Four


"If you think I'm gonna catch you when you fall
You don't know me, you don't know me at all..."


The sound of male voices locked in quiet but nonetheless combative conversation diverted Shalimar from her nocturnal roaming. Faced with yet another night when sleep had refused to come peacefully, she'd finally given up the struggle and reverted to her primal nature, embracing the undemanding darkness as an opportunity to get her fragmenting thoughts in order so that she might finally get some rest. But it seemed she wasn't the only one up and about, and curiosity drew her padding to hover by the door to Adam's office.

What she heard, though, was enough to drive all thoughts of clandestine eavesdropping from her mind and send her bursting into the room. Her entrance had the desired effect - two pairs of dark brown eyes swivelled her way, widening in varying degrees of surprise. But it was only one of them in which she fancied she could also see guilt lurking and she advanced on their owner.

"What are you doing?" she demanded of Brennan, oddly pleased to see his discomfort increase a little. "I told you I'd deal with it, and I will - my way. It's between me and Jesse - it doesn't concern you!"

His face coloured slightly at that, but true to form he stood his ground. "Well, you know, I'm sorry but I think it does. It concerns all of us, and I got tired of waiting for you to see that, to come clean on what happened. Adam needs to know just how close you came out there because of Jesse. He's a liability, Shal, and I don't know that we should be trying to find him, bring him back, if things are just going to go down the same way the next time."

"Brennan," Adam warned softly, seeing the way Shalimar stiffened at the elemental's words, but the younger man was already straightening from his perch on the edge of the desk and moving past her on his way to the door.

"What? You think you can come out with something like that, and just walk away?" Hackles rising, the feral spun round to glare after him and, though there was a moment when they all thought he was going to just keep walking, he slowed and half turned to look at her again.

"Hey, last time I checked this was still the land of free speech. But I'm done anyway." He made to leave, but paused once more to say seriously, "Think about it, OK?" before he finally disappeared from sight.

"Is he right?" Adam murmured, his words halting Shalimar's instinctive move to follow and continue the debate.

"About what?" she asked bitterly, folding her arms defensively across her chest to hide clenching fists as she turned slowly back. "That it's not worth trying to find Jesse? That we should just abandon him out there because he's not behaving acceptably enough for us?"

"No, of course not." He shook his head firmly, his expression conveying his sadness she could even think that, and he watched her for a few seconds to be sure she accepted his words before he asked softly, "What happened on that last job? Between you and Jesse?"

Shalimar blinked in confusion. "You already heard it," she answered curtly, jerking her head towards the door.

Adam sat back in his chair, gaze level. "No, Brennan told me what he thought he saw. But he admitted he was pretty busy getting himself out of trouble. So I want to hear it from you." When she made no immediate response, seemingly lost in introspection, he prompted gently, "He says Jesse froze, that he's too frightened to use his powers any more, whatever the circumstances. And if that's the case I'd have to agree that he'd be a danger to himself and the rest of you on a mission."

She sighed, the exhalation apparently draining sufficient tension from her body to allow her to drop into the seat opposite him. "No, I wouldn't say he froze exactly. I think he made a choice. It just wasn't the choice I wanted or expected. This whole thing has changed him, Adam, in ways I don't think any of us really anticipated. And I hate it. I hate what it's made him become, and I hate that we didn't do enough to stop it."

She fell silent again, only looking up at Adam's persistent, "So... what happened?"

A deep breath, and...

*

So, here they all are again, indulging in some major breaking and entering in the name of truth and justice.

He doesn't want to be here - they can all see that, had seen it in his set expression when Adam had insisted he go along. But she'd hoped - still did - that being out on the street again, part of the team, facing a common cause, would remind him of who he was and what was important to him. Because she's been more than a little disturbed by the changes she's seen in him in the past few days.

It had been small things at first, things she probably wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been for the fact he'd suddenly stopped talking about ''the thing in the alley', as they euphemistically came to call it. In place of that had appeared a steely indifference, punctuated by sharp-edged comments that were similar enough to his normal teasing digs - mostly at Brennan's expense, it had to be said - to make her think twice about calling him on them. But the more she'd thought about it, the more she realised that the barbs now were real. And that was too far removed from the Jesse she knew and loved to be overlooked.

It was like he didn't care any more, not about any of them, not about anyone - and he wasn't bothered who knew it. Yet another unacceptable state of affairs as far as she was concerned.

She'd tried the gentle approach, offering understanding and warmth in an attempt to melt the ice she could see forming round his heart. When that failed she'd tried goading him, hoping to provoke him into an emotional outburst sufficient to break the dam she imagined holding his true feelings in check and shake him back to normal again. But nothing seemed capable of doing that.

