Bad Idea
Hysterical was not a word Jubilee ever found herself in close association with.
She would be told she had attempted to flee from campus on foot immediately after the “incident,” scrambling across the grounds and hurtling into the tree line. It would explain the cuts and bruises that came from crashing through the wildlife.
She would be told it was Logan who found her first - a shivering, babbling mess crouched against a tree. Hyperthermia had begun to set in.
It had been easy enough to carry her back - until the campus came into view. When her ear-piercing shrieking and thrashing started, McCoy had already been standing by to provide medical treatment.
She would be told it took Logan and McCoy's combined efforts to hold her down and sedate her.
Now she was in the infirmary. Again.
Jubilee sighed as she stared up at the arched ceiling, letting her eyes focus and unfocus on the hanging dimmed lights. Instead of an isolated room she lay on one of many beds in a long hall.
The faint drip of an IV bag was the sound she chose to focus on at the moment. Earlier it was the scratching of branches against a nearby window. At night it was always Marie’s snores or soft breathing from the neighboring bed.
Marie had developed a fever, the shock of cold to her system shut down whatever conscious access she had to her own abilities. Jubilee was miserable that the girl was trapped here with her. If there was anyone who needed to suffer, it had to be Jubilee.
Aside from the quiet attendance of McCoy throughout the day checking their vitals and Marie in her induced slumber, Jubilee was left alone with her thoughts.
The image of Jean on the ground, her face gaping in terror - was only one of the many things that whirled in her mind. The past week had pushed her too hard and she struggled to admit that. The instinct to flee was gnawing at her. It told her the same thing it always did. Move on. Get away. New setting, new people, new problems. She never had to worry about what she left behind.
But now she was tethered - the thin string that kept her connected to Marie had strengthened into a steel cable.
The monotony of school was actually comforting. Routine and friendship had found its way back into her life.
Part of her felt trapped. Part of her felt liberated.
Rather than drifting, she’d found anchor.
She wanted to stay. She wanted to flee.
She wanted this feeling to pass immediately.
“How long are you just going to lie there looking pathetic?”
Jubilee’s eyes slid closed. As much as she didn’t mind the way Marie adopted the best bits from her, she hated how Kitty managed to keep only the worst.
The girl had been there for a while. Jubilee had heard her first - clomping around the infirmary, the scrap of a chair as she pulled it to the side of the bed, the heaving sighs, the fucking fidgeting.
And then she’d just start talking.
Kitty had lost some of that nagging nurturing that Jubilee had come to tolerate and was absorbed in the results of their recent performance. She only visited to obsess and complain.
“You’ll have to get out of that bed sometime, you’ve recovered better than Marie.”
The guilt just churned in Jubilee’s gut.
“You’d think after failing they’d take away my sleeve - now all I can do is look at it on my desk. What’s the point? They just want me to live with the shame of it all, right?”
What IS the point?
“Everyone knows now. It doesn’t help that Tabitha is sharing every stupid, inaccurate detail. She failed too! How is she not embarrassed about that? We should’ve let Marie set her on fire. I was so close. This close. I deserved to pass after everything I did. Now I have to see it every time I open up my file.”
Jubilee let go of a haggard sigh and Kitty’s rambling stopped. Her face popped into Jubilee’s view.
“You agree, don’t you? Once you get out of the infirmary we can argue with Logan to change my score.”
Before Jubilee could open her mouth to reply, another voice answered for her.
"Some of us are dying very slowly, Kitty," Marie's southern drawl was thick with malice and Jubilee could see the wince in the other girl's face as she slunk back into her seat.
Jubilee glanced over at her neighbor, a hand already extended. Marie took it without looking, her fingers warm and welcoming in the chilly space. That warmth spread up Jubilee's arm, across her chest and down to her toes. She took the first, clear, strong breath since waking in the infirmary.
"Elixir?" Jubilee offered, sitting up slowly, flexing her free hand and wiggling her toes.
Marie nodded, eyes closed, focused on breathing evenly. The girls watched the bruises on her dark skin disappear. "Sweet thing, that one," she grumbled. "Hard to use, though."
“Are you healing yourself?” Jubilee pulled out her IV with a practiced, gentle tug.
Marie shook her head, letting go of her friend to scratch at the now useless bandage on her arm. She yawned, “I don’t know if Elixir can do that. Logan’s healing factor is too reactive for me to try.” The girl gave a pleasurable moan as she stretched long on the bed and sat up, finally opening her eyes and looking upon her team.
Jubilee couldn’t help her smile, seeing Marie’s hair wild about her face. The back of her head was flat and her thick curls tried to crowd her face. “You look like you had the best sleep ever.”
