If I Never Knew You

"Logan?" the tentative whisper sounded loud in the quiet room.

Logan rolled over and looked at his midnight visitor. He'd heard the footsteps outside his room, of course; he remained alert even when he slept. And he'd gotten used to waking up for the owner of this particular set of steps. "Hey, Jubes." He could smell her tears from where he lay in his bed across the room.

"I…I had another bad dream." She sniffed softly and tried to scrub away her tears. "Please…can I…"

He said nothing, just pulled the corner of the bedcovers up and scooted over on his bed to make room for her. She entered his room, closed the door, and crept timidly into the bed next to him, nestling close to his ribs. Now, safe in his arms, she gave vent to the sobs that had threatened her small body, and he held her close, letting her cry. "Ssh," he whispered into her ear, stroking her tangled, dark hair. "Easy. It's all right, you're home, you're here with us, you're safe. Nothin's gonna hurt ya. Go ahead, darlin'. Cry it out. It's okay."

"I was back…there…and he was there…he started…they did…it was awful…" He could barely make out more than a few words through her sobs, but he didn't make her repeat herself. Instead he held her, cuddled her, soothed her with his simple presence and warm, comforting bulk, and was just there for her, as she had been so many times in his past. Finally she sobbed herself into an exhausted sleep.

He lay for a long while in the dark, thinking, his heart aching. She had been through so much, his little girl; too much. No one as young as she was should have had to endure what she had. He was surprised she was still sane. "Ah, Jubes," he whispered into the darkness of his room. "I wish you'd never met us. Bastion wouldn't'a gotten ya, an' you'd'a been safe." Still thinking that, he slipped down into darkness.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep; but he was startled suddenly awake by a soft glow from the far corner of the room. He lifted the top half of his body from the bed, tensing, wary of an attack. Instead, in the center of that phosphorescent glow, he saw a familiar figure. "Gateway?"

The small figure nodded once.

"What are ya doin' in my room? Scat! Go away! Jubilee's sleepin', she's had a rough night, now ain't the time ta drag her off on one o' yer mysterious missions." The wizened little man didn't speak, just pointed at Logan. "Ya want me?" He started to ease Jubilee's head off his arm, but Gateway shook his head. With one hand, he trailed his hand across the glowing 'skin' of the glowing portal, and the glow cleared. Logan stared, mesmerized, as he saw Jubilee. But it wasn't the Jubilee who lay asleep in his arms now; this was a younger, skinnier Jubilee. Almost exactly the way she looked when he'd first seen her, in Australia's Outback…

This young Jubilee was zipping along a walkway in a mall, plainly fleeing from security cops who were pursuing her. Exactly as she had when the X-Men ha first encountered her. He waited for the intervention, for one of his team members to intercept Jubilee…

Except it never happened. Jubilee continued running, there was no intervention, and eventually she outran the fat, puffing security guards and disappeared out the side door of the mall with her booty; a shirt and a pair of jeans. He watched as she nipped out of the parking lot, mingled with the crowd out in the street, and finally disappeared down a dark alley, cast in shadow by tall buildings on either side. He watched as she pulled the tags off the clothes and exchanged her own ragged, filthy garments for the stolen ones, noting the thinness of her body, the knobby knees. She hadn't eaten well in a while.

The portal clouded over, and when it cleared again he saw her. Gateway was visible too, in the picture, and in front of them was a portal. The portal clearly showed through its opening the arid, dry land of the Outback, and Logan could see the X-Men's hidden base in the opening. This was the pivotal moment of her life, the moment when she had decided to step through, found herself in the Outback, and hidden in the X-Men's base, scavenging their supplies for food, and eventually rescuing Logan himself from the Reavers, who had crucified him.

But this Jubilee didn't step through. She hesitated, took a small step toward the glowing opening, then shook her head and ran away. Logan's heart skipped a beat. "Hey..that didn't happen!" he said. 'Ya got it wrong. She came through the portal an' rescued me…" He trailed off as Gateway shook his head. "You mean…in that reality, Jubes never met us? Yer givin' me the chance ta see what happens ta her if she never comes ta us?" An affirmative nod.

