DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the characters from 'Mutant X'. They're not
my property. They belong to Tribune Entertainment.
***
*********
"Yes, freak! It *is* me!*" Caleb hissed back.
Brennan's eyelids lowered themselves with such pressure that they were nearly crushing his eyeballs. "You fucked-up son of a bitch!" The building anger inside only pumped up larger and larger amounts of electricity inside his body, passing over the limit of safe voltage quantity. The starting results emerged from his fingers in forms of thick sparks, developing sufficient light matter before he threw it heatedly in Caleb's direction.
The amphibian creature sprinted quickly to the left side, harrowingly escaping the deadly bolt. The soles of his feet and palms took hold on the moth-covered bricks of the building; the orange coloring slowly flowed over the weaker nuance of yellow, returning the original appearance of his inhuman eyes. "As tempting as it seems, I don't want to fight you, Elemental."
"Good. Stay where you are then, so I can finish you off more easily." Taking a few steps forward, Brennan brought his hands to form a small circle, readying them for another dosage.
"You're not doing yourself any favors by this, Elemental!" Caleb warned him before taking another leap to land on his strong feet in the middle of the path.
"Yeah?" How so?" Another bolt was released from Brennan's hands but once more it did not manage to hit the target, much to the Elemental and Psionic's dismay. The high quantities had managed however to drain sufficient energy from him, leaving him temporarily "unarmed".
"Why did you have to kill him?" the desperate restrains in her voice were on their last strength from pushing the inedible rage of the Psionic.
"I wish I had done that, Psionic, I really wish I had." The excessive thick salvia that was emerging from Caleb's mouth in the mixture of the artificial light and crude darkness appeared as black tar rather than something more organic. A sudden tightening of his windpipe and the growing pressurized force around his entire neck region began to pull the creature towards the ground while he began struggling to inhale as much needed air as his capacity would allow, regaining the normal flow of oxygen. "Stop it!" His distorted voice became attacked by the rough pebbles of the rapid psychological interruption, clouding the little clarity it had.
Feeling the full recharging of his mutated energy was farther than desired for, Brennan took hold of the diversion caused by Emma and rushed toward the struggling green mutant.
Seeing this, Caleb spun around, facing the Elemental with his back until Brennan captured him from behind with the intention of throwing him across the wall. But the moment Brennan's hands touched the back of the creature, Caleb's skin immediately began leaking out thick pink masses of unusual substance which started quickly eating away of the human skin above it. Not being able to withstand the feeling of acid, Brennan yanked himself away from Caleb with angry and painful groans.
The concern over her friend immediately disconnected the mental power which she held over the amphibian. "Brennan?" she called over to the bent mutant, touching the wall behind him.
"My hands! My fucking hands!" Brennan yelled in disgust and soreness, staring at the large blisters with the still present pink mass, coloring over them.
Emma wanted to run over in his aid but the recovering green creature only a few feet away from Brennan, held her in her place with uncertainty.
"I did not kill the scientist, you ignorant freaks!" Caleb hissed intensely.
"Really, and it would be that easy to believe you, huh?" Emma replied with righteous doubt as her eyes shifted between Caleb and Brennan.
"You can tell with your deformation whether I'm lying or not!"
Emma growled. "It's a gift." She narrowed her eyes. "And it's too late to be playing truth or lies right now, Caleb!" Waiting for a response she did not receive, Emma rushed to Brennan, sitting on the ground.
Gently taking his right hand, Emma noticed the ugly results of Caleb's defense. Looking up, the blend of anger and pain swirled in Brennan's eyes like a livid hive. Touching his shoulder, Emma concentrated on his mind before an easing flow of relieving morphine began flowing down though him, bringing weight on his eyelids.
"He could have killed him," a voice screeched inside her. Her lunges were hurriedly processing the air, running through them when her body felt a sharp thug, landing it on the disgustingly dirty ground.
"We have got to stop meeting like this." Caleb spoke with those steadily disturbing eyes.
Emma struggled to focus when a medium blow to her head disrupted not only her ability to concentrate but her perception of the surroundings. The images in front of her stretched toward surreal formations and the crystal clarity of the sounds was harshly smudged to incoherent noises.
"One of your own is hurt, isn't she?" Caleb continued to speak with satisfying cynicism in his voice.