Marie nodded, “It was needed.” Her expression hardened when she spoke to Kitty. “You’ve been in here so much complaining that it was happening even in my dreams.”
“So it’s true what they say about talking to people in comas,” Jubilee swung her legs out of the bed to Marie’s side, planting her bare feet on the floor. She winced at the chill of the linoleum. Tentatively she stood, found herself to be steady, and stretched with a groan. “I feel like crap but I also feel like I could run a 10k.”
“We should really talk, you guys.”
Marie got out of the bed, standing next to Jubilee and facing Kitty as she yanked out her IV with a rough hand. “If it’s the greatest hits of your latest ranting, I’ll pass.”
Jubilee glanced at Kitty over her shoulder, “You should give it a minute, we both know she’s not a morning person.”
“But it’s the afternoon!”
Marie waved a hand, “It can wait, I’m hungry.”
“NO. NOW.”
The two girls froze, turning their full attention to a fuming Kitty Pryde. She was still sitting on the chair, her hands on her thighs balled into tight fists. Jubilee really took her in, then. Dark circles around the eyes, worry lines creased into her forehead, her hair pulled into the tightest of ponytails, her mouth pressed into a scowl. A knee bounced with the intensity of a jack hammer and Jubilee noticed the haste in which her socks had been pulled on - mismatched in length, the laces of her shoes a tangle on each foot.
"Katherine," Jubilee spoke the girl's name without venom, her voice soft. "What happened?"
Kitty swallowed, rocking forward as she looked down at her feet, as if she couldn't find the words. When she leveled those big brown eyes at her friends they saw not exhaustion, but grief. "Piotr is missing. He went on a mission with a younger group of mutants. It was supposed to be just for training. They lost contact the same day we went into Danger. No one will tell me anything - this is the longest any group has been off the grid. Something has gone wrong in a really bad way, I know it."
And then she burst into tears.
It would be a while before they finally left the infirmary. The girls talked amongst themselves across their beds, Jubilee and Marie trying to console and reason with a crumbling Kitty Pryde. The girl wanted to take action - so Jubilee asked what could they do. Kitty came up short on plausible ideas. They had no information about the "mission" or what could have happened to Piotr and his team. Kitty didn't even know who else had gone with him.
They decided it was clear the only people who had this information were the professors - namely Logan and Ororo.
It was also decided that if they were to try to help, they had to take a few drastic measures.
Marie was not happy about it.
The summer sky burned low in the early evening when they found themselves looking out towards the most remote garage on campus. Logan's motorcycle was parked in one of the driveways.
It was a swift and unanimous decision that Logan would be far more forgiving than Ororo, should they be caught doing what they were about to do.
"I've never actually read anyone's mind before."
“You mean, like, on purpose, right?”
Jubilee shook her head, “Kitty, wind it back, dude.”
"But she knows she can do it!"
Marie sighed, "Yes, that is true."
"You know, this is a pretty terrible time to start having a moral compass about your abilities."
The expression that Kitty received made her look away with a scowl. Jubilee put a firm hand on the girl's shoulder. Kitty's intensity hadn't really let up since they left the infirmary. But that annoying determination had come back with a bit of a vengeance.
"If you don't want to, you don't have to," Jubilee insisted, her expression soft as her eyes met Marie’s. She tightened her hold on Kitty when she felt the girl tense at the words. “This isn’t like anything you’ve done before, so we understand if you’re not confident. RIGHT, Kitty?”
Kitty worked her mouth against a biting reply.
Never mind that Marie had ACTUALLY tried her telepathy on Jubilee several times already. With mixed results. That usually left them both with blinding migraines. It only confirmed that Jubilee probably did have some kind of resistance to mind reading, and just reinforced Marie’s fear and strange reverence for Jean’s power.
Marie took a slow breath, “No, I want to try. We try, even if it means if we fail, right?”
“But you won’t,” Kitty’s eyes glittered with that determination, and Jubilee was relieved her tone carried confidence and trust. “Tell me what I’m thinking about right now.”
Without hesitation Marie replied, “If Logan is punishing you by failing you in the last exercise.”
Kitty started, “Oh my god, yes!”
Marie’s expression sagged, “It’s written on you face, honey. I didn’t need to read your mind to know that.”
Jubilee sighed, a ragged sound. “We haven’t been out of the infirmary for more than an hour, Kitty. I still have frost bite on my ass. Maybe don’t push too hard.”
Kitty looked at Marie, pleading. “The other night I watched you push yourself in ways you never had before. I know I’m crazy right now, and it’s not just because I’m in love with Piotr -“
“ - YOU ARE WHAT -“
“- but I hate not being able to help people when I know I can. The teachers are hiding something, probably to protect us or hide a mistake - I don’t know and I can’t make sense of it and maybe that scares me the most.” Kitty was breathless, wringing her hands, “If it were either of you out there I’d already be on my way - “
Marie snatched Kitty into a hug, silencing the girl. Jubilee watched it melt from a stiff embrace into the two slumping into each other.
