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Their Shared Dreams
by Pirate Turner
She had seen the phrase written in many places that some days it just wasn't worth chewing through the restraints, and though she had never agreed with that statement, there were often days where she came close to feeling just that way. She had never once doubted the worthiness of breaking free of the restraints placed on her when she had been young, but there were some days where she honestly did not feel like leaving her bed with its comforting, satin sheets and spent the entire day simply aching to return to the escape of sleep. On rare occasion, she actually managed to sneak back to bed, but most days, she set off saving the world and didn't get to see the reassuring insides of her bed chamber for hours on end.
Today had been one such day, and she had been away saving the world so long and so many times on top of each other that by the time she was finally able to drag her aching body back home, her manicurist had closed for the evening and there was no one left to fix the delicate fingernails she'd broken during the heat of battle. Emma sighed with relieved pleasure as she laid her blonde head down upon her downy, feather pillow, but then she moaned for, as the moment she shut her beautiful, blue eyes, her mind came frustratingly alive again. A hundred questions, a million memories, and a thousand regrets all played havoc on her mind, heart, and soul, and Emma snapped her eyes back open.
She wouldn't go there, not today, not tonight, not whatever the Hell time it was. She had earned this rest, and she needed it more badly than she'd ever admit openly. She would send the memories on their way, ignore the intensity of her own heart aching, and get the sleep she had earned. She used every trick she knew to force her memories away to bay, but yet each time Emma shut her eyes, there they were again. The faces of her dead students and the only man she'd ever truly loved boiled instantly to the surface of her mind's eye beyond all else, and each of their despairing voices simultaneously clamored for her attention and accused her of allowing them to die.
Emma screamed inside, hit her mattress, and crawled out of her bed. She slunk through the hallways, her ice blue eyes warning all who saw her not to speak a word to her lest she have their tongue for her dinner. There was only one person who saw her these days and still didn't back down from her infamous frosty glare, and as fate would have it, she was waiting in the kitchen, staring at a bowl of chocolate cereal, when Emma slunk into the room. Emma didn't notice her at first as she went straight to the refrigerator and pulled out her secret stash of ice cream.
Jubilee watched in wide-eyed puzzlement as Emma dug a spoon into her ice cream and ate the first bite straight from the carton. The first time Emma became away of her former student's presence was when Jubes sniggered behind her back. "Silence, child," she snapped, "or I shall have your tongue."
"Ya didn't have it when I was a kid," Jubilee countered, "an' ya ain't gonna have it now." As Emma turned, Jubilee's Vampire senses revealed her troubled aura to her, and she stilled as she read the emotions flaring off of Emma. It wasn't just anger; sorrow and grief screamed off of her so loudly that Jubilee wondered how on Earth she'd never realized before how badly Emma was hurting. "Sorry," she muttered before she'd realized the apology had slipped out of her mouth. Catching herself, she shrugged and hurried to add, "I just never would've thought ya'd eat ice cream." She grinned. "An' 'specially not straight from the carton."
"There is still a lot about me, child," Emma responded, sinking into the chair at the head of the kitchen table, "that you do not know."
Jubilee nodded quietly. Emma's blue eyes glanced at her bowl of cereal. "Since when does a Vampire need human nourishment?"
Jubes shot her a fang-filled grin. "We all need human nourishment," she retaliated. "We just usually get it from the humans themselves."
Their eyes met over the table. "You miss being human," Emma observed.
"Nope." Jubilee shook her head. "But I do miss being a mutant." She was slow to open up these days, especially to the White Queen, but she knew she was hurting and found herself wanting to be allowed to help. "And I guess there are some things 'bout being human that I miss, too."
"Like the cereal," Emma commented between bites of her ice cream.
"Yeah." Jubes sighed heavily as she pushed the bowl away from her and watched the creamy, white milk slosh against the grainy, chocolate balls of cereal. "We can't eat human food," she admitted reluctantly with another shake of her head. "Blood's stale. It doesn't taste good, even if we do need it. But we can't eat other food, 'cause if we do, it goes straight through -- "
"Spare me the details," Emma commanded weakly, stifling both a moan and a yawn. She filled her opening mouth with more ice cream.
"We also don't sleep like we should," Jubilee added, shrugging her yellow-clad shoulders, "but then who around here does? You should be in bed."
"Hmph. I wish," Emma admitted before she could stop herself.
"Trouble sleeping?"
