Elsewhere

by River

It's gonna be dawn soon. We should get going.

I drag myself out of sleep on willpower alone. I've been getting so tired lately - ever since that last Shift, I think. We stop for the night, every night, and I immediately drop off, then wake up feeling like I've slept maybe an hour. I try not to think about that, do my best not to show it. I know he'd noticed; his eyes know me too well.

Pretty soon he's stirring, coming awake by my side. Groans, stretches. His arm had been resting on my stomach, and now that it's gone the place feels cold and oddly free.

"Ange?" I say, just to hear my own voice, or maybe to make sure it's really him. Because there are lots of gray-skinned Spic mutants who could be sleeping next to me, after all.

That's kind of not very amusing, in a world where anything at all could happen. Anything.

Something red moves at the corner of my eye, and I nod a good morning at Penny. She crawls closer to us, doing that no-touching kitten impression she'd taken to when she wants to have… warmth? Comfort? Attention? She's gotten more childish lately, or maybe I was just never aware of it before. I remember something about her - about two little girls who looked like Monet, about a pretty little girl reaching her hand out for me. Synching myself to someone and, using her own telepathy, seeing her autism somehow from the *inside*. It's very vague, probably a dream, and I shake it off with some impatience.

My powers, for all the stealing I can do, have done nothing to save us in this cursed land. I've stopped trying to cling on to my previous life a long, long time ago. Synch doesn't live here, anymore; the Thomas kid died with my family and neighbours and everyone I've ever known. All there is now is... me. Us.

Angelo. My little fucked-up family.

He's moving his hand along her shoulders, arms, stomach, forehead, less than four inches away from actual contact, and she looks like she'd practically purr if she could. I worry about that, sometimes, that she'd do that to Jubilee and - and Jubes'd move or something, and - but I really don't want to go there. And there's nothing we can do.

I wouldn't deprive Penny of her one form of human contact, no more than I'd willingly give up mine.

The moaning starts soon enough, just like clockwork. I rise and stumble over to the small pile of cloth, rubbing my eyes hard and stubbornly pushing sleep away. For her, I'll even wake up fully.

It's such a *small* pile. She's so very very small, and she's shaking all over when I get to her. Her eyes, her beautiful unnatural blue eyes are staring right at me, and I know that doesn't mean dick. She's still dreaming.

Though dreaming isn't really the right word. Dreaming suggests flights of fancy, whirling thoughts, and the normal, every-day unconscious mind. This is something... darker.

Nightmares.

I think. I'm never sure. Ange has nightmares, sometimes, and I do too. I guess we all do, these days. He doesn't wake me when he has them, most usually; all I can hope for is recognizing the look on his face in the morning, holding him a little longer, a little harder, in compensation for not being there when it mattered. For not just *knowing*. Me… I have no choice. The screaming could wake the dead.

I try not to think stuff like that anymore. It would be far too easy for it to come true.

But Jubilee… I dunno. I sometimes think maybe it's not really dreaming. Maybe it's, whatever, visions or something. Precognition, maybe, although she's never hinted to knowing what's going to happen. But anything that could set her to whimpering like that, every third morning, almost…

Maybe we're better off not knowing.

I crouch by her side, one hand on her forehead, the other covering her cheek, my fingertips on her temple. Like always. Look down, don't let my hands shake, and try to radiate peace and calm and welcome as hard as I can, like it's something she can pick up in my scent by Shift-honed sensed. How did we fall into this routine, I wonder? It's not like I even have any reason to think it works.

"Jubilee," I say, in a voice just low enough not to startle her too bad. She blinks, and groans more loudly. "Jubilee. Jubicita, c'mon…" and that one brings her to, like I knew it would. It's his special name for her - back from days of big-brother affection and abnormal normalcy. He still calls her that, sometimes, but rarely. I usually keep it for times when I'm desperate, when she won't come up for any other coaxing. But today I… I don't know. Just a weird feeling. We need to get going, soon as can be.

Maybe I've caught some of that precognition stuff myself.

She's breathing very carefully, now. I know she knows it's me, from my hands on her face or my scent or the rhythm of my heart. Something. But I can't help but disapprove when she raises her hand to touch my face - say I was Penny after all?

She traces my eyelids, slow and light, and I close them for her obediently. My Blood is screaming, RUN, just take her and RUN. Her and Angelo and Penny. Go go go go go -

Her fingers trace down my cheekbone, flutter over my lips, try to not only sense but *see*. Then she sits up, and I know better than to help her, than not to allow her that small illusion of independence.

"Penny?" She says. And I swallow and clear my throat and wonder if telling her she's gone, one day, would be any more terrible than this daily ritual.

"Fine," I say. Whisper, really.

"Angelo?" There's something pleading in her voice, like she expects the answer to be the worst.

Like she has any reason not to.

"Here," he says, from behind my back. Like some arrogant cheeky kid in Ms. Frost's class on roll-call. Like the world is *normal*.

I used to think they'd get together, at the beginning. I was pretty sure, really. And I try not to be glad that it didn't turn out that way, I try hard not to be glad that, against all odds, I wound up with someone -

That I wound up with Ange.

We've met a few people, on our way from a place that doesn't exist anymore to a place that had never, most likely, existed at all. So I know it's only natural. People are people, wherever, whenever; and in this crazy afterworld, they seek warmth and contact and not-aloneness. They couple up in ways they could never imagine before.

A few Shifts ago, I opened my eyes from the silent screaming I was doing to find a small town just a few feet from us. I don't know whether the Shift created it, or just brought it near. It was abandoned, just a few dozen empty houses and a small supermarket, sheriff's office, the works. He took her hand and guided her through every path and crevice, telling her about all the things she couldn't see, with her blinded eyes in their clear blue, while she told him all about the stuff he couldn't hear or smell or taste in the air as strongly and deeply as she could. Her senses are heightened now, had been reinforced in the stroke of a Shift, and it's the only gift she could give him, while he filled in for the one sense that same Shift took.

I stayed by our stuff to watch Penny, who curled herself into a spikey little ball and went to sleep, and told a quiet unrushed story about a girl who was the most beautiful thing in the world. I could hear them laughing, just two or three times.

I was so goddamned happy for them. He doesn't spend nearly enough time with her anymore, not alone, not talking. And she'd never tell him how much that means to her. And he'd never admit that he needs it.

And it's part guilt that I have him, that I get to touch him, that I get to taste him. That I get to hold him at night and hear him breath a little faster on bad ones. That I got to have what she, for whatever reason, didn't. Doesn't.

But it's not all, can never be all. Love will always outpace guilt, for me, and Jubilee is someone who I sometimes love even more intensely than I love Ange.

Those are things I can never actually say to them, somehow. I can hint and I can do my best to show and I can love, more and more, desperately. But I can't say. I'm not sure whose rules those are, but I'm pretty certain they aren't mine.

I can be honest inside my head, though. I can even admit I'm not completely certain there *are* any rules.

She smiles at him now, knowing just where the voice came from, and tells Penny good morning and asks her how her night had been. Penny tilts her head at us, and Ange chuckles and says he thinks it was good all around.

He winks at me, and ghoststrokes Penny a few more times, and then his smile is just for her. And I don't begrudge her that.

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