Delauro: Thank you!
Prince Halliwell: Of course! Emma is a part of Mutant X, a permanent part. Nor will Lexa be disappearing (no pun intended) permanently.
Marie Crosby: lol Yeah, Emma just wanted to protect him. There is a lot of Bren in this chapter, I hope you're pleased.
Mony19: Ha, I know. You'll see a lot of Brennan and Emma's struggling relationship, but don't worry, I know exactly how the finale will end and it's good. ;)
bohemianbabe: Aww, thanks!
EternalFire-angel: That's awesome! Thanks for taking a moment to review, I hope you enjoy!
4.04 Haven On Earth
One blink, then two, followed by a few soft moans signaled that the electric elemental was stirring. His dark eyes began to shift from side to side and he could feel that his entire body felt nearly immobile. The mutant craned his neck to the side, his vision blurry from the shear power of Emma's psionic blast. Unfortunately it wasn't much help, all he could see was dark shadows and a few neon numbers, his ears however picked up the soft humming of some type of machinery. He attempted to move his lower body again, but as he'd become more aware, he realized that he was being strapped down. What's going on? He thought warily, struggling with his restraints. Then his eyes shifted upwards and he saw a dark ceiling. Where am I? And with that thought, the previous events came flooding back to him.
----Flashback----
A resounding crack of brittle wood filled the room and the door of the motel room burst inwards.
Lexa thrust out her arms, running at the door while releasing a dazzle at the intruders.
"What the hell?" Jesse yelled, jumping from the bed and running ahead of the electric and out the door after the light elemental.
Following his partners' lead, he too dashed out into the corridor between the motel rooms. As he looked around, he could see someone shielding his or herself with the side of a flowing black cloak. He walked over, taking a fighting stance on Lexa Pierce's left and began to swirl his hands together, generating powerful electrical charges. He saw his fellow Mutant X member, the feral, tumble back into the cloaked figure and once Lexa's dazzle had vanished, his face registered complete shock and the electricity vanished abruptly.
"Em?" Jesse echoed Brennan's thoughts. His face was as white as they come.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," Emma grinned.
Small lasers danced from the tips of Lexa's fingers. "What's going on?"
"Emma's back," Shalimar said.
Lexa shook her head furiously, causing her brown hair to whip around her face at mad speed. "Emma DeLauro is dead." She pointed a finger at the psionic, sending a laser centimeters from Emma's forehead. "Who are you?"
"Lexa, no!" Shalimar screamed.
The baby in Emma's arms wiggled her fingers and Emma's attacker went flying down the corridor, landing harshly against a dumpster.
"Honey, no!" Emma whispered, putting a hand over the child's small fist and tucking it back under the black blanket that she was wrapped in.
"B-bad!" The child cooed, her gaze in Lexa's direction.
"What the hell is going on here?" Brennan asked, looking from Lexa and back to Emma or at least the person that looked the spitting image of her.
"We have to get going, Shal and I have already been attacked."
"We're not going anywhere until we get some answers," Brennan quickly decided as he crossed over to Lexa and helped her to her feet.
----Flashback----
"Brennan?"
Brennan opened his eyes, gazing into Shalimar's coffee colored ones. "Shal?" Again, he attempted to move his arm to touch her soft features, but something was keeping him at bay.
"Shh, shh," the feral soothed as she slid onto the bed next to him and ran a soft hand across the side of his face.
"Where are we?"
"Haven."
"What?"
"We'reat The Haven, Bren. It's okay."
"What happened? How'd we get here?"
"Emma knocked you out with her psionic blast..."
Brennan stared at the blonde feral's mouth, it kept moving, but his mind was still fuzzy. Emma..Emma? A psionic blast? This couldn't be true, the elemental was sure of it. Emma DeLauro had died in the Naxcon explosion. They had wheeled her dead body away. Her arm popping out from under the sheet as they did so and her comlink falling off. Shalimar had been hysterical. They'd made a memorial for her on the side of the mountain, it was where they'd left her comlink. Surely this had to be a dream, some cruel joke, an illusion.
"Bren, are you okay?"
