Title: In and Out of Time (5/?)
Author: wonderbread9
Rating: PG-13 - R
Characters: The Cast of Kyle XY, OCs here and there
Pairings: Kyle/Amanda, Kyle/Jessi
Disclaimer: I don’t KXY because if I did it’d have a season 4.
Author's Note: Sorry, everyone! So, sorry! I hope you guys didn’t think I abandoned this baby, did you? I was just out cold with the flu and then my boyfriend caught the flu then my mom and my little AND older brothers caught the flu and then my dad and my boss and…yeah, that baby was going around like WILDFIRE. I blame my bf’s dog. Anyway, here be chapter five! Woo-ha!
Summary: “If you want to save the world,” Jessi replied, her voice softer, “then let me go.”
Joshua breathed. “I can’t do that. I can’t—”
“Then for all you know,” she cut in, “the future’s going to be the same.”
8o8o8
It was a quiet drive to the place that Jessi had been…kidnapped, and Josh didn’t even want to think of the ‘k’-word or what it could possibly mean for him, his family and Kyle. After all, Jessi was just as much of a superior being as Kyle, so…if she could get caught, what did that mean for Kyle? Could that mean that one day Kyle would be out walking and then, all of a sudden, just up and disappear? He’d already come to accept the strange dark-haired, blue-eyed science experiment into his life and called him his brother, he didn’t want to have to go through losing Kyle again. He didn’t think he or his family could handle that.
But then, what of Jessi? Yeah, she was weird, but not unalike Kyle had been upon his first few days out of the pod. He had been awkward and strange and socially inept and even though it was annoying to have to deal with someone that just didn’t understand the social etiquette that existed in the Trager household again, it would be weird to not have someone there to descramble the porn channel signal for him; after all, Kyle already knew it was wrong, but Jessi…he figured he still had a few bribes left in her to get him what he wanted. And, as much as he hated to admit it, Jessi was starting to grow on him too.
Don’t forget about you dream, came a snide voice in the back of Josh’s head. He gave a mental shake and tried to push away the sudden memories that washed over him: Jessi’s pale skin washed in moonlight, her dark eyes staring at up at him and her lips twisted in a lustful smile. He cleared his throat uncomfortably and sat up straighter in his seat. He glanced at his father, but Stephen’s mind and gaze were directed straight ahead, around the winding, twisting road that Kyle had told their father and Josh that he had taken the night before to get to Jessi.
Josh turned, and stared straight ahead too, all thoughts of Jessi or his dreams or Jessi in his dreams (weird) banished with the returning weight of why they were traveling this road in the first place. He didn’t know how they were going to help the other dark-haired teen, especially since Kyle had told them, in broken sentences, how Jessi had been kidnapped.
Vanished, he’d said. Like a puff of smoke. Or well, not with the same wonder and mystique of a magician’s trick. More like the absolute terror of something stranger than Kyle, or Kyle’s birth, disrupting the already crazy existence that Kyle, Jessi and the Tragers were thrust into. The man had grabbed her by the wrist and then, all of a sudden, they were gone and there was nothing to indicate that two very real, very alive people had been in that spot only moments before. It was…disconcerting to say the least, and it left Josh wondering exactly what he and Stephen were supposed to accomplish by going to the spot.
They weren’t going to find some clue to help them so…what was the point? If the guy had taken her the way Kyle had described then wouldn’t it have been better for Kyle to come along? Josh glanced over at his father and noticed, for the first time, the hard set to his father’s jaw and the way the man’s eyes were intensely fixed on the road as if that were the only thing that he could do with himself. Josh swallowed. Okay, so, maybe his family wasn’t taking this the best that they could. He did remember seeing Lori glance worriedly at the grandfather clock in the den, as if staring at it could somehow hasten the time that it would take for Jessi to return home.
Even his mom, the usual rock of the Trager family had been pushed to her boiling point much quicker than any bickering or antics that the Trager children got into. Josh didn’t want to admit it, not even to himself, that Jessi’s disappearance was scaring him. At least, when Kyle was gone, he could talk to him and would get an inkling that his adopted brother was okay, even if he didn’t know all the details. With Jessi though…there was no telling what was happening to her or what the mad-kidnapper was doing.
Josh pushed those thoughts aside and stared out the window, focusing on the greenery as it rushed passed his window in a dizzying blur. It was such a nice day out, a stark contrast to the doom and gloom that seemed to always linger around the Tragers. He wanted to angle his head upward to take a look at the sky, see the clouds and maybe convince himself that nothing was wrong. Foolish thought he knew because reality had a tendency of crashing down around his ears when he least wanted it too, but even so…
His father finally pulled up to the spot, putting the car in park and shutting it off. It took a moment for he and Josh to get out of the car, and before Josh could, his father grabbed him, twisting in his seat to face his son with a worried, but concerned look. Josh swallowed, meeting his father’s gaze in trepidation.
“Be careful,” his father said shortly, looking away and out to the open spot that revealed a breathtaking view of the Seattle skyline. “Just…look out for…anything, and…if you see…something…let me know. Don’t touch anything, just…let me know.”
Josh gave a single shake of his head and swallowed again, unnerved. His father nodded himself before giving Josh’s arm a squeeze and then getting out of the car. Josh followed swiftly, keeping his eyes peeled on the seemingly innocent surroundings that he and his father found themselves in. There was nothing there, just trees and shrubbery and a light dusting of grass over the surface of the earth. There was an outcropping of abandoned concrete that jutted over a slight hundred-foot drop, but that was all that completed the lonely place and Josh had to give Jessi credit on disappearing off to the one place that nobody smarter than Kyle would be able to find.
He walked the circumference of the spot while Stephen stepped over rock and grass carefully. Josh kicked a pebble and came to stand beside the concrete outcropping. The sun shone on the artificial rock and he laid his hand across it, imaging Jessi sitting there, basking in the glow of barely-there-starlight contemplating whatever super-geniuses contemplated in their loneliness. He wondered what drove her to this quiet place. What had possibly upset her existence again that had driven her to seek the comfort of such a lonely spot?
He walked the circumference of the clearing again, trying to think like a Latnok evil-doer, but all his mind could keep thinking of was Jessi and his dreams and…
Then it happened. He stepped on a single blade of grass, the wind blew and his heart stopped. The entire world exploded into a Technicolor nightmare. Neon greens and blues and pinks were streaming passed his vision at light speed and all he could see were these strange images, strange moving pictures on the back of his eyelids that made no sense and had him screaming, even though he could hear himself, and falling to the ground in agony, even though he couldn’t feel anything at all. Just the colors, just the pictures that he could not understand and that were moving too fast for his mind to catch up to.
8o8o8
Stephen had turned at Josh’s abrupt shout and watched—as if the world had suddenly been slowed down by a cosmic hand—his son’s eyes roll back into his skull and Josh fall to the ground. His heart stopped before slamming back into action full force and he rushed over to his son, pure adrenaline and panic sweeping aside any anxieties he’d had moments before.
“Josh!” he shouted, gathering his son in his arms. Josh’s body began to convulse, deep shakes that ripped through his muscles and made his jaw crash together in jarring sound. Stephen was cursing to himself as he hoisted Josh up, gathered him in his arms again—and with a strength he didn’t know he had—dashed off to the car and loaded his son in. He got into the driver’s side and immediately cranked the car up and into gear, not bothering with his seat belt. There was no time. No time at all.
Whatever it was that was affecting Josh had to have something to do with Latnok, had to have something to do with Jessi’s disappearance and had to have something to do with Kyle. What it was, he wasn’t sure, but he was going to get to the bottom of it.
“Josh, just hold on…
“Hold on.”
8o8o8
He snapped awake immediately as if someone had rudely shaken him from a dream. He had been in a clearing and the whole world was new: green grass and trees, the first tale-tell signs that the earth was awakening itself from its winter sleep and ushering in the rebirth of spring. His father had been there and they had been…trying to find…something, but… The contents of it slipped away and Joshua looked up and gave a start. Two very awake, very lucid brown eyes were staring at him intently from across the room. He licked his lips nervously and stood.
“You’re awake again.” It was a statement , not a question, but even so Joshua felt dumb for saying it. She always had that affect on him before; he just didn’t figure her teenage self would have that affect on him too. Jessi smirked and Joshua swallowed a suddenly dry throat.
“You said when I got better you’d tell me everything,” she replied, not missing a beat. “Well, I slept. I’m feeling better. Spill.”
He chuckled in spite of himself. “I always forget how blunt you can be.”
Jessi’s gaze took on a razor edge. Her lips curled back into a snarl. “Who. ?”
Joshua turned and grabbed the water canteen that he kept on his person and approached her cautiously. She eyed him and the canteen warily, and drew back when he opened it to give her water. She shook her head fiercely and struggled to sit upright. He tried to reach out to help her, but the look she shot him stopped him cold. Instead he threw up his hands in a sign of defeat and watched as she managed to sit herself upright.
Alright, there were a lot of things that he had forgotten about her, this time period and just how stubborn and capable Jessi XX could be. After all, she was superhuman and made of the same stuffs that the Destroyer was. How could he have ever forgotten how powerful she could be when she really set her mind to a task? He capped the canteen and set it back where he had found it before taking his seat once again across from her. He watched her and she watched him, not breaking eye contact, until Joshua, unnerved, looked away.
He swallowed, shifted in his chair and breathed.
Here goes.
“You already know me, Jessi,” he began, meeting her gaze again. “Even if I don’t look the same.”
Her face creased into a puzzled frown. “I don’t know you. Is this some kind of a game? Are you Latnok?”
He chuckled again.
“No,” he replied softly. “Although, life might’ve been much easier if I’d’ve just bitten the bullet and become one of them. One of Latnok.” He bit off the last part with some bitterness. “But no, I’m not one of them. I’m someone else. Someone pretty close to you—”
“Quit the guessing games,” she growled, “and just tell me who you are!”
He breathed, heart speeding up to beat furiously in his chest. Butterflies fluttered like mad circus tricks gone wrong in his gut and his palms suddenly became very sweaty. He wiped them off on the fabric of his pants and all she did was watch him, watch him with those piercing brown eyes that cut him deep into his soul, dragged out all of his secrets and laid them bare for the entire world to see. He suddenly missed that older, wiser, snarkier Jessi that developed fourteen years into the future. At least he didn’t have to tell that Jessi anything of what had transpired in the past. She was there for part of it, and what she had been absent for…well, Joshua had filled her in on.
But this Jessi…this one, he had forgotten about in the long years of war, buried deep under memories of better times, memories that he had thrust so far down in his subconscious that it would take every effort he had to drag them out kicking and screaming. They were sketchy: he remembered that bad things had happened to Jessi, but not quite what. He remembered that people had not always been kind to her, but not whom and that when things seemed like they were looking up, life always smacked her with something else to tear all of her efforts down.
The older Jessi—his Jessi—had accepted that her life was a piece of crap, but even then…she made the most of it. She still joked and laughed and played poker with the guys after long missions and the nights when soldiers just wanted to unwind. But this Jessi, this Jessi’s heart was still an open wound that the world still had much more to bruise. This Jessi had not yet seen the heartaches that would be reaped on her nor the injustices that she would have to suck up and deal with.
