"Jesse!" Shalimar screamed, already moving towards the prone body on the floor.
Brennan caught her arm. "I'll take care of him, run the test!"
"Brennan," she protested, starting to fight him.
He gave her a small zap to get her attention. When she looked up at him, he drilled his gaze to hers. "Run the test. It's what Jesse told us to do. I'll take care of him."
As Shalimar turned back toward the console, it emitted a steady high-pitched tone. "Brennan," she called out. "His heart's stopped!"
"Just run the test. I've got it." Brennan circled his hands together, creating a tesla coil. He gave Jesse a quick sharp shock. The unconscious man's body rocked, but the incessant whine of the biorhythms monitor continued. "Come on, brother," he said as he gave a larger and longer jolt. This time, when the electrical arcing stopped, the whine did too.
"Heart rate 65. Blood pressure normal. His breathing's still shallow, but he's back." Shalimar sighed in relief.
"Good." Brennan grunted as he lifted Jesse's dead weight onto the second biobed. Once settled, he gave Jesse's shoulder a pat. "When you wake up, I'm going to kill you for scaring us like that," he said to the molecular, whose body had now fallen into the comfortable rhythms of sleep. He moved to Shalimar's side. "Did it work?"
"Hold on. Scanning…now." They looked over their shoulders to see parallel golden rays of light run over Lexa's body once, twice, three times. When it stopped, they looked back to the computer. "Analyzing….please wait," the computer screen read.
After a few seconds, torrents of data poured onto the screen. Shalimar scanned the data, searching for the points Lexa had told her to watch for. When she saw the results, she reached up and flung her arms around Brennan's neck. "It worked," she said gleefully. "It worked and they're both okay."
Brennan hugged her back, then looked up when he heard a rustling. Lexa was waking up.
"Ohhh….," she groaned. "What – Jesse?" Lexa's hand reached out while her head rocked side to side. Her eyes opened slowly, finally focusing on Jesse' still form next to her. "Jesse!" she cried meekly, her body reaching out despite its lack of energy.
"Shh... It's okay. He's okay now. He's just sleeping."
Reassured, Lexa relaxed in the bed. "Did it work?"
"Like a charm. Every indicator gave us the result we wanted. I don't know exactly what they mean, but it worked!"
"Good."
Lexa gave as bright a smile as she could muster. Then she let herself
be pulled back into a healing sleep. Before her eyes closed, though,
she looked over to Jesse. She thanked God, and any other deity that
existed, for Jesse, the man she loved, the man who had saved her and
the man who had given them all hope.
.
.
Nine hours later, a now awake and alert Lexa was stationed at Jesse's bedside. She had tried doing some more work on decoding the information Kellogg had given them, but hadn't been able to focus. Her sole intent at the present time was waiting for Jesse's eyes to open, so she could see his haunting blue orbs once again. When had she become such a softie, she wondered as she laced her fingers through his. Sometime in the last few weeks, Jesse had made his way into her heart and now she couldn't imagine her life without him.
When he finally stirred, Lexa called out to Brennan, Shalimar, and Katie who had been waiting and napping in the main room. They entered just as Jesse's eyes opened to meet Lexa's.
"Hello," he whispered.
Lexa smiled, her eyes shining with relief. "Hi, yourself. It worked.
He smiled. He stretched a bit to invigorate his muscles, then reached down to flip the switch on the side of the bed to raise the back so he could sit up. "Can I see the results?"
Shalimar handed him one of the small laptops. He scanned through the information.
"Hey, you had us scared there for awhile," Shalimar said. "Did you know that something like that might happen?"
Jesse nodded. "I knew there was a risk, but I honestly didn't think it would take that long. The good news is that I was able to repair the structure just by repairing the stem cells in the bone marrow. It will take a few days for all the cells in the body to regenerate themselves, but then Lexa will be completely cured. The bad news is that, since Lexa was so close to her expiry date, there was a lot of damage to repair. That's why it took so long. It also required a lot of energy. Hence the passing out."
"And the heart stopping?" Shalimar asked quietly.
