Lucky Me, Chapter 093

I opened my eyes. The sensation of light hitting them forced me to close them again.

Memories, slow and splintered, come back. Kerry, oh no…I died with her. I should very well be dead. I frantically tried to sit up since my powers were still rebuilding themselves from being so taxed. Gentle and firm hands pushed me back down, while telling me to take it easy.

Weakly, I looked over and up at my husband, Scott. His face was marred with a deep frown, but I could sense intense relief in our telepathic rapport. He took one of my hands in his and squeezed it lightly. There was an underlying emotion, and I looked over to where his eyes were directed and I didn't know what to feel.

I couldn’t move because my body was stiff and every muscle ached at being used. Yet, I couldn’t look away even though pained my heart.

Half of me believed I should be thankful to see Kerry in the bed beside mine. She was hooked up to every machine I had ever seen in the medical lab. There was a steady pump from the accordion-like machine which filled her lungs with oxygen, the heart monitor gave soft beeps every time her heart pumped, and IVs inserted into both her wrists.

Tears came to my eyes as I stared at her. The fallen angel. She's so young, too young to know this type of violence.

My thoughts were rattled and still smarting from wounds I guessed only death could bring. A part of me felt drained and yet another part was relieved— as if a huge burden had been taken off my shoulders. It was my death I supposed, I was scared of dying.

I turned my face away, back to look at Scott. I didn't want to die, even as I held my scared daughter in my arms. She screamed and clawed as I held her. The flames were freezing and burning and it-

I felt something on my hand. Something wet and warm which ran smoothly down the back of my hand and onto the bed. Blinking at my husband, I never thought I'd see the day when he would bow his head and cry. Scott normally only let his guard down around me, when no one else stood a chance of coming in. But there was my husband, crying with his head bowed, my hand gripped tightly in his own.

"S-cott?" I managed to croak weakly.

Within a breath, he had leaned over the bed and hugged me firmly, yet gently. I felt only a few tears hit my face as I forced my arms to respond, forgetting their soreness. "Scott?" I whispered again.

"I—thought I had lost you."

My eyes sealed shut as tears emerged from underneath my lashes. "I'm right here." I softly stroked his hair, attempting to comfort him.

"But you weren't, Jean." Scott moved back to gaze at me. "You and Kerry were gone. Flat lined for five minutes at least."

The news was shocking to me. "D-Did Hank-?" Fear gripped my chest, I was dead. I had died. I should still be dead.

"No," was all Scott would say as he held me again. This time, the tears he cried and the words he said weren't about me alone. The phrase 'both of you' slipped in more than once. I knew Scott had to face the loss of two children, Rachel and Nathan, for different reasons and now he stood to face that pain for a third time.

It had only been three days, Kerry was still in a comatose state and yet I was alive. A part of me felt guilty, and another part, again, felt relieved.

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She called me 'Jack' for the purpose of keeping our relationship hidden. She might disguise my name, but I was the one who used an image inducer to hide who I was. Seeing her like this, I wished I could hide again.

There wasn't anything like losing someone you love; except for having a shred of hope that they weren't really gone. That's what that emotion was. She was lying in the medical bay of the mansion with tubes and needles sticking out of her. Just seeing her made me want to scratch my arms where she has the needles inserted.

She's so close, physically, but so far away, mentally.

It's only been a few days and I hadn’t slept for more than an hour at a time. Much to the Professor's regrets, I had not left the room where she lays.

Why didn't she tell me she was going away?

No matter how mad I was, I would have gone with her. Maybe then I could have stopped that psychotic witch from doing this to her.

Kerry. I took her limp, needle infested hand into mine.

If this was really the end, then why the hell did it have to end on a fight?

I was having problems remembering what it is we fought over. Probably something miniscule and stupid. Pointless crap that made her feel she couldn't come to me. God, it hurts. I didn't want to lose her but I couldn’t fight for her.

God, please….. You didn’t give someone somebody and then take them away, You couldn’t. I didn’t want to lose her. She's not allowed to make me crazy like this.

Kerry, you stubborn girl, just wake up.

Just…don't leave.

Tears, ones I rarely cried because I'd rather laugh, fall on her hand and then her face as I leaned over her body and kissed her forehead.

I'd be there for her, when she woke up.

Or even when she could breathe on her own, without the aid of the breathing tube.

I'd be there waiting for her.

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I wanted to growl or electrocute him every time I went down there.

Ten days. Ten days since the incident and every single freaking day he was by her side!