"Uh... what?" Her response appeared disoriented. The pressure was no longer present on her arms and torso. Letting her hands explore the surface of her head aloofly for a physical sign of damage. But even her fingers were barely touching deeper than the hairs on her head as her brain labored itself to shove in more control to them and bring as much of desperately needed normal functioning as it could to her senses.
"You better pray she does not have a mark on her elbow, otherwise..." he brought his mouth closer to her left ear. "She won't be breathing air much longer," and soon enough the amphibian creature swiftly removed himself from the Psionic. Where he later disappeared was beyond the range of interest or capabilities in both mutants' conditions, putting them both under temporarily sleep.
*********
After the crafty work her brain had went through to repair some of the strongest damage done, Emma slowly sat up with 80 percent of the disorientation disappearing. The coldness of the ground had seeped in her delicate skin, sending shivers through her entire body, forcing it to quickly separate itself from the source. This gave her an indication that the time she had spent lying down was long.
Realizing that she had arrived here with Brennan, Emma tried to immediately spin around and find him. Her eyes found him sitting down in the same position in which she last saw him. Approaching him slowly, Emma touched her head as the feeling of trembling waves after a hit with a hammer on a gong, flowed inside her. Her eyelids pressed tightly. It gave aching. "I'm going to tear that bastard from the inside next time I see him," Emma told herself.
Crouching down in front of him, she whispered softly. "Bren? Can you hear me?" Her quiet calling must've triggered an alarm inside the Elemental as he slowly opened his eyes. "Mm?" Detecting her somewhat tired face his eyes widened with a verbal question to follow but the still present pain on his hands cut him off. "Argh!" His gaze speared down to the source. "That son of a bitch!" he hissed angrily.
"I know."
"Where is he?" he looked up at her.
"Gone, apparently." She tilted her head with a sympathetic expression when she felt concern drifting from him as a result of her tired image. "I'm ok, my head hurts a bit but I'm ok." Seeing his eyes fall on his hands again, she sighed. "Come on, let's go back." She reached for his arms but Brennan managed to quickly stand up on his own, not giving his friend a chance to help him. "You don't look good." She heard him say. Emma snorted weakly. "Thanks. Neither do you."
*********
Brennan glanced at his injuries with amazement that they had remained the same. He did not know how long his consciousness had switched places with his subconscious, letting him sleep, but it felt long.
Emma had disappeared into the kitchen preparing something, giving Brennan to do nothing in the meantime but walk over to the bedroom and check on Shalimar. Moving the door slowly forward his elbow, he was slightly startled to notice another person lying on the bed beside the Feral. His senses eased when the site of Jesse came into a clearer view. He glanced at the lamp. Jesse must have forgotten to turn it off. It was better that he didn't as it gave Brennan a chance to see his lover once more.
He crouched down in front of her, staring at her face. She appeared to be trapped in her slumber still but below her eyes darker half-circular shapes were beginning to become recognizable. Brennan pressed his lips to disallow his sigh to escape through them. The guilt for his absence was with less intensity than he had anticipated but the concern over her wellbeing had not disappointed him. Although the physical pain on his hands was distractive, his eyes absorbed her entire face, giving them an even bigger hunger for knowing the truth. "Who did this, sweetie?" his voice did not venture from his mouth although his lips were moving.
He wanted to touch her with his fingers, but the damned wounds gave him no such luxury. It annoyed him. If he could kill Caleb with his thoughts, Brennan would have done it without hesitation. The creature was responsible for Adam's death and who knows what he had done to Emma... Brennan knew she wouldn't tell him, although the reason for that was foreign to him.
Shalimar had not awoken a single time since he returned and it saddened him. Emma had the opportunity to see her open eyes and hear her speak and so did Jesse, but faith was somewhat less merciful to him.
She looked tired, almost exhausted and it puzzled the Elemental as she had gotten more than the needed sleep to regain her primal strength. He wanted to check her wounds but foreseeing that it might disturb her, he swiftly changed his mind.
The silence surrounding them, gave him an opportunity to listen to her breathing for a while... it appeared disrupted, almost as if she had sand in her lungs. His eyebrows furrowed. She did not appear well, she did not appear better... sadly, she appeared worse. Somehow this thought stuffed a thick unidentifiable mass in his throat at the very bottom, on the line between the entrapment and "freedom" in the lower parts of his organism. An eerily bad feeling was begging to wrap itself around the outer walls of parts of his brain and the entrance of his heart and its edges having long lost the smoothness of comfort had replaced it with the spikes of disturbance.