Logan raised an eyebrow. "An' the stuff she's suffering now never happened ta her? Bastion, the Church o' Humanity, they never happened ta her?" Another negative shake. Gateway didn't wait for Logan's reaction to that, but turned o the portal and drew back the shimmering veil, letting Logan look into what-might-have-been…

Jubilee's breath came in harsh, panted gasps as she pelted down the alley, away from the cops chasing her. She'd gotten overconfident, and taken a chance she shouldn't have taken. She'd gone into a supermarket with some money she had begged, and gone to buy something to eat. She had seen the candy bars sitting at the checkout counter, and the sugar called to her...it had been too long since she'd tasted something sweet. So she took one, slipping it into her pocket. And just as she was going out the door, the security guard had stepped out and tried to stop her. She'd run.

She continued running, cursing herself for getting caught. She clung to her food; dried meat, some small bread rolls, dried fruit, and the so-precious candy bar. With those in her arms, she couldn't run fast, and she cried in despair as the heavy hand of the security guard fell on her arm, preventing her from running anymore, keeping her from going anywhere…

The woman sitting across from her at the police station's table was sour-faced and apparently didn't like her job. She sat there, stiffly buttoned up, as she asked Jubilee questions about where she'd come from, who she was, which foster home she'd run away from, and other questions like that. Jubilee answered as briefly as she could, her attention focused on the cup of hot tea and the doughnut one kindly old police officer had given her. She ate ravenously, worn out from her exertion. Finally the woman sniffed disdainfully and left the room. Jubilee was too busy eating the food she had bought from the grocery store to pay attention.

Later she would wish she'd paid more attention, been more forthcoming with her answers. Because of her behavior, and the fact that they couldn't figure out which foster home she'd run away from, she was labeled a 'problem child' and sent to a juvenile offenders' facility. This was marginally better than the streets, but not much. True, she had a bed to sleep in and food to eat on a regular basis…but no one cared about her, and being young and small and a mutant, she was picked on constantly by the older, bigger girls at the facility. She was constantly limping about with bruises garnered from fights, and having her meals taken from her as a result of those fights. Several of the girls at that facility truly were disturbed, and one girl took a liking to Jubilee. Jubilee was then spared the fighting, but had to pay in the worst coin possible; her own body. So at the age of sixteen she lost her innocence to an eighteen year old girl with a sawed-off piece of broom handle.

Logan cringed as he saw the blood, heard Jubilee screaming in pain and misery as she was brutally torn open, her innocence shattered along with her virginity. "No," he whispered, instinctively tightening his grip around the sleeping girl beside him. "No, not Jubilee…" He looked at Gateway, his face stricken with horrified grief, and repeated, "Not Jubilee…"

Gateway mercifully drew a shimmering veil over the face of the portal, and when it cleared…

Jubilee huddled in the bus shelter, shivering, cold, unable to keep completely out of the rain. She'd been released from the juvenile detention facility several months ago, when she turned eighteen. They had given her the address of a halfway house, where she could sleep…but Catherine, the girl who had abused her, was there too, and Jubilee found herself staying away as much as possible from the place to avoid having to submit to Cathy's 'special attentions'.

"Hey," came a kind voice, and Jubilee looked up, to see a man standing in front of her, holding out his hand. "You look like you could use a hot meal and a safe place to sleep. Come with me." Jubilee slowly uncurled her cold, shivering body from the bus bench and followed the man numbly.

At first, it seemed like heaven. He taught her to be a thief, taught her to steal and pick pockets. She already had the beginnings of skills, learned while she was younger, so he just sharpened her abilities a bit. She went out and picked pockets and stole stuff, usually jewelry and other valuables from outdoor merchants, and in return he gave her a place to sleep and food to eat. He had a few other street kids wrking for him, doing the same thing; they were mostly boys though.

