Three
"Anything?" Emma's quiet voice slid gently into Shalimar's consciousness, interrupting her intense focus on the computer screen in front of her. Taking a deep breath she turned to face her friend, taking the opportunity to stretch out muscles starting to complain at being in one position too long.
Emma was watching her a little cautiously, but with clear concern - though whether for her or Jesse, Shalimar wasn't sure. Or maybe it was one and the same thing...
"No, not yet," she replied. "I've been running checks on hotel and motel registrations, credit card records, police reports, anything I can think of. But he's gone completely to ground." Like the wounded animal he is, she added silently.
"You knew it wouldn't be easy to find him if he's chosen to hide," the psionic said, coming to perch on a stool beside her. They'd had that very discussion earlier in the day when Shalimar had come bursting into her room demanding she join her on the Helix that instant so they could start searching for the missing Jesse. It had taken a lot of careful reasoning to talk her down from that plan, not helped by the feral's sudden realisation that Emma had actually already known he'd gone and wasn't making any overt effort to do anything about finding him. Since it seemed she'd already tried - and failed - to enlist Brennan's assistance, this further betrayal had been sufficient to send her storming away, intent on making it a solo mission. And the younger woman had been left with no option but to scurry after her if she wanted to prevent it.
But eventually, after a somewhat one-sided conversation that had continued at pace all the way through the heart of Sanctuary and on to the aircraft's hanger, the logic of what Emma was saying had sunk in. Grudgingly Shalimar had agreed there wasn't much point in flying aimlessly around looking for someone who quite probably had no desire to be located, and had all the skills needed to prevent it happening.
Since then, she'd been running through all the usual methods for seeking out a missing person, as well as a few wilder ideas of her own, while the rest of the Mutant X team seemed to be taking turns to try and distract her from it. Not that she'd been about to let that happen - she'd been at it for hours, rebuffing every attempt so far to get her to take a break.
"It hasn't been that long, you know," Emma continued. "He hasn't even been gone a day yet. Could be he just needed some air, some time to think, and he'll be back for supper this evening like nothing's happened."
But the blonde mane shook emphatically at that. "No, not this time. He's gone, Emma. He's been building up to something like this, but none of us wanted to know about it." Dark brown eyes lifted to fix with beady intensity on her companion's face. "You could have helped him, you know. Helped him see this wasn't his fault. Helped him over it."
"No, I couldn't," Emma said firmly, shaking her own head slowly. "We've been through this before, Shal. I could have made him feel better for a little while. But it wouldn't have lasted. He needed to find his own way through this."
"Not alone," Shalimar persisted. "No-one should have to deal with something like that alone."
"But he wasn't alone, though, was he." The words held an oddly distant quality, as if their speaker's mind was somewhere else. "We were all trying to support him. Just maybe not in the way he thought he needed..."
*
The two men prowl around each other, like big cats marking their territorial boundaries. This room isn't big enough for the both of them right now, and those sharing the space with them can only hope that one or other will tire of the sport and leave before it comes to blows. The work they're trying to do, the suspected conspiracy they're trying to uncover, is almost forgotten against the backdrop of a tortured conscience still seeking some form of release.
"Will you just give it a rest!" Brennan snaps suddenly. "This old hair-shirt routine is getting real boring, bro." He ignores Jesse's incredulous look, and the glares being thrown his way by the other occupants of the room. "It happened, OK? Going over it again and again is not going to change that. No-one here is laying blame - the only person doing that is you. Shit happens, you know? You aren't the only one to make a mistake through ignorance - we've all done it at some time or another. But you can't let it take over your life. So why don't you give us all a break and let it go."
"How do you do that?" Jesse's words hammer the air between them, the accompanying expression equal parts sullen resentment and hurt disbelief.
"Do what?"
"Act like nothing's happened?" The blue eyes bore into him. "How do you live with the things you've done? The memories of the people you've hurt in your oh so murky criminal past?" He laughs humourlessly as he drops back into a chair. "Oh, that's right - nothing you did back then ever really hurt anyone, did it? Well, that's OK then. But if that's the case, where the hell do you get off telling me how I should be feeling about this? It didn't happen to you - you didn't kill someone!"