Jesse looked up sharply, blinking in confusion. Then he looked back to the laptop at the records for his own status during the procedure. "Hmm. Note to self. Don't use that energy source. I'll be more careful next time."
"Next time?"
"Yup. You and Shalimar. You're next. It'll be easier and not take so long since your expiry dates aren't for a while."
"Yeah, we saw the file. But you're not touching us until you are 100% better, got it?" Shalimar said in a mothering tone.
"Got you completely. But I'm 100% now. All I needed was some sleep. Plus, the sooner I do it, the less time and energy it takes. Every day counts, so the sooner the better. By the way, what time is it?"
"It's almost 10:00. But still, I don't think you should try anything for at least a couple days." Brennan gave his shoulder a squeeze.
Jesse sighed. "Fine. But two days from now, I want one of you in here. So, what else is new?"
He asked the question to get the attention off himself, attention he wasn't comfortable with. Lexa's attention, though, he could deal with. He enjoyed the feeling of her hand in his. He flexed his fingers in hers so he could feel more of her.
"Well," Katie said. "The lawyer I saw gave me a whole new box of legal papers to go through."
They
all chuckled at this. "All the technology in the world," Lexa said.
"And they still can't figure out a way to stop the paperwork."
.
.
Three hours later, after everyone had assured themselves that Jesse and Lexa were okay, the four mutants and Katie were in their beds, fast asleep after an emotionally tumultuous day. Well, all were asleep except one. In Lexa's room, Jesse was laying on his back, wide awake. His nine hour 'nap' had made him restless, and he was anxious to start his own efforts to find Adam. Now that Jesse had found a way to fix the genetic structures of the other members of Mutant X, his stress level had gone down significantly. But, he needed Adam to help him find a different cure for all the other mutants; there were far too many and not enough time for Jesse to heal them all.
Jesse slowly disentangled himself from Lexa's arms. They still hadn't taken the next step – Lexa had been tired and the time wasn't right – but still felt the need to be physically close to each other. He dropped a kiss on her temple before pulling on his pants and a shirt and leaving the room.
He walked down the hall, heading for Shalimar's room too look for Brennan. He stopped, however, at the main room when he peeked in and saw Brennan sleeping on the long sofa. Jesse gave a soft smile. He had the suspicion that this was one of the few, if only, times that Brennan and Shalimar had not slept in the same bed since that night after Dominion headquarters was destroyed. He had forgotten that Brennan had fallen asleep there earlier, and wouldn't wake up. Not even Shalimar was motivated enough to drag him to a bed, so they had left him there.
Jesse moved silently into the room and knelt on the floor beside the couch. "Sorry about this, Brennan," he said, his voice so low that he could barely hear it himself. "But you're next, and the sooner the better." The side of his mouth ticked up in a half smile. "Plus, I can't sleep, and this will put me out like the proverbial light." Jesse lightly placed his hands on Brennan's hip, pushing the shirt out of the way so he could have skin to skin contact, which made the process easier. Jesse took a few deep breaths and began to heal the sleeping elemental.
Brennan woke from a bad dream to intense shooting pains in his hip and flashes of red light on the other side of his eyes. Opening them, he saw Jesse, whose body was rapidly going between phasing and massing. Having seen it twelve hours before, Brennan knew exactly what Jesse was doing, despite the fact that the others had wanted him to wait a few days. Brennan managed to grit his teeth during the pain, waiting for Jesse to finish his work. A few moments later, Jesse slumped to the floor. Brennan reached down and checked the younger man's pulse and breathing. Both were steady and strong. Brennan reached down to the other end of the couch and grabbed the other arm cushion. He lifted Jesse's head and placed the pillow underneath, then rolled Jesse onto his back so he wouldn't wake up needing a chiropractor. "That's all you're gonna get, man," Brennan said to the now slumbering Jesse. Brennan was grateful for what Jesse had just done, but knew that it could have waited a couple days. "You disobeyed orders. Just for that, I'm not dragging you back to Lexa's room. Actually, I don't think she'd like to know that you disobeyed orders either. So consider yourself lucky." Brennan rolled over on the couch, punched the arm cushion he was using for a pillow, and went back to sleep, this time dreaming of the future with a light heart.