One night he came back from a bar early, roaring drunk. She'd had brushes with him when he was drunk before, so this wasn't new. What was new was that he yelled at her, told her she was worthless, and began to hit her. He beat her unconscious that night. The next morning he was apologetic, letting her stay in from her 'job' that day and sleep. But the night after that, he beat her badly, and then tried to force himself on her.

She killed him.

Not deliberately, no. She was still in pain from her terrible beating of the day before, and this fresh assault made her snap. She fought back, as she hadn't done the first time he'd beaten her, and used her mutant powers. Crazed with fear and terror, she brought her hands up and paffed him. He flew across her room, hitting the far wall and going through it like paper, and that had brought the top floor of the abandoned house they slept in down around their ears. Buried in the rubble and suffocating, she passed out. When she woke, she was in a hospital, with the wounds from her beatings being treated in a guarded, secure ward for prisoners. She was under arrest for murder.

It came out during her trial that she hadn't really killed him; a falling piece of timber had speared straight through him and pierced his heart, killing him instantly. Her public defender asked for leniency, given that she was so young, and signs of his abuse had been evident on her body when they found her. In fact, as she sat in the courtroom, she was still a mess. However she was a mutant, and it was exercising her powers that had brought about his death, indirectly. So she was sentenced to jail; six years. She was, at the time, nineteen; she would be twenty-five when she got out.

She'd already done time in the juvenile girls' correctional facility; she wasn't expecting adult jail to be any different. Aside from Catherine, who had abused her body, she hadn't had any trouble from the guards or any other inmates.

But prison was a shock. Being so small, with few fighting skills to defend herself, she found herself at the bottom of the prison hierarchy. And these people, in there with her, mostly deserved to be there; they were deranged individuals who took a cruel pleasure in sadistically torturing her young body. Jubilee could do nothing but try to endure, both the inmates' attentions and those of the guards, most of whom didn't want her body; they just wanted to hurt her for being a 'freak'. Her meals were taken away from her on imagined pretenses on a regular basis, and she was often sentenced to days, and weeks, of solitary confinement. Her hands were kept secured by handcuffs or straightjackets behind her; the guards and inmates being afraid she would use her powers on them. She was beaten, starved, forced to submit to the demands of some of the butch prisoners, and was in general miserable. She was also introduced to illegal drugs in prison, introduced to cigarettes and alcohol as well. She used them as an escape from her constant physical and mental pain.

She continued to use drugs once outside of prison. She had become hopelessly addicted to them, and at the halfway house she found a room at, the others had people coming and going all the time. She got a job as a night cashier for a local all-night fast food place, and used what little money she earned from there to keep herself strung out on drugs. Sometimes she would even steal from the cash till in order to buy her next fix; but she had to. She was desperate. She was twenty-six, and all she could see in front of her was the drugs that helped her combat her mental anguish. Gateway appeared to her several times while she was here, distressed at her slow spiral into personal destruction, but Jubilee was too deep in a drug-induced haze to care. She took to prowling the streets at night as a prostitute, turning tricks to get enough money for her drug habit. Despite her misery, she was still young enough to please, and she managed to make enough to keep her in her habit.

She always tried to clean up before a meeting with her parole officer, but one time, she slipped. The craving was sharp, and she was getting her needle out to shoot herself up when the parole officer came into her room at the halfway house. But instead of turning her in, he struck a deal with her. He would falsify the records, make it so that her drugs wouldn't appear on her record…if she consented to be his patsy when he wanted a quick poke. Terrified of going back to prison, she chose the lesser of two evils; she became his whore.

He took to coming by several nights a week; she would obediently meet him at the door. He would buckle a leather dog collar around her neck, and she would submit to whatever he wanted. He was heavily into S&M, and she soon sported a set of scars and welts that were impossible to hide. No one talked about it, though. They knew what deal she'd made with him, and the hard-faced, worldly woman who ran the halfway house thought that she deserved it, and said nothing.

