Once again I find myself apologising for leaving you all hanging so long. But schoolwork and Vines gigs have kept me away from my computer. I'm gonna try and rectify that tonight by attempting to finish the story, in rough atleast. And here, to keep you all from wondering too much about the fates of the Mutant X team I have uploaded chapter 12. I appreciate all the reviews I've received so far and I would be really happy if you would all take the time to review again, mostly just because I'm really kinda proud of this chapter. Its all about the emotions with a little bit of action so I hope you enjoy and then there's the penultimate chapter and then the finale of this story so please bare with me...I only take so long because I want it to be good.

Her eyes shot open as a click sounded in the furthest recesses of her mind. She heard it as if it came at her through a mist or a fog, the noise dulled because of the obstacle. As her eyes focused and became accustomed to the harsh natural light which flooded in she saw the floor. Her head was hanging at an angle and she watched as bits of dirt, tiny rocks and the occasional twig blew across her eyeline in the light breeze. Eventually she got together the strength to raise her head from the mildly uncomfortable position in which it was stationed. She looked around her, her mind taking a while to process the most obvious of things. Beyond Jesse's shoulder Handon was standing, looking around him with a barely hidden expression of terror on his normally so calm face. Beyond him stood Shalimar, looking a little the worse for wear and Brennan standing next to her, looking protective as per usual, his hair a little spikier than he had styled it that morning.

'Halle,' Lexa whispered imperceptibly as she took in the face of the fourth person. She looked tired but happier than she had ever been when she had been working for the Dominion. Running away had done her good. Lexa didn't have the energy or the breath to say anything more or anything louder.

Her eyes moved slowly towards the one face she had been hoping to avoid more than anything else. Charles Handon she could handle but there was too much between her and Jesse for her to view him in the same way. Any guy who beat her up would usually be met with disdain because he hadn't picked on someone his own size. But she couldn't hate Jesse, she found it extremely difficult to even dislike him. And it wasn't just his personality, it was the way he had helped her find hers that really made her love him.

Eventually she got together the courage to look into the blue eyes she was so scared of. They looked back at her with compassion and guilt. She smiled and felt tears well up in the bottom of her eyes as she recognised Jesse, her Jesse. She leaned forward and pressed her lips against his, comforting in his warmth. As she pulled away she felt one of his hands let go of her arm and the finger of his thumb wiped away the slow trickling teardrop which had been making its way down her pale cheek. She leaned her face into the palm of his hand and closed her eyes, feeling her strength under the sudden change of odds flow back into her body.

'I'm sorry,' he said quietly, the rest of the world fading into silence.

'Me too,' she replied, thinking of the bruise on Jesse's back from where he had landed and the small pinpoint scar which would probably remain on his stomach, both of them serving as constant reminders of what had happened.

'Halle.'

They both turned at the sound of the loud, angry voice which broke into their own personal dimension. Charles was red in the face, his normally cool demeanor falling away into the ether. Lexa knew why he was so pissed off. All his life he had tried to keep the people around him down. It was one of the ways in which the Dominion had exerted pressure on Halle. They told Charles to keep her under his thumb and he was only too happy. Halle couldn't refuse her big brother anything and she had caved under his constant nagging and lecturing, and the occasional beating. Lexa had known what had been going on and at every step she had tried to curve his power mad ways but he was, by that time too far gone.

In return for keeping silent and allowing Charles to get away with the long term torture of his little sister Lexa had helped Halle escape. She had felt that it was her duty to do such a thing, having caused her so much pain, even if it was indirectly. She had hoped to free Halle from the clutches of the Dominion. She felt like she had failed but the look on Halle's face at that point in time told her that she wouldn't feel that way for much longer. She looked angry, beyond angry. And she looked strong, she looked like, for once she had the power.

Shalimar leant closer into Brennan for support. Ever since she had entered back into her own world she had been hit sporadically by the urgent desire to either sit down, vomit, or sit down and then vomit. She guessed it would take her a while to feel like herself again, to feel like she should be in her own skin and that she wasn't trespassing in someone else's body. She felt Brennan's slow, almost deliberate breathing against her back. It was like he was counting when to breath in and when to exhale in seconds, every breath taking a certain amount of time. It was reassuring and she slowly felt the bile which had been threatening to rise into her throat settle in her stomach. She wondered if he would truly forgive her for everything she had done. It wasn't that she was feeling any more than the obligatory amount of guilt at having attempted to screw over a lot of people and beat her boyfriend up, because she knew it hadn't been her fault. It had been Halle controlling what she saw and how she saw it, and it had been Handon controlling her, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she could have fought it, that she should have fought it.

She grimaced at the memory of what she had done to Lexa as she stared across the gravel at the now blue and purple bruise which had settled on her cheek. The memory was fuzzy and that creeped Shalimar out more than anything else. Not only had she been so caught up that she had hurt Lexa that much but the fact that she now couldn't remember it all exactly. Shalimar relied on her memories to fuel her actions, and normally her brain was pretty accurate. It freaked her out that she could forget something so momentous. She didn't want to question her past but she couldn't help it.

A bright flare of light brought her crashing back into the real world, away from her thoughts. It appeared that while she had been caught in a reverie Handon had become ever so slightly pissed off with all the people around him and he had started taking that frustration out on people's eyes. Shalimar could tell that everyone else was stunned by it but her eyesight was still perfectly fine. Her feral abilities kicked in and it was like she was on auto pilot. She knew she should leave it to Halle and Lexa to finish off what had begun years before but there was no way Handon was getting off without a couple of punches from her.

She walked forward, stealthily, trying to stay out of Handon's direct line of vision. She walked up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder, preferring to drop her stealth act for an all out brawl any day.