Brennan could feel Shalimar's warm skin against his cheek again. He closed his eyes, absorbing the warmth from her hand. It was, he realized, cold as well as dark where ever he was.
"He's awake, Emma, he's awake!"
At the mention of the psionic's name, Brennan Mulwray's eyes flashed open again. This time the lights shown brightly into his eyes, forcing his pupils to become several times smaller. But that didn't startle him, what did was seeing an all too familiar face framed by dark red hair and an innocent pair of eyes.
----Flashback----
As a young Brennan Mulwraytravels through a loud and vibrant nightclub crowd, a terrified young woman collides with him. He locks eyes with the young woman, horror written all over her face. The electric elemental could tell that there was something different about her, something pure and wonderful. He wanted, needed, to get to know her.
Unfortunately before the elemental could get a word out, the short haired woman with themystifying eyesjetted out of the way, trying desperately to find safety from whatever was after her.
----Flashback----
"Brennan?"
The voice of the redhead before him was the same, just as the electric had remembered it. But really, it couldn't be her. She died! It's why Lexa had come to them, to reconstitute Mutant X. He squinted his eyes, trying to get a better look at the psionic.
"Maybe we should remove the restraints? I really think he was just in shock before," Shalimar reasoned as she gently rubbed the elemental's arms. "Please, Em?"
Emma nodded solemnly. She hadn't liked the idea of strapping Brennan down, but she'd been afraid that if she hadn't, his emotions may of overwhelmed him and she had a daughter to think about now. "You're in the infirmary, Brennan. You've been out since my psionic blast." She freed his left ankle from the leather strap on the bed and moved the right. "My emotions were running pretty high back there and I think I hit you with more force than I had intended. You've been out since yesterday." She moved to one of his arms as Shalimar worked on the other. "I'm sorry about this, but it was the only way. Time was of the essence. Shal and I were already tracked once on the way back to the motel room and I couldn't risk them raiding the place." She walked over to a pristine white sink and grabbed a soft white wash cloth and began to run it under cold water. "I've brought you back to my home, Haven."
"We've all been waiting anxiously for you to wake up," Shalimar added as she ran her hand across his forehead. "You were stirring for quite a while, even letting off some electrical discharge a few hours ago."
"Just relax," the telempath said as she came back and proceeded to lay a cool cloth across the elemental's forehead. "I can feel your senses slowly reverting back to normal and as long as you take it easy, things will be just fine."
"Do you remember anything?" It was the feral again. "Anything at all?"
Brennan closed his eyes, leaning his head back into the paper covered pillow on the bed.
----Flashback----
Lexa's eyes quickly shot back to Emma's. "I think the real question we're all wondering is, how are you here when you're supposed to be dead?" As the last word left her tongue, the room filled with a deafening silence.
Emma opened her mouth and when she spoke, her voice was lowered. "We're not in a secure location."
"She's right," Shalimar suddenly said. "We have to know before we can trust you." It was a shock to everyone.
Hurt flickered in the psionic's eyes. "Because of Bailey."
"What?" The Mutant X members chorused.
"Bailey," Emma said as she peeled away the black blanket from the child in her arms. "She needed to be protected and the only way to do that was to fake my death."
Shalimar raked her hands through her long locks. "B-but who is she? Where did she come from? Why does she need to be protected?"
"She's a mutant."
"A new mutant?"
"No, she was one of the few who was born a mutant," Emma replied.
Jesse's eyes sparkled as he looked at the child, Bailey, with extreme interest. He had once discussed mutants having children with Lexa, who'd detested the idea and said that they were not natural and there for they should not have children.
"Where are her parents? Why can't they protect her?" The questioned belonged to the electric elemental.
"We are protecting her," Emma shot back.
"What?" Shalimar and Jesse asked.
"Bailey is my daughter," Emma informed. "Mine and Adam's daughter. Bailey DeLauro Kane."
"You and Adam!" Brennan bellowed, his voice rocketing the eardrums of everyone in the room and probably the rooms on either side of him.
"We don't have time for this!"
Brennan stared helplessly as the redhead hissed the words at him and then narrowed her eyes and a psionic globe of energy came flying at his head. It was all so sudden and then he felt the psionic energy pummel his body, before everything went black.
