DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the characters from 'Mutant X'. They're not
my property. They belong to Tribune Entertainment.
***
*********
The silent moment between the Elemental and Psionic was kept until a familiar voice disconnected them from their stillness. "If Shal could see you right now."
When feeling the removal of her lips from the indirect contact which they had with his skin, he turned his head and saw Jesse standing beneath the now functional clock. "What about it?"
Jesse shook his head as a response to Brennan's question but his expression from a disturbing flatness transformed into minimal bemusement when his eyes noticed Emma's face. "What happened?" he then asked cautiously.
"Um," Emma quickly withdrew her hands away from the natural and even comforting warmth of Brennan's neck as if she had done a serious crime with their mere placement around that part of his body. She began rubbing her right eye as she replied: "I just had some weird... bad vision."
"What about?" The Molecular's hands found themselves on his waist.
"I don't know," she shrugged and spoke in a tone as it had been nothing but a worthless dream. "Some shadows, huge scary eyes... quite creepy."
"Are you alright?" his concern rose higher as he approached the Psionic.
Emma nodded. "Yeah. I'm ok. Just a brief scare, nothing serious." A smile finally managed to be placed on her face.
His eyes took an exasperating glimpse of Brennan before he settled them on the redhead again for a while. "Oh."
Emma tried to squeeze her eyes inside her eye sockets as she observed Jesse back. "What happened?" the worry drifted in her voice. The response in his look was not welcoming.
"I felt a little dizzy while fixing the clock. It's nothing." His hand tried to brush the words away. He did not want her to worry with such potency... she appeared to have been doing that ever since Adam's death.
Emma sensed this and swallowed with desperate hopes for lack of notice by the two men. He *was* calling for her. Little pieces of guilt began climbing inside her; she wished his signal was stronger but it did not even approach that level, instead it was weak, worryingly weak. But he was alright now. He looked well. There was nothing on his face or mind which could indicate that temporarily unpleasant change of his state. She would believe him for now. "Yeah."
Jesse took a step back. "Is Shal awake?" he asked simply.
"No. She's still sleeping," Brennan answered to receive only a nod from the Molecular.
"I'm...uh... I'm going to check on her." Jesse pointed weakly towards the bedroom and walked away.
"What's with him?"
"Overly protective of Shalimar. More than usual..." Emma responded quietly.
"It seems so."
Her blue eyes slowly shifted to have a frame of Brennan's face. "She didn't wake up?"
He looked back at her with neutral gaze but it soon began showing sad signs of false hope. "No." Brennan sighed. "It's worrying."
"It really is." Their voices were two steps away from deaf whisper.
The clock on the wall accidentally came into her view. Seven - it showed. The casting shadows of the evening were slowly ordering the faint sun to disappear in deep slumber until tomorrow. Emma's back was the first to feel the cold effect from those shadows and a moment later so did Brennan's arm. "I didn't know I fell asleep," she whispered. Strange and quiet feelings of relief rocketed up towards her brain. It had been a dream... no, a nightmare. A sad sigh escaped her. For a few barely visible moments a sign of hope had emerged that she could be closer to an answer before being carelessly snatched away by this accidental glimpse of the clock. "It was a dream," she told him with a higher tone.
"It was..."
"Yeah. Uh..." she then squeezed the soft skin on his right arm. "Can you take me to the alley?" Emma requested.
The question received little hospitability from him. "Why?" he asked her.
"I wanna take a look."
"We searched everything."
"Maybe you still missed something." A line next to her lips was an invitation for a smile but one which was quickly rejected.
He looked at the window. "It's going to be dark soon."
"Which is why I need extra protection."
"What's going on?" he asked her with drops of suspicion in his voice.
She looked at the table where the two pieces of metal were placed. Standing up she then walked over to them and ran her eyes over the now cold material of the objects. The bloodstains on the second piece sent a lightning of memories from the nightmare before they flashed almost brutally before her eyes. She blinked twice to regain the comfort of the present. Like a soft breeze it traveled inside her to embrace her senses in the familiar security. "It felt so real," a voice only for her sounded. "Em?" his voice traveled lightly over to her.
She spun around. "I gotta see the place," Emma demanded quietly.
There was no verbal response from the Elemental while he continued to wait for a real answer from her.
