly how to begin," Jesse told her, "So I guess I better just start with the last thing you remember." He looked over at her, and scaled her with his eyes. "What's the last thing you remember?"
Emma had to think hard to try and recall what was the last thing she knew happened. She scratched the back of her head, replying, "Well, I remember there being glass. Everywhere. I don't know if the windshield broke or what," she looked up at him, "but we definitely need to get some new glass." Jesse involuntarily laughed at her, while he strained to think. There was so much left to tell her.so much he still didn't know. He stared at the wall for a few brief moments, before returning his gaze towards Emma. She tried to stay as quiet as possible, hoping not to somehow change his mind about telling her. He let out another heavy sigh and began:
"Well, Emma.That glass was not only off the windshield but the other windows in our car as well. We had crashed into some invisible object in front of us, and totaled the car. But it was impossible to see it, or even foreshadow this event. I saw Shalimar look at something outside our window, and it seemed like she was about to warn us before it happened. However, it wasn't fast enough; we hit the entity head- on. Shalimar and I were still conscious and were able to get out of the car, while you and Brennan were lying there motionless," he said, grimacing at the mental image that he was able to recollect. He could still see it: there were twisted metal everywhere, bent pieces of the fender, and the doors had practically fallen off by themselves. And then there was his two-team members.friends.unawake.not knowing if they were dead or alive.He tired to shake them image out of his head, but no avail. He looked down to Emma, patiently waiting for him to go on. Emma didn't need to use her powers to know what Jesse was feeling inside. It was so evident, painted on his face like a portrait by Thomas Kinkade.
"Shalimar and I tried to fight them off best we could, we tried.we really did try," Jesse suddenly blurted out, and Emma cocked her head to study his face. She gently patted his knee, reassuring him.
"Who? Who were fighting? Talk slower." With that, Jesse tried to reconstruct his thoughts more accordingly. He didn't want Emma to think he was powerless, and how could he prove that if he couldn't even put a decent narrative together? Even if it had a not-so-great ending, or rather, beginning, at least he could put it together so he sounds sincere with his words. He swallowed hard twice, and then, without skipping a beat, continued.
"We had just hobbled out of the car, not injured whatsoever, maybe a bruise here or there.but we hadn't even gotten completely out of the car yet. And they attacked us. There wasn't any warning, no sign, nothing. They---"
"They, who? New Mutants? The Strand? The GSA?" Emma slipped in.
Jesse decided to finish his sentence. "They're not the GSA, that's for sure. If they were, we wouldn't be here now. Little is left to doubt that we'd be stocked up in some stasis pod having one nice, long nap.actually, that doesn't sound half-bad right now." Emma just smiled at him, and jokingly punched him on the shoulder, giving him the cue to continue with the story.
"Its not the GSA, and there's no way it could be The Strand. Nonetheless, it's a new mutant group of some kind, all right. But whatever it was they were coming for, they didn't get. However, they did get Shalimar," Jesse solemnly told her.
"Shalimar?!" Emma's voice rose with heightened excitement. Her friends were dropping like flies, left to right. How could Shal have been taken? she thought. Shal was the bravest, most physically skilled of any of them. How could she have been caught? If they could capture her, they could get any one of us.
"Yeah, while Shal and I tried to battle off these mysterious people, one of them must have had a tranquilizer gun or something, because before I had the chance to even notice she was getting slightly drowsy, they were trying to shove her away from my site. She fought hard; you should have seen her. I've never seen her get that way before, the adrenaline really must have gotten to her. If only.."
"If only what, Jesse?" Emma urged, trying to keep the conversation going. She fondled a loose thread on her skirt, trying to distract and keep herself from running out the door to find her friend. He looked at her with uncertainty in his eyes, and gently rubbed her left hand. Using his thumb, he stroked her knuckles, trying to smooth out the invisible wrinkles. "If only."
After a small moment of silence, he lunged into a rambling, "My God, Emma, you have no idea how hard I tried to get her back. I couldn't even tell they had her for a brief second, but even in that small split time, I charged at them, even becoming intangible for them to take their hands off me, in order to get to Shalimar. She looked so helpless, you know? I know It's difficult to imagine her like that, but she had this look of vulnerability in her eyes. You have no idea what I was going through. This feeling just came over me, like it was my duty to get her back. And I couldn't. No matter how hard I tried, they were always on me, keeping me back.
"I couldn't help her. I couldn't. By the time I even got around to thinking about how I could help Shalimar, not even enough time for my instincts to react, my head was given a face-to-face greeting with the cement," Jesse said, closing his eyes. "After that obviously, I don't remember anything. They did things that were surreal. They were inhuman."
Emma was silent for a moment, unable to respond. Jesse, instead, took a breather, squinting his eyes and try to hold back some of the reoccurring images that came up into his face. It all came back so clearly now---why? "Why? Why must I go through this again?" he said to himself, eagerly trying to rid the images of the car wreck, and Brennan lying, unmoving, on the side of the car. Emma, he remembered was also unconscious, had been somewhat blank from his memory. He remembered that like a plaything, she had been slung onto the outer side of the window, not bleeding but had turned a pale blue in color. She was sitting in the front passanger seat, and one arm had been mashed against the side of the dashboard. Her other arm had been twisted into such a shape that resembled an S; it seemed to be fine now, he couldn't imagine how much pain it had probably caused her. Yet, something seemed wrong. Now that he thought about it, the placement of Emma's comatose body seemed awkward. "It's not poss--" he started to think, but Emma brought him back to reality.