In exasperation, she'd cornered him just before they'd left, demanding, "What's happened to you, Jess? How have you come to this?

"You have to ask?" The familiar blue eyes were wide and incredulous, soul-deep hurt clearly visible for a brief moment before he looked away. "Then there's nothing more to say."

And true to his word, he hasn't uttered a syllable since they left home, going silently and a touch sullenly at Brennan's direction to take care of his part of the mission - retrieving encoded records from the heavily firewalled computer systems housed here in this misleadingly run-down warehouse they've sneaked their way into - while the others run interference should the need arise. And Shalimar finds herself more than usually keen that it should, looking for some outlet for her anxiety-turned-irritation at what she sees as Jesse's increasingly perplexing conduct.

A sudden noise reverberates tinnily from a distant part of the apparently deserted building and she takes it as an invitation, letting the others' warnings to wait and allow the opposition to come to them dissipate in her wake. Using her enhanced senses to seek out her prey, she soon finds herself locked in fierce combat, frustrations lost in the singing of blood warmed by the heat of battle, scything her way through their ranks and leaving them scattered on the dusty floor behind her.

Another group of gun-toting thugs appears from a side door and without conscious thought she turns their way, her feral instincts taking control as she meets them head on. She's aware peripherally of the other pockets of conflict taking place, Brennan mixing blue-hot blasts with cold hard fists and flying feet, Emma despatching those who elude them both with bursts of emotion they're ill-prepared to deal with.

Jesse's terse 'Got it,' through their com-links pre-empts his re-appearance from the back room he's been working in, pausing as he emerges to sweep the scene with empty eyes.

"Let's get out of here!" growls Brennan, his words punctuated by grunts of effort as he takes care of remaining business. She'd like to comply, but a rapid if somewhat belated assessment of her situation only brings her to the sudden realisation that, in her enthusiasm for the fray, she's allowed her attackers to box her into a blind corner, to cut her off from the rest of her team and the way out.

As they close in on her she looks helplessly around for an escape route. But the only obvious egress is through the thick panes of safety glass set into one wall, and they prove too resistant even for her feral strength to break.

But there's still no need to panic because through the glass she can see Jesse hovering on the other side of the room beyond. And even at that distance she knows he's aware of her predicament, knows that in a few seconds he'll have crossed the space separating them and created a doorway for her to slip through to safety, like he's done so many times before, like he always will...

Except that, apart from what could have been the beginnings of an abruptly halted step forward, he doesn't move. Narrowing her focus in a way she can ill afford given the proximity of her captors she can see some kind of silent battle raging in him, and she realises with sickening clarity - even before he turns away - that this time it's different.

Hands grab her, attempting to drag her God knows where, and although she fights back tooth and claw she knows it's little more than a delaying tactic. Her scream of impotent fury echoes around the room, almost drowning out Brennan's shouted warning from the far side of the window. He fires up a sustained lightning bolt that disintegrates the glass a split second after she's dropped down below the level of the sill, its force catapulting those of the bad guys who weren't quick enough to follow suit back into a tumbled heap against the far wall. Then she's up and running, vaulting through the still smouldering hole and sprinting for freedom with the elemental pounding alongside.

"Son of a bitch!" she hears him cursing behind her as they burst out of the building to see the others ahead, Jesse already racing up the Helix's ramp while Emma moves more slowly behind, pausing to look back anxiously as she does so. Their welcome appearance, though, gives her permission to turn and follow him, her team mates hot on her heels.

In seconds they're all on board, but it's not until the urgent need to get the plane airborne and out of range of small arms fire from the surviving security men has passed that there's time for reaction to set in. Bewildered hurt mutates to anger too quickly to be easily controlled, but for once she doesn't just let it loose unthinkingly, indiscriminately. Something tells her that road leads to a future she won't relish, so with an effort she contains it.

She doesn't need Emma's telempathic abilities, though, to know Brennan's about to explode; she can feel the indignant outrage on her behalf emanating in waves from him. But she's never needed him to fight her battles for her and this is no different. She speaks his name quietly, shaking her head in mute warning when he glances back at her from his seat next to Jesse, and though she can see from his raised eyebrows he doesn't understand he does grudgingly subside into simmering silence.

It won't last, she knows that. And she's not sure she wants it to, or how long she's going to be able to restrain her own aggrieved rage before it demands an outlet. She just knows that now is not the time, not with so many distractions and certainly not with the others listening in.

This has become too personal.

*

But even later, back at Sanctuary, she hadn't trusted herself to talk to Jesse, frightened that she'd lash out, do something she might regret in her anger and deep sense of betrayal. Now, though, she realised that she'd been so mad at him she'd stopped asking herself why. Why he would behave like that. Why, of all people, he would abandon her.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Adam asked softly. "When you got back? Or if not then, when you found out he'd left?"