She could lie very easily, Emma thought. She could tell the child she had a great deal more duties to fulfill. Yet she had known Jubilee personally longer than any of the other mutants on Utopia, and there had been a time when she had also been closer to the child than she would ever be to any of their other team mates, including Scott whom she bedded just to keep her spot on a team filled with people who either hated her or, like Namor, wanted to use her for her wealth, prestige, and power. She didn't want to lie to her, Emma realized, but she also would not answer her and took another bite of her ice cream.
Jubilee cocked her head to one side and studied Emma, her blood red eyes narrowing in on her and the darkened aura that surrounded her. "You still miss him," she said suddenly, her observation surprising them both.
Emma was so startled that she dropped her spoon mid-way through its journey to her mouth. It splashed into her cartoon as her widened, blue eyes stared back into Jubilee's red orbs. "Ya miss Irish," Jubes clarified, and Emma trembled inside. No one was to know that; no one had ever known, including her beloved Sean himself, how strongly she had felt for him for years, how she had . . . She gulped and forced the rising bulge in her throat back down. She had loved him, but she had never admitted it while he lived and still would not.
Jubilee reached across the table for Emma's hand. "It's okay," she said. "Ya can tell me."
Emma stood up so quickly that she almost knocked over her chair. "I do miss him," she said icily, "as much as you miss Angelo." She whipped her ice cream carton off of the table, licked the last of the cream from her spoon, and hurriedly began putting it up.
Jubilee watched her through eyes widened by her shock. She did miss Angelo. There wasn't a moment of any day or night that went by that she didn't think of him. He had been much more than a team mate and her very best friend; he had been the one true love of her life. No one had ever seemed to know just how greatly she had felt for Angelo before, and nobody had really appeared to care until Emma. Her words and tone said one thing, but Jubilee had seen the hurt flashing in her blue eyes and the tears welling in her soul. She rose from her chair.
When Emma turned back from shutting the freezer door, she was even more startled to find Jubilee standing right in front of her. Despite all her training and her many years of waging a one-woman war against humanity, she had not heard the child move from the table, but then she was no longer a child, she remembered as she gazed down into her blood red eyes. Her student was no longer human or mutant. She was a Vampire, and Vampires could get away with things, like moving instantly half way across the room without making a single sound to give themselves away, that no one else could.
Jubilee heard Emma's heart hammering. She gazed up into her ice blue eyes flashing with fear, uncertainty, and sorrow and knew she was wondering not if but rather how she would use what she had learned about her tonight against her. "It's okay, Frostie," she assured her and surprised them both by giving her a quick, tight hug. "Your secret's safe with me. Irish would have been lucky to have ya. Ya would've done him a heckuva lot more good than Moira MacTaggert with that stiff stick up her ass."
She released her and stepped back as quickly as she had hugged her. She had once, not really too long ago though it did feel like another lifetime ago, been completely open with her emotions. She'd not tried to hold back from hugging anybody she liked who needed a hug, even if they didn't know they needed one, like her Wolveroonie, but that had been before she'd lost her powers and her family, before she'd lost her place as an X-Man. Now, as a Vampire, she was reluctant to come close to any one and knew that even those who she'd once considered to be some of her greatest, most loving friends feared her.
Emma's blue eyes blinked down into Jubilee's red ones. Jubilee shook off her insecurities and returned Emma's startled gaze through open orbs that slowly narrowed as she reached boldly into her mind. "Now go get ya some sleep, and have some good dreams. Ya deserve 'em."
Emma nodded slowly and started to walk off as though in a daze. She stopped just inside the doorway to the kitchen, gave herself both a mental and physical shake, and smiled back at Jubilee from over her slender, white shoulder. "Do not think you can play games with a telepath's mind, Jubilee. Even if you are a Vampire now, I still sense your thoughts in my head."
Jubilee grinned back at her. "Caught!" she admitted. "But they're there for yer own good. Now go get some sleep, and tell ol' One Eye I'll be sticking around for a while. If, that is, he doesn't mind having a Vampire on the team."
"You have a place here, Jubilation," Emma assured the young girl who, she'd come to realize this night, was as troubled as she herself, "for as long as I do and you want it." She slipped out of the room then, and Jubilee closed her eyes a she followed her through the building and back to her room.
Scott was waiting when Emma returned to the bedroom she shared with him. Both women cringed inside as they saw his hand clutching himself. "It's about time," Scott spoke with a grin. "I was beginning to wonder if I'd have to help myself tonight."