But, if Joshua could help it, she would never, ever have to see those dramas unfold nor see the fruition of her life’s tragedies. If he could help it, he would change things for her, for everyone.
“Jessi,” he began, quietly. “It’s me…Josh.”
8o8o8
It was Lori, not Nicole, who had received Stephen’s frantic phone call. She had been standing on the front porch, cradling the small device in her hand and waiting for it to ring—like she had been waiting for it for nearly three hours—and let her know if the Seattle police had found anything. For three hours it had remained silent in her arms and she had remained still as a statue, watching the world pass by, hoping against hope that nothing had happened to Jessi, hoping that they’d find her and that she’d be alright.
It was as she was glancing right that two things had happened at once: Amanda came out of her home, going straight to the mailbox and glanced up at and Lori, who’d lifted a hand to wave, and the phone rang scaring her witless. She picked it up immediately, not seeing the frown that had creased Amanda’s face nor the way the blonde-haired teen made a move to approach the Trager house.
“Nicole?! Nicole?!” came Stephen’s panicked shout from the phone’s receiver. The phone immediately flew to Lori’s ear and she called out, “Dad, what’s wrong? Did you find her?”
She didn’t notice that Amanda had come up the walkway of the Trager’s home, her frown creased even further. She stepped lightly up the stairs as Stephen shouted through the phone, “Lori?! Go-go get your mother! Now!”
“What? Why?” Lori asked, panic lacing her voice. It was then that she glanced up and saw Amanda standing at her side, mouthing, ‘What’s wrong?’ Lori shook her head, feeling helpless tears want to spring to her eyes. She heard her father curse, heard a pained groan in the background and all color drained from her face.
“Dad, is that Josh?”
“Go get your mother.” She jumped at the vehemence in her father’s voice and rushed towards the front door before remembering Amanda had been standing beside her. She turned back to the very confused, very puzzled Bloom girl and said, “Amanda, now is…it’s just not the time.”
“What’s going on?” Amanda demanded, walking forward and grabbing Lori’s arm. “Does it…Does it have to do with…Kyle?”
“Look,” Lori swallowed, feeling helpless. “Can you come back later?”
“I want to help,” Amanda replied, her eyes pleading. Lori gripped the phone tightly and nodded before rushing off to find her mother, and Amanda breathed, taking a step into the Trager household, feeling like a prisoner on death row. It had been so long since she had been in this house she half-expected it to suddenly sprout tentacles and chase her away. She stepped inside cautiously and closed door, still gripping her mother’s mail, but not quite sure what to do with herself.
She knew she shouldn’t be there. After all, it was her that had pushed Kyle away after he had run off to go and help Jessi…once again. But…she couldn’t help herself. Something about Kyle kept dragging her into his life, and like a moth to a flame, she couldn’t help but follow her desires no matter how much the other parts of her kept shouting ‘No!’ She walked deeper into the Trager house, gently touching the wall and setting her mother’s mail down on the table that decorated the foyer. She looked up, saw herself in the mirror and gave a grim sort of smile. She did say she was going to help. She could just sense that something was wrong here, and even if she weren’t needed, she’d let someone else tell her that. Until then, she’d lend a hand.
“Amanda,” came the soft whisper, and Amanda gave a start before turning swiftly to face the speaker of her softly spoken name, and when she saw him, her eyes widened to bright, blue saucers. It was Kyle, looking to all the world like a lost puppy. Bags were under his eyes and his skin was paler than usual. He looked like a man who had stared into the face of death.
“Kyle,” she whispered back, reaching out a hand to him, wanting to take him into her arms. Had she done this when she had turned him away? Was he torn up and broken about his decision to once again abandon her for Jessi? Was he what all the fuss was about in the Trager house?
For a second, Kyle looked grateful, as if this was what he had been wanting for, but when he looked up into her gently smiling face, whatever grateful emotion he’d had evaporated immediately and he looked just as sorrowful as ever.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he informed her and looked away. “You should—”
“But I’m here now,” she replied softly, stepping closer. “And…And, if you need me…I’m not going anywhere.”
He looked up at that, surprise registering in his deep blue eyes. She smiled wider and he allowed himself a gentle smile in turn. He grabbed her hand instead of falling into her arms like she was sure he wanted to and took her into the living room and seated them both on the couch. She turned to him, her gaze expectant and he met her gaze dead on.
“Amanda, I—”
“No,” she said gently, cupping his face in her hands. “Let’s not talk about it. Let’s just—“
But they were interrupted by a panic-stricken Lori, who—with tears pouring down her face—entered the living room and said in a shaking voice,” It’s Josh…Something’s wrong.”
8o8o8
“You probably won’t believe this,” he began. “Sometimes when, I think about it…and I mean, really think about it…Sometimes, I don’t want to believe it either. You must realize, Jessi, that…so much has changed. And not for the better. The whole world…it became really screwed. FUBAR. And so irrevocably so that…no one was sure that this little gamble would work. I mean, c’mon…seriously…time travel? Who’d have thunk it? Who’d have dreamed it possible? Well, I’ll tell you who. You did Jessi. You did, and for one second, in this messed up existence and life, I had hope. Real hope…”
His heart was beating faster and faster in a chest that he wasn’t even aware of. His body was shaking in a body that he couldn’t remember was his own. All he could see were the dizzying, sickening colors that rushed passed his mental vision and the horrible nausea that he felt when he saw what was there. War. War, and the ruined remnants of Seattle. Burning cities. Slave encampments and the face of someone he had trusted so implicitly displayed across billboards and television screens and broadcasted on radios: ‘You will submit. You will submit. The Creator knows what’s good for you. The Creator is your guiding light. Trust the Creator. Love the Creator.’
But somewhere deep down, his mind was screaming, ‘Wrong. Wrong. All wrong. He is the Destroyer. The Destroyer will level you, will waste you and will kill your soul.’
But even deeper than that, even deeper, in a world that he was no longer aware of, someone was shouting at him, “Come back, Josh! Goddamn, don’t you leave me! Come back!”
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way, you know?” he continued. “Life wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Everything was supposed to go on its merry little course. Me and Andy, we were supposed to get married, you know? Have the house, the white picket fence, the dog and the cat and the two point five, cancer-free kids, but…Andy had always been so outspoken. I don’t remember much about her, but I do remember that. She’d never been able to keep mouth shut about anything, always expressing her opinion, always telling others what she thought. Maybe that was the reason why he killed her first. Kill off the strongest opposition you have—those that know you best—and the world won’t see what kind of monster you’ve become.”
More colors. More visions, more images floating passed. He knew these things, something in him knew these things, but…he didn’t know them either. A very strange and confusing paradox. But then, one image streamed passed his vision and it almost stopped his heart…a second time. Andy, red hair and green eyes, twinkling at him, was bloody and bruised and he could see, looking at this horrible image through his own eyes, a shadow of a boy with dark, black hair and blue eyes glaring at her with such anger and such hatred in his eyes that it made Josh sick to his stomach to see. How could—
Where could—
What was going on here?!
But Andy was smiling at him through her and mouthing like a new age mantra, ‘Be strong, Josh. I love you, I love you. Be strong.’
She wasn’t pleading for her life. She was screaming or asking for mercy. She was staring at him, her eyes were twinkling and she was smiling and she was telling him to be the strong one. This was worse than her cancer threatening to come back. This was worse than anything he could ever experience in his life.
Please, please, dear God, let this be a dream…
But dreams didn’t feel this real, didn’t have this flavor of reality around, didn’t have this finality to them, like he was staring at an aspect of his life that had already happened. But it was crazy because this had never happened. This had never—
His hand came up, blues eyes shadowed with a dark intent and Josh cried out, sobbing, pleading and screaming profanities, ‘No, don’t! Please, dear God, don’t! Please, Kyl—”
He could feel the sweep of power like the gentlest caress across his face before Andy’s body locked up, tense for the briefest second, and then slumped forward. Dead. Her green eyes were lifeless as they stared at him. Her face slack, never to smile at him, never to laugh. Nothing. Nothing.
Josh let out a howl of grief.
“He killed so many, but nobody thinks him capable of it now. Right now, he’s probably the innocent boy that everyone knows and loves, but to me…I know him as a monster. Sure, I was gullible like everyone else, but I’ve seen the things he’s capable of. I know the things he can do to people. He gets inside of you and messes with your head. He can do that Jessi. He can…” Pause. Cleared throat. “But I’m digressing, aren’t I? You want to know what happened, right? Not the ramblings of some thirty-year-old war vet, eh? Alright. I’ll tell you. But this isn’t going to be easy to hear.”
It was all in rewind, a crazy story from the beginning, and his father was somewhere outside of his confused consciousness, shaking and sobbing with a nurse trying to comfort him and his mother and sister, his brother and his neighbor on their way to the hospital and its staff that was trying to keep him alive. He was lost in this world of memories, but eventually they dragged him back, all the way back, to the beginning when everything began to fall apart.
He saw it in crystal clarity. He saw it as clearly as day, as clearly as stars on a cloudless night, and what he saw chilled him to the core.
No, no. That was impossible.
It couldn’t happen.
It wouldn’t happen.
Not…him.
Not…
No.
“In one week, Latnok is going to kill Amanda Bloom, and Kyle is going to destroy the world.”
8o8o8
Josh woke with a scream in his throat just as Joshua sat up straight in his chair with a jerk and breathed as if his throat were raw. Jessi was staring at him intently and he licked his lips, dragged his canteen to his suddenly dry lips, popping the top and taking a long gulp of the refreshing liquid.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jessi replied heatedly. Joshua glanced at her, but she wasn’t looking at him. She shook her head, fixed him with a momentary glare. “Kyle would never…Kyle wouldn’t…I mean, Kyle would never destroy the world. Me…maybe, but Kyle…Kyle loves everyone.”
Joshua dropped his empty canteen in his lap and let a grim smile split his face in two. “Oh you think so, eh? Kyle has the same abilities as you, the same will power and the same passions grip him.”
“But, but,” she looked away again. “He wouldn’t…not for anything. Amanda gets killed by Latnok? Why?”
“Why’d she get kidnapped?” Josh countered. Jessi glared at him.
“Kidnapped,” she snapped. “Not killed.”
The grim smile snaked its way across Joshua’s face again. “Let me break it down to you then:
“Kyle goes crazy with grief because of what happened, and he kills Cassidy. Then he takes over Latnok and after that…well, Seattle was the first city he destroyed.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jessi continued, stubbornly. “What happened? Why didn’t I stop him?”
“You left,” Joshua replied with a shrug. Jessi look immediately became a perplexed one.
“I left?” she repeated in disbelief. Joshua nodded solemnly.
“I suppose it was…after he’d told Amanda the truth about himself.” He shrugged. “Must’ve brought them closer together? But, it drove you away…made you think that you’d lost the only real person in this world that, uh, meant something to you…and…when Latnok killed her and Kyle went psycho, there was no one to stop him. No one to put an end to the reign of terror before it became so.”
“So…when did I join the…uh, war effort?” she asked, her voice still tinged with disbelief.