"What happened next, Jesse, after they knocked you down?" She asked in a soothing voice, and instead of looking at her with a prolonged look in his eyes, he changed his manner drastically, telling her the next events as if they were statistics, or even old facts he had just happened to recall:
"After they knocked me down, my world went black. I remember waking up later-it couldn't have been more than a half an hour most---and feeling as sore, almost as if I'd hit myself by my own mass. It took me a while to get up; I could barely move. It took most of the strength in me to get back to the car." He paused briefly, trying to remember. "I saw you and Brennan lying there, and figured it would be best to get out of there. I would have called Adam on the ComLink, but it was gone." Flashing his rough, tan hand at Emma, she noticed the narrow white line that had once kept his ring. She nodded, and he moved on.
"Then, after remembering approximately where we were, I started to look around. Most of the shops and stores around here have been abandoned, because Shalimar had wanted to take the shorter, easier route to get to the club. She had said she and Brennan been through here before, and knew where they were going. I slowly began to recall that there was a deserted market store just around the corner, maybe two blocks off. Since this part of town has been basically uninhabited, no one saw me. It didn't take me too long to get here, but," he said, casting a small grin out the side of his face, "You aren't as light as you look." Emma smacked him on the shoulder, and chuckled at the small joke. "Hey! You can't say that to a woman! It's like asking for the death penalty!"
Jesse shook his head, smiled a bit and moved on. "Not too long after I got here, maybe 10 minutes, Brennan stirred. Don't worry, he was all right. A tad drowsy, perhaps, but fine. He woke up asking all the usual questions, 'what happened?' 'where am I?'. You know, typical things."
"Yeah, but I'm sure that, as opposed to me, you answered him when he asked you!" Emma interrupted.
"Heh, well, at the time I didn't see any reason not to. We both checked up on you afterwards. Boy, are we lucky that Adam had given us that lecture on on- the-spot recovery care. But don't tell him I said that," he said, with a smirk. "Apart from what you can't already tell, bumps and bruises and such, we discovered you were in critical condition. Your pupils showed us that you could have died had you not awoken within five hours," Jesse swallowed uneasily. He had almost forgotten how much that had tugged on his and Brennan's heartstrings. Losing her would never be something he could do, not for anything.
"When Brennan realized the shape you were in, he immediantly charged out of
here, looking for Adam. His ComLink had been taken as well, but the blood from his fingers must still be on there. I know my fingers had bled, so Brennan thought that Adam had no idea of our situation. With the exception of being tremendously sore and minor damage to his left forearm, Brennan left me here with you, having me watch over you and to recuperate. His mind also seemed to be preoccupied with Shalimar's whereabouts, as well. He figured that if he could get to Adam, he could find Shalimar, help you, and then find out who the hell these people were." Jesse gulped. He hadn't talked to anyone for that long a time, or that much, before. He wasn't used to these one- sided conversations in which he controlled. He searched Emma's eyes for a reaction, and finding none, he gently massaged her shoulder for reassurance. Her face showed shock, as if she was dumbstruck with what had happened to her team. Instead of asking her to respond, he leaned his back against the brick wall, and slowly blinked.
Emma sighed, and her eyelids felt heavy with sleep. There was so much to think about, everything that had happened-how it was that she had been 'asleep' through all that. But even more so was that she could tell by the strain that Jesse's voice in certain parts of his conversation, and the almost-tear in his eyes, took that he didn't like for other people to know how defenseless he could be when it came to his friends. And it wasn't because of his pride, either.it was the feeling of not being able to help when those you loved are harmed. A way he had felt his entire life, one that he thought he could be able to shield himself from.
Jesse had yet to fall asleep, and she leaned against her best friend. Blinking slower and faster, she was overwhelmed with exhaustion and her breathing was slowing to a more even and unhurried pace. Although Jesse was dreadfully tired as well, but he had so many things on his mind, like Brennan and Shalimar, it seemed impossible to sleep. He let out an uneven sigh, which Emma could recognize immediately. She patted his leg soothingly, and they both tried to sleep leaning against each other. She stared back into the nite, and was silently whispering to herself the possibilities of the next day. When they seemed to be too much, she decided that sleep was the only thing that could get her into the next day. It was still and quiet, and the room was filled with dark blues and black shades of light.
It was still dramatically cooler than Emma had anticipated the weather to be, and she was shivering. Her teeth clattered together, but she tried to quiet them unsuccessfully. Jesse pulled her closer to him to keep her warm, even though he himself had goosebumps running up and down the sides of his arms. Emma let out a small breathe, and the puff of white was easy to be seen. A slight quiver went down her back, although this time it wasn't the cold. The possibility of tomorrow made her shudder. She thought she heard a creak from outside the door, but reasoned with herself that it was the wind howling. When it happened two more times, she almost woke Jesse, but decided against it. Instead, she wormed her way into a comfortable sleeping knook, and prepared to fall asleep.
As Emma was about to fall asleep, sitting slightly curled and upright against the wall next to Jesse, Jesse suddenly jolted straight up, as if out of sleep and realization, his eyes gleaming white, and wide open, whispering ever so quietly,
"They're here!"