"Of course not, darling," Emma cooed pleasantly though anger and disgust roared inside of her. "Have all the pleasure you want." Her gloved hand stroked his cheek. Her lips touched his, and Scott fell asleep.
Emma sighed her relief and gratitude for her telepathic abilities; curled into the bed beside Scott, leaving him uncovered and taking all the sheets for herself; shut her eyes; and, at last and for the first time in years, instantly drifted off to sleep. Jubilee gave her good dreams of how Sean should have reacted had Emma ever been brave enough to tell her beloved how she'd truly felt about him and the happiness that union would have brought the both of them and then recoiled from her dreams. She returned to herself just in time to see the next mutant woman pulling more ice cream out of the freezer.
Lockheed was perched on Kitty's slender back, and he watched Jubilee with his head cocked to one side. She smiled at him, and the dragon cooed, his purple tail slashing happily through the air. Kitty shut the door and dug into her rocky road ice cream. "So have you made a decision yet?"
Jubilee nodded. "I have," she told her, "but he's not gonna like it."
Kitty paused with the spoon still inside her mouth. Slowly she withdrew it as she continued to gaze at Jubilee. "You're staying?"
"Yeah."
Kitty shook her head in amazement; Lockheed cooed questioningly. "Why?"
"I'm needed here," Jubilee said, her red eyes misting over. She shook her head and forced down her tears, reminding herself that Vampires didn't cry. "Wolvie hasn't needed me in a long time now. He made that clear when I lost my powers. But there's somebody here who does need me, and I'm gonna stick it through by them." She smirked. "Rather they want me to or not."
"Is there anything I can do to help?" Kitty could tell the younger girl was about ready to break down. She would have gone to her and wrapped her in a tight, big hug at one time, but now that Jubilee was a Vampire, she wasn't sure what to do with her, how to help her, if she needed her help, or if it would even be safe to hug her or mean signing her own death warrant instead.
"Yeah." Her tears sounded in her throat, and Jubilee cleared her voice before adding in a far rougher tone, "Look after him, Pryde, okay?"
Kitty smiled sadly. "I will." Lockheed cooed his agreement. He hated seeing young girls upset, and part of him wanted to fly over to Jubilee, wrap his wings around her face, and give her a tight hug. Yet, like Kitty, he knew she was a Vampire and was loathe to get that close to such a blood-thirsty monster.
Jubilee nodded and turned away from them. The tails of her long, yellow trench coat whirled around her as she moved, and then she was gone, flying off into the night and down to the beach. She paused again only when she was once more by herself and stared out at the water and the night's reflection in its dark waves as she thought yet again of her beloved Angelo. She wrapped her arms around herself, held her own self tightly, and cried as she thought of him. One day, she'd be with him again, but she had no idea how long it would take. A lifetime without him would have been miserable enough, but now she faced an eternity.
She wiped the tears from her eyes. The cool, night wind whipped around her, but she didn't feel the temperatures. She didn't feel much these days except for sorrow and anguish, and she'd seen those emotions reflected back to her from a woman whom she'd never thought could hurt so much, a woman who was in the same boat as she, hated and feared by those she fought alongside with and had made many sacrifices to save and protect and lost, lonely, and heart broken without the man she loved standing beside her, the man who was now dead and whom she'd never dared to tell how much she loved him while still he lived.
Jubilee stood alone on the shore, knowing she had an eternity of misery ahead of her. She didn't know how long Emma would last. It wouldn't be as long as she would now that she was a Vampire, but while she was there, she would stand beside her. She'd be there for her as Irish should have been, as they all should have been while they had been Generation X. She'd be there for her, and maybe together they could get through the nights and the heartache a little more easily.
Maybe together they could still build a better world, after all, while they never forgot the ones they loved and never stopped crying inside. Maybe together they could still find a way to make the dream that had all brought them together a reality, or they would die, Jubilee knew, fighting for a dream for which they yearned in a world and amongst people who hated and feared them. They would stand together. They would never forget the men they loved, and they would do all they could to make the dream in which they had all believed a reality.
"Jubilee."
Jubilee looked up through startled, red eyes to see Professor Charles Xavier, the man who had started it all, walking to her. He opened his arms to her, and for the first time in years, Jubilee didn't hesitate. She fell into his fatherly arms and cried out what was left of her heart and soul as he held her, stroking her hair and reassuring her like Wolverine had once done. Charles held his daughter in his arms, clutched her throughout the night, and carried her into the future of his dream that was now all their dreams.
The End