Chapter 13: Fight

Jubilee sighed as she settled onto the grass under the maple sapling. She propped her book open in her lap, but didn't start reading right away. Instead she looked back at the mansion thoughtfully, seeing someone crossing in front of one of the upper windows.

The only thing that traveled faster than light was news, especially in a mansion full of people. The gossip that she and Wolvie had been 'doing it' wasalready common knowledge by the time she got out of the showers, and neither she nor Logan had been particularly happy about it. Logan had stumped off to his rooms muttering something about 'flamin' telepaths' (which she wholeheartedly agreed with) and she had gone off to find some peace and quiet. She picked a book off her nightstand and limped off to the Rec Room, only to find Remy there, playing pool with Rogue. "You an' Logan gonna get togethah, sugah?" Rogue had asked sweetly, and Remy had grinned. Annoyed, she had left for quieter parts.

She retreated to her room…but Paige and Warren were doing something in Warren's room that necessitated a lot of noise, and she couldn't concentrate. Finally she left the mansion altogether and came out to her favorite spot under the trees. Now she was settled with her back to the trunk of the tree and preparing for a nice quiet afternoon.

Until the trees rustled and Sabretooth stepped out onto the grassy lawn.

She tensed, but otherwise didn't move. There were motion sensors all over the grounds, after all; whoever was in the control room at the moment would know there was an intruder, and shortly Logan would be out here to beat Creed up. Again. Until the cavalry got here, she just had to keep him busy. "Haven't had enough ass-whuppin', Creed?" she said, feigning boredom.

"Wasn't me getting pounded on," Creed said dismissively, his eyes boring into hers. "Case ya didn' notice, yer precious Logan was the one gettin' beat up."

Jubilee had to fight hard not to shudder. That feral, predatory glare…she'd seen that look before, and it was closely connected to the most traumatic incident of her life. No. She wouldn't think about it. "Coulda fooled me. Looked like you were getting banged up some, too." She carefully eased the book off her lap, sensing that Creed was about to make his move.

He did, a moment later. He launched himself at her, hurtling forward with his arms extended, reaching out to grab her. She skittered out of his reach, retreating to the other side of the tree, and listened for any sounds coming from the direction of the mansion. Come on, guys, where are you? she said to herself as she sidestepped quickly, to keep the tree between Creed and herself.

Creed sprang, and she retreated back around the tree again. It took a moment to realize that the target wasn't her, but the tree. Creed ran into it, colliding with it, knocking it over—it was only a sapling, it couldn't stand up to a collision with a big feral mutant with adamantium bonded to his frame. The tree started to fall, and she ducked around it, her attention no longer wholly on the large, snarling man she had been fighting. She ran straight into him, and found herself trapped in a steely grip. Adamantium, her brain informed her coolly as she threw her arms outward, trying to break his grip and free herself.

She might as well have tried to break steel. It wasn't doing much good. She dropped her hands to her sides, aiming her plasmoids at a sensitive part of his anatomy, and released a burst of concentrated, high-intensity sparks. She heard him howl in anger and pain as they exploded against his groin, due to the way he was holding her up, and he released her. She started to run, but he caught her after a few steps. He swiped a clawed hand across the back of her head, a swipe that caused pain to explode against the back of her scalp, and she fell forward against the fallen sapling, dazed from the pain in the back of her head and the collision of her forehead against the tree trunk.

"JUBES!" She heard someone yell, but her head was throbbing too hard, and she hurt too much to try and move. She lay against the tree, eyes closed, trying to fight the nausea from the blow to her head. The X-Men were here, they could take care of things now. The last thing she was aware of before she blacked out was the warm trickle of blood at the back of her neck.

Logan was in his room taking a nap when the mansion's alarms went off. He went from deep sleep to instant wakefulness in barely half a minute, and grabbed his shirt as he stepped out into the hall. "What's going on?" he asked, as he started running after Bobby, a few short feet ahead of him in the hallway.

"Creed…he's out on the back lawn, he triggered the motion sensors by the woods," Bobby called as he ran.

Logan hurtled out the back door of the mansion, quickly catching up with Scott as the taller man ran out toward what looked like a fallen tree. Overhead, Ororo and Rogue and Warren were already airborne, but Logan lost track of where everyone else was as a different scent permeated his nostrils. Blood. And not just anybody's blood, but Jubilee's!