"Brennan, please," she asked him. The frostiness of her previous behavior would be a good excuse for him to reject that plea with the tiniest hesitation or the comprehensible lack of it and she would understand him but Emma wanted to go to that alley; step on that dark piece of dead city ground. Perhaps something would enter her mind to indicate at least a few scraps of needed clues or only a clue.
The minority of her positive expectations were satisfied when they received Brennan's response which consisted of the removal of his body from the couch and its approach towards the Psionic.
*********
Through the thin cracked space between the cold painted wall and the wooden door, Jesse's left blue eye watched the two mutants walk slowly through the main doorway. When the entrance door clicked, signaling their final departure, the Molecular moved his teeth and turned around. The room was weakly covered by the fading lamp that barely generated the little energy it had from its two light bulbs.
With soft steps he silently treaded towards the bed. The darkness fell viciously tonight in Jesse's view, devouring the sun in a time when it could have granted the illuminate sustainer of life a few more hours... longer hours for his sleeping friend to bathe unconsciously in the natural warmth, for her thoughts to have a healthy place to swim in. He cursed the night only for himself and fell slowly on his knees before bringing his arms at the edge of the bed. His chin touched the soft skin of his hand while his eyes watched the tired image of the woman sleeping on the bed.
"Shal?" He whispered so faintly that even his own ears could barely detect the name. But the stillness of her face was the only response which he received. His index finger touched her right cheek, sliding tenderly down to her chin. The skin felt dry beneath his touch, different than before. He thought that he had even managed to scrap away a few strange dead cells with his fingers as her skin was silently begging for moisture. any kind of moisture, as it had little tolerance of the increasing dryness. His eyes narrowed. "Strange..." he thought. "How did it get like this?"
Once more he brushed his finger gently on Shalimar's cheek and then brought his hand closer to his eyes for observation. Tiny white particles were spread on that surface. Jesse returned his gaze to Shalimar. His thumb pressed against the particles before removing them in the colder air arriving from the open window. The oddity of the discovery quickly rushed to the back of his mind. He dismissed it immediately for reasons unknown.
"You'll be alright, won't you?" he pleaded with a boyish whisper. His fingers crawled slowly to her hand that shielded her stomach. Smoothly his fingers took hold of hers and dragged her hand closer to him. The change registered nothing in Shalimar's soporific mind.
Her hand took the protection of Jesse's hands as they covered it with little pressure. Watching it being safely hidden beneath his safeguard, Jesse could hear Shalimar's shallow breathing. "Do you think... this would have happened if you came with me instead of Brennan?" he only captured a brief glimpse of her unchanged face drenched beneath the heavy water of dreams.
He hoped she was surrounded by dreams, pleasant ones; dreams which would give the mind healthy nourishment and provide a silky result of a happier view once the eyes would suck in the first rays of the morning; not dreams that would transform into nightmares and eat away the energy of the brain with such hunger that it would only give aggravating exhaustion and unwillingness to continue the wakefulness in the day.
"I don't think you would have... you would've been safer here." He nodded with bold assurance in his voice as he gently squeezed her hand. It felt easier for the hostility to take over the larger part of him rather than the brotherly forgiveness towards the Elemental.
*********
Their steps were the only sounds made in the suffocating night air of the dark alley. Neither Brennan nor Emma spoke a single word since they left the apartment. A strong enough topic did not manage to surface to their minds, capable of pulling out verbal exchanges from their lips. As trade for that absence, both mutants let the silence be their invisible companion for the time being.
Emma looked up at the sky. The sun had disappeared and everything was painted either ghostly blue or sadistically purple. The blood in her veins momentarily froze when her blues came across little fluffy pieces of black thin material. Clouds. She cringed. "It won't start raining. It won't!" she huffed inside with tamed disapproval, distant from anger. They were so small but they can get bigger, they can grow and unkindly envelop even the moon before a large and frightful arrow of lightning would appear as if released from the gods, giving out one final warning and then their liquid product would be poured down on the unsuspected victims, making their way on the cold, isolating concrete ground.
"It's not gonna start raining." She heard Brennan say to her. Her initial reaction of quickly spinning her head to meet his eyes was beaten by the slower, more casual approach.
"How do you know?" she asked him. Her senses tried to find the cause of his notice. The results which she received were slightly disturbing: he had smelled her fear and annoyance clinging on the outer walls of her psyche.
"Well, look at the sky." He nodded upwards toward the wide horizon above them. "Those puny clouds could hardly produce enough rain to soak a cat, let alone the entire city."