Of course he was never awake. I started to take some college classes and had to be gone most of the day. By the time I returned, it was late and I'd always go and see her first.

But she was never alone. She was always with him.

Ugh, it was so disgusting. Most of the time I would just turn and leave, but something would make me go and at least stare at her and ignore him completely. He was such a spineless wuss. How the hell did he get Kerry?

Yeah, Chris with the bad attitude, that was me. Chris who had fallen for a girl who never gave me more than sharp words and withering looks.

That sucked.

Why the hell doesn't he just leave her be? He's an idiot. I hate him right now.

I ground my teeth together and turned to leave, I bumped into her sister as I went.

"Uh," the girl started but I shoot her a nasty glare and the sheer force of the look caused her to step back. Kerry would have killed me several times already had she known the look I had given to her precious baby sister. "N-never mind."

I sighed. This wasn't what she would want. I also had a little sister so I knew how to handle them. Sorta.

"Sorry, I-just thought you were someone else." I give her my best smile, which Kerry said looked more like a toothless lion's snarl.

"I-I'm kind of lost." Darcy, she didn’t look much like her sister. Kerry had black hair and green eyes; Darcy had more blondish hair with bluish eyes. "I don't know where the kitchen is."

Shaking my head, making sure to keep a smile on my lips I jerked my head in the direction and waited for her to catch up with me.

This was the least I could do for Kookie until she woke up.

Sheesh, when did I become so soft?

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If anyone had a clue I was down here, I would have to bring massive amounts of pain down upon them. I might be thin, but it didn’t mean I cannot hold my own in a fight. Although, in honesty, I would just manipulate their emotions until they were a whining mess.

Who would ever think the mighty Julie Loone would bother with the mostly dead girl off and on for almost two weeks?

Her boyfriend was passed out again by her side. Pathetic lovesick fool. Although everyone was putting on a brave face, I could read them clearly.

They were terrified and had no hope of her recovery. They didn’t see things the same way I did. I could see her emotions, and after living in an asylum, I knew dead people.

I was always surrounded by the insane and their erratic emotions. When they were sedated, their emotions would tone down a great deal, but not completely off. When they attempted suicide, then they were like warmed flesh.

But it wasn't so with this blockhead.

This trollop was fighting something in her vegetable state. Her emotions weren't fever pitched, but they existed enough to show the battle to those, namely me, who knew what to look for.

There was depression and hope mingled and stabbing each other constantly. It's almost funny how she was fighting herself with something the others didn’t even have. Oh, they had the depression. They fancy it over hope.

I could help. I really could, hope was an emotion. I could simply push her emotions in that direction and speed up the battle. But…I didn’t want to.

I wanted to see the perfect princess suffer for a bit. She's too stubborn to die. She's too stubborn to do anything beside what she wanted to do. But that's not wholly the reason for my want of her suffering.

No, I wanted her to suffer for another reason.

My hands, even though they were…never mind. My nails bit into my palms, actually only into the leather that covers my palms. Red leather, the color of blood, the color of love and passion in the emotions. It wasn't my fault!

I shook my head, I would not cry!

Narrowing my eyes, I wished I could burn a hole in her head sometimes. I didn’t really hate her, but I hate that she-was so attached to him. I didn’t know why I fancy him so much. He was one of the people who have been normal to me for as long as I have been here. The comments and nasty words slide right off of him as if they were bits of rain.

In Las Vegas, I could have let her die. I could have let both of her and Bobby be murdered by their own stupidity. The door they were about to pass through was never used by anyone on that floor, meaning Lucky Dice and his associates, and therefore was booby trapped. It was fixed with a bomb that could have blown away half of the stair well. I noticed this only because I know how to make bombs such as that.

For the briefest of moments I think about placing a bomb under her bed, but the furthest I'd ever get was thinking about it. I was not completely a demon after all. Pushing my sunglasses further up my nose, I turned and left. There was nothing more to see.

As I was leaving, I bumped into the girl's number one fan.

"Watch were you're going, Bradley."

He gives me a dirty look, and then, as I walked away, I feel a electric shock go through my body.

Whirling around, I go to give him a piece of my depression but he's already disappeared into the room.

Wanker.

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She looks like some type of foreign, forsaken angel lying on the snow white sheets with her dark hair fanning out around her pale features. Except now…well, anyway, now it's different. I walked in while her boyfriend was sleeping. He didn’t do much anymore but eat, sleep and worry. He wasn't down here all the time because Mrs. Jean didn’t approve of the match.