For four short, but to his mind incredibly long, seconds, fear had literally swallowed him inside its black shadows, devouring the thick courage he bore with him. "No," he whispered and shut his eyes as tightly as possible to banish the unwanted feeling. The voices settled, the fear disappeared but the consequences remained to linger secretly in the lower corridors of his beating heart. Shifting his eyes to the ceiling, he then took a deeper breath and managed to return his calmer self. Bringing his gaze down to Shalimar again, he fought hard and finally swallowed the mass in his throat. "Wake up soon?" he pleaded with such silence that only the Feral could hear him, had she been awake. Standing on his feet once more, Brennan bent down and kissed her lips softly. "Goodnight," he breathed into her.
When he returned to the living room, he found Emma standing by the couch with a bronze tray in her embrace. "Are you alright?" she asked him worryingly.
Brennan nodded. "Yeah. I'm fine." He sat down.
Emma felt his dishonesty. Putting the tray on the table, she then picked up one of the two bandages which had a strange gooey mixture of green, purple and red paved on its surface.
"What's that?" Brennan asked doubtfully as the Psionic was preparing to place the bandage around his hand.
A line to the left side extended her lip. "It's a homemade recipe." She looked at him and saw the mistrust in him. "Don't worry. It'll sting at first, but tomorrow your hands will be just the way they were before."
"Em, I'm not in the mood for bullshit," he spoke quietly.
"It's not bullshit, Bren. It's um... a very special formula. It'll heal the wounds much quicker than any other remedy."
"Oh I see... magic?" he said mockingly.
Emma smiled once more. "Yes," she replied, almost lightly. "It's magic."
Exhaling, he decided to let his rational side take a needed vacation and give into her persuasions. Whatever vegetable or mineral she had crushed to get this mess, he hoped it would at least ease the pain in his hands and return the feeling it them.
The first time the different chemical substances touched, it felt like a momentarily heated eruption of pain and itchiness, burning even deeper in Brennan's skin. "Holy fuck! It hurts!"
"Effective cures usually do," Emma said while wrapping the bandage carefully around his left hand. "It'll be gone quickly," she reassured him.
"You're pretty calm," he said warily.
She sent him a glance. "How should I be?"
"I don't know. I mean with what happened earlier....."
Emma sighed. "Yeah. But... being frustrated is gonna get me even more tired."
Her voice was tremendously soft. If she would've dared to sing a lullaby to him right now with such a tone, he would surely fall asleep. His eyes followed the movement of her hands as they tried to tighten the bandage with the final ends but without causing further agony to her "patient". When the left hand was securely tightened, Emma took the other piece of medical cloth. "I feel like I'm six right now," Brennan said with a weak smirk.
"Why's that?" Emma applied another small smile.
"'Cause you remind me of aunt. I was pl- ouch!" the collision of substances cut his sentence short for a moment. "Damn it," he whispered.
"Go on," she encouraged him, while wrapping the bandage carefully around the right hand.
He took a deeper breath. After all the wounds that he had to endure through out the years, he would be more than "used to" such agony, even that of shorter durance. His reaction right now proved otherwise. "I bruised my hand on this rock. It hurt like hell and I cried like it, too." Brennan saw Emma's fingers running around the bandage to make sure it was secured. "My aunt then put something on my hands. It hurt even more but... the bruises disappeared quickly. It felt better." He nodded.
A soft smile remained on Emma's face while watching him speak. She understood the meaning. "Thanks," she replied.
"Are you alright?" he then asked her.
"Yeah."
"How's your head?"
"It's um better..." Emma stopped from saying more than this. She felt his disorganized feelings of anger and anxiety inside him because of Caleb, Shalimar's condition and even himself. If she would add more to her sentence she would only fuel his emotions. Emma could not let herself do that. It would have unwanted consequences and add more worries to the weight she was already carrying... she did not appear that strong.
Looking in his eyes, being slowly drawn to the depths of that brown color, Emma felt the pressure inside him. He would need to release that in some way. "How did she seem?" She started.
