No.

Blue iris's blinked rapidly against the fluorescent lights.

No.

Please tell me….no.

She had said goodbye to this life long, long ago.

To say that the bright light hurt her eyes seemed like an understatement. For the first time in as long as she could remember, the bright light seemed more painful than the constant humming that always overpowered her senses. It hurt. It hurt like hell, but for the relief, even for a second. She was thankful.

"What's going on?" she could hardly recognized the voice as her own. It seemed foreign. Inhuman. The voice was different. The history behind it was gone. In a flash.… Everything that had ever mattered, mattered no more. That voice didn't belong to Emma Delauro.

Not that girl. Not the simple girl who was born some twenty three years ago. That girl… she had faded long ago…

"ADAM?"… Her voice sounded urgent and concerned. For what she didn't know, and she didn't quite comprehend. She tried to focus for a complete second, but once her brain even began circulate towards comprehension, she stopped. It hurt far too much to even begin to think about thinking, why waste your time trying to understand something that seemed to come naturally.

So… she worried.

It didn't hurt too much to blank out on the fact that her being here… it… just… seemed wrong.

"I'm not supposed to be here?" She knew it was the truth, that she didn't belong, her brain felt like it was swimming in a fish bowl that had suddenly been fogged when a couple cups of milk had been added. Everything was familiar, but she would be damned if she could distinguish up from down. But the statement still came out sounding like a question.

It was the truth, and yet she still trusted Adam to distinguish what she held as fact, and what she held as fantasy. He had always been her north star. Whom else was she to trust.

As always, it was him, and he was near by. She could sense it. "Adam?..." It sounded more like a plea than a question anymore.

There were five people within her immediate surroundings. She was sure. There was no uncertainty left in her mind. Two were close. The other three seemed to be keeping busy with whatever was at hand. One was easy. He was the man she had sought out so many times before, in countless times of uncertainty.

The other was…

Oh, god… No….

Her eyes clamped shut again, and she tried desperately to will herself back into unconsciousness. This wasn't happening. This wasn't happening. It couldn't be. They had taken care of this situation a long time ago.

It couldn't be her…. ?


Shalimar stood and strode towards the gurney. She reached the girl's side as she watched Emma's eyes clamp shut.

"Emma?..." She asked…., for the first time since they had brought back the body from Manhattan, the always quiet and stoic empath had reacted. Shalimar was no fool, she could gauge a bad reaction, and she knew that Emma was not glad to feel her presence.

She was conscious. Not a lot, but she was still awake at least.

Shalimar gently ran her fingertips down Emma's left cheek. The softness and warmth boggled her mind.

The stiffness in Emma's position was clearly visible. Her eyes where clamped shut. Her arms where rigid. The fear that seemed to be radiating off of the telempath seemed to both soothe and upset the feral.

Emma was scared. She was scared of her. Why would Emma be scared of her? But for her to be scared, meant that she had to be conscious of her presence. And that into itself, added a whole new level of reality to the situation.

Emma was really alive.

"Oh my god…. Emma." She closed her eyes and found herself reliving the time since that day in her father's building. She saw the explosions. They were all running. She heard Adam call Emma's name.

She closed her eyes and was quickly taken back to the moments that she had first realized that Emma was gone. She saw the body on the stretcher, and she saw the ring fall. Her best friend was gone. Her best friend was dead.

If that was a lie… how could she tell if this all was true?

Oh, god… she could be dreaming.

And then she felt it.

It was only the slightest touch. Something that could have been overlooked and written off as a small draft passing over the small hairs on her hand. But her feral senses registered it as so much more. It was a touch. She could almost dare to call it a caress.

But… none the less it was there.

Fingers closed around the side of her hand, and quickly intertwined between her already splayed fingers.

Reality was knocking perilously at the door. After a quick decision, Shalimar slowly opened her eyes and glanced down.

She was met with foggy blue iris's. Within a single second, she no longer had any doubt that the girl in front of her was Emma.


Emma Delauro forced a smile.

The muscles in her cheeks almost quaked with weakness. But she held fast and watched as tears slowly made their way down her team mates face. Both the joy and the grief radiating from Shalimar, helped make the current predicament ever present. But she continued to smile.

None the less.


Adam quietly shut the door behind him.

He had watched Emma stir and he had watched Shalimar nearly leap to her side.

He had always held fast that he had done the right thing. Their choices had always been based around those who would be more in harms way, than they would be. He had to believe that he had done the right thing. And he had managed to convince himself so.

But, watching Shalimar react to just a glimmer… now that had rocked him to his core. Both him and Emma had given up hope long ago, so to watch someone blindly jump at a reaction, seemed like watching a starved man who was already at heaven's gate, beg for food.

Adam turned down the hallway and quickly hasted towards his room. Down the corridor he saw both Jesse and Brennan headed his way, and he quickly realized that rest would take at least a few moments longer to come to him.


"I don't understand." Jesse said flatly, as he leaned up against the wall just below the stairs to the dojo.

"We watched you both fall." Brennan finished his though for him. "Not only that… We saw Emma dead. We saw her body. We saw her ring."

"No… Don't you get it?" Adam stated. His patience was finally getting the better of him. "You saw what she made you see."

The blank faces on the two men told him that they still didn't understand the situation before them.

After a deep breath… Adam continued. "Yes, we fell. But… we were never even close to being in danger."

"But you fell?" Brennan stated again.

Adam glanced at the taller man and started over, yet again. "Yes, Brennan, we did fall, but Emma's power stopped us from being all squished on the sidewalk."

After quick glance, and eyebrow raise from the two other men, Adam added…

"Okay… so I need to sleep."

"Emma… She saw this as an out. One, we had been looking for, for quite some time. She, for lack of a better word…, caught us on our way down… and she made you see her dead." He continued… "But, she didn't make you see me as dead… only because she knew that I would once again have to return to you, as the leader of Mutant X."

"Why?.. Why her?... Why dead?" Jesse asked.

Adam glanced up at the young man.

"Because, she knew it would be easier for you to accept her murder, than her slow and painful demise."

"Now, come on… you're Adam… you have to know some way to be able to help her." Brennan added, like it was the answer to everything.

"Oh… I know an answer… and that answer is her."

After a brief silence from the two men, he continued. "Look at this as… well… kind of, sort of, the same thing that Brennan went through when his power mutated. The only thing that could help him keep it under control, was for him to force his brain to focus… and the only thing that could help him to do that was… a telempath. He's only alive because of Emma. And he only experienced about 1/18 of what she's going through every second."

Adam watched as the realization seemed to set into the two men before him.

"If this were happening to anyone else… she could help them. She would save them, the way she saved you, Brennan. She could literally help your brain to focus on what you would need to focus on. In other words… she could keep all distractions at bay. She could help you weed out anything that was unimportant."

"But, the question is now… How do we help her do that for herself? If you find out how... PLEASE LET ME KNOW… God only knows that I've been searching for a solution ever since Emma first came to stay with us."

"Why do you think she was reluctant to join Mutant X the first place."

"So… to state this in the most simple way possible… 'the victim is the perp.' And, for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to make her help herself."