A/N- Hey all! Sorry for not getting this up faster. There were some completely unavoidable circumstances that prevented beta-ing. As a reward for your patient waiting, this chapter is longer! Yay! As always, thank you vega! You're awesome! Don't forget to tell me what you think! Reviews motivate me to get this done!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She sat with her back against the sandstone boulder, looking out over the water.
The sun was slowly sinking in to the depths, leaking the most beautiful array of pinks and purples and reds she'd ever seen.
Growing up in the city, she'd never experienced the wonders of nature so vividly. Never in her entire life had she witnessed such stunning serenity. Each color melded so brilliantly with the next, each living in a perfect harmonious peace with its neighbors.
But while the beauty touched some part of her, she knew, deep down, it stirred up strange confusion. All her life, she been fighting, fighting for her life, fighting to survive, fighting to protect the things that mattered the most to her. It felt odd to experience a moment where fighting was irrelevant, something she knew she hadn't earned with fists.
"You want some company?"
"No," Kerry replied, keeping her eyes on the disappearing sun.
Emma stepped closer, the dry, dead leaves crunched under her feet. As she reached the rock, one hand explored its smooth, hard surface. "You sure?"
"I wouldn't have said it if I wasn't."
The redhead remained unmoved, much to Kerry's dismay. Apparently, she underestimated the gentle woman's attitude tolerance. She thought for a moment how she could get the intruder to leave and allow her enjoy the moment before she had to sort out her next move.
"I thought you were going home."
"I did," Kerry answered simply, keeping her own information in check. The more she knew and others didn't, she'd learned, the more of an advantage she had.
"So, what are you doing here?"
"I'm trying to watch the damn sunset." Kerry shot back irately, meeting her glance with annoyed eyes, "Do you mind?"
"Sorry," Emma half-whispered.
The gentle woman felt silent and, for a moment, Kerry suspected she might leave. "You know, Kerry," she began again; her voice was more forceful, like she had just set her mind to something, "I didn't come up here for pleasantries."
"Good, 'cause you're not getting any."
"I came up here to tell you that you made a big mistake."
Kerry scoffed. "Really."
"Yes," Emma replied. Her face held a sympathetic, almost pained look. "You did."
"And what mistake might that be?"
"Jesse is not the bad guy here. He doesn't like to hurt people. I know that lying to you hurt him as much as it hurt you."
Kerry's face remained still, solemn with a hint of irritation. "It's funny how our interpretations vary."
"Listen." Emma crouched to the ground next to her, her voice calmed with a hint of melancholy desperation. "I don't know about the Jesse you know, but my Jesse, he was born to help people. He's torn up about this. I think if you can find it in your heart to trust him again, things would be better for both of you."
"Don't talk to me like I'm a child!" Kerry spat abruptly. "It's not your business what I do and who I trust! You don't know about me or my life, and frankly I don't give a rat's ass about what you think or who you know. So why don't you go play peacemaker someplace else!"
In the next moment she saw it, a dull flash of emotion in the telempath's eyes. She looked away quickly, trying to hide something.
Guilt…
Kerry looked away, not at the almost fully vanished sun, but at the grass and dirt mixture beneath her legs, biting her lip to hold back a fit of anger. "You were trying to read me weren't you?"
Emma glanced at her with a mixture of fear and remorse. "I'm sorry, Kerry."
"You're a telepath or something, a psionic. I remember the blast you threw at me."
"Telempath," she admitted.
"God!" Kerry sighed angrily and climbed to her feet. She pointed a warning finger at the telempath. "Stay out of my head, Red, if you know what's good for you."
* Break *
Dull thuds of punches and small grunts of effort rang out in the silence. Her body twisted and curled, extending and recoiling with each punch and kick in an angry ballet. A thin film of sweat barely graced her skin as she moved back and forth, swaying like a practiced kick-boxer, berating the punching bag with her tiny, powerful, wrapped hands.
It was a rare occasion that nothing went through her head, no conceivable thoughts, no new ideas, no coping of any kind. Her focus was instead on the black, absence of color in front of her, providing a direct path for emotion, not through her head, but through her fists.
Suddenly, her hand hit the plastic with only a fraction of the power before. Her body slowed and she straightened, hands outstretched to steady the large black bag.
