Two
"What? What do you mean he's gone? Gone where?" Shalimar could hear her voice rising in harmony with her anxiety levels as she faced Adam over the work surface in his lab. She'd come in here full of the self-righteous indignation that had been festering overnight, ready to sound off at him about Jesse, his stubbornness and his current - to her - inexplicable behaviour, to demand their mentor do something to make it right again. But the older man's words slammed her to a mental halt, leaving her floundering as she tried to grasp their implication.
Adam sighed. "Believe me, if I knew I'd tell you. Maybe you could talk some sense into him."
She laughed shortly and glanced away. "I doubt it - not after yesterday..."
He frowned at that but she didn't seem to notice, her own brow furrowing as she asked more of the expected questions; when, how, where - again, though he'd already told her he didn't know. But he was more than willing to share what he did. "According to the security logs he left late last night, after midnight. Took the Ducati." He punched some keys on the console he'd been working at and turned the monitor so she could see. "Looked like he was in a hurry - and planning to be away a while."
Shalimar felt her concern crank up a few more notches, her stomach knotting painfully at the sight of Jesse, pale face haggard but determined in the subdued lighting of Sanctuary's garage, moving purposefully towards the parked motorbikes with a full backpack slung over one shoulder. She watched him lift a helmet off the shelf and pull it on before swinging a denim-clad leg over the nearest machine and gunning it into life. For one long moment she thought he was just going to ride away but, as he waited for the outer doors to open he turned his head to stare directly up at the security camera, his expression hidden by the tinted Perspex of his visor. And then he was gone, the clang of the exit closing behind him jolting her out of her transfixion.
Suddenly desperate for some outlet for her feelings, she rounded on Adam again, dark eyes flashing dangerously as the sentences tumbled over themselves to escape. "Why didn't we hear him? Why didn't the alarm go off? And why didn't you wake me when you found out? How could you let me sleep and not tell me? Tell us? What have you been doing about it, about finding him? We should be out there looking for him, trying to..." She ran out of breath, finally giving him the chance to speak.
"Look where?" he said, trying to keep his tone reasonable despite his own unease. "He's turned off his com-link and disabled the locator on the bike. This is Jesse we're talking about, remember? He knows Sanctuary's security systems almost as well as I do, and he's expert enough at finding people to know how to stay invisible himself. If he doesn't want to be found, there's not a lot we can do about it."
"Better," she whispered, and he frowned again, raising a questioning eyebrow to which she offered a small wry smile in response. "Sanctuary's systems? He was so pissed at not being able to find a way in himself when Ashlocke was holding you here, he spent every night for the next week digging out the specs from wherever you hid them and making sure he wouldn't be caught out again." She saw Adam's expression tighten a little and, misunderstanding, sought to reassure him. "It's OK - I'm sure he didn't find all your secrets. But getting in and out of here undetected now would be child's play for him." She paused, then continued thoughtfully, "Which means..."
"He wanted us to know what he'd done, but not until it was too late to stop him," Adam finished for her.
They were both silent for a moment, considering that.
"But he shouldn't be out there alone!" Shalimar's anxiety for the man she considered the little brother she'd never had was not to be pushed aside for long. "Not now, not after what happened. Not when he's acting so weird..." She tailed off, eyes suddenly distant, and Adam was struck by the sudden realisation that, for all her questions about Jesse's departure, the feral had never asked what reasons he could have for choosing to leave - which started him wondering again what had happened between them the previous day.
Before he could ask, though, she was off and running again. "We should have been able to do something more to help him, you know? Back at the start. Found a way for him to accept it as the tragic accident it was, not something he needs to beat himself up over forever. Not something that he needs to handle alone."
Adam raised an eyebrow at her. "You know Jesse as well as I do - he'll always find a way to beat himself up if he thinks he's made a mistake. And he's always preferred to work out his own solutions, usually before he even tells anyone he has a problem!"
"This is different, though," Shalimar insisted. "We all knew there was problem. And he'd asked for help." She saw his sceptical expression and smiled a little sadly. "Well, OK, maybe not in so many words. But in his own way he was asking..."
*
Wild-eyed, Jesse paces the heart of Sanctuary, his hunched shoulders and the restlessly clenching and unclenching hands accentuating the obvious tension running through his lean frame. Perched anxiously on the edge of her chair, Shalimar watches him, her heart aching to see him so distraught.
"It wasn't your fault," she says, for maybe the fiftieth time, trying to imbue her words with as much sincerity and support as she can muster so they might this time reach him. But yet again they fall on deaf ears.
"How can you say that? How??" He rounds on her, leaning forward to bring his face close to hers, blazing eyes boring into her with such intensity that, to her horror, she finds herself flinching instinctively away from him before she can prevent it. But he seems to accept it with only the briefest flash of hurt resignation, barely halting in his tirade. "Did you see any other molecular mutants out there today? Anyone else stupidly... *criminally* arrogant enough to phase a wall without thinking about the consequences? Because I sure as hell didn't..." He points a finger, stabbing at himself viciously in staccato punctuation as he says, "I. Killed. A. Child." The finger folds back into the suddenly balled fist that thuds emphatically against his chest. "Me. I *murdered* her! And there's nothing anyone can do or say that will change that."
He turns abruptly away to pace some more and she has to resist the urge to go after him, hug him, find some way to console him, to take the pain away. But his wounds are too fresh for that to be an option right now. And besides, the worst thing of all is that the cold hard facts say he's right. He did do it, did kill her even though it was remotely and without intent. Sometimes, though, the facts only tell one side of the story.