Jubilee was only a few months away from her thirtieth birthday when she found out she was pregnant. But she didn't know who the father was. She suspected that the baby's was her parole officer's (even though her parole was long over, he had still come to see her…and she had continued to let him in) but since not all of her johns were careful, it could easily have bee one of them. Fearful of his reaction, she hid it from him, and didn't tell him.

But suddenly she realized that she was pregnant. She was going to have a child. A baby, who she could love and care for as she had never been cared for, whom she could love and be loved in return, a child who would depend on her for its very life. And that knowledge shocked her into action. She checked herself into a clinic, suffered through withdrawal and detox, went and registered for state-funded prenatal care, even found herself a job at a small diner. She poured her bottles down the drain, kept herself from frequenting her old hangouts where drugs and tricks could be found together, and managed to save up enough to get herself a small efficiency apartment away from her parole officer and some cheap furniture. She even splurged on a lovely little baby cradle she found at a yard sale, and got the man who ran the diner to sign for her to get a tiny, cheap used car. Then she bought a baby stroller and a carrier, and started learning to sew so she could make little pants and shirts, caps and booties. She had found out the baby was a boy, and planned on naming the child Logan. Mr. Logan was the name of the man who ran the diner, and who had signed for her car and was letting her pay for it out of her wages.

Logan couldn't have moved if he'd wanted to. His eyes were blurred with tears, but he couldn't look away. Jubilee…his little girl, his darling…if she had never met him, never met the X-Men, this was what her life would have been like; a constant cycle of pain, abuse, drugs and emptiness. The normal fate for most street kids, he knew that…but it somehow hadn't seemed as real as it did now. Things like this happened all the time…but Jubilee, thanks to the X-Men and Logan, had been spared all that. He remembered now the last thought he'd had before going to sleep; that she'd never met them, never went through Bastion's torture, never been crucified, never died. Well, after seeing what Gateway was showing him, he couldn't wish that anymore…

There was only a month till her delivery date, and she was waiting anxiously. Her discomfort was acute, she was exhausted and bloated all the time, and felt as though she were going to burst at any moment. There was a knock at her apartment door, and she heaved herself up to answer it. She was expecting it to be Logan, who, after the diner closed in the evening, had taken to bringing any edible leftovers to her apartment.

Instead it was her parole officer. He looked at first puzzled at her white face, then puzzlement turned to rage as he saw her swollen, obviously pregnant belly, and realized what must have happened. And his rage manifested itself in physical violence.

Jubilee, handicapped by her awkward body and fear for the life of her little boy, tried to placate him. When it became obvious he wasn't going to be placated, she simply curled up in a ball, tried to protect her belly with her arms, and endured the beating. Formerly, this display of passivity could cool his anger, but he was too far gone this time. He had brought a bag of his bondage paraphernalia with him, anticipating using them on her, and saw no reason why her current condition should postpone his plans. If he'd been a little less angry, a little less drunk, he would have thought better of it…but as it was, he had only one thought in his mind; strike out at Jubilee.

An hour later, one of Jubilee's neighbors called Logan, the diner's owner, about some strange sounds she was hearing from Jubilee's basement apartment. Mr. Logan left the diner unattended except for the cook and hurried out to her apartment. Finding the door unlocked, he pushed it open and entered. Jubilee lay on her small bed, her arms tied to the headboard, her ankles tied to the rails. She was unconscious and barely breathing, her body marked with what seemed like hundreds of bleeding cuts, and there was too much blood between her legs. He called 911, and followed the ambulance to the hospital.

Hours later, the doctor came out. He told the diner owner that they had tried everything they could, but the damage had been too extensive. The child had died, and Jubilee herself was on the brink of death.