"Adam."
"Training?" Adam asked as he sauntered into the gym.
Shalimar turned and shrugged. "Just practicing what I'm gonna do when we get our hands on the bounty hunter's leader."
Adam smiled to himself as he slowed to a stop. "Really…"
"What are you up to?" she asked pulling at the tape across her knuckles. "I thought you were working."
"Well, even us geniuses need a break every once in a while --- otherwise that computer scene would have made me blind years ago."
Shalimar chuckled. "I guess so." She balled up the white stripes and threw them into the corner. "So is this a social visit, or…?"
Adam shot her a sly look as he took a step towards the wall. "Not exactly." His hand reached for his jacket collar and slowly shoved it backwards and off the man's back. "I was wondering if you'd give me the pleasure of a little sparing match."
Shalimar looked dubious as he began to roll up his sleeves. "Come on, Adam. You serious?"
"As a heart attack," he replied with a smile.
"Get real, Adam," she answered with a laugh and an eye roll. "It's been a long time since you've had to train me. You had to call in another feral in the end."
"But who do you think taught her?" Adam countered. "What's the matter? Are you scared?"
"No," Shalimar said amused at the man's sudden less than mature behavior. "I just don't want you to get hurt."
"Oooh," Adam chuckled approaching her again. "Come on, I'll let you be offense."
Shalimar rolled her eyes again. "Alright, but you asked for it."
Her right fist ripped through the air at her mentor. The middle-aged man dodged it quickly and the fight began. She circled, punched, and kicked as he dodged and blocked in an elaborate dance across the gym floor. Each move she made, he blocked with intense effort, never advancing offensively on her.
"You know," Adam began between dodging strikes. "I know why you're so aggressive lately."
"Oh yeah?" She replied with an attempted kick. "Why?"
"It's your feral instincts coupled with your human ability to hold a--" he grunted as he caught ankle at his chest, "Grudge."
He throw her foot away from him, pushing her backwards, fighting to regain her balance. "I don't hold grudges." She grunted with a fake smile.
"You don't trust Jesse because he betrayed your pack. When an animal's been kicked too hard," Adam continued, stopping her left hook with his forearm, "it always thinks twice about its attacker."
"You say it all the time, Adam. I'm not an animal." Shalimar hand snapped to his wrist, allowing a right-handed blow to his stomach.
Adam winced and stepped backwards. "Nice shot." He coughed.
"Sorry," She answered, bringing her fists up to her face again, shaking a loose strand of blonde hair out of her sweaty face.
He smirked and shook his head at her untamed competitiveness. Slowly, Adam stood up straight and beckoned her again with his fingers.
The blows picked up in rhythm, becoming a steady beat of foot steps and grunts.
"Shalimar, I need you to do me a favor," Adam explained, dodging a kick.
"No," She answered simply.
"Just cut Jesse some slack."
"He doesn't deserve it," Shalimar answered sternly coming across her body with her elbow. "I had too much trust in him."
Suddenly, Adam sprang at her, seemingly released from the constraints of his age. His foot swept her legs out from beneath her, crumpling her to the ground. He crouched beside her with a disappointed look. "What you're saying is, because he was so close to you, you can't forgive him. Shouldn't it work the other way around?"
Shalimar stared up at the ceiling, eye blank and body suddenly limp from fatigue. Her expression froze in a look of unwilling refusal. Suddenly she spoke, "Why do you always win when I fight you?"
Adam smiled. "Because I know you won't hurt me," He paused. "Just like you won't hurt Jesse."
Her face contorted into a scowl as her muscles tensed once more. With a swift spin, she was on her feet again, now looking down at Adam. "You're wrong." She turned and left in a storm of hurt and rejection.
* -Break- *
"Taking a break?"
Jesse looked up from the computer as the middle-aged scientist neared him. "Not really."
"Well, from the lack of typing and clicking, I can only assume you've developed tele-cyber abilities or…."
Jesse turned toward him, glancing only quickly back at the screen once.
"Actually," he began matter-of-factly, "I'm testing a program."
Adam's brows furrowed. "Which program?"
"Mine. I've created a program to breakdown the Genomex firewalls and encryptions." he explained motioning to his computer. "It's just something I've been working on."