“When it looked like it was hopeless.” Joshua smirked again. “At least, for us normal humans anyway. You came in like an angel of death, killing off an entire platoon of his soldiers all by yourself. Then…well, you settled more for the science track than you did the…uh…war front. You made advancements in technology that turned the war around for us. Turned it around enough that we thought we could win it…”
“But?” Jessi’s eyes were wide now, and her body leaning slightly forward, all ears, intently listening. Joshua kept his grin of satisfaction to himself. It wasn’t always that Jessi got play hero, he remembered that too. It must’ve been a treat to hear that she’d saved his ass more times than he could count.
“Kyl—I mean, the Destroyer—brought out the big guns…Something we couldn’t handle and…it decimated everything,” he replied, his voice somber. “Everything…all of our troops, our supply lines…everything. And when we all thought it was lost, you told the big bosses that you had a secret weapon that could possibly change everything so that nothing would be the same ever again. A secret weapon that would help us win.”
“Time travel,” Jessi finished and sat back on her cot. “Unbelievable.” She was quiet for a moment, contemplating what he had told her and Joshua watched her, watched as the gears worked in her head. He wanted to believe that she believed him. He wanted to believe that his gamble would work. That Jessi was the key to stopping everything, to preventing the war and to changing the course of history, even if that meant depriving himself of the history that they developed between each other. He wanted her to believe him, needed her to.
She looked up with a start, surprising him from his inner thoughts, and asked, “But then…why take me? Why did you…”
“Hopefully,” Joshua admitted quietly, “to take his focus from…her.”
“I don’t…I don’t understand,” she replied, puzzled. “He…he probably already told her and they’re probably…”
“He didn’t get the chance to,” Joshua said firmly. “And…with you taken, he’ll focus more on…getting you back.”
Jessi’s look of disbelief returned. “So, what…you’re playing a time traveling matchmaker? C’mon.” She shook her head, her face cracking a little and showing the sorrow that existed underneath it all. “Kyle cares about her…about…Amanda. He’s not going to…he won’t…he won’t come looking for me with his precious Amanda around.”
Joshua was silent for a moment. “Maybe he won’t…And maybe he will.”
Her look was a hopeful one before she masked it behind a look of stone. “He won’t.”
She looked away, fiddled with her shirt hem and Joshua continued to watch her, wishing so desperately that this entire ordeal could be over with. He wanted to know if he somehow went back now, would he be returning to a much happier future where he, in his current incarnation did not exist, or would it be the same dismal future? Was anything he was saying or doing making even the slightest difference?
“Can you just…” Jessi started, then stopped and swallowed. “Can you just…turn this…dampening what’s it off, please?”
“I don’t know if I should do that,” Joshua replied, steel lacing his tone. Jessi glared at him.
“Look,” she growled. “You already kidnapped me, battered me and are stopping me from using my powers. I heard what you had to say. Now, let me go.”
Joshua raised an eyebrow. “And what will you do? I know, you’ll go back to him and tell him exactly what I’ve said and then everything…EVERYTHING…that I’ve done will be for nothing. No, you’ll stay put.”
“No, I won’t,” Jessi hissed. Joshua raised his other eyebrow.
“Oh, you won’t will you,” he hissed back. “Trust me, you built this field. You can’t break out of it, you can’t manipulate it, you can’t do anything unless I turn it off and since I’m not in the mood to—”
“What did he ever do to you that makes you hate him so much?” Jessi asked, her brown eyes laser points again and Joshua paused in mid-rant, feeling like someone had dumped him with a bucket of cold water. He swallowed and looked away, a frown creasing his features.
Did he dare tell her? Did he dare let her know what kind of a monster Kyle was? Or the monster that Kyle could be? He breathed and listened to her and she shifted on the cot.
“He killed her,” Joshua replied, quietly.
“What?” Jessi asked, puzzled.
“He killed her,” Joshua repeated louder. “He killed Andy. He killed everyone. Except Declan, but even he wished he were dead sometimes.”
“K-Kyle?” Jessi asked, her voice horrified. Joshua nodded.
“He killed Andy first. She was one of the few to oppose him, you know? I kept quiet little the good, little coward that I was. Then he killed…Lori and-and Mark…and Dad and Mom…He killed them all because…I mean, how could he look at them and not remember what he had been? How could he not peer into their faces and see the kind boy that had loved everyone and everything. He’d called himself the Creator to the rest of the world, but to those of us that had survived his nasty assault on Seattle, we knew. We knew.
“He wanted to no part of that boy that he had been. And when Latnok killed Amanda, he figured that us lower humans didn’t know how to think for ourselves and make decisions for ourselves and that we’d always entertain hurting others before helping them. He’s always been that you, you know? He never let others make their own decisions. He just always figure: ‘Kyle knew best. Kyle was so smart. Kyle was always on top of things. Kyle was always helping and always take control.’ No one ever thought that those same ‘good’ traits could go horribly wrong if unchecked. And nobody ever checked them because he was Kyle and he was good.”
Joshua shook himself as if he were trying to shake the old cobwebs of horrible memories from his mind. He looked up and met Jessi gaze.
“I have to stop him,” he continued firmly, “anyway I know how.”
“And you’re going to use me to do it?” she snapped, her words laced with anger.
Joshua’s jaw hardened. “If I have to.”
“Then you’re no better than Latnok,” she replied in a hiss.
“Maybe not,” Joshua hissed back, “but at least it changes the future. At least, it saves the world.”
“If you want to save the world,” Jessi replied, her voice softer, “then let me go.”
Joshua breathed. “I can’t do that. I can’t—”
“Then for all you know,” she cut in, “the future’s going to be the same.”
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
In and Out of Time 4/10
Title: In and Out of Time (4/?)
Author: wonderbread9
Rating: PG-13 - R
Characters: The Cast of Kyle XY, OCs here and there
Pairings: Kyle/Amanda, Kyle/Jessi, implied Jessi/Josh (you’ll get it soon enough)
Warnings: The story is, from here on out, an AU (Alternate Universe). The themes may get a bit darker as time progresses, but hopefully not by too much. I’m trying to curb this with a realistic standpoint on a, yet as determined, unrealistic show. Bare with me a bit.
Disclaimer: Welcome to my little funpark, where I own none of the characters or themes expressed in Kyle XY, but do borrow them every once and a while when I’m bored.
Author's Note: Okay…so, you’ll probably find out answers in this chapter about Kyle. This particular story isn’t going to be thousands of pages long, but it does set the stage for a much longer piece that I really want to get started working on after this.
Summary: A pained expression crossed his face before he wiped it away immediately and swallowed. “You may not know it yet, Jess, but you’re going to save the world.”
IV.
That night, Josh dreamed.
Now, there was nothing unusual about the start of the dream; it began like any other: Andy was approaching him in some sequined, skimpy outfit with a fire blazing in her hooded, bedroom eyes and he was grinning from ear to ear because he knew what was coming next. He felt his body stir in anticipation, watched as her hair fell over her shoulders in a cascade of blazing red hues, veiling his vision of her desire-ridden eyes. Her hands touched his ankles, gently, gently and trailed up his legs, massaging and caressing in languid strokes that made him shiver with want and desire. His eyes fell shut and the grin remained plastered on his face in satisfaction.
He loved these dreams, loved the unbridled passion that his girlfriend displayed in his nighttime fantasies that she would never display in the real world, no matter how daring, creative and uncompromising Andy could be. There were just some things that he didn’t even think that she would think were normal enough to engage in so all he had, really, were his dreams. Blurry around the edges always and sometimes misty like those cheesy sci-fi horror flicks that he loved so much, he would always be position on a bed in some exotic locale: India, Hawai’i or Asia; it didn’t matter. Andy would always be there and her voice, usually so harsh and brutal during the day with her quips and snarky witticism, would be dropped an octave, dropped to a seductive whisper that did more than a few interesting things to his hormonally driven body.
He felt the bed beside him shift, felt the comfortable weight of a feminine form near, the heat radiating from her smooth skin. He reached out, eyes still closed and touched her, a gentle caress over her warm skin, hearing her slight gasp and her breathing quicken in answering anticipation. His grin widened, her pulled her close and smelled the tangy scent of citrus shampoo and the equally intoxicating smell of the skin lotion of the same brand. Something in his mind echoed, disrupting his dream sequence momentarily, that Andy never wore anything like citrus; she was more of a kiwi-strawberry kind of gal: bitter, but sweet all wrapped in one delectable package.
But Josh pushed that voice away, breathed into the scent of her, pulled her close and crushed her ample chest against him. Her breath caught again, and his grin fell as he landed kiss after kiss along her smooth shoulder, pale like milk crystal and just as fragile…if only she would let him in. There was moonlight above them and the scenery had changed drastically. Gone were the palm trees that hung low in his window and the jungle sounds that had come vaguely to his ears at the start of it all. Hard, cold earth was rough against his naked skin and he could feel the rough scratch of five o’clock shadow along his brow when he brushed it playfully against her chest.
She giggled; it did not sound like Andy.
As the drama unfolded, Josh felt himself pull back and shush her quiet, but she only giggled at him again, an impish sound that he never thought he would hear coming from such a stoic woman.
Wait…woman?
But he couldn’t stop himself. Clouds passed over the face of the moon, shielding her face from him, but somewhere deep inside, he knew who it was that lay on her back beneath him, looking up at him with eyes that set him on fire. The world around them was that of a forest, the last bit of greenery left in a Seattle that was—even as they lay together, caressed each other and explored each other’s bodies—was being destroyed in a ground assault. But the sounds of cannons firing and guns of war ripping through the bodies of innocent soldiers didn’t pierce the canopy of the wood, and here…He could pretend for one second that his life wasn’t going to hell and that she was all that he had to cling to, that she was all that was left of a world he wanted to desperately to return.
Her hand came up, cupped his face and returned his attention back to the love making at hand. She needed this, even if she didn’t need him, and if it stung to high heaven when she called out a name that was other than his, he didn’t say a word. Just moved with her, breathed in her scent, mapped out everything about her that he possibly could with his hands wandering over the curves and contours of her body.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered, in a voice that sounded so soft, so alluring. “We’ll figure something out.”
“We will?” he asked, dream still fuzzy around the edges, a voice inside of him telling him that this was wrong, wrong, so very, very wrong. She nodded, smiled at him and he smiled in turn.
“Okay, Jessi.”
It was then that Josh sat up in his bed, breathing hard and ragged, his body feeling like it was on fire. Early morning sunlight slanted into the venetian blinds of his window and he looked around, immediately confused and bewildered. Where was he? What was going on? Why—?
When his mind finally caught up with him, and reminded him that he was in bed and was going to be late for school, Josh groaned, plopped back down on the sweat soaked sheets, flinging a hand over his eyes.
Jessi. He had dreamed about Jessi. That was just…too weird. What the hell was he thinking? He was supposed to be dreaming about Andy, his—hello!—girlfriend. Not about the weird freaky, science experiment that was taking up residence in his mother’s old office.
And speaking of science experiments…
Josh sat up immediately again and looked around. It was empty. Kyle was nowhere to be seen. Josh rose from his bed, temporarily pushing aside the disturbing—but still very, very arousing image of a very adult Jessi and a very adult him engaging in…—dreams that suddenly decided to take up residence in his head and disrupt his normal sleep patterns, and left his room, seeking out the wayward teen that had come into their lives only three short years ago.
