Blueshift

Blueshift Chapter Sixteen (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply


A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… *sends a nap * InterNutter (yay for the new BBS!), TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are loverly and wondermous for archiving/hosting. :) ProPhile: Check your inbox tonight around 7 my time. Ish. Morgan: *GLOMP* How’s the sidewalk shoveling campaign going? Readers/Reviewers: Foxy is out of pocket for a few days so the next few chapters are un-beta read. I’ll send out corrections if need be when she’s pocketed. Or something like that. :)


Jean frowned and rubbed the back of her hand, wincing when she felt the forming bruise where Beast had taken her blood. She could hear him and Cecilia murmuring nearby, something about counts and cells. For once, Jean did not care about the medical terminology and it did not make her ears prick with interest. She was thirsty and her head throbbed, side effects of the sedative, she knew. She opened her eyes and blinked at the glare of the overhead light reflecting off of the white ceiling tiles and turned her face aside, jerking in mild surprise as she saw Scott sitting next to her, staring. “Hey,” she murmured. “How long was I asleep? It takes you an hour to get home…”
“Beast said you’d been out for about that long when I got here… it’s just a little past ten,” he leaned close and touched her face tentatively. “Are you okay? They said you had some sort of a headache and fainted in the library hall then again in the Professor’s study…” He did not voice his question about pregnancy. He had been snapped at once before for suggesting it when she felt ill for a week straight, his concern being turned into an accusation that she thought he thought she was gaining weight. “Are you studying too hard again?” he said instead.
“No,” she sighed, not wanting to get into their old argument once more. “I told you, I’m pacing myself now.” She reached up and closed her fingers around his, pulling his hand down to her side and looking him in the eyes. “I promised. We’re working too hard to make this work for me to throw it away on some term paper.”
Scott nodded but did not say anything else for several moments. They had been to group therapy for young couples, been to a retreat and even gone to some friend of the Professor’s who specialized in marriage counseling trying to find some even footing and sometimes Scott feared that it was all useless, that their age and goals were against them. He tried to force the thoughts back as he lifted her hand to kiss the back of it, sighing as he did so. “Don’t scare me like that, please. Beast called me at the garage and said you’d lost consciousness…” he paused and sighed again. “Damn it. Forgot to clock out.”
Jean smiled, her head still throbbing and feeling stuffed, but her mood lifting just a bit. “I think Francis will forgive you if you call him and explain.” She shifted and tried to push herself up on her elbows, wincing as it felt as if her head were sloshing full of liquid, her pulse suddenly tangible inside her skull, or so it seemed.1
“Just lay down, Jean,” he urged, gently pushing on her shoulders. “They’re working on Emma right now. What do you need? I’ll get it.” He was already standing, ready to get a cup of water, a fresh pillow, anything she asked for.
“Emma?” she asked thinly. “What’s she doing in here?” Jono and the Professor both had been in the conference with her, Jean recalled, and neither of them had seemed surprised when she described what she had been dealing with since the evening before, the voices and feelings she could not block out or control. No one else in the Institute had expressed a similar problem, just her. She blinked, something clicking in her mostly unmuddled thought processes. She craned her neck to see Beast and Cecilia retreat into his office and close the door softly behind them. “Scott,” she murmured urgently, “go ask Emma why she’s here. Quick, before the sedatives kick in.”
“What?” he made a face of brief confusion. “Why?”
“Just do it! Please?” She tried to sit up further as if to do it herself but Scott put a restraining hand on her shoulder. “Thank you,” she sighed as he moved to Emma’s side across the room. Jean closed her eyes again and laid back, making a mental note to write on her own chart that she did not want that sedative ever again. A moment later, her fog was lifted by a loud, piercing screech rising from Emma.
“I TOLD YOU!” the older woman cried out, her hands flying to cover her ears, “I HEAR THEM ALL THE TIME! I CAN’T MAKE IT STOP!”
Beast practically burst from his office as Scott scrambled back, slipping and falling and getting to his feet before the massive blue mutant made it to Emma’s bedside. Jean shoved herself into a sitting position, staring, wide eyed and pale, at Emma. The telepath was thrashing, clawing at her ears, her clothes asunder as she tried to work free from Beast’s grasp. “Scott, help him!” she shouted, getting to her feet with only a slight lurch and sway. Scott grabbed Emma’s ankles and held her as firmly as he could, closing his eyes tightly as his glasses slipped down his nose. Beast held her by the shoulders, pushing his forearm against her abdomen, trying to keep her writhing to a minimum as Cecilia hastily jabbed her arm with another dose of sedative. “What,” Beast said after a long moment in which Emma’s struggles grew weaker then finally stopped, leaving the telepath breathing hard and shallowly, her eyes moving rapidly behind her eyelids, “brought that on?”
Scott swallowed hard and pushed his glasses back into place. “I just asked her why she was down here and why she wasn’t in Boston…” He blushed furiously, leaving out the part about Jean asking him to.
Beast sighed. “I think Jean’s okay to go back to the boathouse and rest. If there’s any more problems, call me immediately.”
Jean nodded, bending slowly to pick up her shoes. She was not fine. She was far from fine. And she had a sneaking suspicion why. “Scott,” she said softly as he led her by her elbow out into the hall, “could you do me a huge favor?”
“Depends,” he replied, just as quietly, “is it going to get me screamed it? Because if it is, this had better not be to ask Banshee or Theresa something…”
Jean smiled and shook her head carefully. “Find Jono for me. I have to talk to him.”
He paused and levelly at her, raising a brow. “Jono? Why?”
“Because he’s the only other person here with telepathic abilities that will tell me the absolute, unvarnished truth.”


1 If you’ve ever had a migraine, you know what I mean.