----Flashback----
"Is he okay?" Shalimar asked, pulling the psionic to the corner of the white room as she stole a few glances back at him.
"He's fine," the telepath assured her best friend. "But he's confused, especially about me. He keeps having flashbacks."
"Is there anything you can do to ease his mind?"
Emma shook her head. "I think it's better if I leave him alone for a while, so he can take it all in. In fact, I should probably leave the room. When he's ready to talk, he will."
Shalimar raked a hand through her thick locks. "Should I go?"
"No, I think it would be very beneficial for you to remain with him."
The feral nodded in compliance before returning to her man's side.
Emma smiled, slipping out the door of the infirmary unnoticed.
----
Jesse clasped his hands over his eyes. "Where's Bailey? Where's Bailey?" His voice was high and singsongy as he spread out his finger and rolled his eyes. "Where's Bailey?" He whipped his hands from his eyes and pointed to the little hazel eyed child. "There's Bailey!" He grinned like a child on Christmas morning.
Bailey clasped her hands together and giggled wildly. "Boo!" She wiggled her fingers at a white blanket with Winnie the Pooh on it, a few feet from her. The blanket drifted into her awaiting arms and she tugged it tightly over her head.
"Uh oh, I think we just lost Bailey again!" The molecular said, pretending to be confused as he cupped his hand over his brown and moved his head from side to side, pretending to search for the little telekientic.
"Ahh!" The telekinetic squealed, yanking the blanket from her head and throwing up her arms.
"Having fun, Jess?"
Jesse spun around to see Emma hovering in the doorway, her arms folded neatly across her chest. "Yeah, she really likes peek-a-boo."
"And apparently so do you," the psychic mutant smirked.
"Well what can I say?" Jesse leaned over and began to gently tickle the little girl. "With a face like this, who cannot love finding it?"
The corners of Emma's mouth curved in as she walked over to her old friend and her daughter, plopping down on the floor next to them and sitting with her legs crossed. "You've always been great with kids, Jess. The real fatherly type. I've always loved that about you."
"Yeah, well, I can definitely say the same about you." The molecular laughed. "Minus the fatherly type, ya know?" He watched as the little psionic pulled the blanket over her head again. "I always knew you'd make a great mom, I just never thought it'd be with Adam."
"Life's funny sometimes," the redhead agreed as she squinted her eyes. "Where's Bailey?" She cooed, patting her hand on the ground around the child and pretending not to know where she was. "Is she here?" She asked suddenly, pulling up a brown teddy bear.
"Guess not," Jess frowned. "What about here?" He asked, peeking behind Emma.
"Don't think so," Emma frowned. "How about..."
"Here!" Jesse exclaimed, pulling off the blanket to reveal Bailey squealing with delight. "God, she's cute, Em!" He commented, gazing at his old friend.
"She is."
Emma's head whirled around to see Brennan leaning against the door frame. "But?"
"We need to talk," Brennan said, cutting to the chase. His arms were folded tightly across his powerful chest and his eyes cast a steely gaze upon her.
"I think we all need to," the psionic suggested.
"We will, but right now, it's just you and me."
Emma pulled to her full height, ready to comply with her old friend's request. "Okay, I suppose I owe you at least that much."
"At least," Brennan scoffed as he turned on his heel and left the room.
Without another word, the psionic followed his path out.
----
Lexa Pierce sat alone in her new bedroom. It was double the size of her old one at Sanctuary. Plane, though. Apparently Emma had decided not to make it homey, as she wanted Lexa to express her own tastes. She heaved herself from the bed and walked over to a small desk, pulling out a blue and black office chair, and seating herself closely against the desk. She traced her slender fingers along the edges of a brand new, top of the line laptop and then flicked it open and placed her fingers along home row. Her lips pursed together and her face registered complete concentration. She narrowed her eyes as she accessed the Internet and then typed in a series of secret codes and passwords, before finally typing in the word, 'Naxcon.' She was going to find out just what really happened during that explosion and what other secrets Emma and Adam were hiding from her and her team.