“I’m sorry you’ve been alone these few days,” Marie had nestled her chin on Kitty’s shoulder, tucking the smaller girl into the folds of her sweater. “I know we’re all better together. We’re going to help, Kitty. We’re always going to help.”
Kitty let go of a soft sound and pulled away, wiping her eyes.
Jubilee stood with her hands on her hips. “So I guess we just ignore that Kitty admitted her undying love for - yeah okay, you know what? Let’s just do this.”
They decided it was best to be at a distance and upwind from their professor, who Marie sensed was somewhere in the garage doing...whatever Logan does. All she could call it was “ruminating.” What little they did know of his abilities came down to what Marie could share.
Heightened sense of smell and hearing. Slow to age, quick to heal. Drinks alcohol like water. Was probably alive for the signing of the Declaration of Independence and still has shrapnel in his body from the Civil War.
They would not take any chances.
The trio hid far back by a tree line, allowing themselves to be absorbed in the darkness it offered as the sun descended in the sky. Jubilee and Kitty kept watch for Marie, who sat in her loose lotus, hands resting on her knees.
Jubilee matched her breathing with Marie’s, trying to calm the nerves that had been in overdrive for what felt like weeks. She was exhausted, feeling the weight of it settle on her shoulders. Jubilee clenched her jaw as she rolled them, willing away the tension. When Marie’s deep breaths softened, Jubilee let herself drop into a crouch, eyes never leaving the garage.
“Do you think she can do it?”
Kitty’s hushed voice split the quiet. She hadn’t moved much either. But Jubilee could see the line of tension in her body, the way her shoulders also slumped with a weight only of Kitty’s making.
“She can do anything,” Jubilee replied.
“...Do you think I can do it?”
Jubilee frowned, “Read minds?”
“Be a leader.”
“...Is that what you want, Kitty?”
“I used to think that’s what I wanted. Then I failed. If I can’t lead in a training exercise, what good am I to my team? My family? My friends?”
Jubilee chewed the inside of her cheek, not sure how to feel about being the emotional support friend for a girl who was probably banking her entire existence on whatever came out of Jubilee’s mouth.
“I don’t know a thing about it,” Jubilee glanced over to see the outline of Kitty’s shoulders sag at this. “I’ve always looked out for myself but,” she knew they were both looking at Marie now, “I’m learning that if I really wanted to protect the people I love, I just have to show up. The worst thing is to give up and walk away.”
Kitty’s voice sounded thick, “Why did I fail, Jubilee? What did I do so wrong?”
Jubilee looked back at the garage, “Life isn’t always about passing. Sometimes failing is the only way to get better.”
Kitty hummed in reply.
“I mean who knows what Logan thinks anyway, he could’ve hated the way you wore your hair or -“
A low, horrible growl stopped the words in Jubilee’s throat.
Both Kitty and Jubilee jumped to defensive stances, whipping their heads around, knowing what that sound always preceded.
“Do you see him?” Kitty hissed.
Jubilee strained her hearing instead of trying to rely on her eyes in the darkness. The growl had left a cold stone in her gut, and it seemed to weigh heavier by the second.
Shit, where was he?
“Stubborn as shit!”
Kitty had to stifle a yelp, and Jubilee whirled around at the words.
They were both looking down at Marie.
Her eyes were still closed, but her face...her face was contorted in a way that didn’t fit her features. But Jubilee knew that ugly scowl.
“Never gonna learn...”
The hairs on Jubilee’s neck stood on end. It was as if Logan was speaking THROUGH Marie.
“What the f-“
“Shh!” Kitty came to a crouch next to Marie, not touching the girl but examining her closely. “Must be some kind of trance,” she said.
“Gonna get them...” Marie seemed to choke on the words, “Killed or worse.”
Kitty and Jubilee exchanged horrified expressions.
“Stupid...brats...” Jubilee tensed as she watched Marie’s face twist and contort, like she was fighting against something.
“She looks like she’s in pain, Jubilee,” Kitty’s voice was pitched, and she grabbed at Marie’s arm as if she were going to shake her awake.
“Kitty don’t - “
The warning was too late.
Marie’s attention snapped directly at Kitty, who was frozen in shock. Jubilee flinched at the sharp sniff Marie took, and Kitty jumped back at the growl that came from the girl’s throat.
“You didn’t know this was a two-way connection?”
Jubilee crashed into Kitty and dragged the girl into a full blown sprint.
Maybe this was a bad idea.