Chapter 16: Remembrance
As he expected, she had nightmares again.
He was up at the first small sound from the bedroom, and opened the door quietly. Moonlight from the bedroom's small window illuminated Jubilee's sleeping figure, and he saw the frown on her face in its light. He stood by the bed for a while, looking at the small face twisted in an expression of anguish and remembered pain, watched her writhe under the blankets. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth to stifle her cries, and he winced as he watched her teeth cut into her skin.
She moaned, twisting in the sheets, flinging both arms outward before returning them to her lower ribs, exactly where they would be if she were still wearing a straitjacket. "Let me go," she moaned, twisting in the sheets and winding them around her body further. "Please, Bastion, let me go! Stop it, I haven't done anything to you…please, I'm just a kid…" the hopeless pleading in her voice tore at Logan's heartstrings as he listened. "Daria, why is he doing this to me? Please, I have to get out of here…" She started to struggle…really struggle, but the sheet wound around her body was now constricting her movement, and she couldn't get her arms free.
She panicked, her eyes flying open wide. "Get off me…get it off me…let me go….please…"
Logan captured her twisting body in his arms as he fell onto the bed, trying to keep her from rolling off the bed on the other side and striking her head against the unyielding wooden wall of the cabin. She shrieked as a pillow flew up over her face, obscuring her vision of who was touching her, and her efforts increased.
Logan jabbed the pillow aside with his elbow and yanked at the sheet, popping a claw to shred the thin material in his haste to get it off Jubilee. As soon as her arms came free, she pushed tangled hair out of her eyes, took one look at him, standing beside the narrow bed with one claw extended, and rushed into his arms. He hastily retracted the claw and sat down on the bed with her in his arms, smoothing her hair and murmuring soothing noises in her ear as tears started to slip silently down her cheeks. He could feel the tension in her body drain out as he continued to hold her, until she was totally relaxed against him, and then he said, "Jubilee. Talk to me. Please, darlin'. Whatever it is in ya is eatin' ya up inside, an' I can't just sit by an' watch my Punkin die."
She was silent for moment…and then she began to talk.
She started with the moment of her capture back at the Academy—"You know what really hurts, Wolvie? I thought I was being rescued from the mayhem goin' on back there with Frosty…"—and on to her first awakening at the clinic. Waking to find herself stripped nude, covered with a paper drape that still left much of her skin exposed to the chilly air of the medical lab, and watching a man with a huge pair of buzzing shears doing a hack job on her hair, hair that she knew was going to take a long time to grow back. Her sense of helplessness, her fear, the pain as the dull shaver pulled unmercifully at the dark locks, and then the humiliating experience of being released, being handed a short garment, and told to dress—in front of the doctor who had checked her out—"processed," Jubilee told Logan bitterly—and the guards who stood against the wall, leering at her immature, fourteen year old body as she shivered her way into the short 'dress'.
She told him of having her hands encased in some kind of metal mittens, being led down a number of featureless hallways, to a shower, and shoved in to it after having the dress stripped from her. Then the shock of a lukewarm shower that warmed her up temporarily, then made her colder when the water was turned off; being forced to stand still by the simple expedient of having her mittened hands tied to the rail while they dried her off. They hadn't molested her then, but the experience had been humiliating enough. After they had dried her off they pulled the little dress over her head, and as they unshackled her hands to put the dress on her, she lashed out with feet and hands and caught them by surprise. She ran down the hallways, unsure of where she was going, knowing only that she had to escape. Then the brief fight, and she had hesitated…and then stopped and turned back to help the guard she had attacked, sure that she had killed him. Logan blew out a breath. Chiding her about it now was redundant…but leaving a fallen enemy behind you was a good thing, and not something to feel guilty about. So guilty, in fact, that she had missed her chance to escape to give the guard CPR! And she told of finally making it outside…and then passing out from the cold almost immediately.
And when she'd woken again, she was back in the medical lab, straitjacket firmly on her arms, preventing all movement…and the guards, angry that her attempted escape had earned them a dressing-down, administered a beating that left her so dazed she couldn't resist when they dragged her up on a table and strapped her down again. Then came the terrible process of fitting her with the mind-sifter, the bulky helmet that would probe her mind and drag images and memories out of her for Bastion's edification, and she described, in a halting voice, how the thin, needle-like probes had drilled deep into her skull, to bury themselves into her brain tissue. They yanked a pair of pants and shoes onto her body, still nude from the waist down, and threw her into a doorless, windowless cell.
Then the man whom she thought was rescuing her, Bastion, came to her for the first time and told her what he wanted from her; he wanted her to tell him everything she knew about the X-Men, particularly where they were. When she scoffed and told him she wouldn't tell him, he began to work on her mentally and emotionally, first with Scott's battered visor. That had triggered the memory of Illyana's death, a memory she had to try furiously to suppress as soon as she felt the vibrating of the needles in the sifter. But when he'd tried to bring her something to eat a long time later, she had refused to eat it, had kicked it back into his face despite her growing hunger and thirst. Logan whispered something about her having been brave, but it went unheard as Jubilee poured out the harsh, anguished memories that had plagued her since she'd escaped from the Hulkster base.
"Y'know, he almost broke me, that early," she said now, safe in the fortress of Logan's arms. "When he showed me an image of him, interrogating you, electrocuting you…I almost started crying in front of him. And then h made the image of you beg, and I realized it wasn't real, and I started laughing at him because he was so freaking desperate to get at whatever was in my head. And I yelled at him, attacked him the only way I could, by kicking at him. And something happened, I found out from Daria later that his proximity to the mindsifter picked up some of his own memories…and they weren't nice ones at all. He got mad, and he beat me."