Looking past her, Brennan leaned back. "Not good." He shook his head. "Not good at all..." Exhaling, he had hoped that that would suffocate any tears which would eventually surface. What disturbed him more was his reaction to seeing Shalimar a moment ago. She was only temporarily disabled. Why was he taking this so tragically? Was it due to the uneasy intuition?
"You'd think after all that damn rest she would not appear to be hanging to. uh, by a string of whatever. At least, that's how she... appeared to me. She's so tired. She-she looks like she hasn't slept in a week, her breathing is irregular, she's..." He stopped. The confession had dug deep inside him to find the carefully concealed tears and rushed them further up to reach the walls behind his eyes. A stone heavy sigh was released before he dropped his eyes to the site of his bandaged hands.
"You think she's getting worse?"
"Yeah. I have this feeling about something... it's horrible but I don't know what it is. When I was in there, it scared it shit out of me."
"About Shal?"
He nodded in response.
Emma placed her hand on his shoulder. Her fingers felt the tension in his muscles. "She has to be alright. I don't see anything that could jeopardize that."
"I hope you're right."
"Me too," she whispered.
"But it keeps coming back. It's, it's... Damn it!" The annoyance swirled hurriedly in his brain, arousing his senses for more fear.
"Bren, please..." she spoke softly. "Calm down... she has to be ok... we're here to keep an eye on her, we won't let her get any worse." Emma placed her best convincing voice to ease Brennan's frustrations.
"What if it's not up to us...?"
"Bren, she..." Emma sighed. "It's not a major, life-threatening injury, it's not a virus, some disease... it's only a wound that's gonna heal soon."
His gaze showed expected vulnerability as the tears slowly clouded the eyes. "I can't shake away that feeling... I..." breathing out annoyingly he placed the back of his hand above his nose before closing his eyes. He couldn't dismiss her image, the frailty of her face, the draining strength from her muscles. Everything surged inside him forcing him to replay it in his mind.
That chaos was beginning to force inside her mind as well, trying to drill through the thick walls of her protection but Emma did not let it enter. The damage will be overwhelming. Instead she reached for his hand, lowering it down before placing her two hands tenderly on his face, cupping it. The moment her fingers touched the surface, his skin eased and gave into the softness. The fingertips felt the tiny needles of his barely seen unshaved beard. "We've been through enough for one day. Don't beat yourself up even more... please..."
The softness of her voice reached a higher level, which cracked through any control present in his body and the tears were clouding his vision with such thickness that he could barely make out her face. This made a hole inside him to let in further unexpected fear to flow though, that she might be a dream and he was alone. The hands were not enough. He needed better proof. This wasn't the right time. He did not wish to be alone now. Without much thought, the Elemental leaned promptly forward, pressing his lips against Emma's. He captured them hungrily, afraid of letting them go.
Emma's eyes burst open as the chaos inside his mind left no real opportunity for her to process his intended actions. But she did receive his fear of letting go. It bore into her like an arrow, capturing her senses with his strong emotions. Slowly, her eyes closed. She surrendered to his attack. Emma would reassure him that he wasn't alone. Her lips fought playfully with his, savoring their taste. Their taste was... sweet.
There was no romance here, no sudden discovery of emotions of love and desire hidden for ages. It was simply a needing of nearness.
The moment, however, was short. It did not deserve to be longer. It did not have the right to continue. Emma leisurely separated herself from him. Her breathing increased but she tried to keep it under control. "No... no," she warned as the kiss threw back memories of a night that happened four years ago. Loneliness was the reason that night; nothing else but loneliness.
The disconnection of their lips tore away the barrier and released two tears to slide down on his cheeks. "I just..." there was childish shakiness in his voice but the secure certainty did not vanish. "Wanted to make sure you were still here." He confessed.
Emma stared at him with heart-tearing pity and regretful sadness. The liquid products traveled slowly... painstakingly slowly on his still smooth skin, as if making a small path for a river to run through it. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, embracing him with sympathy and needed warmth. "It's gonna be ok, remember?" Emma closed her eyes. "It's gonna be ok..." the last word turned itself into a comforting whisper.
It felt hard on him that he could not touch her like he wanted; that his hands could not feel the warmth reflecting from her. He wanted to complete the embrace, to make it full but he was unable to do it. Instead he wrapped his arms around her as much as they had the capability to do so and buried his closed eyes in her neck, feeling the blood pulsating against his eyelids. letting his senses know that she was real, alive. well. He would not be alone tonight.