"No," the harsh whisper was torn from Logan's throat. "No…she was so happy…how could that have happened to her…Oh, God…" His grasp on Jubilee's fingers tightened, as if to reassure himself she was still there, then his tear-blurred eyes returned to the portal, where a new image was unfolding…

Jubilee spent much of the next few months lying in bed and crying. She felt as though, for a brief moment, she'd had happiness in her reach, and her parole officer had snatched that away from her when her precious little baby had been taken form her. The diner owner had cleared away the shattered baby cradle, and quietly sold the car seat and stroller, but there was still the sight of the little clothes she'd so painstakingly sewn form bits of her own outgrown clothes. And she cried. Cried and cried and cried, as if she would never stop, clutching the little clothes to her aching breasts and mourning the infant she had lost, the happiness now denied her, the bleak years ahead of her. She had wanted to try again to have another one, but the hospital doctor told her that the damage was too extensive. The things her parole officer had done had torn her too badly inside to risk another pregnancy which would almost certainly end in her own death.

But life, such as it was for her now, had to go on. She continued her work at the diner, although her former friendly chatter and bright eyes now held a shadow of darkness behind them, a shadow that would never go away. Sensing this, they tipped her generously, sympathetically. But nothing could fill the hole in her soul.

The only thing she had now to look forward to now was revenge. Mr. Logan had pressed charges, and her former parole officer was now in jail awaiting trial. Anger propelled her into the courtroom. Anguish made her choke out her story to the silent courtroom and the judge. A desire to see justice done kept her on her feet until the guilty verdict was pronounced, whereupon she fell to the floor in a dead faint.

But revenge didn't fill the empty hole in her soul, and one night she went to a local bar and drowned her sorrows in a bottle. Though she cursed herself for it the next morning, she went there again the next night. And the next. And the next. Her old cravings returned, and soon she found herself falling back into the pit of misery she had briefly managed to climb out of. She walked the streets when she wasn't drinking, she cried herself to sleep still holding the little shirt she'd made with the words 'Mommy's Boy' stitched on it, and when she woke she went robotically back to work at the diner with dark shadows under her eyes and leaden footsteps. She had paid for her car, now, it was hers, but she sold it for money to buy her drugs and her liquor, and when that ran out she sold every stick of furniture in her apartment out of desperation. Only the bed remained, still stained with her baby's blood, and she started sleeping on the floor because she couldn't stand to sleep on it anymore. But she couldn't bring herself to steal from Mr. Logan, no matter how desperate she became. Something of her tattered pride still remained to her.

And one night, between the drugs and the alcohol, and her own emotional pain, she couldn't stand it anymore. She bought a bottle of sleeping pills from the drugstore, drank every single one of them down with a bottle of whiskey, then took the rest of her drug supply all at once. She lay down on her bed still clutching that tiny shirt to her chest, cried herself to sleep, and never woke again. When Logan dropped by later that day, as he'd started doing every day she wasn't working, he found her curled up stiff and cold on that bed, her hands still holding that shirt, dried tears on her face, and a small peaceful smile on her lips. Her tormented soul had finally found peace in death, and Mr. Logan firmly hoped she'd be reunited with her beloved child somewhere up there.

He didn't have a lot, but something compelled him to see that she had a funeral. He was helped by some of her patrons from the diner, who chipped in to help defray the expense, and there was a small but decent showing when she was buried one warm spring day. She was lowered into the ground still carrying that little shirt, and her headstone had her name, her birthdate, the date of her death, and the simple line, "Love redeems a lost soul."

Logan was on his knees beside the bed, tears streaming unashamedly down his face as he gripped her sleeping hand in his. "No…never…I'm glad we brought her here…she can't have lived like that, dear God…she didn't deserve a life like that…Bastion, the Church…that was preferable to seeing her live like that, die like that…" He hugged her to him, weeping hard, unable to let her go.

A deep, ancient voice filled his mind. Because of you, she was spared that. If she had stayed, that was what her life would have been like. She saw you, saw the X-Men…and something about you drew her to you. She loves you. Love can redeem a lost soul. Not only hers, but yours too. Remember.

"I will…" Logan said quietly, wiping away his tears, climbing into bed beside her, tucking her againsthis side tighter. "I will."