Emma snorted. His voice managed to caress the spiky edges of her exasperation until the smoothness was given space, without the Psionic's knowledge. "Since when did you know this much about weather forecasts?"
"Dare you ask?" a lifted eyebrow on his face and a small bolt between his fingers gave her an answer.
A short but honest giggle was heard from Emma and a responsive brief smile was seen on Brennan. A sweet but quickly disturbed moment.
"Silly question," she corrected herself and took a deeper breath. "Are we close?" Emma asked.
"Almost."
"Ok."
An unexpected bizarre vibration ran through her when they took a left turn, closer to the destination. The waves of the vibrations felt worrying. Hitting the shore of her mind they signaled for her alertness as it raced up as quickly as it could to the higher levels of her consciousness.
The Psionic suddenly stopped with her arm blocking Brennan's path.
"What is it?" Puzzlement covered the Elemental's face as he looked at his friend.
Emma returned his gaze with a more intensive one painted with distressing warning.
Reading her quickly, he let her silent message be absorbed by his mind. Brennan returned his face in front of him and closed his eyes tamely. He nodded. "Yep," was his response before the sudden reopening of his browns followed and the swift movement of his right arm that let out a larger bolt of electricity towards the higher left corner of a right-sided building covered by pitch black shadows.
A loud and painful animal scream was heard before a large, unrecognizable shadowy figure was seen falling down. Indistinct, heavy breathing followed the sound of the figure hitting the ground, emerging from the thick black covers and beneath the faint lamp, flashing enough to show color of skin.
The two mutants took cautious steps toward the fallen victim until a disturbing stench and an image of familiarity rooted their feet to the filthy and cold ground. Blood rushed viciously though their bodies with such angry speed that it would either burst though their skin or clog the tiny canals giving hurried stoppage of the mutants' bodily and vital functions.
Emma's lips parted by a small shivering force as her eyes were devouring the figure lying almost helplessly in front of them, three feet away. "It *is* you..." she said dimly.
The large yellow eyes with their thick black pupils stared back at the two mutants with the eyelids tightening and loosening weakly around them, the surrounding shadows giving them an even bigger distance from jovially friendliness.
*********
***
*********
The silent moment between the Elemental and Psionic was kept until a familiar voice disconnected them from their stillness. "If Shal could see you right now."
When feeling the removal of her lips from the indirect contact which they had with his skin, he turned his head and saw Jesse standing beneath the now functional clock. "What about it?"
Jesse shook his head as a response to Brennan's question but his expression from a disturbing flatness transformed into minimal bemusement when his eyes noticed Emma's face. "What happened?" he then asked cautiously.
"Um," Emma quickly withdrew her hands away from the natural and even comforting warmth of Brennan's neck as if she had done a serious crime with their mere placement around that part of his body. She began rubbing her right eye as she replied: "I just had some weird... bad vision."
"What about?" The Molecular's hands found themselves on his waist.
"I don't know," she shrugged and spoke in a tone as it had been nothing but a worthless dream. "Some shadows, huge scary eyes... quite creepy."
"Are you alright?" his concern rose higher as he approached the Psionic.
Emma nodded. "Yeah. I'm ok. Just a brief scare, nothing serious." A smile finally managed to be placed on her face.
His eyes took an exasperating glimpse of Brennan before he settled them on the redhead again for a while. "Oh."
Emma tried to squeeze her eyes inside her eye sockets as she observed Jesse back. "What happened?" the worry drifted in her voice. The response in his look was not welcoming.
"I felt a little dizzy while fixing the clock. It's nothing." His hand tried to brush the words away. He did not want her to worry with such potency... she appeared to have been doing that ever since Adam's death.
Emma sensed this and swallowed with desperate hopes for lack of notice by the two men. He *was* calling for her. Little pieces of guilt began climbing inside her; she wished his signal was stronger but it did not even approach that level, instead it was weak, worryingly weak. But he was alright now. He looked well. There was nothing on his face or mind which could indicate that temporarily unpleasant change of his state. She would believe him for now. "Yeah."
Jesse took a step back. "Is Shal awake?" he asked simply.
"No. She's still sleeping," Brennan answered to receive only a nod from the Molecular.
"I'm...uh... I'm going to check on her." Jesse pointed weakly towards the bedroom and walked away.