She shrugged. "I was going to. But it didn't seem important when it came down to it. Not when he'd already gone. And anyway, like I said, it was between him and me."

"Not if it affects the team - Brennan was right about that."

"I don't give a damn about the team, Adam!" She thumped a fist down on the desk in emphasis as she came smoothly to her feet, and started to pace back and forward. "Just Jesse. What can he have been going through, that would make him choose to turn his back on someone in trouble? On me? He's always cared more about helping others than himself - it's what brought him to Mutant X in the first place."

"As you said, he's obviously made some new choices."

Stopping in front of him, she leant in to pin him with a steely look. "Yes, and you know what? That's our fault. We all told him he should let it go, find a way to get over it. Well, if this is how he's decided to do it, I'd rather he went on grieving forever. At least that way he'd be someone I recognise, because right now I have no idea who he is!"

Adam nodded. "Right. So what we need to do is find him, get him to come back here so we can help him work it through properly."

"Oh, so *now* you want to help him. Now when it could be too late! Why weren't you there for him before, when it mattered, instead of locking yourself away with those damn scientists? You know he's always looked to you for guidance, sought your approval. You could have made the difference for him."

He sighed, shifting a little uncomfortably under the intensity of her stare. "What do you want me to say? I misread the situation - misread him. I thought that you, the ones who were with him when it happened, would be able to help him better than me. I didn't realise the whole incident would affect him so badly, that he'd find it so hard to come to terms with, otherwise of course I'd have got more involved, done more to get to the root of the problem."

"But he came to you, I know he did," she protested. "Couldn't you see how he was hurting?"

"I could see he was struggling with what he'd been through, yes. But he didn't seem to be asking for my advice. I thought he was just getting things off his chest, using me as a sounding board while he worked it all out for himself - he's always been so tenacious when it comes to trying to understand how and why things happen, good and bad. So determined to find his own answers. This didn't appear to be any different."

"Well, it was. So way more different, and if you'd been paying attention to us like you should have, instead of that stupid isotope project, you'd have known this wasn't something he was going get through on his own."

The accusation stung, for all that it was mostly true, and Adam was pushed to retaliate. "Why? You didn't. You've already said you all just told him to get over it."

Shalimar's eyes flashed dangerously. "But we were too close to it! We saw it happen, needed to find our own ways of dealing with it too. You don't forget something like that in a hurry. But you could have brought some objectivity to it all, helped put it into perspective."

Adam sighed and looked up at her sadly. "OK. I admit I was at fault. But what's done is done, and it doesn't change the fact that Jesse's actions, whatever his reasons, just demonstrate how far he's gone down this new path of his. And we may have to accept that we're never going to get him back."

"No!!" Her response was immediate and vehement. "I can't believe you'd be prepared to let him go - because I won't. Whatever Brennan wants us to think, Jesse is still part of this team, and I'm damn well going to make sure he stays that way!"

And with that she was gone, leaving Adam to mull over her words in pensive solitude.


****


Shooting bolt upright into the disorienting and claustrophobic darkness of another cheap motel room, the fading echoes of his own wordless cries still ringing in his ears, Jesse gulped down ragged breaths as he scrabbled for the light switch. Harsh brightness from the single unshaded bulb drove away the shadows but couldn't do anything to diminish the images from his nightmare running roughshod through his head.

A familiar scenario - in fact, the very thing he'd replayed over and over again in his mind during those long days and nights right after it happened, as if that would somehow change the outcome. It never did. At least, not during his waking hours.

But it seemed that now, in his dreams, things really were turning out differently. Only the end result was equally as horrifying as the original.

It had all begun the same; the same alley, the same cowering scientists, the same thugs. The same sense of satisfaction dissolving to horror at the sight of the hand dangling limply from the confines of the wall. But this time, when he phased the bricks again, it was Shalimar who fell into his waiting arms, Shalimar who lay blue-lipped and unmoving on the ground. And when he looked around desperately for someone to help him, someone who could bring her back to life again, all he'd seen was Daisy standing staring at him, accusing him, condemning him...

With a groan he drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, letting his head droop onto their support as he rocked miserably backwards and forwards, willing his heart to stop hammering in his chest. This couldn't be happening - not when he'd promised himself it was over and done, that he was never going to think about it again.

But it looked like promises weren't going to be enough, and right at that moment he didn't know if he had the strength to find a better way. One thing was for certain, though - sleep was pretty much off the agenda until he did.

With a sigh he unfolded himself and reached for the TV remote. It was going to be a long night.


****

TBC