FEVER
"Where is he?" Brennan asked, trying not to sound disgusted as he looked around the new scenario that Jesse's fevered subconscious had drawn them into. "You know, the first time I delved into Jesse's twisted little mind he was easy to find. Not too many places to go when you're rock-climbing in a tunnel with a pit of lava below."
"What is this place?" Brennan wanted to know. He could see Jesse clinging to the wall, hair plastered against his face with sweat and exhaustion. There were dark circles under the molecular's eyes, testament to how close to death the man was. Brennan swallowed his dismay.
It wasn't far to the opening above, but the stakes were high. There were handholds in plenty, but each one was slippery with humidity. One false step, one missed grasp, and a fatal fall would follow, for down below was a whirling cauldron of fiery lava.
Jesse looked up at him, a dull resignation in his eyes and a hollowness in his voice. "It's the end."
"Well, he's not here now." Shalimar scanned the territory. It was soothing to the feral, a forest of tall trees with leaves coming into the bloom of springtime. A meadow stretched out beyond the tree-line, flowers threatening her elemental companion with an attack of purely imaginary hay fever. A boulder here and there completed the idyllic scene. "This place looks pretty nice, not at all what I'd have thought for a man burning up with fever. I hope this is a good sign. Maybe Jesse's fever is going down by itself."
"Are you sure we're in the right place?" Brennan asked. "I mean, we could be in his right brain, and Jesse's hiding out in the left."
"Wouldn't be the first time he's given me the slip," Shalimar returned philosophically. "Stroll in the woods time, Brennan. Let's go find our missing brother." She raised her voice. "Jesse? Where are you? Jesse?" She listened hard, her eyes going feral with the effort. They may have been inside Jesse's mind, Brennan reflected, but the laws of physics still seemed to have a major effect on the perceived reality. Makes sense, he decided. Jesse was one of the most logical guys he knew. Things ought to follow a plan.
But Shalimar only shook her head. Jesse wasn't calling out to them this time. They'd have to track him down the hard way.
They split up when they came to a fork in the wooded path. Shalimar peered down one side, then the other. The two routes began by looking identical, trees edging the paths, but there the similarity ended. One path was well-traveled, with hardened footprints showing that many hikers had passed through this route. The other appeared all but abandoned, the bushes encroaching on the narrow path and blocking it up ahead, bringing to Shalimar's mind the old Robert Frost poem that Jesse was always embarrassed to admit that he'd read: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood… "Which way?"
"Beats me. Which way does Jesse want us to go?"
"Which way will get us to Jesse whether he wants us to or not?" Shalimar countered. "This doesn't make sense, Brennan. This whole scene is too peaceful. I mean, when we were trying to unmass his heart, he gave us a frozen wasteland. His heart was turning cold as it was dying—kind of symbolic. Even what you told us of being in his mind the first time, with the lava pit being the end of everything, that made a kind of Jesse-sense. But this? This is nice. I could spend a long time here and be very happy."
"Maybe that's the point," Brennan replied. "Maybe this is another form of Jesse giving up, trying to retreat into a happy place."
Shalimar gave him a look of exasperation. "I don't think so."
"Why not? Makes sense to me."
"Not to me." The feral took pity on the elemental. "If Jesse were going to retreat to somewhere, where would he go?"
"Huh?"
"Going into the woods is not where Jesse feels most at home. Sanctuary is; it was the first place that Jesse ever felt wanted, felt like he belonged. Sitting in front of a computer with a mega-dose of coffee is. If Jesse really was trying to create the ultimate retreat, it would have computers with continual on line access and the perfect anti-virus protection. Not to mention no pop-ups."
"You have a point," Brennan acknowledged. He indicated the fork in the road. "So which way?"
Shalimar sniffed; no help. "Beats me. Let's split up. We'll meet back here in an hour if we don't find anything."
"An hour? Won't that be too long for Jesse?"
Shalimar shrugged. "We could be going through all this in the blink of an eye or taking three hours to travel ten feet. You know time is skewed for Jesse when he's thinking about something else. Who's always late to dinner?" With a lop-sided grin, she moved off, selecting the less-traveled fork. Brennan sighed, and trotted toward the left, grateful to be assigned the more civilized route by the feral.
Whatever the man was pondering, he had taste, Shalimar found herself thinking. This was a perfect place for the feral to be even though it was only in Jesse's mind. It was as if he had designed the dream to appeal to her senses. Birds twittered in the boughs of the trees, a breeze brought a hint of small mammals crouching in the undergrowth, and the air was alive with life. She broke into a gentle jog, enjoying the sensation of hard dirt underneath her feet.
No, wait. There was something more, something that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. What was it? Shalimar strained to see, to smell, to determine what the danger was—
Smoke.