I didn’t know why.

My sister has always been pretty to me, but the stark contrast of white versus black makes her seem almost picturesque. Her boyfriend stirred and I sheepishly smiled at him as he quickly pulled away from her.

"That's okay, you don't have to." I tried to stop him from a hasty retreat, but it didn’t help because he made a few excuses and ran for it.

I sighed and sat down on the empty bed beside her. Since I was only 5'5’’ my feet weren't anywhere near the floor and I kicked them out in a beat only I could hear. They said they didn’t know where Mom went to and as nasty as it makes me feel, I couldn’t say I really cared. How could I? She was the cause of Kerry's current precarious state.

The Bible I'd been clutching in my arms was my only comfort. It was when Daddy died, when Grandma got attacked, when Kerry got attacked and now. Many people I’ve met before and after this wonder how I could still believe in God who was good when all these misfortunes have happened in a steady order.

My reply usually was something like 'think about how bad I would be without Him.' They were still baffled, but it's true. My sister meant the world to me because I've always looked up to her. Kerry was always the one to stand up for me when I wouldn't, she was the one who put up with me during nightmares (though I know she became irritated) and even entertained me on Halloween by letting me pick out the costumes.

A smile formed on my face as I started to hum.

Even now I feel peace overwhelm me. A sense of knowing whatever happened was in the best hands they could possibly be in.

A memory of when I was seven and she just turned ten comes to mind. I had been at Sunday school when a boy, Eric, had lifted up my skirt and I ran away crying. Kerry had seen the whole thing and brought the word of God right down on that boy's head until he saw the lights (or at least bright bursts of them the way his eyes twirled around in his head). Daddy had been less than amused, Mom said the young punk deserved it and Kerry had threatened that if he or any of his loser friends messed with me again, they'd have to answer to her.

That's how she got the nick name 'D'mon Demon' which sounded like Mr. LeBeau's 'the' so it translated into 'De Moon Demon'. She had to carry that name with her all through elementary and her junior high years. I always felt guilty because I knew it was my fault she had such a reputation and a horrible pet name. I bet she hadn’t mentioned that to anyone.

I accused my younger self of being the reason my sister withdrew from people, because she was the 'demon' of her class. So she stood up for a weaker person, what was wrong with that? Kerry always blew off my questions and apologies, but I knew she was lonely.

While she was the strong one, I was the popular one. For some reason, my sister's bad reputation only improved mine.

My smile faded as I remembered, yet again, another time when she took the brunt of the pain for something that wasn't her fault.

It was when she was going into high school, after we had lost Daddy. Tears started to spring up at the thought of my father who had gone Home. Another pain, less deep, but only barely, surfaced as I could hear their taunting voices ringing in my ears. My sister had been trying to help me do something when that same boy, Eric, decided to do something vicious.

Because Kerry wouldn't even pass him a glance, the boy, of course, fell for her. He asked her out and she simply said she'd rather eat a three day old toad which had been injected with nuclear waste and run over by a tractor fresh out of the cow field. From that day on, he had spread nasty rumors about who she was and what she did.

It was the typical dumb teenage topics. He said she was gay, that she was really a guy who liked to cross dress, and all this other stuff. It was horrible. But that wasn't even the worse of it all.

The worst part was when he found her notebook full of clippings about mutants.

He accused her of being a mutant, at the most at being a mutant lover at the least. Pretty high crimes. It came to a climax when Eric had flaunted her notebook around the cafeteria and asked her point blank. Kerry looked ready to gouge his eyes out, but she didn't hiss a word.

Instead, he turned to me. He asked if I could deny it. I glared at him and then looked to Kerry who waited for me to answer. I was in the middle of the most popular people and I had been pressured. So I said the only thing I could think of, and that was that she was a freak in love with the X-gene and then went on to describe her room. I made up most of it and felt like a big fat liar (which I was) afterwards.

It took me a week to be able to talk to her without wanting to cry, I felt so guilty. When I told her that I didn't mean it, Kerry looked at me, and my heart broke repeatedly every time I thought about the look in her eyes. There was no fight, there was no life, just a complete cave in. She was empty and her eyes showed it.

Kerry had told me not to think about it too much or I might get a reputation as an intellectual. From then on she had been a zombie. Doing what she needed to, but nothing else. She clamed up and just stayed out of the way. It was because of me, I just knew it. It's because I betrayed her. All she ever did was protect me and I betrayed her.