*********
***
*********
"Yes, freak! It *is* me!*" Caleb hissed back.
Brennan's eyelids lowered themselves with such pressure that they were nearly crushing his eyeballs. "You fucked-up son of a bitch!" The building anger inside only pumped up larger and larger amounts of electricity inside his body, passing over the limit of safe voltage quantity. The starting results emerged from his fingers in forms of thick sparks, developing sufficient light matter before he threw it heatedly in Caleb's direction.
The amphibian creature sprinted quickly to the left side, harrowingly escaping the deadly bolt. The soles of his feet and palms took hold on the moth-covered bricks of the building; the orange coloring slowly flowed over the weaker nuance of yellow, returning the original appearance of his inhuman eyes. "As tempting as it seems, I don't want to fight you, Elemental."
"Good. Stay where you are then, so I can finish you off more easily." Taking a few steps forward, Brennan brought his hands to form a small circle, readying them for another dosage.
"You're not doing yourself any favors by this, Elemental!" Caleb warned him before taking another leap to land on his strong feet in the middle of the path.
"Yeah?" How so?" Another bolt was released from Brennan's hands but once more it did not manage to hit the target, much to the Elemental and Psionic's dismay. The high quantities had managed however to drain sufficient energy from him, leaving him temporarily "unarmed".
"Why did you have to kill him?" the desperate restrains in her voice were on their last strength from pushing the inedible rage of the Psionic.
"I wish I had done that, Psionic, I really wish I had." The excessive thick salvia that was emerging from Caleb's mouth in the mixture of the artificial light and crude darkness appeared as black tar rather than something more organic. A sudden tightening of his windpipe and the growing pressurized force around his entire neck region began to pull the creature towards the ground while he began struggling to inhale as much needed air as his capacity would allow, regaining the normal flow of oxygen. "Stop it!" His distorted voice became attacked by the rough pebbles of the rapid psychological interruption, clouding the little clarity it had.
Feeling the full recharging of his mutated energy was farther than desired for, Brennan took hold of the diversion caused by Emma and rushed toward the struggling green mutant.
Seeing this, Caleb spun around, facing the Elemental with his back until Brennan captured him from behind with the intention of throwing him across the wall. But the moment Brennan's hands touched the back of the creature, Caleb's skin immediately began leaking out thick pink masses of unusual substance which started quickly eating away of the human skin above it. Not being able to withstand the feeling of acid, Brennan yanked himself away from Caleb with angry and painful groans.
The concern over her friend immediately disconnected the mental power which she held over the amphibian. "Brennan?" she called over to the bent mutant, touching the wall behind him.
"My hands! My fucking hands!" Brennan yelled in disgust and soreness, staring at the large blisters with the still present pink mass, coloring over them.
Emma wanted to run over in his aid but the recovering green creature only a few feet away from Brennan, held her in her place with uncertainty.
"I did not kill the scientist, you ignorant freaks!" Caleb hissed intensely.
"Really, and it would be that easy to believe you, huh?" Emma replied with righteous doubt as her eyes shifted between Caleb and Brennan.
"You can tell with your deformation whether I'm lying or not!"
Emma growled. "It's a gift." She narrowed her eyes. "And it's too late to be playing truth or lies right now, Caleb!" Waiting for a response she did not receive, Emma rushed to Brennan, sitting on the ground.
Gently taking his right hand, Emma noticed the ugly results of Caleb's defense. Looking up, the blend of anger and pain swirled in Brennan's eyes like a livid hive. Touching his shoulder, Emma concentrated on his mind before an easing flow of relieving morphine began flowing down though him, bringing weight on his eyelids.
"He could have killed him," a voice screeched inside her. Her lunges were hurriedly processing the air, running through them when her body felt a sharp thug, landing it on the disgustingly dirty ground.
"We have got to stop meeting like this." Caleb spoke with those steadily disturbing eyes.
Emma struggled to focus when a medium blow to her head disrupted not only her ability to concentrate but her perception of the surroundings. The images in front of her stretched toward surreal formations and the crystal clarity of the sounds was harshly smudged to incoherent noises.
"One of your own is hurt, isn't she?" Caleb continued to speak with satisfying cynicism in his voice.