No, you won't, came that voice. You won't remember this when you awaken. But she loves you. Don't let that love slip away. The voice faded from his mind, the glow from the portal faded as Gateway stepped back through it, and the room was left in darkness…

Logan woke to the feel of sunlight on his face. He blinked his eyes, feeling the dried tear tracks on his face. "What the.." he rubbed at them. "Must have been one hell of a dream," he muttered to himself, shifting carefully so as not to wake the girl sleeping beside him.

But she woke anyway, as the sunlight from his open window touched her face. She batted at the brightness irritably, yawned prodigiously, and only then opened her eyes and looked at him. "Geez, Wolvie," she said, narrowing her blue eyes in puzzlement. "You look like ya been put through the wringer. You've got, like, major bed head."

"I feel like it," he grumbled. "My eyes itch, and I feel tired as hell."

"Well, don't go back to sleep," she said, sitting up and running her fingers through her short locks. "Scotters has a Danger Room session planned for this morning, so we gotta get up." Ignoring her own words, she curled up on the bed for a moment, and Logan suddenly got an odd double image; superimposed over the seventeen-year-old was an image of an older Jubilee; undoubtedly the same person, but so careworn and unhappy she looked older than he did. A phrase whispered through his mind; Love can redeem a lost soul.

She turned to look at him, and caught the strange look in his eyes. "Like, dude, what's up?"

He shook his head to dispel the odd double image. "Dunno. Somethin' left from a dream, I guess, But I can't remember it now." He shooed her off the bed. "Come on. Scat on back t'yer room so I can dress."

She grinned impishly, bounced up, planted a kiss on his cheek, and was gone. He stood watching her go, touching his cheek where she'd kissed him, and again something whispered across his mind. Sighing, he pushed it aside, and reached into his drawer for a shirt. "Damn kid's gonna be the death o'me one day," he grumbled as he pulled his shirt over his head. Then he caught sight of himself in the mirror across the room, and was startled into a laugh. He really did have 'major bed head'.

He left his room, shaking his head. "But it will be a hell of a way to die," he muttered as he headed for the stairs.

If I never knew you--

If I never felt this love,

I would have no inkling of

How precious life can be!

And if I never knew you,

I would never have a clue

How at last I'd find in you

The missing part of me.

In this world so full of fear,

Full of raging lies

I can see the truth so clearly

In your eyes.

And I'm so grateful to you

I'd have lived my whole life through

Lost forever, if I never knew you.

And if I never knew you,

I'd have lived my whole life through

Empty as the sky.

Never knowing why.

Lost forever--

If I never knew you.

END

Aw, damn.

Sorry, still blowing my nose and trying to stop the tears. There.

I don't know about this one. It's an impulsive write. I had this dream last night, about Jubes's life if she hadn't met the X-Men, hadn't met Wolvie, and this morning when I woke up (at 4 am) I was crying, really, really crying. I couldn't stop. I got up, got a drink, calmed down…but for some reason, I remembered every damn detail. And it's been going through my head at odd times all day. I didn't want to write it out today, mostly because all the emotions are still raw around that dream, but I couldn't resist, and I sat down…let's see, it's 7:06 pm now, and I sat down around 5:00 pm to write, so I've done 6 and a half pages in about 2 hours. That's a record for me.

I don't know what the reactions are going to be like when you people read this. I can't even begin to guess. I think some of you are going to hate it; it's gritty, dark, angsty fiction…but it wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it, and I really don't want to have the same dream tonight, which is what usually happens when I have one this strong. I have to write it or I'll dream it again tonight.

Ah. Reality intrudes. My Shih Tzu just caught another mouse, and is merrily playing with it (and is killing it along the way, incidentally.) Yep. It's definitely dead. And she wants to know why it won't play with her anymore.

Let me leave you with this little…interesting fic…and go dispose of the dead mouse. I'd really really appreciate it if you all told me what you think. This is a lot grittier than anything I've written before.

Jaenelle Angelline