It became crystal clear. Fever. Heat. Fire.
The fire coursing through Jesse's veins, put there by the pneumonia in his lungs, was being translated into his dream as a fire in the woods. Shalimar shuddered. Of all the things to come up against, it was fire that the feral dreaded most. And Jesse knew that. It was the one thing that could turn her into a quivering ball of feral jelly and send her packing.
"Brennan!" she cried out. This would be Brennan's turn to pull Jesse's fat out of the fire—literally. He would have to do it, because it was beyond Shalimar's abilities. Shalimar could kick any four men into oblivion without thinking twice, but fire overwhelmed any sense that she had. "Brennan!"
No answer. Shalimar tried her comm. link, only to find that it wasn't functioning in Jesse's nightmare. Wonderful, Jess. Don't make this easy, saving your life.
She could go back, go to the fork and run and get Brennan. For there was no doubt in her mind that this was where Jesse was, that he was only a short distance up ahead, fighting the fire.
The crackling grew louder. She heard shouting, angry shouting, voices that didn't belong to Jesse. Then there was a cry of despair: Jesse!
That decided her. There was no time to get Brennan. It was either Shalimar, or lose Jesse all together. This might be a dream, a nightmare, but it would kill Jesse if she didn't act. She dashed ahead.
The idyllic scene turned horrid. It was something out of the dark ages: witch trials, with Jesse in a starring role as the witch being burned alive at the stake. Even as Shalimar approached she could see one hooded man toss a torch onto the wood surrounding the molecular. Another blaze shot up, flames licking at Jesse who was tied to the stout wooden pole in the center of the inferno.
"Jesse!" she screamed. Dammit, why didn't he simply phase out of the ropes and escape? Same reason he was in this mess to begin with: his mind. In this nightmare, phasing wasn't an option. He hung limply in the bonds, overwhelmed by the heat that symbolized the fever that was burning him up inside as well as out.
One by one the hooded figures standing around the pile of burning embers tossed more logs onto the inferno. It was almost ritualistic, first one then another reaching behind to cast another stick. Shalimar reached the first and swung him around, fist cocked to remove this cloaked assailant from adding to Jesse's misery.
It was Mason Eckhart.
Shalimar recoiled in horror. Eckhart merely leered at her, then turned back to hurl another tree branch onto the fire. Another hood fell back to reveal Dr. Harrison fondling a proton coupler, inserting it into a nest of twigs before delivering the fiendish device into the bonfire. Across the way, flames jumping into the air to obscure the view, was Colonel Gaument. The military man held a skewer in front of him, toasting marshmallows and greedily gobbling them down in between tossing coals onto the inferno and then poking at Jesse with the sharp edge of the skewer, all the while murmuring "ka-boom". Next to Gaument was Noah Kilmartin almost shame-facedly pushing a fat log into the blaze.
All had come to torture Jesse in his nightmarish last moments.
There were others, faces that Shalimar didn't know but could guess at: a ten year old girl taunting Jesse for being 'different', the doctors that his well-meaning parents had taken him to in order 'fix' what was wrong with him. All adding fuel to the fire, all contributing to the fever that would burn him up. Jesse cried out as the flames licked at his legs.
She had to get him out.
Fighting she could do. The cloaked figures went down before her onslaught, kicking and slashing, tears running down Shalimar's face. One by one she stripped away the evil people in Jesse's life, the ones who had come to his fever-racked mind to haunt him in his trek toward death.
But the flames drove her back. Every time she opened up a hole in the circle of hooded figures, a curtain of fire roared up to keep her from her little brother. It was as if the flames had a mind of their own and were deliberately trying to keep her away.
Well, duh. This was Jesse's nightmare, Shal.
"Jesse!" she screamed. "You have to let me in!"
The fire was driving her mad, sending her sense reeling with an inborn terror of fire. It was only an iron will that kept her dancing around the edges, trying to rescue her 'little brother' dangling from the wooden post in the center of the blaze. He lifted his head dazedly, fastened on her.
"Shalimar?"
"Jesse!" Shalimar screamed again. "Phase! Phase, and get out of there!"
"I can't," he groaned. "I don't know how."
"Yes, you do!" Shalimar insisted. The flames were growing higher, and her feral self more fearful. "Concentrate, Jesse! You can do it!"
"I can't!" Jesse's voice was ragged. "Help me, Shalimar!"
"I can't!" she wailed. The bonfire was too great. She couldn't make herself dash through the blaze, even for Jesse. She tried; she made little hopping steps toward him, only to be driven back every time a lick of fire advanced on her. "Jesse!"
"Shalimar!" It was a cry of despair. Jesse was dying.