"Uh... what?" Her response appeared disoriented. The pressure was no longer present on her arms and torso. Letting her hands explore the surface of her head aloofly for a physical sign of damage. But even her fingers were barely touching deeper than the hairs on her head as her brain labored itself to shove in more control to them and bring as much of desperately needed normal functioning as it could to her senses.
"You better pray she does not have a mark on her elbow, otherwise..." he brought his mouth closer to her left ear. "She won't be breathing air much longer," and soon enough the amphibian creature swiftly removed himself from the Psionic. Where he later disappeared was beyond the range of interest or capabilities in both mutants' conditions, putting them both under temporarily sleep.
*********
After the crafty work her brain had went through to repair some of the strongest damage done, Emma slowly sat up with 80 percent of the disorientation disappearing. The coldness of the ground had seeped in her delicate skin, sending shivers through her entire body, forcing it to quickly separate itself from the source. This gave her an indication that the time she had spent lying down was long.
Realizing that she had arrived here with Brennan, Emma tried to immediately spin around and find him. Her eyes found him sitting down in the same position in which she last saw him. Approaching him slowly, Emma touched her head as the feeling of trembling waves after a hit with a hammer on a gong, flowed inside her. Her eyelids pressed tightly. It gave aching. "I'm going to tear that bastard from the inside next time I see him," Emma told herself.
Crouching down in front of him, she whispered softly. "Bren? Can you hear me?" Her quiet calling must've triggered an alarm inside the Elemental as he slowly opened his eyes. "Mm?" Detecting her somewhat tired face his eyes widened with a verbal question to follow but the still present pain on his hands cut him off. "Argh!" His gaze speared down to the source. "That son of a bitch!" he hissed angrily.
"I know."
"Where is he?" he looked up at her.
"Gone, apparently." She tilted her head with a sympathetic expression when she felt concern drifting from him as a result of her tired image. "I'm ok, my head hurts a bit but I'm ok." Seeing his eyes fall on his hands again, she sighed. "Come on, let's go back." She reached for his arms but Brennan managed to quickly stand up on his own, not giving his friend a chance to help him. "You don't look good." She heard him say. Emma snorted weakly. "Thanks. Neither do you."
*********
Brennan glanced at his injuries with amazement that they had remained the same. He did not know how long his consciousness had switched places with his subconscious, letting him sleep, but it felt long.
Emma had disappeared into the kitchen preparing something, giving Brennan to do nothing in the meantime but walk over to the bedroom and check on Shalimar. Moving the door slowly forward his elbow, he was slightly startled to notice another person lying on the bed beside the Feral. His senses eased when the site of Jesse came into a clearer view. He glanced at the lamp. Jesse must have forgotten to turn it off. It was better that he didn't as it gave Brennan a chance to see his lover once more.
He crouched down in front of her, staring at her face. She appeared to be trapped in her slumber still but below her eyes darker half-circular shapes were beginning to become recognizable. Brennan pressed his lips to disallow his sigh to escape through them. The guilt for his absence was with less intensity than he had anticipated but the concern over her wellbeing had not disappointed him. Although the physical pain on his hands was distractive, his eyes absorbed her entire face, giving them an even bigger hunger for knowing the truth. "Who did this, sweetie?" his voice did not venture from his mouth although his lips were moving.
He wanted to touch her with his fingers, but the damned wounds gave him no such luxury. It annoyed him. If he could kill Caleb with his thoughts, Brennan would have done it without hesitation. The creature was responsible for Adam's death and who knows what he had done to Emma... Brennan knew she wouldn't tell him, although the reason for that was foreign to him.
Shalimar had not awoken a single time since he returned and it saddened him. Emma had the opportunity to see her open eyes and hear her speak and so did Jesse, but faith was somewhat less merciful to him.
She looked tired, almost exhausted and it puzzled the Elemental as she had gotten more than the needed sleep to regain her primal strength. He wanted to check her wounds but foreseeing that it might disturb her, he swiftly changed his mind.
The silence surrounding them, gave him an opportunity to listen to her breathing for a while... it appeared disrupted, almost as if she had sand in her lungs. His eyebrows furrowed. She did not appear well, she did not appear better... sadly, she appeared worse. Somehow this thought stuffed a thick unidentifiable mass in his throat at the very bottom, on the line between the entrapment and "freedom" in the lower parts of his organism. An eerily bad feeling was begging to wrap itself around the outer walls of parts of his brain and the entrance of his heart and its edges having long lost the smoothness of comfort had replaced it with the spikes of disturbance.