“Kyle!” he called loudly as he walked down the hall, passing Lori’s room. Her door came open immediately, emitting his very annoyed, very un-caffeinated sister.
“Geez, shouting much,” she growled, shuffling in her pajamas passed him and down the stairs to make herself a cup of coffee in the kitchen. “C’mon, Josh, don’t start being aggravating now. It’s way too early in the morning.”
He made a face at her before following her down the stairs.
“It’s not like mom and dad aren’t already awa—“ he began and stopped immediately when he saw his sister frozen on the bottom step, staring into the living room with a look of shock.
“What’s going on?” he asked, stepping passed her and peering into the living room himself. There he saw Kyle, seated on the couch in a hunched over position, staring off into space. He stepped further into the room, a frown creasing his features as he approached his brother, hand outstretched.
“Kyle?” he called, but the other teen did not stir at his approach, did not move or shift from his position. Josh swallowed, feeling a wave of unease wash over him and coil his stomach into knots. Apparently, Lori felt the same and the two Trager children glanced at each other before Lori mouthed, ‘I’m going to go get mom.’ And dashed off immediately. Josh wanted to roll his eyes and glare at her retreating back. Great, just great. He didn’t do touchy-feely emotions or things like that. Not unless it was with Andy—or Jessi, a snide voice snickered in the back of his mind that sounded oddly like Declan’s.
He brushed it away and touched Kyle’s shoulder gently with his still outstretched hand. Kyle started, turned and the look that Josh saw in his brother’s eyes would’ve sent him reeling and rushing off to find his mom and dad had Lori not gone off to find them herself. A pained look haunted the deep pockets of Kyle’s normally expressive and emotive blue eyes and dark bags dragged his eyes down at the corners; there was such an emptiness in their depths that Josh was sure that if he stared too hard and for too long, he would get lost in the sadness that he found there and never, ever find his way out again. He wondered worriedly what it was that could seriously depress the usually so cheerful, optimistic Kyle; what could possibly have devastated him so much that he would sink into this state?
And then, he figured he knew: Amanda.
Josh plastered on his best sympathetic smile and crouched down beside Kyle, hand still gripping his brother’s shoulder in as reassuring a touch as he could manage. He swallowed.
“Hey, buddy,” he started, trying for a friendly tone. “Are you okay?” He paused, not wanting to skirt the deadly waters where any subject of Amanda Bloom immediately drove Kyle deeper into sadness. He steeled himself and asked, “Is…Are you…Is it Amanda?”
The pained look that crossed Kyle’s face made Josh think he hit the nail on the head. He breathed a sigh of relief. This he could handle, anything else…anything like Latnok or weird conspiracies or anything WAY out there like that…well…
“Look, Kyle,” Josh began, “everything’s going to be okay, you know? Maybe you and Amanda just weren’t right for each other…Or, maybe, just maybe, somewhere down the line the two of you will get back together and make superhuman, hybrid babies or something…But, you know, you gotta give this time—”
“This doesn’t concern Amanda,” Kyle cut in softly, his eyes shifting away from Josh’s. The other boy frowned in puzzlement. Well, if it didn’t deal with Amanda then who…
Realization dawned on him, and could he help that a snake of something hot burned in his stomach when he thought of brown eyes staring up at him with eyes hooded with lust? He breathed a shuddering breath that Kyle didn’t notice and said, “Jessi.”
The pain flared in Kyle’s eyes anew.
“What happened?” came the urgent sound of Stephen’s voice as he and Nicole came quickly down the stairs, Lori in tow. Josh stood immediately to give his mother and father room, but watched Kyle, watched every move that he made and every shift in his expression. Kyle’s eyes fell on Nicole’s kind face first and then Stephen’s before his eyes welled up with tears and they poured down his cheeks. His lips trembled and he hastily wiped the tears away.
“It’s Jessi,” Kyle began, stopped and breathed a trembling breath. He met all of their gazes with his sorrowful blues, “she’s gone.”
8o8o8
It only took the Trager’s a few hours to assemble, dressed fully, and Nicole immediately manning the phones, dialing the local police. Stephen and Josh had immediately taken off to investigate the place where Kyle had indicated that Jessi had disappeared, and despite his protests to wanting to go out and help, Lori had been left with the charge of taking care of her adopted brother. He sat on the couch, in the same position that she and Josh had found him in, playing with his fingers and twiddling his thumbs, face creased in a troubled frown; she wondered what was going on in his head.
Jessi was gone. That’s what he said, and his explanation for her disappearance was strange, even for Kyle: that some man had come and waved his magic wand or whatever and she and he both disappeared. What? Things like that just never happened. People didn’t just up and vanish into thin air. It was impossible. She glanced over at Kyle and sighed.
Then again, both Kyle and Jessi were impossibilities to begin with. So, then…why was this out of the realm of possibility at all? Lori wanted to hit her head against something in frustration. She had come to believe, that even though Kyle and Jessi were weird oddities that certainly had changed her view of the way the world worked, they most certainly had not transformed her viewpoint of the world in such a way that she believed pigs could fly and the ocean would suddenly produce talking fish. It was still as crappy as it had been, it just had the existence of two extraordinary people within it.
But now…
Now…
Lori sighed and turned to Kyle, saying, “I’m going to go find mom.” She stood and was about to seek out her mother, when a thought occurred to her and she turned back to her brother and said firmly, “Stay here, Kyle.”
He didn’t answer, just remained seated, face still pursed in that troubled frown. She sighed again, turned on her heel and sought out her mother. She found Nicole in the kitchen, talking to the police on the phone, trying yet again to explain who exactly it was that they were looking for and why. Her face was flushed in irritation and anger and she looked like she was about ready to slam the phone back into its holder in frustration. She held up a shushing finger to Lori, who waited patiently while her mother finished her conversation with the police deputy and hung up the phone with a calm that Lori was very sure her mother did not feel.
“Yes, Lori,” her mother said evenly, and had it been any other day and her mother’d used that tone with her, Lori might’ve taken offense. But now wasn’t the time or the place.
“Anything?” Lori asked with an anxiousness that she was surprised that she could feel. Her mother sighed in frustration and shook her head.
“Nothing,” Nicole admitted, gritting her teeth. “How’s Kyle?”
Lori shrugged, helplessly, shaking her head. “No change. He just sits there, you know? Frowning. I don’t know what to do.”
Nicole nodded herself and flashed her daughter a reassuring smile. “I’ll talk to him. See if there’s anything else he can give us to go on.” She started out of the kitchen, tossing over her shoulder: “Man the phones. If anything comes up—”
“I’ll call you immediately,” Lori finished, walking over to and grabbing the cordless phone from the wall. She held it in her hand and wrapped herself in a protective hug, going straight to the front door, opening it and walking out into the cool air of a spring morning. She stepped onto the front porch, glad to be out of the house and looked around. There wasn’t much activity on the street, but when was there ever? Just a man walking his dog, birds singing in the trees and the mailman down the street carrying on his monotonous task of giving people their bills. The sun was shining, clouds drifted across the sky’s face and Lori couldn’t understand—could quite wrap her head around—why nothing had stopped, why nothing had just stopped dead and frozen in its tracks the moment Jessi had disappeared.
Life shouldn’t have been going on as normal. The world shouldn’t still be turning on its axis. The man across the street should not be walking his dogs, the mailman should be pausing her car and bowing his head in respect: Jessi was gone. Jessi was taken, and no one seemed to understand that. No one seemed to see that something was suddenly missing in the Trager household: a snarky quip here or a sulking comment made there. Nothing, not even a shadow of her haunted the place, save Lori’s memories and the dawning fear that she had growing in the pit of her stomach: what if they never found her? What if this were Latnok and its evil schemes? What if this were MadaCorp?
She hadn’t realized how important Jessi had become—they all hadn’t—until suddenly they were faced with the terrifying prospect of her not being there at all. She could only imagine how Kyle must’ve been feeling about all of this. Here he was faced with the daunting prospect of being alone again. She knew that he cared about her and her family and knew that he loved them with all of his heart, but she also knew that—when Kyle had discovered Jessi’s existence—a weight had been lifted off of him and a much lighter emotion had come over him: he’d finally found someone who could share the weight of the world with him, he didn’t have to be alone and baring the brunt of everyone else’s problems all on his own.
Lori swallowed, clutched the phone tightly. She hoped, prayed, that nothing had happened to Jessi and that Kyle wouldn’t left alone again. She didn’t want that for him; he was already devastated over Amanda, would fate be so harsh as to take Jessi from him as well?
Lori sighed, her shoulders slumping in despair.
Just let Jessi be alright. Just let her be okay.
8o8o8
Everything hurt. From the smallest cells in her body to the very skin that stretched over her muscles and bones, Jessi could count every single pain center in her mind that was reverberating in agony, could tell anyone who was willing to hear, why her body was reacting in such a way: the human body is made up of thousands and thousands of cells, her voice echoed in her mind in a clinically detached tone, and at any given time said cells are constantly active, constantly moving, so that a feat—such as teleportation—could never be humanly possible unless all variables of cell activity were taken into account. Human bodies were not meant to teleport and yet this man had done the impossible and was suffering no ill effects from it. If she had been in a better position, Jessi would’ve demanded how he had done it, but instead, she lay on the cot that the man had scrounged for and whimpered even as he crouched down beside her on the bed, his expression unreadable and he dabbing her forehead with a cool wet cloth with a gentleness that she had not expected from someone who clearly had to be apart of Latnok.
She swallowed, her throat raw, and shifted, trying to get away. He grabbed her, gently, gently and pushed back down on the cot, his brown eyes as razor sharp as they had been when he first brought her to this place, where it was. She knew she was in a warehouse, could hear the way the wind whistled distantly through the empty rafters of a high-vaulted ceiling. She could smell rust and age and a musty odor permeating the space and she when she looked up with pain-filled eyes, she saw water stains marring the concrete walls of the room around her, the bulletin board to the far side of the room and the sunken in remains of what had once been a desk. Ah, so an office then.
Her gaze immediately snapped to the man as he approached with a canteen of water in his hand. She could smell the H2O and despite her pain, fished her senses out to detect if there were any poison or foreign substance sloshing around in the metal container that could possibly do her harm. When she was sure that there was none, she took a quick sip, just enough to soothe her throbbing throat, all the while glaring up at the man with the wariness of a cat.
“Don’t worry,” he said softly, his voice a low whisper, “I’m not going to hurt you, Jessi. It’s gonna be okay.”
She pulled back immediately and spat the water at him. He pulled back immediately and cursed when the water hit his shoe. He glared at her, nostrils flaring and growled, “Whether you believe me or not, I’m not going to hurt you, Jessi.”
She growled at him, her voice coming out grating even to her ears, “Then why did you kidnap me? Who are you?”
The man rotated his neck in irritation and sighed, shaking his head. “You’re not ready for that. Not until you get stronger.”
She growled again, and he smirked. “You always did have that temper on you. I forgot about it, and it didn’t show up nearly as much in the war.” A pained expression crossed his face before he wiped it away immediately and swallowed. “You may not know it yet, Jess, but you’re going to save the world.”