"Brennan!" Shalimar shrieked. Where was the big man? He could get Jesse out. He didn't have the feral's fear of fire. Where was he?
Nowhere to be seen.
"Help me, Shalimar!" Jesse begged. He struggled against the ropes tying him to the post. Fire danced upon his leg.
Then the dark clouds over head parted, and a beam of sunlight drifted down toward her. Shalimar looked up, hoping for a miracle, hoping for something that would allow her to rescue Jesse. That someone would come to help her help Jesse.
"Be strong, Shalimar," whispered a voice through the clouds. "You can help him."
"I can't!" she wailed. "I can't."
"You can," the voice insisted. "He was strong for you. Remember?"
His eyes were as wild as Shalimar had ever seen them, in too much agony to think. He stared at her, mutely begging for her to end the pain, to put him out of his misery, to give him relief, unable to do more than moan. He clutched at her hand.
She stroked the hair off of his forehead, terrified at the beads of sweat standing out, wringing his shirt with moisture—and blood. "Help him!" she demanded as Dr. Robinson strode up.
The doctor did. A bolt of almost visible empathic energy struck the molecular, and he collapsed in on himself, semi-conscious, his eyes no longer taking in his surroundings.
"Telempath?" It was Brennan.
"Yes. In cases of severe trauma, the healing of the mind is as important as the healing of the body."
Lexa interposed her body, tugging on Shalimar's sleeve. "C'mon. Let's find out who did this to Jesse."
Shalimar almost objected, but she saw the sense of it. If this was done to her 'little brother' by someone who knew mutants, then it was of paramount importance to find out who—and why and how. She caressed his cheek, promising to return, unable to stand the mute pleading for release in those eyes. "Be strong, Jesse," she whispered, and had to fight not to sob, "don't die."
He didn't, though it was a near thing.
"Be strong for him," the disembodied voice urged. "You must, Shalimar."
"I can't!" she wailed. "I can't!"
"You can." Was that Lexa's voice? And Dr. Robinson's? The disembodied voice had a strangely dulcet tone, as though two people were talking at once.
No, not talking—thinking. Thinking at Shalimar, and helping her to control her fear. She heard an echo of what Dr. Robinson had told Brennan in the first horrible hours when Jesse had been shot, when they were searching for Jesse's attacker. 'Be strong,' Dr. Robinson had told Brennan. The elemental had refused to leave his teammate's side, refused to let him die. 'You can't let him feel your fear,' she had told him. Brennan had shared that with Shalimar later on, when they thought that Jesse was out of danger.
"I was scared stiff," Brennan told her. His hands were still shaking. "I thought that Jesse was going to die, and it would be my fault." He sat on the lounge chair, head bowed, shoulders hunched. "I don't know I would have lived with myself if that had happened. I mean, this was Jesse! He was massed, Shalimar! That wasn't supposed to happen! Bullets aren't supposed to hurt him!"
Shalimar took his hands in her own, stilling the tremors. "He didn't die, and it wasn't your fault, Brennan. The whole thing had been carefully planned. Dr. Harrison knew that Jesse would instinctively act to protect you. He designed that bullet with Jesse's mutant anatomy in mind."
Brennan shook his head, not in denial but as recognition that he still couldn't cope with what had happened. "He took a bullet for me, Shalimar. It nearly killed him."
"But it didn't." As a feral, Shalimar lived in the here and now. Jesse was alive, and was going to stay that way if Shalimar had anything to say about it. "You wouldn't let him go then, and we won't let anything hurt him now."
"It was Dr. Robinson," Brennan told her. "She told me that I couldn't let Jesse sense my fear, that it would only make him more afraid." The shakes tried to come back. "It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, Shal."
"It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do." The words haunted the feral, but now they arrived with Lexa's and Dr. Robinson's voice. "You can't let him feel your fear. This is his nightmare, not yours. The flames are his, not yours."
And realization dawned.
The flames are his, not yours.
They can't hurt you unless you let them.
I can do this, Shalimar told herself. She closed her eyes. I can't feel the heat, can't hear the crackle and pop as the wood burns. The embers are not hot beneath the soles of my shoes. I don't smell the charnel odor of Jesse's burning flesh. That's not Jesse, and this is not fire. It is a representation of fever.
I can do this.
Her hands found the ropes that bound her 'little brother' to the wooden post, the knots tight and taking too long to untie. There was suddenly a knife in her hands, and she sliced through the stubborn cord, knowing when to stop before cutting through tender flesh.
"Shalimar?"
She opened her eyes to find Jesse looking at her in wonder. She let him slide limply into her arms, holding him up to keep him from collapsing onto the burning embers.
"Where are we?"
And it began to snow: a gentle cascade of flakes that hissed and spat as it put out the rest of the fire.