For four short, but to his mind incredibly long, seconds, fear had literally swallowed him inside its black shadows, devouring the thick courage he bore with him. "No," he whispered and shut his eyes as tightly as possible to banish the unwanted feeling. The voices settled, the fear disappeared but the consequences remained to linger secretly in the lower corridors of his beating heart. Shifting his eyes to the ceiling, he then took a deeper breath and managed to return his calmer self. Bringing his gaze down to Shalimar again, he fought hard and finally swallowed the mass in his throat. "Wake up soon?" he pleaded with such silence that only the Feral could hear him, had she been awake. Standing on his feet once more, Brennan bent down and kissed her lips softly. "Goodnight," he breathed into her.
When he returned to the living room, he found Emma standing by the couch with a bronze tray in her embrace. "Are you alright?" she asked him worryingly.
Brennan nodded. "Yeah. I'm fine." He sat down.
Emma felt his dishonesty. Putting the tray on the table, she then picked up one of the two bandages which had a strange gooey mixture of green, purple and red paved on its surface.
"What's that?" Brennan asked doubtfully as the Psionic was preparing to place the bandage around his hand.
A line to the left side extended her lip. "It's a homemade recipe." She looked at him and saw the mistrust in him. "Don't worry. It'll sting at first, but tomorrow your hands will be just the way they were before."
"Em, I'm not in the mood for bullshit," he spoke quietly.
"It's not bullshit, Bren. It's um... a very special formula. It'll heal the wounds much quicker than any other remedy."
"Oh I see... magic?" he said mockingly.
Emma smiled once more. "Yes," she replied, almost lightly. "It's magic."
Exhaling, he decided to let his rational side take a needed vacation and give into her persuasions. Whatever vegetable or mineral she had crushed to get this mess, he hoped it would at least ease the pain in his hands and return the feeling it them.
The first time the different chemical substances touched, it felt like a momentarily heated eruption of pain and itchiness, burning even deeper in Brennan's skin. "Holy fuck! It hurts!"
"Effective cures usually do," Emma said while wrapping the bandage carefully around his left hand. "It'll be gone quickly," she reassured him.
"You're pretty calm," he said warily.
She sent him a glance. "How should I be?"
"I don't know. I mean with what happened earlier....."
Emma sighed. "Yeah. But... being frustrated is gonna get me even more tired."
Her voice was tremendously soft. If she would've dared to sing a lullaby to him right now with such a tone, he would surely fall asleep. His eyes followed the movement of her hands as they tried to tighten the bandage with the final ends but without causing further agony to her "patient". When the left hand was securely tightened, Emma took the other piece of medical cloth. "I feel like I'm six right now," Brennan said with a weak smirk.
"Why's that?" Emma applied another small smile.
"'Cause you remind me of aunt. I was pl- ouch!" the collision of substances cut his sentence short for a moment. "Damn it," he whispered.
"Go on," she encouraged him, while wrapping the bandage carefully around the right hand.
He took a deeper breath. After all the wounds that he had to endure through out the years, he would be more than "used to" such agony, even that of shorter durance. His reaction right now proved otherwise. "I bruised my hand on this rock. It hurt like hell and I cried like it, too." Brennan saw Emma's fingers running around the bandage to make sure it was secured. "My aunt then put something on my hands. It hurt even more but... the bruises disappeared quickly. It felt better." He nodded.
A soft smile remained on Emma's face while watching him speak. She understood the meaning. "Thanks," she replied.
"Are you alright?" he then asked her.
"Yeah."
"How's your head?"
"It's um better..." Emma stopped from saying more than this. She felt his disorganized feelings of anger and anxiety inside him because of Caleb, Shalimar's condition and even himself. If she would add more to her sentence she would only fuel his emotions. Emma could not let herself do that. It would have unwanted consequences and add more worries to the weight she was already carrying... she did not appear that strong.
Looking in his eyes, being slowly drawn to the depths of that brown color, Emma felt the pressure inside him. He would need to release that in some way. "How did she seem?" She started.
Looking past her, Brennan leaned back. "Not good." He shook his head. "Not good at all..." Exhaling, he had hoped that that would suffocate any tears which would eventually surface. What disturbed him more was his reaction to seeing Shalimar a moment ago. She was only temporarily disabled. Why was he taking this so tragically? Was it due to the uneasy intuition?