But then she came to this place. This 'school' and for the first time in a long time, she was actually starting to be Kerry again. Especially because she didn't get people who judged her. Every time I'd call or she'd send a letter Kerry was more alive than I had noticed in a long time. No one knew what we had been through, no one called her names and when she got a boyfriend, she couldn't be any more like herself than before the tragedies.

I glanced over at my sister and opened my Bible, closing my eyes I prayed for her recovery and then start reading out loud from the Gospel of Matthew. Half way through the third chapter, Kerry's new 'mother' came in. She smiled and I tried to reflect the action but failed.

"How are you holding up?" I couldn’t believe this lady was more concerned about me than she was about herself.

"Okay." I answer vaguely. "Do you know when she'll wake up?"

Her smile faltered, "I don't know if she'll wake up."

My heart dropped to the floor. I guessed it's better than her lying and raising my hopes. "Oh." I wrestled with the right words for what I wanted to ask. A few minutes later and the words were captured between my teeth and tongue. "Y-you were there when-they said she-"

"Yes," her voice was very controlled, wish I had that ability. "I was, why?"

"Wh-what did you see?" I gripped the book in my hands to my chest, trying to use osmosis to make it be a part of me physically. "Toward-the end?"

Mrs. Summers was very quiet for a few minutes. Was she debating on not telling me? Maybe it was something I didn’t want to hear. I sighed, it might not be something I wanted to hear but it was something I definitely wanted to know.

"Fire." I cringed. "Cold and hot, black with white tips. She was suffering—” after that, she pinched her lips together, green eyes looking off to the side.

"I know someone who suffered worse." She arched an eyebrow but didn’t say anything more. "Just like Him, Kerry wasn't at fault with the—attacker but she still stood between me and that fate. I don't see how people can go through life with only themselves to depend on."

"When you're a mutant, it's different. We have enough power to forge the future."

"But not enough power to keep people from dying."

She didn't retort and I feel silent as well.

Absently I flipped to a familiar passage my Daddy would read to both Kerry and I when we were little.

"But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed." -Isaiah 53: 5.

"No way!" Julie screamed.

"Yes 'way'!" Chris fought back. The energy started to crackle around his body. "Get. Out."

"I wasn't doing anything you -you!" Julie stomped her foot and marched heavily out of the room. Pretty big feat for such a lightweight.

"Both of you, out of here!" Dr. McCoy commanded them. "Don't you have something to do?" He turned, eyed me and muttered under his breath about the impossibilities of youth. "I'm surprised to see you in here, Bishop."

I nod. I only came to look at her for a few minutes because I know part of the future. It's not that she was an outstanding X-Man. However, seeing her here in the medical bay, near death led me to the realization that the future was always opened to change. Hadn’t it already changed?

The X-Men played a vital role in the shaping of the world I came from, but with the stop of Onslaught, perhaps my time line has already been nullified.

The one time I did speak to D’mon about her future, I lied.

It wasn't her grandchild at all that told us the stories of Blyt but I wasn't able to tell her who it was. She has to shape her own future. I just hoped it would be different from the one which I lived in.

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I lost my parents.

I lost my brother.

I lost my son's chance to live a normal life.

I lost my daughter in the time stream.

I lost my first love, then my first wife, and then I lost my wife again, though temporarily.

And now I stand to lose another child. Many would wonder why if I even had a heart anymore after it had been destroyed so many times with loving and losing. But I was the one who was the shoulder to lean on, the sensible, dependable Scott Summers.

I was one of the first X-Men and I'd seen many of our members die. I'd been to almost every one of their funerals and had to hide the hurt because I was the one the others needed to lean on. Sometimes I hated it. This was nothing but the self made cage I had put myself into. I just had to be the strong one, the one who never changed, the one who would always remained the same no matter what life threw at me.

Staring down at Kerry, I know why I felt like I recognized her spirit. She had the same sad trait I did. She's always trying to be the strong one and felt guilty when she couldn’t be. I tried my hardest to break that habit before it sunk its claws into her life, but I was already too late.

I hadn’t been down here in the three weeks she's been laid up. I didn't want to see another person die on me.

Yes, I yelled at her. Probably I yelled too much, but I just didn't want her to end up in the medical bay, like she was and close to death, like she was.

Though I really couldn’t’ tell her very much out loud, since I had a talent for expressing my feelings, but I was so proud of her. What she did for another made me glad she was under my training, that she chose not to hurt, but defend even at her own physical expense.

I picked up her hand and squeezed it lightly

And then I screamed for Hank.