He spun round to face her and she smiled broadly before slamming her fist into his nose. She heard the crunch that accompanied the movement and felt her muscles loosen almost instantly as the exertion of the movement woke her body up a little.

Handon buried his face in his hands, a groan issuing from deep in his throat and Shalimar took the chance to kick him while he was almost down. She dug her knee into his chest and he dropped to the floor, his hands flying to the area with new pain revealing his bloodied face.

She felt a certain sense of satisfaction as she saw her torturer lying prone on the ground. She didn't pity the people who used new mutants as target practice and she certainly didn't sympathise with those who used family. She had been through quite enough of that already and didn't want to see others living the same scenario.

Brennan smiled with pride as he heard the sound of Shalimar's fist smashing Handon's nose into the next continent. He still couldn't see clearly but the noise rang out in his ears which had adapted slightly with his new found blindness. Gradually the world came back into focus. White became shadows, the shadows became clearer and eventually colour returned. Brennan looked around him. Everyone else, excluding Shalimar looked like they were just waking up, all of them rubbing their eyes and blinking a lot. Handon was lying on the floor, looking like he wanted to be somewhere else fast.

Brennan reached out and took Shalimar's hand in his own, pulling her back from Handon slightly. They both knew the importance of allowing Halle to finish the job. She needed the finality of doing it herself, she needed to get closure but Brennan, more so than anyone knew how Shalimar was capable of losing herself in the moment, getting caught up in the fight.

He felt the warmth of her skin against his own and felt her return the pressure he had placed on her hand with a gentle squeeze. He couldn't believe they still hadn't told Lexa and Jesse about their current situation. It felt a little odd that they knew nothing. If Emma had been around the secret would have been out within a matter of seconds but back then Brennan had hid his feelings for Shalimar. It was ironic that now he didn't have to tell anyone he desperately wanted them to know. He pulled Shalimar towards him and she stepped back, allowing him to lead her but keeping her eyes on Handon as he pushed himself off the ground and dusted his expensive, flashy suit off, the dust and grains of dirt forming a cloud around him.

Brennan saw Handon's look directed straight at Shalimar, and he sensed that she wasn't planning on backing down. Brennan's glance flicked downwards towards Handon's hand. He was flicking light in and out of it, clearly getting ready to release a flash or two straight at Shalimar. Brennan raised the hand which didn't have a tight hold on Shalimar's and opened it. Within seconds it was full of blue electricity, flickering and blazing across Brennan's skin. He saw the fear in Handon's eyes as he realised he was outnumbered and he backed down, stepping back a short way, his gaze now fixed on the sparks.

Jesse watched the proceedings, his arm around Lexa's body. She was still shaking slightly from his own confrontation with her and he knew she needed the support at that moment but he couldn't help wishing that Shalimar wasn't the only one seeing some action. He would have loved to mass his fist and slam it straight into Handon's skull but he knew he wasn't quite capable of killing the man. No matter what he had done to himself and the rest of Mutant X Jesse could not force himself to murder someone, even one as nasty as Charles.

Jesse had always figured that that was what made him the weakest person in Mutant X. His inability to close himself off from the more compassionate side of his personality so he could just concentrate on kicking ass had always been a downside to him, or atleast that was what he thought. But gradually, over a long amount of time he had come to realise that they all dealt with their own humanity in the face of such violence in their own way. Shalimar was equally as compassionate as he was, maybe even more so but due to her feral DNA she couldn't hide it nearly as well as he could. The thing about Shalimar was that she had a whole different side to her, one she could hide behind. There was feral Shalimar and human Shalimar and although they had done a pretty good job of merging together there was still an aspect of separation. Brennan did the most normal guy stuff to get over it. He went out to bars and picked up women (not so much recently but Jesse guessed that he would get an explanation about that when Brennan and Shalimar were ready to give it to him), he fought holograms; and he did some not so normal guy stuff like reading poetry. All of them were ways of releasing the tension which managed to build up during a day, tension which built up through Brennan's day job. Jesse smiled as he thought about Lexa's ability to deny that anything was going on. She could feel everything but she blocked herself off from it, hid herself behind thick walls and refused to break them down until she was sure there would be something on the other side which appealed to her. He was gonna have to help her with that one. And Jesse, he slept and ate and played computer games because they were the most normal aspects of his extraordinary life.

So for now Jesse was happy to stand and watch as everyone else finished off the guy that Jesse couldn't feel sympathy for but couldn't hate either.

Halle stepped forward, out from behind the shadow of Brennan. She looked at Charles her eyes filled with a mix of emotions, many of which he couldn't decipher as he looked back at her. There was anger and hatred, those were obvious in the clenched fists which she held at her sides. How dare he think that he was more powerful than she was? How dare he live under the impression that he could control her, or that he had the right to? But there was something beyond that, something which distinctly resembled pity and love. She stared straight back at him. His inability to read her had been what tore them apart. She frustrated and puzzled him and that had made him hate her, over time atleast. He had made her suffer by keeping her with the Dominion and then dragging her back when she escaped. She didn't want to kill him but if it came down to the simple choice of her or him then she wasn't going to agonise over the decision. He had put her through enough pain, physical and mental over the years and if she let him live he would do it again. Charles had always been egotistical about his abilities and having himself beaten in a fight by her would lead him to find her again. He would search the underground until he discovered where she was hiding and he would hurt her, he would make her suffer pain which she didn't think possible.

Two words kept on floating around in her head: simple choice. She knew it should have been that way. She knew that it should have been a decision which she didn't even have to think about, not for a second but he was her brother, he was the one link she had in the world and she was about to destroy it. He may not have been a great person, to her or anyone else but she wasn't like him, she still had some sense of what humanity was.