This gave her pause and she frowned at him, struggling to sit up on her hunches. He immediately sprang to her, hands outstretched to push her down again, but the glare she shot him stopped his movement cold. He watched her warily, but dropped his arms to his sides.
“Who are you?” she asked firmly.
“I told you,” he started, but Jessi cut him off.
“I am strong enough,” she hissed angrily. “I’m strong enough. I’m strong enough to—”
“You can’t do anything,” he replied, steel lacing every word. “I will tell you this much: there’s a dampening field that’s surrounding this room. You can’t use your powers here, trust me. And, you want to know what’s really ironic?” He smirked mirthlessly. “You made it. So, sit back—“he went to her and forced her down on the bed again—“ and relax. Heal up. We got a lot to talk about later.”
He walked away from her, to the other side of the room, but before Jessi begrudgingly complied to his wishes, she stated, stubbornly, “You called him ‘Destroyer’.”
“What?” the man asked, puzzled. Jessi fixed him with a brown-eyed glare that she saw made him visibly shiver.
“Kyle,” she admitted, with a little hesitation. “You called him ‘Destroyer’. Why?”
The man looked uncomfortable.
“Later,” he promised. “Later…I’ll tell you everything.”
That didn’t satisfy Jessi in the least, but she could do nothing about it for now. All she could do was lay down and settle on the cot. She shut her eyes against the harsh, stark sunlight that streamed in through the small cracks in the wall of her temporary prison and gather up all the reserve strength that she had. She tested out the man’s claims about there being a “dampening field” surrounding the room that they were in, pushing passed the pain to seek out knowledge of where every single cell was in her body and command them all to do as her powerful mind bid. But nothing happened. She could not summon up the will to force her cells to rapidly travel to every aching muscle in her system. Nothing worked, and for a moment, very real fear ensnared Jessi in its clutches.
If this man could easily take her down, then what about Kyle? What did he have planned for Kyle? She had to better, had to get stronger because nothing and no one was ever going to hurt Kyle, not if she could help it. So, Jessi settled down in her sleep, angry at how very mortal she felt, but biding her time nonetheless.
Soon, very soon, she’d get her answers.
Soon.
8o8o8
It was even more disconcerting dealing with her past self then the future self that he had come to care about. Joshua watched as Jessi finally listened to him and settled on the cot, finally going to sleep. He picked up the faint sounds of her soft breathing and went over to check on her, just to be sure. She was asleep, thank god. He didn’t know what he would do if he had to peer into those intense brown eyes again, sharp lasers that pierced that very depths of his soul without knowing that she did. He’d almost slipped, almost told her everything when she had demanded it. It was a wonder that her voice had power over him, even after her young age.
He didn’t remember it ever doing things to him. He didn’t remember him wanting to lay all of his troubles at her feet and letting her dissect him in that clinical way of hers, logically telling him every solution that he needed to hear. He was sure that she could do it even now, that she possessed that kind of discerning eye that he had fallen so deeply in love with. Joshua swallowed, stood and paced on agitated feet.
He needed to watch himself. He couldn’t get sloppy. The entire mission was riding on what he did, how he proceeded and what events in the past that he influenced. He had to be precise. He had to make sure that whatever that had went wrong, never repeated itself…or, at least, never went wrong in the first place.
He turned, sat down in the rattling chair that he had procured from another office within the warehouse aside from this one and watched the sleeping teen across from him. Her hair shone in the light that slanted in through the cracked walls of the office. Her face looked so serene in her slumber. There was no blemish save a slight bruise that was blossoming along her jaw line and if this were any other time—say, fourteen years into the future—he would’ve crossed the room right now and caressed that cheek, kissed her awake and apologized for his gruff behavior. But he couldn’t, wouldn’t.
If he were at all successful in what he was trying to do here that future wouldn’t exist. He would never get the chance to touch her, to be showered with her affections such as it was. He wouldn’t get to know what it felt like to see her naked and in all of her glory, to hear her laugh, to see her smile or her eyes twinkle when they fell on him. He would never…
Stop it, Joshua, came the hard voice of Declan from a future long, long gone by. Just stop it and man up. You know what you’re here for.
And he did, even though he didn’t want to be the one to do the job. He had to stop the Destroyer. He had to him—Kyle—from decimating everything. Even now he cringed at saying his former adopted brother’s name. It had caused so much fear and loathing and hatred and pain that most in the resistance had taken to just calling him ‘Destroyer’. No one had to attach emotional significance to that title save antipathy and anger. No one had to remember that he had, at one time, been a kind, vibrant boy who had looked upon all that came into his presence with innocence and open affection.
But those memories of the Destroyer were dead and gone, buried under years and years and years of anger and hate and the ugly beast of revenge clawing its way up Joshua’s body every time he was a broadcast or a newspaper bearing the face of someone he had trusted so implicitly at one time. How stupid he had been, and how foolish to think that the Destroyer would always remain the steadfast brother that he could depend on.
His eyes fell on Jessi once again.
No matter. He would change the course of history no matter what the cost, no matter what he had to do, and if Jessi wouldn’t—or couldn’t—help him…then, he’d do the only thing that was left: he’d kill him; he’d kill Kyle.
He’d kill Kyle dead.
Author: wonderbread9
Rating: PG-13 - R
Characters: The Cast of Kyle XY, OCs here and there
Pairings: Kyle/Amanda, Kyle/Jessi, implied Jessi/Josh (you’ll get it soon enough)
Warnings: The story is, from here on out, an AU (Alternate Universe). The themes may get a bit darker as time progresses, but hopefully not by too much. I’m trying to curb this with a realistic standpoint on a, yet as determined, unrealistic show. Bare with me a bit.
Disclaimer: Welcome to my little funpark, where I own none of the characters or themes expressed in Kyle XY, but do borrow them every once and a while when I’m bored.
Author's Note: Okay…so, you’ll probably find out answers in this chapter about Kyle. This particular story isn’t going to be thousands of pages long, but it does set the stage for a much longer piece that I really want to get started working on after this.
Summary: A pained expression crossed his face before he wiped it away immediately and swallowed. “You may not know it yet, Jess, but you’re going to save the world.”
IV.
That night, Josh dreamed.
Now, there was nothing unusual about the start of the dream; it began like any other: Andy was approaching him in some sequined, skimpy outfit with a fire blazing in her hooded, bedroom eyes and he was grinning from ear to ear because he knew what was coming next. He felt his body stir in anticipation, watched as her hair fell over her shoulders in a cascade of blazing red hues, veiling his vision of her desire-ridden eyes. Her hands touched his ankles, gently, gently and trailed up his legs, massaging and caressing in languid strokes that made him shiver with want and desire. His eyes fell shut and the grin remained plastered on his face in satisfaction.
He loved these dreams, loved the unbridled passion that his girlfriend displayed in his nighttime fantasies that she would never display in the real world, no matter how daring, creative and uncompromising Andy could be. There were just some things that he didn’t even think that she would think were normal enough to engage in so all he had, really, were his dreams. Blurry around the edges always and sometimes misty like those cheesy sci-fi horror flicks that he loved so much, he would always be position on a bed in some exotic locale: India, Hawai’i or Asia; it didn’t matter. Andy would always be there and her voice, usually so harsh and brutal during the day with her quips and snarky witticism, would be dropped an octave, dropped to a seductive whisper that did more than a few interesting things to his hormonally driven body.
He felt the bed beside him shift, felt the comfortable weight of a feminine form near, the heat radiating from her smooth skin. He reached out, eyes still closed and touched her, a gentle caress over her warm skin, hearing her slight gasp and her breathing quicken in answering anticipation. His grin widened, her pulled her close and smelled the tangy scent of citrus shampoo and the equally intoxicating smell of the skin lotion of the same brand. Something in his mind echoed, disrupting his dream sequence momentarily, that Andy never wore anything like citrus; she was more of a kiwi-strawberry kind of gal: bitter, but sweet all wrapped in one delectable package.
But Josh pushed that voice away, breathed into the scent of her, pulled her close and crushed her ample chest against him. Her breath caught again, and his grin fell as he landed kiss after kiss along her smooth shoulder, pale like milk crystal and just as fragile…if only she would let him in. There was moonlight above them and the scenery had changed drastically. Gone were the palm trees that hung low in his window and the jungle sounds that had come vaguely to his ears at the start of it all. Hard, cold earth was rough against his naked skin and he could feel the rough scratch of five o’clock shadow along his brow when he brushed it playfully against her chest.
She giggled; it did not sound like Andy.
As the drama unfolded, Josh felt himself pull back and shush her quiet, but she only giggled at him again, an impish sound that he never thought he would hear coming from such a stoic woman.
Wait…woman?
But he couldn’t stop himself. Clouds passed over the face of the moon, shielding her face from him, but somewhere deep inside, he knew who it was that lay on her back beneath him, looking up at him with eyes that set him on fire. The world around them was that of a forest, the last bit of greenery left in a Seattle that was—even as they lay together, caressed each other and explored each other’s bodies—was being destroyed in a ground assault. But the sounds of cannons firing and guns of war ripping through the bodies of innocent soldiers didn’t pierce the canopy of the wood, and here…He could pretend for one second that his life wasn’t going to hell and that she was all that he had to cling to, that she was all that was left of a world he wanted to desperately to return.
Her hand came up, cupped his face and returned his attention back to the love making at hand. She needed this, even if she didn’t need him, and if it stung to high heaven when she called out a name that was other than his, he didn’t say a word. Just moved with her, breathed in her scent, mapped out everything about her that he possibly could with his hands wandering over the curves and contours of her body.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered, in a voice that sounded so soft, so alluring. “We’ll figure something out.”
“We will?” he asked, dream still fuzzy around the edges, a voice inside of him telling him that this was wrong, wrong, so very, very wrong. She nodded, smiled at him and he smiled in turn.
“Okay, Jessi.”
It was then that Josh sat up in his bed, breathing hard and ragged, his body feeling like it was on fire. Early morning sunlight slanted into the venetian blinds of his window and he looked around, immediately confused and bewildered. Where was he? What was going on? Why—?
When his mind finally caught up with him, and reminded him that he was in bed and was going to be late for school, Josh groaned, plopped back down on the sweat soaked sheets, flinging a hand over his eyes.
Jessi. He had dreamed about Jessi. That was just…too weird. What the hell was he thinking? He was supposed to be dreaming about Andy, his—hello!—girlfriend. Not about the weird freaky, science experiment that was taking up residence in his mother’s old office.
And speaking of science experiments…
Josh sat up immediately again and looked around. It was empty. Kyle was nowhere to be seen. Josh rose from his bed, temporarily pushing aside the disturbing—but still very, very arousing image of a very adult Jessi and a very adult him engaging in…—dreams that suddenly decided to take up residence in his head and disrupt his normal sleep patterns, and left his room, seeking out the wayward teen that had come into their lives only three short years ago.
“Kyle!” he called loudly as he walked down the hall, passing Lori’s room. Her door came open immediately, emitting his very annoyed, very un-caffeinated sister.
“Geez, shouting much,” she growled, shuffling in her pajamas passed him and down the stairs to make herself a cup of coffee in the kitchen. “C’mon, Josh, don’t start being aggravating now. It’s way too early in the morning.”
He made a face at her before following her down the stairs.