"You'd think after all that damn rest she would not appear to be hanging to. uh, by a string of whatever. At least, that's how she... appeared to me. She's so tired. She-she looks like she hasn't slept in a week, her breathing is irregular, she's..." He stopped. The confession had dug deep inside him to find the carefully concealed tears and rushed them further up to reach the walls behind his eyes. A stone heavy sigh was released before he dropped his eyes to the site of his bandaged hands.
"You think she's getting worse?"
"Yeah. I have this feeling about something... it's horrible but I don't know what it is. When I was in there, it scared it shit out of me."
"About Shal?"
He nodded in response.
Emma placed her hand on his shoulder. Her fingers felt the tension in his muscles. "She has to be alright. I don't see anything that could jeopardize that."
"I hope you're right."
"Me too," she whispered.
"But it keeps coming back. It's, it's... Damn it!" The annoyance swirled hurriedly in his brain, arousing his senses for more fear.
"Bren, please..." she spoke softly. "Calm down... she has to be ok... we're here to keep an eye on her, we won't let her get any worse." Emma placed her best convincing voice to ease Brennan's frustrations.
"What if it's not up to us...?"
"Bren, she..." Emma sighed. "It's not a major, life-threatening injury, it's not a virus, some disease... it's only a wound that's gonna heal soon."
His gaze showed expected vulnerability as the tears slowly clouded the eyes. "I can't shake away that feeling... I..." breathing out annoyingly he placed the back of his hand above his nose before closing his eyes. He couldn't dismiss her image, the frailty of her face, the draining strength from her muscles. Everything surged inside him forcing him to replay it in his mind.
That chaos was beginning to force inside her mind as well, trying to drill through the thick walls of her protection but Emma did not let it enter. The damage will be overwhelming. Instead she reached for his hand, lowering it down before placing her two hands tenderly on his face, cupping it. The moment her fingers touched the surface, his skin eased and gave into the softness. The fingertips felt the tiny needles of his barely seen unshaved beard. "We've been through enough for one day. Don't beat yourself up even more... please..."
The softness of her voice reached a higher level, which cracked through any control present in his body and the tears were clouding his vision with such thickness that he could barely make out her face. This made a hole inside him to let in further unexpected fear to flow though, that she might be a dream and he was alone. The hands were not enough. He needed better proof. This wasn't the right time. He did not wish to be alone now. Without much thought, the Elemental leaned promptly forward, pressing his lips against Emma's. He captured them hungrily, afraid of letting them go.
Emma's eyes burst open as the chaos inside his mind left no real opportunity for her to process his intended actions. But she did receive his fear of letting go. It bore into her like an arrow, capturing her senses with his strong emotions. Slowly, her eyes closed. She surrendered to his attack. Emma would reassure him that he wasn't alone. Her lips fought playfully with his, savoring their taste. Their taste was... sweet.
There was no romance here, no sudden discovery of emotions of love and desire hidden for ages. It was simply a needing of nearness.
The moment, however, was short. It did not deserve to be longer. It did not have the right to continue. Emma leisurely separated herself from him. Her breathing increased but she tried to keep it under control. "No... no," she warned as the kiss threw back memories of a night that happened four years ago. Loneliness was the reason that night; nothing else but loneliness.
The disconnection of their lips tore away the barrier and released two tears to slide down on his cheeks. "I just..." there was childish shakiness in his voice but the secure certainty did not vanish. "Wanted to make sure you were still here." He confessed.
Emma stared at him with heart-tearing pity and regretful sadness. The liquid products traveled slowly... painstakingly slowly on his still smooth skin, as if making a small path for a river to run through it. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, embracing him with sympathy and needed warmth. "It's gonna be ok, remember?" Emma closed her eyes. "It's gonna be ok..." the last word turned itself into a comforting whisper.
It felt hard on him that he could not touch her like he wanted; that his hands could not feel the warmth reflecting from her. He wanted to complete the embrace, to make it full but he was unable to do it. Instead he wrapped his arms around her as much as they had the capability to do so and buried his closed eyes in her neck, feeling the blood pulsating against his eyelids. letting his senses know that she was real, alive. well. He would not be alone tonight.
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