Jesse turned away as Adam's face grew skeptical. "That's impossible. How could you simulate a human's reasoning abilities in a program that only took a day to build?"
His shoulder shrugged. "Like I said, I'm just testing it."
The older man studied the screen over Jesse's shoulder. Numbers and codes were flying down the flat surface. Every few seconds a series of numbers or characters would be entered in and the pattern would continue. Only when the code was accepted did the screen image change and only minutely.
"How long did this take you exactly?"
"Total?" he asked. "About six or seven hours, but that was just today."
"What do you mean 'just today'?"
"I've been working on my own hacking programs for months now." Jesse smirked at Adam's perplexed face. "You honestly thought I'd stay away from computers after leaving here? Kerry had me working as bartender slash Webmaster of the Up To Zero web page."
"I take it you had a lot of free time once you mastered those drinks, huh." Adam smiled, thoroughly amused. "You've always had an uncontrollable curiosity at times." He watched the screen again for a moment, and then nodded. "Alright, let me know if it works. Maybe we can start it from various places in the database, make our work much quicker."
"Will do."
* -Break- *
"Reminds you of her, doesn't it?"
Jesse's eyes didn't waver from the motionless body of the unconscious woman. Silently he willed the elemental away. There was something about being alone in the dark lab with his thoughts that seemed so desirable to him.
He didn't know how long he'd been there, standing, staring at Lila's body, draped in the shadow of the dull blue florescent light. He hadn't thought about it until that moment. His legs felt tired and his muscles were sore. But his mind was unusually clear.
He felt a bond with her, whether it was their similar scientific heritage or the fact that she was the same age as he when his life felt like an overwhelmingly lonely coma.
Maybe it was neither.
"That's why you're here, right?" Brennan's voice brought him back to the present. The muscular man stood in the doorway behind him, staring at the object of Jesse's attention. "She reminds you of Emma."
"I don't want to talk about this, Brennan," Jesse answered monotonously, stepping backwards away from the filled examination chair.
"Tough," he replied in a strong, quiet voice. "I want to."
"You know everything." Jesse looked towards his old companion. "What's there to talk about?"
Brennan's face was hardly as he remembered it. It had no charm, no unexplainable magnetism, only a stern worn look of an overworked old man. "The real reason you left."
"I needed a break. You know that."
"People who need a break don't just up and leave in the middle of the night without any goodbyes."
"I left a note."
"We didn't need a note, Jesse." Brennan shot back. "We needed to say goodbye to you. Face to face, the way we almost didn't have with Emma. Why are you telling me this…this bullshit?"
"It's the truth. I don't care if you believe it." Jesse began to walk towards the door. "Just leave it alone, Brennan."
Brennan's solid body blocked the exit. "It doesn't make sense, Jess."
A familiar frustration rose again in his chest. How could this man stand here and demand something he didn't even know if he had? It called up memories: yelling, screaming, pushing, threats…and tears.
"What do you want me to say?!" Jesse exploded, advancing on Brennan like a fighter, shouting through the eerie still of the room. "Huh?! I hate everyone here?! I was crazy?! I had a mental break down?!" He stepped back. His voice lowered, but his fury still manifested. "I couldn't take it anymore! I can't just block things out, Brennan! I don't care how impervious my body is! I can't just forget things and keep them from getting into my head!"
He looked back at Lila. Still silence, still sleeping…
"Dammit!" he mumbled to himself at his own outburst. "Just leave me alone."
* -Break- *
A flash…
And it was over.
A small red sphere of light disappeared into her skin, grazing the ear. Her eyes rolled back. Her thin framed body gave out, crumpling to the ground like a rag doll, the invisible puppet string of her life cut with a malicious flash of light.
He ran to her, time slowing so that seconds felt like hours, minutes were days, and hours were lifetimes. He called her name over and over, at first at a strong panic but with each syllable fading to a vague whisper. In his mind, there was no fight. The men dressed in full black diminished into the background, leaving only her gradually fading consciousness.
"Hold on," he whispered to her as he hugged her limp upper body to his chest, pushing the strand of hair out of her pale face. Her breathing smoothed over the seconds, like a long final breath. His heart pounded and stomach receded into his throat with fear.
A final plea of desperation…
"Don't leave me. Please don't leave me."