“It’s not like mom and dad aren’t already awa—“ he began and stopped immediately when he saw his sister frozen on the bottom step, staring into the living room with a look of shock.
“What’s going on?” he asked, stepping passed her and peering into the living room himself. There he saw Kyle, seated on the couch in a hunched over position, staring off into space. He stepped further into the room, a frown creasing his features as he approached his brother, hand outstretched.
“Kyle?” he called, but the other teen did not stir at his approach, did not move or shift from his position. Josh swallowed, feeling a wave of unease wash over him and coil his stomach into knots. Apparently, Lori felt the same and the two Trager children glanced at each other before Lori mouthed, ‘I’m going to go get mom.’ And dashed off immediately. Josh wanted to roll his eyes and glare at her retreating back. Great, just great. He didn’t do touchy-feely emotions or things like that. Not unless it was with Andy—or Jessi, a snide voice snickered in the back of his mind that sounded oddly like Declan’s.
He brushed it away and touched Kyle’s shoulder gently with his still outstretched hand. Kyle started, turned and the look that Josh saw in his brother’s eyes would’ve sent him reeling and rushing off to find his mom and dad had Lori not gone off to find them herself. A pained look haunted the deep pockets of Kyle’s normally expressive and emotive blue eyes and dark bags dragged his eyes down at the corners; there was such an emptiness in their depths that Josh was sure that if he stared too hard and for too long, he would get lost in the sadness that he found there and never, ever find his way out again. He wondered worriedly what it was that could seriously depress the usually so cheerful, optimistic Kyle; what could possibly have devastated him so much that he would sink into this state?
And then, he figured he knew: Amanda.
Josh plastered on his best sympathetic smile and crouched down beside Kyle, hand still gripping his brother’s shoulder in as reassuring a touch as he could manage. He swallowed.
“Hey, buddy,” he started, trying for a friendly tone. “Are you okay?” He paused, not wanting to skirt the deadly waters where any subject of Amanda Bloom immediately drove Kyle deeper into sadness. He steeled himself and asked, “Is…Are you…Is it Amanda?”
The pained look that crossed Kyle’s face made Josh think he hit the nail on the head. He breathed a sigh of relief. This he could handle, anything else…anything like Latnok or weird conspiracies or anything WAY out there like that…well…
“Look, Kyle,” Josh began, “everything’s going to be okay, you know? Maybe you and Amanda just weren’t right for each other…Or, maybe, just maybe, somewhere down the line the two of you will get back together and make superhuman, hybrid babies or something…But, you know, you gotta give this time—”
“This doesn’t concern Amanda,” Kyle cut in softly, his eyes shifting away from Josh’s. The other boy frowned in puzzlement. Well, if it didn’t deal with Amanda then who…
Realization dawned on him, and could he help that a snake of something hot burned in his stomach when he thought of brown eyes staring up at him with eyes hooded with lust? He breathed a shuddering breath that Kyle didn’t notice and said, “Jessi.”
The pain flared in Kyle’s eyes anew.
“What happened?” came the urgent sound of Stephen’s voice as he and Nicole came quickly down the stairs, Lori in tow. Josh stood immediately to give his mother and father room, but watched Kyle, watched every move that he made and every shift in his expression. Kyle’s eyes fell on Nicole’s kind face first and then Stephen’s before his eyes welled up with tears and they poured down his cheeks. His lips trembled and he hastily wiped the tears away.
“It’s Jessi,” Kyle began, stopped and breathed a trembling breath. He met all of their gazes with his sorrowful blues, “she’s gone.”
8o8o8
It only took the Trager’s a few hours to assemble, dressed fully, and Nicole immediately manning the phones, dialing the local police. Stephen and Josh had immediately taken off to investigate the place where Kyle had indicated that Jessi had disappeared, and despite his protests to wanting to go out and help, Lori had been left with the charge of taking care of her adopted brother. He sat on the couch, in the same position that she and Josh had found him in, playing with his fingers and twiddling his thumbs, face creased in a troubled frown; she wondered what was going on in his head.
Jessi was gone. That’s what he said, and his explanation for her disappearance was strange, even for Kyle: that some man had come and waved his magic wand or whatever and she and he both disappeared. What? Things like that just never happened. People didn’t just up and vanish into thin air. It was impossible. She glanced over at Kyle and sighed.
Then again, both Kyle and Jessi were impossibilities to begin with. So, then…why was this out of the realm of possibility at all? Lori wanted to hit her head against something in frustration. She had come to believe, that even though Kyle and Jessi were weird oddities that certainly had changed her view of the way the world worked, they most certainly had not transformed her viewpoint of the world in such a way that she believed pigs could fly and the ocean would suddenly produce talking fish. It was still as crappy as it had been, it just had the existence of two extraordinary people within it.
But now…
Now…
Lori sighed and turned to Kyle, saying, “I’m going to go find mom.” She stood and was about to seek out her mother, when a thought occurred to her and she turned back to her brother and said firmly, “Stay here, Kyle.”
He didn’t answer, just remained seated, face still pursed in that troubled frown. She sighed again, turned on her heel and sought out her mother. She found Nicole in the kitchen, talking to the police on the phone, trying yet again to explain who exactly it was that they were looking for and why. Her face was flushed in irritation and anger and she looked like she was about ready to slam the phone back into its holder in frustration. She held up a shushing finger to Lori, who waited patiently while her mother finished her conversation with the police deputy and hung up the phone with a calm that Lori was very sure her mother did not feel.
“Yes, Lori,” her mother said evenly, and had it been any other day and her mother’d used that tone with her, Lori might’ve taken offense. But now wasn’t the time or the place.
“Anything?” Lori asked with an anxiousness that she was surprised that she could feel. Her mother sighed in frustration and shook her head.
“Nothing,” Nicole admitted, gritting her teeth. “How’s Kyle?”
Lori shrugged, helplessly, shaking her head. “No change. He just sits there, you know? Frowning. I don’t know what to do.”
Nicole nodded herself and flashed her daughter a reassuring smile. “I’ll talk to him. See if there’s anything else he can give us to go on.” She started out of the kitchen, tossing over her shoulder: “Man the phones. If anything comes up—”
“I’ll call you immediately,” Lori finished, walking over to and grabbing the cordless phone from the wall. She held it in her hand and wrapped herself in a protective hug, going straight to the front door, opening it and walking out into the cool air of a spring morning. She stepped onto the front porch, glad to be out of the house and looked around. There wasn’t much activity on the street, but when was there ever? Just a man walking his dog, birds singing in the trees and the mailman down the street carrying on his monotonous task of giving people their bills. The sun was shining, clouds drifted across the sky’s face and Lori couldn’t understand—could quite wrap her head around—why nothing had stopped, why nothing had just stopped dead and frozen in its tracks the moment Jessi had disappeared.
Life shouldn’t have been going on as normal. The world shouldn’t still be turning on its axis. The man across the street should not be walking his dogs, the mailman should be pausing her car and bowing his head in respect: Jessi was gone. Jessi was taken, and no one seemed to understand that. No one seemed to see that something was suddenly missing in the Trager household: a snarky quip here or a sulking comment made there. Nothing, not even a shadow of her haunted the place, save Lori’s memories and the dawning fear that she had growing in the pit of her stomach: what if they never found her? What if this were Latnok and its evil schemes? What if this were MadaCorp?
She hadn’t realized how important Jessi had become—they all hadn’t—until suddenly they were faced with the terrifying prospect of her not being there at all. She could only imagine how Kyle must’ve been feeling about all of this. Here he was faced with the daunting prospect of being alone again. She knew that he cared about her and her family and knew that he loved them with all of his heart, but she also knew that—when Kyle had discovered Jessi’s existence—a weight had been lifted off of him and a much lighter emotion had come over him: he’d finally found someone who could share the weight of the world with him, he didn’t have to be alone and baring the brunt of everyone else’s problems all on his own.
Lori swallowed, clutched the phone tightly. She hoped, prayed, that nothing had happened to Jessi and that Kyle wouldn’t left alone again. She didn’t want that for him; he was already devastated over Amanda, would fate be so harsh as to take Jessi from him as well?
Lori sighed, her shoulders slumping in despair.
Just let Jessi be alright. Just let her be okay.
8o8o8
Everything hurt. From the smallest cells in her body to the very skin that stretched over her muscles and bones, Jessi could count every single pain center in her mind that was reverberating in agony, could tell anyone who was willing to hear, why her body was reacting in such a way: the human body is made up of thousands and thousands of cells, her voice echoed in her mind in a clinically detached tone, and at any given time said cells are constantly active, constantly moving, so that a feat—such as teleportation—could never be humanly possible unless all variables of cell activity were taken into account. Human bodies were not meant to teleport and yet this man had done the impossible and was suffering no ill effects from it. If she had been in a better position, Jessi would’ve demanded how he had done it, but instead, she lay on the cot that the man had scrounged for and whimpered even as he crouched down beside her on the bed, his expression unreadable and he dabbing her forehead with a cool wet cloth with a gentleness that she had not expected from someone who clearly had to be apart of Latnok.
She swallowed, her throat raw, and shifted, trying to get away. He grabbed her, gently, gently and pushed back down on the cot, his brown eyes as razor sharp as they had been when he first brought her to this place, where it was. She knew she was in a warehouse, could hear the way the wind whistled distantly through the empty rafters of a high-vaulted ceiling. She could smell rust and age and a musty odor permeating the space and she when she looked up with pain-filled eyes, she saw water stains marring the concrete walls of the room around her, the bulletin board to the far side of the room and the sunken in remains of what had once been a desk. Ah, so an office then.
Her gaze immediately snapped to the man as he approached with a canteen of water in his hand. She could smell the H2O and despite her pain, fished her senses out to detect if there were any poison or foreign substance sloshing around in the metal container that could possibly do her harm. When she was sure that there was none, she took a quick sip, just enough to soothe her throbbing throat, all the while glaring up at the man with the wariness of a cat.
“Don’t worry,” he said softly, his voice a low whisper, “I’m not going to hurt you, Jessi. It’s gonna be okay.”
She pulled back immediately and spat the water at him. He pulled back immediately and cursed when the water hit his shoe. He glared at her, nostrils flaring and growled, “Whether you believe me or not, I’m not going to hurt you, Jessi.”
She growled at him, her voice coming out grating even to her ears, “Then why did you kidnap me? Who are you?”
The man rotated his neck in irritation and sighed, shaking his head. “You’re not ready for that. Not until you get stronger.”
She growled again, and he smirked. “You always did have that temper on you. I forgot about it, and it didn’t show up nearly as much in the war.” A pained expression crossed his face before he wiped it away immediately and swallowed. “You may not know it yet, Jess, but you’re going to save the world.”
This gave her pause and she frowned at him, struggling to sit up on her hunches. He immediately sprang to her, hands outstretched to push her down again, but the glare she shot him stopped his movement cold. He watched her warily, but dropped his arms to his sides.
“Who are you?” she asked firmly.
“I told you,” he started, but Jessi cut him off.