Logan gritted his teeth and his hands faltered, but when she didn't say anything more, he got his temper under control and continued to stroke her hair and shoulders again. After a moment, she resumed.
"So he kept trying the mind sifter until it became apparent that I wouldn't cooperate, and he had the thing taken off my head. He still left the straightjacket on, though. And he sent his female assistant, Daria, in to bring me food and water. I was bruised from the sporadic beatings he'd give me when he got frustrated and not inclined to be patient, and I confronted her about her 'boss.' Something I said hit a nerve, and she left. I shouldn't have…but after she left, I ate. They didn't release my arms, so I had to eat with my face in the food, like a dog or something…" Her voice trailed off, and she had to take a few deep breaths before she went on. "She ate some, to make me think the food was safe…but it wasn't, there were drugs in the food, and I started hallucinating after that. They left me alone, though I think they were recording everything I said. I talked a lot while I was hallucinating, but apparently I didn't say what they wanted me to say.
"When I woke up from the drugs there was more food…so I drank the juice and refused to eat. Just kept ignoring the food they shoved in at me, and finally Daria came in after a week to try and make me eat. I had managed to get my arms free, I just didn't want anyone to know, and I was waiting for a chance to try and escape again. When she came in, I attacked her…and she turned out to be a mutant, of sorts. I still don't know what it was she attacked me with, but I talked her though it and helped her get herself back under control. And she realized that what was happening wasn't right, wasn't fair; that Bastion wasn't against all of mutant kind if he could torture me and be nice to her."
Logan smiled to himself, a little sadly. That was one of the things he loved about Jubilee. Even in the extremity of her own distress, she'd always think of the other person first. The guard she'd resuscitated, this girl Daria…Jubilee had a heart of gold and a forgiving temper to match. Even with all she'd gone through. He focused on her next words.
"After that I think Bastion realized I'd gotten to her. She didn't come anymore. He had guards come in periodically, hold me down, and force-feed me. They'd stuff my mouth full and punch me in the stomach until I had to swallow or choke, or they'd hold my nose until I had to breathe. And seeing as how the drugs and the mind-sifter hadn't done a whole lot of good, he ordered the guards to do whatever they wanted to do, to make me talk. They…" Jubilee took a shuddering breath. "They hurt me. They beat me, they…they molested…me, and hurt me and did all kinds of things to me. There were times when I just wanted to die. I didn't know how much time had passed; it was constantly dark, and I was never allowed out. Except when they dragged me off to their medical labs. They'd strip me and strap me down, and do all kinds of things…They'd inject me with drugs to force me to hallucinate, or give me these horribly painful medical 'checkups' that left me bleeding and screaming in agony for days. Logan…I wanted to die. Every time they put me back in my cell, I wanted to die. I stopped eating, stopped drinking, went into a kind of catatonic state whenever they weren't…playing…with me." Tears filled her eyes. "I cursed you guys. You hadn't come to rescue me, like you all had before; I didn't know what was going on, I hadn't heard from you…I wished for you desperately, Wolvie, and you never came." There was no accusation in her voice, no rancor. Just sadness.
"I didn't know until afterward that you all had problems of your own. And so did Frosty, although she and Sean really ought to have known I was missing when everybody else came back and I didn't." There was accusation in her voice now. "And then one day Bastion pulled me out and showed me what was going on outside the base, and there was Scott, and Sam and 'Ro and Jean, and…and you…" Jubilee looked up at him now, her eyes full of remembered horror. "I saw you, and you were so badly beat up…I tried to resist thinking it was really you, at first, and then I saw the way you were hanging onto Jean…"
Tears spilled down her cheeks. "I knew it was for real. And then you guys escaped and got loose, and he sent the guards after you while he started closing the doors…I couldn't let him put you through what I had gone though. I flung myself at the button that opened the doors, hitting them with a protruding knob on the mind-sifter he'd put back on my head. The doors opened and you guys got out. Bastion was furious. He beat me, hard, so hard I could barely stand after he was done…but you were free, and I knew you'd escape. I was torn. I wanted you guys to come rescue me…but I also wanted you to keep going, to get away from him and never come back."
She took a deep breath. "He had the mind-sifter taken off…and then he let the guards beat me before they dropped me back in my cell. Soon after they'd gone, Daria came in. She knew, now that his plans had been foiled, he'd run out of patience with me and would really start to hurt me, as if he hadn't done enough already. And she had enough. She helped me escape. When it was evident that we were being pursued, she dropped me off at the bottom of a dry gorge and flew away, leading the Sentinels away from me. Then she…" Tears filled Jubilee's eyes. "She flew right into the side of a sandstone wall. Killed herself. The Sentinels didn't get a chance to ask her where she'd dropped me off." She looked up at Logan. "And I never got a chance to say thank you." She sniffed.
"I ran. I didn't care what direction I was running, I just ran. For a long time. And then a Sentinel found me, caught me after I tripped on a stupid prairie dog hole, and when I turned around to fight with him, determined to take him with me if he was going to kill me, there you were. I was never so happy to see anyone else in my life." She looked at him meditatively. "When you hugged me that first time, I realized something. See, Bastion had been asking me where my home was…and the minute you hugged me, I knew that home wasn't the mansion, it was wherever you were."
Logan pulled her in a crushing hug. And now she let go, with a storm of pent-up tears, held back for too long, tears of grief and pain and loss and a number of other emotions she'd never given vent to. Logan held her, hushed her, soothed her, and finally lay down on the bed beside her and let her cry herself to sleep beside him. Finally, exhausted himself, he slept too.