Brennan shakes his head, not in response to the words so much as in exasperation at Jesse's dogged persistence. "Have it your way - you wanna wallow in your own misery forever, knock yourself out. Just don't expect me to join you." He flings a glance that encompasses the whole room. "I'm outta here." Then he's gone, leaving behind an atmosphere thick enough to cut with a knife.
The silence drags on, those remaining seemingly taking shelter in their own worlds, until finally Jesse's gaze slides Emma's way. And she has to steel herself against the wave of pain and bitterness that follows. "What? No helpful advice? No spiritual guidance for the salvation of my soul?"
She looks at him for long seconds, eyes huge under her bangs, and he stares back. She thinks he's trying to feel if she's reading him, but is unsure whether he wants her to or not. After all, would it really be fair to share what's going on in his head with anyone, let alone a friend? Maybe part of him wants to beg her to not just share it but to take it all away, to excise the whole episode from his mind, even though she's confident it's not something he can remember seeing her do specifically. But even so, she fears that somehow he knows she can, that he's come closest to knowing - even if he doesn't know how - that she is probably the most powerful of them all now, and can most likely do almost anything she sets her mind to.
But he knows she won't help him, even before she blinks and shakes her head apologetically. "Nothing you don't already know in your heart, Jesse. There is a way for you to deal with this, but you have to find it for yourself. In yourself. It has to be your solution, your decision. Your choice."
As she watches him listening to her words she feels him pulling away from her, with a final desperate flood of emotion that batters itself to a standstill on the intractability of her mental barriers before draining away again.
And then there's nothing.
All she can sense from him is a kind of fuzzy numbness. Even his expression has closed in, the shutters dropping to hide everything behind a featureless wall in the split second before he lurches upright and hurries away, and she's left to wonder whether the price of his salvation will prove too costly for any of them to bear.
*
Emma slid back to the now in time to hear Shalimar say softly, "I guess we all had our own ideas about that - assuming what worked for us would for him too. But I should have remembered, he's always felt things deeper, longer than me. Than all of us, really." She paused and looked up, catching some fleeting change of expression cross the psionic's face. "Well," she amended hastily, "not you, of course. That goes without saying. Or maybe just differently than you..."
The pigtails Emma's red hair was pulled back into today made her look outwardly absurdly young, but the unfathomable eyes that gazed back seemed as old as time itself right now. It was probably only a few seconds before she made any comment but oddly it felt a lot longer, and Shalimar experienced the tiniest frisson of something that she might have identified as fear if she hadn't been looking at one of her closest friends. But the response distracted her before she could give it more thought. "Perhaps not so different. Intense emotions are something we're all prey to, to some degree or another. Jesse's just never really learned how to separate himself from them when he probably should.
"I doubt he's ever really felt he needed to."
Until now.
Either one of them could have said it but neither did as they lapsed into silence, both lost in their own thoughts again.
"When did you last eat?"
The question took Shalimar by surprise, but her stomach chose that moment to remind her loudly it had indeed been too long. 'I hope he's all right out there,' she thought as she allowed Emma to chivvy her towards the kitchen.
**
The huge orange disc of the sun settled slowly into the waiting embrace of the western horizon, the jagged teeth of the distant mountains nibbling away at it even as Jesse pulled the motorbike to the side of the road and raised his helmet visor to watch. Behind him, spreading out at the foot of the hill he'd just climbed, lay the first stop on his journey to a new life. Sadly he'd realised only too quickly that it wasn't to be the last. The town, home to all those happy people he'd envied from afar, couldn't offer him anything more than fleeting refuge.
Somewhere out there, he told himself firmly, looking out over the landscape tinged red by the sun's dying rays. Somewhere there had to be a place for him, a place he could belong, be accepted as the person he knew he needed to be to survive. A place he could find peace. All he needed to do was keep moving, keep looking until he found it.
However long it took.
"Which will be forever unless you get started," he murmured reprovingly to himself as he revved the engine, before dropping the bike into gear and pulling away with a screech of rubber.
A thought occurred to him, though - wasn't it always the hero that rode off into the sunset? And instinctively he took the next side road that presented itself, turning his course away from the slow-dimming golden light towards the gathering darkness filling the valley below. A far more fitting environment in which for him to continue his search...
****
TBC