Paige was ahead of him, having been outside playing basketball with Rogue when the alarms had gone off inside. He heard her anguished scream, "JUBES!" before he got there, and the panic in her voice lent wings to his feet. He outdistanced Scott swiftly, and came to a stop a few feet away from the tree aghast.

Jubilee lay crumpled against the tree, and the back of her shirt was damp with blood. Her hair was slick with it, and he sucked in a harsh breath as he saw how still she lay. Beside him, Paige was husking, the peculiar shripp of her splitting skin accompanying her breathless panting. He popped his claws, the snikt loud in the sudden silence, and he snarled, "Ya done it now, Creed. Ya made me mad. Get away from her!"

Creed smiled, lifted the hand with its bloodstained claws to his mouth, and licked Jubilee's blood from the tip of one claw. "Yeah? An' what are ya gonna do if I don't, runt?" he stepped closer to the tree, giving Jubilee a kick. Her limp body rolled over, and Logan saw the pallor of her face.

He lunged in, quickly, claws and arms fully extended. Creed dodged, still putting himself between Logan and Jubilee, and Logan's temper rose to the killing edge. Jubilee was hurt, bleeding, she needed help, and Creed was between him and her…

A beam of pure red energy caught Creed high on the shoulder, knocking him backward a few feet. "Get out of here, Creed!" Scott snapped out, hand on his visor, ready to open it again. "Or—"

"Or else," Creed sneered, ignoring the smell of singed hair and skin. "Please. I heard it all a'ready. Not like you X-wimps are gonna be able ta do nothin' bout it…"

Something hard smashed into the side of his legs, and he stumbled over a few steps before regaining his balance. By the time he looked around for what had hit him, Paige (in her diamond form) was already out of his reach and past his guard, and kneeling beside Jubilee. She caught Logan's eye, gave him a tiny nod, and placed herself between Jubilee and Creed, ready to defend her fallen friend.

Logan gave an inward sigh of relief. Good; Jubilee was alive and okay. If she'd been in danger, Paige wouldn't have switched her attention to the battle. He blocked everything out of his mind and focused his attention on Creed. "So. Wanna tell me what yer doin' here?" he growled.

Creed lowered himself into a fighter's crouch and watched Logan through slitted eyes. "I was takin' care o' some business when I ran inta ya on the road a couple o' days ago," he said. "And the frail over there jumped in after ya when we went in. I tried ta grab her underwater, keep her from savin' ya, but she got me with them sparkly things o' hers. It got me mad. I came here ta get even." He grinned. "Looks like I got her back, didn't I?"

"Like hell…y'did…" came a weak voice, and suddenly a stream of multicolored plasmoids came from behind him and knocked him forward a few feet. They weren't as powerful as they usually were, but Logan was still impressed that Jubilee could muster any sort of offensive when she was this badly disoriented. "Get the hell outta here, ya creep. Before my Wolvie takes a chunk outta yer hide." She was upright, though just barely, leaning against the tree, her hands extended. "Beat it."

Creed looked at Jubilee, at the hands extended in front of her, ready to do battle; then at Logan, still in a fighter's couch. At Paige, still in her diamond form and looking quite ready to commit murder; and at the X-Men, ranged behind Logan and Scott, all watching him. With a muttered growl, he turned and vanished into the underbrush, heading back out of Xavier's grounds the same way he'd come.

Logan briefly considered chasing after his nemesis, then thought better of it as Jubilee, sensing the danger was over, staggered. Paige caught her before she crumpled again, and then Logan was beside them both, taking Jubilee's other arm and looking into her eyes. Her pupils were dilated; it wasn't a good sign. "Jubes, are you okay?" he said as quietly as he could. She still winced and put a hand to her head. "Head…hurts," she whimpered. She frowned as she saw her hand come away, covered with blood…and stared at it for a moment before fainting dead away. Logan caught her before she could fall, scooping her up in his arms and starting for the mansion at a run, the other X-Men following behind him.

Most of them dispersed as soon as they came in, but Paige and Warren followed Logan down to the medlabs. Annie and Hank were both ready, having been warned in advance by Emma that Jubilee was coming. They bustled about, doing a great many things and saying a lot of things in medical codes Logan didn't understand, and wasn't interested in understanding. He sat beside her bed, trying to stay as close to her as he could and still not get in their way, and prayed that Jubilee would be all right. She didn't look like she was dying…but she didn't look so good, either.