“I am strong enough,” she hissed angrily. “I’m strong enough. I’m strong enough to—”
“You can’t do anything,” he replied, steel lacing every word. “I will tell you this much: there’s a dampening field that’s surrounding this room. You can’t use your powers here, trust me. And, you want to know what’s really ironic?” He smirked mirthlessly. “You made it. So, sit back—“he went to her and forced her down on the bed again—“ and relax. Heal up. We got a lot to talk about later.”
He walked away from her, to the other side of the room, but before Jessi begrudgingly complied to his wishes, she stated, stubbornly, “You called him ‘Destroyer’.”
“What?” the man asked, puzzled. Jessi fixed him with a brown-eyed glare that she saw made him visibly shiver.
“Kyle,” she admitted, with a little hesitation. “You called him ‘Destroyer’. Why?”
The man looked uncomfortable.
“Later,” he promised. “Later…I’ll tell you everything.”
That didn’t satisfy Jessi in the least, but she could do nothing about it for now. All she could do was lay down and settle on the cot. She shut her eyes against the harsh, stark sunlight that streamed in through the small cracks in the wall of her temporary prison and gather up all the reserve strength that she had. She tested out the man’s claims about there being a “dampening field” surrounding the room that they were in, pushing passed the pain to seek out knowledge of where every single cell was in her body and command them all to do as her powerful mind bid. But nothing happened. She could not summon up the will to force her cells to rapidly travel to every aching muscle in her system. Nothing worked, and for a moment, very real fear ensnared Jessi in its clutches.
If this man could easily take her down, then what about Kyle? What did he have planned for Kyle? She had to better, had to get stronger because nothing and no one was ever going to hurt Kyle, not if she could help it. So, Jessi settled down in her sleep, angry at how very mortal she felt, but biding her time nonetheless.
Soon, very soon, she’d get her answers.
Soon.
8o8o8
It was even more disconcerting dealing with her past self then the future self that he had come to care about. Joshua watched as Jessi finally listened to him and settled on the cot, finally going to sleep. He picked up the faint sounds of her soft breathing and went over to check on her, just to be sure. She was asleep, thank god. He didn’t know what he would do if he had to peer into those intense brown eyes again, sharp lasers that pierced that very depths of his soul without knowing that she did. He’d almost slipped, almost told her everything when she had demanded it. It was a wonder that her voice had power over him, even after her young age.
He didn’t remember it ever doing things to him. He didn’t remember him wanting to lay all of his troubles at her feet and letting her dissect him in that clinical way of hers, logically telling him every solution that he needed to hear. He was sure that she could do it even now, that she possessed that kind of discerning eye that he had fallen so deeply in love with. Joshua swallowed, stood and paced on agitated feet.
He needed to watch himself. He couldn’t get sloppy. The entire mission was riding on what he did, how he proceeded and what events in the past that he influenced. He had to be precise. He had to make sure that whatever that had went wrong, never repeated itself…or, at least, never went wrong in the first place.
He turned, sat down in the rattling chair that he had procured from another office within the warehouse aside from this one and watched the sleeping teen across from him. Her hair shone in the light that slanted in through the cracked walls of the office. Her face looked so serene in her slumber. There was no blemish save a slight bruise that was blossoming along her jaw line and if this were any other time—say, fourteen years into the future—he would’ve crossed the room right now and caressed that cheek, kissed her awake and apologized for his gruff behavior. But he couldn’t, wouldn’t.
If he were at all successful in what he was trying to do here that future wouldn’t exist. He would never get the chance to touch her, to be showered with her affections such as it was. He wouldn’t get to know what it felt like to see her naked and in all of her glory, to hear her laugh, to see her smile or her eyes twinkle when they fell on him. He would never…
Stop it, Joshua, came the hard voice of Declan from a future long, long gone by. Just stop it and man up. You know what you’re here for.
And he did, even though he didn’t want to be the one to do the job. He had to stop the Destroyer. He had to him—Kyle—from decimating everything. Even now he cringed at saying his former adopted brother’s name. It had caused so much fear and loathing and hatred and pain that most in the resistance had taken to just calling him ‘Destroyer’. No one had to attach emotional significance to that title save antipathy and anger. No one had to remember that he had, at one time, been a kind, vibrant boy who had looked upon all that came into his presence with innocence and open affection.
But those memories of the Destroyer were dead and gone, buried under years and years and years of anger and hate and the ugly beast of revenge clawing its way up Joshua’s body every time he was a broadcast or a newspaper bearing the face of someone he had trusted so implicitly at one time. How stupid he had been, and how foolish to think that the Destroyer would always remain the steadfast brother that he could depend on.
His eyes fell on Jessi once again.
No matter. He would change the course of history no matter what the cost, no matter what he had to do, and if Jessi wouldn’t—or couldn’t—help him…then, he’d do the only thing that was left: he’d kill him; he’d kill Kyle.
He’d kill Kyle dead.
In And Out Of Time 3/10
Title: In and Out of Time (1/?)
Author: wonderbread9
Rating: PG-13 - R
Characters: The Cast of Kyle XY, OCs here and there
Pairings: Kyle/Amanda, Kyle/Jessi
Warnings: It's going to get a bit strange...AU-ish, takes place directly after Life Support©, and will include some elements of what I’ve seen of pictures on . So, there is a spoiler-ish warning for those who have yet to check those out.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Kyle XY ©, Kyle, Jessi or any other part of the show. If I did, we’d a season four with nothing BUT Kessi *sigh*
Author's Note: Took a page from Roswell’s book and decided to take a crack at the time travelling theme. To my fellow Kessi-lovers, don’t hate me too much. There’s a lot of Jessi!angst at the beginning, but it gets better, I SWEAR!!! 3
Summary: He looked up a head and he saw them: brown eyes, wide with fear, framed by a face that had yet to be worn by the devastation of war, a face that was smooth and young without the lines of worry and the frowns of frustration. He saw her, and knew, finally: I made it.
8o8o8
III.
He knew that he was playing with fire—they all were. He knew that the gamble he was making could blow up royally in all of their faces and that everything—every single thing—that they had ever worked for, slaved over, bled for and died for could end if anything he tried or any mistake he made caused a chain reaction that could make the situation that he was leaving behind even worse than it already was. But he had no choice, and as he watched the world that he had come to know, love and hate turn to fire around him, Joshua Trager knew that no matter what he did he could not fail.
The time stream was like a Technicolor nightmare of swirling blues, hot pinks and blazing greens as he felt something jerk, yank and pull painfully on his navel and he was thrown backwards, backwards to a time that he could hardly remember, and dreaded more than he had ever dreaded anything in his life. He looked back, looked back to where the future loomed in the time tunnel, the vision he saw frayed around the edges, and saw her brown eyes twinkling at him, even though a raging hellfire was blazing around her, catching fire to her hair, turning her beautiful pale skin to ash. He blinked, and she was gone, disappeared forward in time while he was slung back like a sling shot, a human cannonball defying all laws of physics and logic; it figured that he, the most skeptical of everyone, would be the one who was picked especially for this mission.
He remembered that day, so long ago, when he was called into debriefing, not even settled in his room on base yet and still carrying on his person the funk of the passed mission that had lasted two weeks and had kept him from the comfort of the underground bunker. The commander—a sprite of a woman with features that looked more suited to a sitting room somewhere along an upscale Parisian boulevard—nailed everyone gathered with a sharp glare from her ice blue eyes. Her lips had been set in a thin, grim line and, for the first time in a long time, Joshua had felt the first stirrings of anxiety twist his gut into knots. The commander, a Charlotte Deveaux, held in her arms a stack of paperwork that Joshua was sure was the cause of his anxiety; he knew by the way she clutched it, that what ever was held there could very well steer the course of the future, and that, by no means, bode well in his mind.
“I have assembled you all here because the group of you are the best, the brightest and the strongest soldiers that the resistance has and have been fighting on the front lines since the start of this war,” she began and set the stack of paperwork down on the debriefing table. “And because of your experiences, you must know that this war…is hopeless. The opposition is too strong, too powerful and we’re losing soldiers and fighters everyday and losing territory. Even now, our resources are dwindling and soon we’ll have nothing.”
The woman’s face, if at all possible, became even more grim and her ice blue eyes took on a look sadness around the edges. She breathed and handed the first page of the stack of paperwork to Joshua. He took it, looked it over and frowned. There was a diagram on the page, drawn in the shape of a whirlpool. He frowned and handed it off to the man that sat beside him, a stern-faced gentleman with a jagged scar that ran diagonal along his face from his right temple to the left side of his jaw. Commander Deveaux passed him another sheet from her stack, and another and another, all just as confusing as the first. Joshua couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing: numbers? Diagrams? Notes jotted down in a chicken-scratch handwriting that he couldn’t understand?
“Pardon me, ma’am,” Joshua started, and the commander fixed him with her hard blue eyes. “But what is all this?”
“It’s—”
“Perhaps, I can explain it better, commander,” came the softly spoken request from Joshua’s left and his brown eyes snapped to where it had come from and be held her.
She wore a white lab coat, clean despite the fact that water rations had been cut back again in the past month. Her brown eyes fell on his. She smiled and looked away, meeting the commander’s no nonsense gaze with a determined look of her own.
“Of course, Ms. Hollander,” came the commander’s curt reply, and the small woman stepped out of the way and allowed her, Jessi Hollander, leeway into the room and full reign of the floor. Joshua’s heart skipped a beat and he swallowed tickly as Jessi nodded and stepped further into room. Everyone was silent, all eyes trained on the brown-haired, brown-eyed woman that had done more for the war effort than any twenty, trained soldiers combined.
“What you see before you, ladies and gentlemen,” she began with a pointed look at all of them, “is hope. Hope for the future. Hope for the present. And hope for the past. In the old days,” Jessi began a slow circuit about the room, starting at the farthest edge of the debriefing table and traveling around it, picking up the individual pages of notes and research before setting them down again and continuing on, “scientists claimed that time moved in a linear fashion, and that nothing and no one could ever break through it or ever travel along its pathways.” She stopped beside Joshua and he felt a shiver run up and down his spine and sweat break out along the skin of his brow. She smiled at him and butterflies fluttered maniacally in his stomach. “But I’ve discovered a way,” she continued in a gentle whisper. Joshua swallowed thickly. “I’ve discovered a way to go back and change…everything.”
There was an assortment of protests that reverberated around the room, but Joshua heard none of it. His attention was fixed on the woman that stood before him, smiling; her brown eyes boring into his, boring into his soul. He breathed, but every breath felt like a chore. His heart thumped faster, blood rushed like a flood through his veins.
“I’ve discovered,” Jessi said louder over the din; everyone immediately fell silent, “how to go back and make right what went horribly wrong. I’ve discovered how to stop the Destroyer.”
The rest of the meeting was a blur, the rest of what had been spoken of were vague snippets of here or there conversations passing through his thoughts. All he remembered mostly from that day, weeks and weeks ago, were her eyes, brown lasers boring into him, turning him into mush on the spot. It hadn’t always been that way; he hadn’t always seen her in that light, and he knew that even with what he had grown to feel for her, her depth of emotion for him was only on the surface; he knew that he could never be HIM, and would never—no matter how long he tried or how hard—reach into those secret depths of hers and wade through the darkness and the shadows that existed.
