CHAPTER EIGHT: DECISION
The sky had started darkening to rich velvet blue before Jubilee ventured inside the stone mansion. Hank was a great blue teddy bear and talking to him brought her some peace. But Jubilee felt the recent events would still haunt her dreams. It still mattered that she had hurt one of her friends.
Just before she entered the mansion Jubilee felt the wind plaster her hair to her head as one of the blackbirds thundered overhead in slow motion, heading for the landing bay. Jubilee ran her fingers through her tangled black hair trying to straighten it out before going inside.
Jubilee stopped in the kitchen to make a sandwich. On her way to the MedLab to check in on Paige she munched her way through the pickle and baloney concoction.
Hank looked up as Jubilee entered. "She's doing much better. Some of the wounds are starting to close up."
Jubilee barely heard the words. Her attention was focused the blond head the bend over Paige's bed. Though she had only on occasion met the young man, she knew instantly who he was. Sam. Paige's older brother, code named Cannonball. He was Paige's hero, her reason for becoming a superhero, her reason for wishing to become a mutant so very long ago.
They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. Did he blame her for his sister's condition…did he know she was the one who shattered the fragile skin of the Kentucky girl, that all this was her responsibility.
"Hello." Sam looked back down at his sister. If he knew anything, he did not blame Jubilee for his sister's condition. Jubilee let out the breath she had been desperately holding. He should, she whispered in her mind. He should blame me, it was My Fault.
Hank watched the conflict play across Jubilee's face. It tore his heart that the young girl blamed herself for Paige's condition.
Sam looked up suddenly, noticing the silence. Uncertainty plagued his voice. "Umm, aren't you one of Paige's friends…" He trailed off. Jubilee was gone, backing out the door as soon as Sam started to speak.
"Was it somehin' Ah said?"
Hank sighed and ran his hand through the blue fur on his head, making it stand up strait. He really didn't know what he could about Jubilee. "No. It has nothing to do with you at all, Sam."
Outside Jubilee paused, looking back at the room that held the body of her friend and her brother. When she had first joined the X-Men there had been no one her age around. Logan had acted like a father to her, and the others like extensive Aunts and Uncles. But not one of them had been a friend. She had almost forgotten what it was like to gossip with a someone who cared about the same things, to stay up late an watch horror movies with a fellow screamer and eat too much junk food. Then she joined Generation X. It had been one of the worst and the best day of her life. She left the people who had become her family behind, and yet when she arrived at the school she found something she had been missing for so long it no longer hurt. People her age, who would become her friends. Closer in many ways than anyone on the X-Men team had been.
Yet, as Jubilee walked back to the room she and Monet were sharing, she weighed the unblemished moments of her life against the pain she had been witness to. She winced. The only times she could remember feeling safe, happy, and loved were the times before her parents had been murdered.
Jubilee wandered if this was how it was going to be for the rest of her life, fearing the moments when hell broke loose and destroyed what little bits of happiness she had acquired.
As she passed the rec room of the mansion, she saw the people which whom she shared her life, both GenX and the X-Men. They were gathered around the TV discussing comic book heroes. Everett, Monet, and Bobby were loudly backing Superman, while Jono and Sarah were opposing this with the merits of Batman. A game of pool was going on, background to the fanatic discussion.
Jubilee stood in the shadows, wandering how they could be so happy while Paige lay in a comma below them. Before anyone could notice her, Jubilee moved on, hugging the pain inside.
By the time she reached her room Jubilee's thoughts had wound themselves through a thousand possibilities of what had and could happened in her life as a super hero. She had seen what happened to people who grew old in this business. Why just look at the professor. She sometimes wandered what kept him human at night. Scott and Jean had lost both their children, who became people they didn't know. Logan had lost even more, wife, daughter, even himself.
Was that kind of future worth it, Jubilee wondered. In the time she had been with the X-Men the state of the world seemed to be worsening, not getting better. Every day another menace emerged to mess their lives up. Intellectually Jubilee knew the heroes of the world had adverted more disasters and horrible futures, but on the flip side she felt many of the worlds problems had only been worsened by presence of heroes.
Maybe the world would be better off with fewer heroes, not more.
Jubilee didn't know when she finalized her choice, but in the end it didn't matter. She wasn't going to loose another friend to the super hero business. The only problem was how to convince people to let her go. Technically she was still a minor, only 16. Just up and leaving like Rogue had wouldn't work for her. She had no family to go to, no friends she was still in contact with who would let her live with them.
Emma Frost was her guardian, though. A sad smile lit Jubilee's face. If anyone would understand, Emma would. Despite their past conflicts Jubilee respected Emma, for both her strengths and her style.
By the time Jubilee decided this, it was too late to find the White Queen. The morning would come soon enough.
For the first time in what felt like an age, Jubilee slept through the night without the nightmares disturbing her sleep.
Author's Note: I don't know much about Sam except what I saw in GenX. Please forgive me if anything about him is OCC. I almost forgot to include him, but then I remembered Paige had a rather tight-knit family. Sam couldn't not show up.