Hank finally looked up from the examination he was doing of Jubilee's scalp. "She will be fine, Logan," he said, taking a moment to reassure his friend. "She has a slight concussion, from the subdural hematoma present on her frontal cranial surface, and lacerations to the hindpart of said cranial surface, which are deep and will require several days of recovery, but she will be fine. There may be some disorientation and unpleasant sensations from the nerves from the collision of her frontal lobe with the inner surface…"

"Hank!" Annie broke in. "Knock it off with the medical terminology! Logan, she'll be fine," the nurse said. "We'll want to keep her here and keep an eye on her concussion, and she's going to have a hell of a headache from her brain colliding with the inside of her skull, but she's going to be fine."

Logan much preferred Annie's diagnosis. Hank gave Annie a disgruntled look and muttered something about 'broadening one's vocabulary' but said nothing after that.

Jubilee moaned as she woke.

Her head ached, and there was a dull fiery pain across the back of her head. When she opened her eyes the only thing she could still see was darkness. She screamed weakly and lurched forward out of the bed, tears filling her eyes. Weak…she was so damn weak. She needed to eat to get her strength back, but the drugs Bastion had put in her food made her sick, and she could feel the nausea in her stomach and she wouldn't touch it unless she was forced to. Her legs folded under her, dumping her to the cold tiled floor of the operating room, and she began to cry helplessly, curling up on the floor. "No," she moaned. "Please, I can't tell you what you want to know…please, stop hurting me, let me go, I'm just a kid…"

A door opened, and quick footsteps crossed the room. A hand touched her shoulder. "Jubilee—" said a light, feminine voice.

Jubilee cowered away from the hand, flailing out feebly. "Don't hurt me anymore, please don't hurt me," she whimpered. "I'm just a kid, please, let me go, no more needles, oh, God, please, no more, I can't—"

"Jubilee!" came a different voice, and a hand touched her again. She tried to fight it off, crying again, but the hand refused to go away. Instead a voice spoke her name, and this time she recognized it.

"Logan…Logan?" She raised her head, but darkness was still the only thing she could see. "Logan, is that you? Where are you? It's so dark…I can't see…oh, God, I'm hallucinating again, he's not here, nobody's here, it's just me and Bastion, I can't give in, I can't…"

Logan bit his lip hard. The blow to her head must have triggered a flashback, and she thought she was in Bastion's base again. He looked at Annie helplessly, and Annie sighed. "Jubilee," she said, placing a hand on the girl's shoulder. "You're here, at the mansion. Logan's right here, he's not going anywhere. Bastion's gone. You're safe. He can't hurt you. You got into a fight with Sabretooth and got knocked out. There's swelling in your brain that's pressing down on your optic nerve, that's why you can't see. It'll go away in a few days. Come on, off the floor or you'll catch cold along with everything else that isn't working right. And I assure you, you aren't going to want to sneeze or cough with the headache you have now." She spoke in a no-nonsense tone, taking Jubilee's upper arm and pulling upward.

Logan took her other arm and said, "Come on, Jubes. Doc's orders. Don't wanna get Hank mad at ya fer gettin' a cold, do ya?"

Jubilee's glazed, unseeing eyes turned in his direction. "Logan? You're here? Are you really here?"

His voice was rough with emotion at the hopeful tone in her voice. He swallowed hard and told her, "Yeah, darlin', I'm here. Come on, Punkin. Back inta bed." Jubilee tugged her arms out of Annie's hand and reached out, exploring with her fingers. She felt his shirt, then went upward, until she felt his sideburns, and then the cowboy hat he wore. And as if the hat decided her, she fell against him, her shoulders shaking with sobs. Logan carefully steered her back to her bed, and Annie went to get a syringe.

As soon as Jubilee felt the alcohol swab touch her arm, she gasped and jerked her arm out of Annie's reach, her sightless eyes filling with terror. "No needles," she pleaded. "Please!"

Logan's heart twisted in his chest. He'd know Bastion had brutally abused Jubilee during her imprisonment at the base; he'd never asked her what really happened, and she hadn't volunteered the information. He hadn't said anything, deciding to leave the topic alone. Obviously, that approach wasn't working, because she still had some issues she hadn't worked through yet. He made a decision to confront her about it when she felt better.

Instead of injecting the sedative into Jubilee's arm, Annie emptied the syringe into Jubilee's IV, which the girl hadn't even noticed. "She'll be okay, Logan," the nurse said reassuringly. "The blow to her head just brought back some bad memories, apparently. I'll talk to Hank about having someone sit with her so she won't be this disoriented when she wakes up again."

"I'll sit with her," Logan said quickly.