She throws a helpless glance around the open space, empty but for the two of them, and wonders again where the others are, why they aren't here to add their own brands of encouragement and comfort. Adam's with the scientists, she thinks, getting a rundown on the work they'd been doing that had necessitated their flight from those who would use it for wrong. But Emma? Brennan? They seemed to drift unobtrusively away once they'd all made it back to the relative calm and security of home, leaving her to cope alone with this bundle of raw and desperate emotions their friend has become.
Thinking about it, she realises this is probably the reason. Both of them, in their own ways, would find dealing with this level of emotional intensity too daunting a prospect. Emma would need time to build her shields to a sufficient level to prevent herself getting swamped. And Brennan just plain preferred not to have to get embroiled in this kind of thing. To be honest, she was kind of glad he wasn't there - in his current state she'd couldn't say how Jesse might react to one of the elemental's typically blunt takes on the situation. But Emma... Emma might find some way to get through to him, and Shalimar hopes she'll feel ready and able to spend time with him soon.
The pacing brings him back past her and on impulse she reaches to grab his hand, pulling him down to join her. He resists, as she knows he will, but she gets her way and with a reluctant sigh he accedes to her urging, lowering himself stiffly to sit ramrod-straight beside her. But she can't help noticing the distance he keeps between them.
"It really wasn't your fault," she tries again. "You weren't to know. You didn't mean to do it. It was an accident - they happen, Jess, you know that."
He slumps suddenly, as if the effort it's been taking to keep himself upright has become too much for him. "They shouldn't," he says sullenly. "Not like that. Not to someone that young. Not when a bit of thought could have prevented it. I wish... I wish my powers had never changed, that I'd never learned how to phase anything other than me."
She realises they've been going over and over the same ground, the same 'if only's for what feels like hours. "It's late - you should try and get some rest," she suggests, but he shakes his head firmly.
"No. I can't." Averting his face, he drags the back of a hand covered by the too-long sleeve of his jumper surreptitiously across his eyes before taking a deep shuddering breath and pushing to his feet. He glances down at her, gaze still suspiciously liquid. "How can I, when every time I close my eyes I see her face? And I can't even remember her name..." A pause then, quietly, heart-breakingly, "My God, Shal, what have I done? And how am I ever going to find a way to live with it? What can I ever do to make it right?"
For long moments they just stare at each other, and she sees the last ray of hope die in his eyes as she struggles forlornly to find something to say that will sound anything other than an empty platitude. Then, without another word, he turns and walks away.
She watches him go, head drooping disconsolately, and though her soul cries out to her to call him back, all she can do is whisper after him, "Daisy. Her name was Daisy."
*
"Shalimar?"
She shook herself, cat-like, blinking huge dark eyes up at him. "We have to find him," she said simply. "We have to."
"But..." Adam started, only to be forced to silence by her raised hand and abrupt transformation from kitten to tiger.
"No buts!" she said fiercely. "I don't want to hear them." He could see what looked disturbingly like guilt colouring her expression in the seconds before she dropped her gaze from his, but he made no comment as she turned away, throwing, "I'll get the others, get started on a search plan," back at him on her way out of the door.
****
The first day of the rest of his life - why didn't those words fill him with the expected thrill of freedom, Jesse wondered as he idly watched a group of pigeons arguing over discarded crumbs. The small municipal park he'd found himself in as he'd ambled aimlessly through town was bustling with the early lunch goers who'd been lured from their offices by the fine weather, the remains of their sandwiches providing plenty of pickings for the ever present scavengers, and he'd been unable to resist the quiet companionship they seemed to offer, however removed.
He'd managed to avoid doing much thinking so far today, immersing himself in finding somewhere for a late breakfast once he'd checked out of the motel, then enjoying the simple pleasure of walking in the sunshine without actually having anywhere to go or any nefarious business to attend to. But now he was just sitting he no longer had anything to distract him from the nagging thoughts he'd been avoiding. The ones that wanted to know what he was going to do with himself now. How he was going to survive. Where he was going to go.
Good questions. Big questions. And ones he had no simple answers to.
The only thing he was sure of was that his mutancy wasn't going to play a part in it.
A snapshot flared briefly in his head, one that tore at his heart despite the time that had passed since it had happened.
Amanda.
Amanda talking proudly about her life, about making a living working in a record store, being amongst normal people who accepted her for herself and had no idea of the powers she could call on.
Powers that had, in the end, been the reason for her untimely death, something that he still blamed himself for regardless of everyone's attempts to convince him otherwise. If he hadn't let her send him home, he'd have been there to protect her from her attackers. And if he'd never asked her out in the first place, his world might have by-passed her in favour of some other hapless New Mutant. Either way, she'd paid a price she'd done nothing to deserve. Just like Daisy.
Which of course was his fault too.
For a long self-indulgent moment, he allowed himself to imagine a present where Amanda was still alive, seeing as clearly as if she was standing in front of him the look of warm pleasure on her face as he told her he was putting it all behind him. No more 'showing off' his powers, no more crusading on behalf of freaks like him - just as normal a life as he could manage in the circumstances. A life with her.
But the image faded like the daydream it was, too quickly, too completely, and he was left to mourn its passing as he'd mourned hers, in a bittersweet haze of if only's that did nothing to improve his mood.
"Why?" he whispered, almost unaware he'd said the word out loud and not even sure exactly what he was asking. But the only response was the coo of the pigeons and the distant laughter of those lucky enough to have people to share it with.
****
TBC