"What's with him?"
"Overly protective of Shalimar. More than usual..." Emma responded quietly.
"It seems so."
Her blue eyes slowly shifted to have a frame of Brennan's face. "She didn't wake up?"
He looked back at her with neutral gaze but it soon began showing sad signs of false hope. "No." Brennan sighed. "It's worrying."
"It really is." Their voices were two steps away from deaf whisper.
The clock on the wall accidentally came into her view. Seven - it showed. The casting shadows of the evening were slowly ordering the faint sun to disappear in deep slumber until tomorrow. Emma's back was the first to feel the cold effect from those shadows and a moment later so did Brennan's arm. "I didn't know I fell asleep," she whispered. Strange and quiet feelings of relief rocketed up towards her brain. It had been a dream... no, a nightmare. A sad sigh escaped her. For a few barely visible moments a sign of hope had emerged that she could be closer to an answer before being carelessly snatched away by this accidental glimpse of the clock. "It was a dream," she told him with a higher tone.
"It was..."
"Yeah. Uh..." she then squeezed the soft skin on his right arm. "Can you take me to the alley?" Emma requested.
The question received little hospitability from him. "Why?" he asked her.
"I wanna take a look."
"We searched everything."
"Maybe you still missed something." A line next to her lips was an invitation for a smile but one which was quickly rejected.
He looked at the window. "It's going to be dark soon."
"Which is why I need extra protection."
"What's going on?" he asked her with drops of suspicion in his voice.
She looked at the table where the two pieces of metal were placed. Standing up she then walked over to them and ran her eyes over the now cold material of the objects. The bloodstains on the second piece sent a lightning of memories from the nightmare before they flashed almost brutally before her eyes. She blinked twice to regain the comfort of the present. Like a soft breeze it traveled inside her to embrace her senses in the familiar security. "It felt so real," a voice only for her sounded. "Em?" his voice traveled lightly over to her.
She spun around. "I gotta see the place," Emma demanded quietly.
There was no verbal response from the Elemental while he continued to wait for a real answer from her.
"Brennan, please," she asked him. The frostiness of her previous behavior would be a good excuse for him to reject that plea with the tiniest hesitation or the comprehensible lack of it and she would understand him but Emma wanted to go to that alley; step on that dark piece of dead city ground. Perhaps something would enter her mind to indicate at least a few scraps of needed clues or only a clue.
The minority of her positive expectations were satisfied when they received Brennan's response which consisted of the removal of his body from the couch and its approach towards the Psionic.
*********
Through the thin cracked space between the cold painted wall and the wooden door, Jesse's left blue eye watched the two mutants walk slowly through the main doorway. When the entrance door clicked, signaling their final departure, the Molecular moved his teeth and turned around. The room was weakly covered by the fading lamp that barely generated the little energy it had from its two light bulbs.
With soft steps he silently treaded towards the bed. The darkness fell viciously tonight in Jesse's view, devouring the sun in a time when it could have granted the illuminate sustainer of life a few more hours... longer hours for his sleeping friend to bathe unconsciously in the natural warmth, for her thoughts to have a healthy place to swim in. He cursed the night only for himself and fell slowly on his knees before bringing his arms at the edge of the bed. His chin touched the soft skin of his hand while his eyes watched the tired image of the woman sleeping on the bed.
"Shal?" He whispered so faintly that even his own ears could barely detect the name. But the stillness of her face was the only response which he received. His index finger touched her right cheek, sliding tenderly down to her chin. The skin felt dry beneath his touch, different than before. He thought that he had even managed to scrap away a few strange dead cells with his fingers as her skin was silently begging for moisture. any kind of moisture, as it had little tolerance of the increasing dryness. His eyes narrowed. "Strange..." he thought. "How did it get like this?"
Once more he brushed his finger gently on Shalimar's cheek and then brought his hand closer to his eyes for observation. Tiny white particles were spread on that surface. Jesse returned his gaze to Shalimar. His thumb pressed against the particles before removing them in the colder air arriving from the open window. The oddity of the discovery quickly rushed to the back of his mind. He dismissed it immediately for reasons unknown.
"You'll be alright, won't you?" he pleaded with a boyish whisper. His fingers crawled slowly to her hand that shielded her stomach. Smoothly his fingers took hold of hers and dragged her hand closer to him. The change registered nothing in Shalimar's soporific mind.
Her hand took the protection of Jesse's hands as they covered it with little pressure. Watching it being safely hidden beneath his safeguard, Jesse could hear Shalimar's shallow breathing. "Do you think... this would have happened if you came with me instead of Brennan?" he only captured a brief glimpse of her unchanged face drenched beneath the heavy water of dreams.
He hoped she was surrounded by dreams, pleasant ones; dreams which would give the mind healthy nourishment and provide a silky result of a happier view once the eyes would suck in the first rays of the morning; not dreams that would transform into nightmares and eat away the energy of the brain with such hunger that it would only give aggravating exhaustion and unwillingness to continue the wakefulness in the day.
"I don't think you would have... you would've been safer here." He nodded with bold assurance in his voice as he gently squeezed her hand. It felt easier for the hostility to take over the larger part of him rather than the brotherly forgiveness towards the Elemental.
*********
Their steps were the only sounds made in the suffocating night air of the dark alley. Neither Brennan nor Emma spoke a single word since they left the apartment. A strong enough topic did not manage to surface to their minds, capable of pulling out verbal exchanges from their lips. As trade for that absence, both mutants let the silence be their invisible companion for the time being.
Emma looked up at the sky. The sun had disappeared and everything was painted either ghostly blue or sadistically purple. The blood in her veins momentarily froze when her blues came across little fluffy pieces of black thin material. Clouds. She cringed. "It won't start raining. It won't!" she huffed inside with tamed disapproval, distant from anger. They were so small but they can get bigger, they can grow and unkindly envelop even the moon before a large and frightful arrow of lightning would appear as if released from the gods, giving out one final warning and then their liquid product would be poured down on the unsuspected victims, making their way on the cold, isolating concrete ground.
"It's not gonna start raining." She heard Brennan say to her. Her initial reaction of quickly spinning her head to meet his eyes was beaten by the slower, more casual approach.
"How do you know?" she asked him. Her senses tried to find the cause of his notice. The results which she received were slightly disturbing: he had smelled her fear and annoyance clinging on the outer walls of her psyche.
"Well, look at the sky." He nodded upwards toward the wide horizon above them. "Those puny clouds could hardly produce enough rain to soak a cat, let alone the entire city."
Emma snorted. His voice managed to caress the spiky edges of her exasperation until the smoothness was given space, without the Psionic's knowledge. "Since when did you know this much about weather forecasts?"
"Dare you ask?" a lifted eyebrow on his face and a small bolt between his fingers gave her an answer.
A short but honest giggle was heard from Emma and a responsive brief smile was seen on Brennan. A sweet but quickly disturbed moment.
"Silly question," she corrected herself and took a deeper breath. "Are we close?" Emma asked.
"Almost."
"Ok."
An unexpected bizarre vibration ran through her when they took a left turn, closer to the destination. The waves of the vibrations felt worrying. Hitting the shore of her mind they signaled for her alertness as it raced up as quickly as it could to the higher levels of her consciousness.
The Psionic suddenly stopped with her arm blocking Brennan's path.
"What is it?" Puzzlement covered the Elemental's face as he looked at his friend.
Emma returned his gaze with a more intensive one painted with distressing warning.
Reading her quickly, he let her silent message be absorbed by his mind. Brennan returned his face in front of him and closed his eyes tamely. He nodded. "Yep," was his response before the sudden reopening of his browns followed and the swift movement of his right arm that let out a larger bolt of electricity towards the higher left corner of a right-sided building covered by pitch black shadows.
A loud and painful animal scream was heard before a large, unrecognizable shadowy figure was seen falling down. Indistinct, heavy breathing followed the sound of the figure hitting the ground, emerging from the thick black covers and beneath the faint lamp, flashing enough to show color of skin.
The two mutants took cautious steps toward the fallen victim until a disturbing stench and an image of familiarity rooted their feet to the filthy and cold ground. Blood rushed viciously though their bodies with such angry speed that it would either burst though their skin or clog the tiny canals giving hurried stoppage of the mutants' bodily and vital functions.
Emma's lips parted by a small shivering force as her eyes were devouring the figure lying almost helplessly in front of them, three feet away. "It *is* you..." she said dimly.
The large yellow eyes with their thick black pupils stared back at the two mutants with the eyelids tightening and loosening weakly around them, the surrounding shadows giving them an even bigger distance from jovially friendliness.
*********