Mere seconds were passing, he knew, but in this strange world of colors shooting passed his vision at light speed, it felt like the seconds were crawling and when tried to focus on the lights, pictures blazed passed his curious gaze. The images stung. They cut deep. He saw his life flash before his eyes: everything backwards like some cosmic hand had pressed rewind on the VCR of his mortal existence. The first time he had ever shot a gun. The first time he had ever gotten shit-faced drunk. The first time he had ever gotten his heart broken and the first time he had ever killed a man. All there, all replayed for him like some sick cosmic joke. It made him smirk in mirthless humor.
Jessi had said that when he entered the time stream he wouldn’t see a thing. She had predicted that the minute he stepped through the thin veil that was reality and time and space, he would blink and in those mere seconds he would be at his destination. But as he looked out and saw his life replaying before him—the good times and the bad—a sudden thought struck him: it was nice to know that even Jessi could be wrong sometimes. The thought was a bitter one, but Joshua blinked again, more seconds passed and he saw up ahead the vision of star lights and the sky line of a Seattle that had not yet been decimated by the ravages of war.
He saw up a head earth with the first sprigs of green grass dusting a ground that had been, only a few short weeks ago, covered in a thick layer of snow. He saw the gentle glow of a street light and the vague sounds of insects singing. Fourteen years propelled into the past. Fourteen years and he could only vaguely remember that he’d been dating Andy at this time, and that life—for the most part—had been simple.
He looked up a head and he saw them: brown eyes, wide with fear, framed by a face that had yet to be worn by the devastation of war, a face that was smooth and young without the lines of worry and the frowns of frustration. He saw her, and knew, finally:
I made it.
8o8o8
Jessi screamed as the pillar of light fell from the sky, traveling faster and faster and faster to where she stood, frozen in fear and a sick fascination, staring up at an impossible perversion of nature. Light didn’t do things like that, and the world didn’t react the way it had only moments before with a keening wail ripping through the atmosphere and the force of a whirlwind gale. Nothing scientifically could explain any of this, and even though Jessi’s mind groped around for answers, she knew that she would find none. All she could do was watch as the pillar descended and wonder which god of this messed up universe that she found herself in had she managed to piss off now.
The earth began to rumble again underneath her feet at the light’s descent, the trees began to shiver in their places and the wind began to stir like a dog being called by its unholy master. It was then that Jessi’s feet allowed her to move and at that last second, when disaster seemed imminent and her life would surely have flash before her eyes, Jessi dodged out of the way just in time, landing on the ground in a jarring roll before staggering to her feet and watching, her heart thundering loudly in her ears and her breath coming to her in ragged gasps, as the pillar of light slammed into the earth, lightning cackling around its edges and the figure of a man standing, peaceably in the center.
Jessi’s mouth parted in shock.
No, no, most certainly not. Her mind was moving faster and faster, traveling at light speed, trying to take in all that she was seeing and arrange it in such a way that logic could prevail and her universe would not be turned on its rear. But nothing could account for this. Nothing could explain this, no matter how much her mind tried to reason it out. There was just no way possible for light to exist in such a concentrated form and to cause these types of changes to the world around her and for a man—a literal human being—to be able to exist within it without being burned to a crisp.
In spite of herself, Jessi’s feet edged her forward, avoiding the active forks of lightning that licked the air, and reached her hand out to touch…
It wasn’t hot. Not like how the atmosphere had been before the pillar had arrived. There was no heat radiating from it all. Her eyes widened in fascination and she licked her lips, reaching her hand even further out. She just wanted to touch…
It was then that the man turned. His brown eyes widened and his mouth parted in a shout.
A tongue of lightning shot from the pillar with such speed that Jessi had no time to dodge and all she could do was look on in horror as it sped towards her, faster and faster, a jagged, white blazing light that would surely be her doom.
It drew closer.
Blinded her.
Jessi felt heat then pain as the tongue of lightning whipped across her skin. Her nerve endings screamed agony. Her body blazed with fire. It hurt so much that she couldn’t cry out, the sound stuck in her throat. She was lifted up, up, up—an impossible height off the ground—and tossed like a rag doll into a tree.
Her head cracked against the wood.
She heard the man shout her name.
She wanted to ask what the hell had just happened, but her angry question came out as a whimper of pain. Her teeth were clenched, her jaw locked and her hands were balled into tight white fists. Her mind was working, fighting through the throes of agony that threatened to overtake her. She had to fight through this. She had to.
What if this was Latnok’s doing? What if this was some kind of new invention that they had decided to test out on her? She wasn’t entirely sure about the organization and how far advanced its technologies were, but if this was something that they had cooked up, then she had to pull herself together, shake off the pain that she was feeling and fight them. They could hurt Kyle. They could hurt the Tragers. She didn’t want to lose the only family that was slowly beginning to welcome her into their fold; she’d before die she ever lost that.
And so, with a laborious breath, Jessi dragged herself to her feet, leaning on the tree for support and raising her hand to the man that stepped out of the slowly diminishing pillar of light. He looked vaguely familiar, like maybe she had seen him from somewhere before, but she didn’t want to let that distract her. She went deep into her mind, where synapses fired and electrical impulses danced along the neural pathways, deep into the place where she could feel connected to the gravitational pull of the world around her, where she could see and count every single electron and proton that crashed and flew apart from each other in the small microcosm of the atomic world, and attempted to change the polarity in the world around her.
It was difficult and when she looked up the man cocked his head to the side, grinned at her with a mouth that looked like it had not smiled in a very, very long time and touched something on his wrist. He seemed to be wearing a watch, but it was nothing like any watch that Jessi had ever seen. No matter; he’d be dealt with soon enough. She turned her body’s own polarity, her body’s own gravitational force to the world outside, manipulating every piece and part of her down to the very last cell, forcing it out, at the man, in a wall of energy that should’ve knocked him over and out cold.
But it didn’t.
Nothing happened, and when she tried again, he only grinned wider and approached her weakened form on feet that barely made a sound along the grass strewn earth.
“Don’t worry, Jessi,” he said, reaching a hand out to touch her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She pressed herself closer to the tree that she was leaning on, forcing away the sharp jolt of pain that still reverberated through her and frowned at him. “Who-who are you? What do you want?”
“I—”
“Get away from her!”
The man looked up in surprise. A familiar shiver rushed up and down Jessi’s body, like someone had dipped her body in warm, soothing water and a calm stole over her mind that she had grown so accustomed to feeling that she had stopped thinking anything of it. But now, now she was glad to feel it, glad to feel the essence and presence of Kyle as he stepped out of a thick outgrowth of bushes, chest heaving and face flushed. His blue eyes blazed with anger.
In the next few seconds, everything moved so fast that Jessi had only had a split second to react, adrenaline surging through her already battered, bruised and fatigued body, and forcing her to get up and to act before her entire world came crashing down around her ears: the man turned, his face transforming from that of the tenderness and concern that he had shown her only seconds before, pulling back in a snarl of anger and a hatred so deep that it blazed in his eyes and she was sure had consumed his soul; he flicked his wrist and from the sleeve of his shirt, came a gun; Kyle shouted her name; the man raised his weapon and Kyle raised his hand to stop him.
“Destroyer!” the man spat in anger and loathing.
“Kyle!” Jessi screamed, and pushed herself up from the ground.
The man’s hand squeezed the trigger, and Jessi slammed into him with all her might as a shot rang out and Kyle went down. She hit the ground with such force that the wind was knocked out of her, but the man was up again and moving. Cocking his gun again and aiming. But this time Kyle was ready. Before the man could shoot, Kyle had it, ripped from the man’s hand, and poised, floating, in the night air. The man looked up then snapped his gaze to glare at Kyle and growl before he turned—Jessi looked up and met the man’s razor sharp gaze.
He grabbed her hand, pressed a button on his watch, and the two of them disappeared.
8o8o8
They were gone.
There one moment, and then—in the blink of an eye—Jessi and the strange man were gone.
Kyle breathed, heart still hammering against the confines of his chest, body still shaking from the rush of adrenaline that coursed through his blood like hot lava. He strained his senses, casting them out like a net, casting them so far and so wide, listening to every sound, from woodland creatures to the distance rush of a lonely car passing along empty Seattle streets.
Nothing.
No one.
He stood upright, walked to where Jessi and the man had been. Kneeled. Pressed his hand to earth. It was still warm where her body had lay. His nose twitched and picked up the faint scent of her before a gentle breeze blew it away and carried it farther than his outstretched senses could detect.
He swallowed thickly.
His hand trembled against the earth.
He breathed.
Jessi was gone.
Jessi was…
A frown creased his features. His normally smiling, grinning, smirking mouth pressed into a thin line. His blue eyes blazed in the darkness. He looked up at the star lights that had born silent witness to what had just transpired.
Jessi was gone.
He couldn’t feel her presence, the comforting warmth that stole over him when he knew she was near. He couldn’t detect her anywhere, not anywhere close.
Was this Latnok? Were they punishing him? Did they take her to ensure that he would follow through with their plans? Kyle stood.
He breathed again.
Felt anger surge through him. Felt raw fury tear through him with the force of a gale wind.
He had already lost so much tonight. He had already been taken through enough emotional upheavals to last him a lifetime. He had been pushed and shoved and manipulated, he had been attacked, his family attacked, Amanda attacked, and now this…
Now Jessi…
Kyle’s entire body began to tremble with the whirlwind of emotions that rushed through him. He swallowed thickly again.
He was going to find her.
He was going to get Jessi back.
Author: wonderbread9
Rating: PG-13 - R
Characters: The Cast of Kyle XY, OCs here and there
Pairings: Kyle/Amanda, Kyle/Jessi
Warnings: It's going to get a bit strange...AU-ish, takes place directly after Life Support©, and will include some elements of what I’ve seen of pictures on . So, there is a spoiler-ish warning for those who have yet to check those out.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Kyle XY ©, Kyle, Jessi or any other part of the show. If I did, we’d a season four with nothing BUT Kessi *sigh*
Author's Note: Took a page from Roswell’s book and decided to take a crack at the time travelling theme. To my fellow Kessi-lovers, don’t hate me too much. There’s a lot of Jessi!angst at the beginning, but it gets better, I SWEAR!!! 3
Summary: He looked up a head and he saw them: brown eyes, wide with fear, framed by a face that had yet to be worn by the devastation of war, a face that was smooth and young without the lines of worry and the frowns of frustration. He saw her, and knew, finally: I made it.
8o8o8
III.
He knew that he was playing with fire—they all were. He knew that the gamble he was making could blow up royally in all of their faces and that everything—every single thing—that they had ever worked for, slaved over, bled for and died for could end if anything he tried or any mistake he made caused a chain reaction that could make the situation that he was leaving behind even worse than it already was. But he had no choice, and as he watched the world that he had come to know, love and hate turn to fire around him, Joshua Trager knew that no matter what he did he could not fail.
The time stream was like a Technicolor nightmare of swirling blues, hot pinks and blazing greens as he felt something jerk, yank and pull painfully on his navel and he was thrown backwards, backwards to a time that he could hardly remember, and dreaded more than he had ever dreaded anything in his life. He looked back, looked back to where the future loomed in the time tunnel, the vision he saw frayed around the edges, and saw her brown eyes twinkling at him, even though a raging hellfire was blazing around her, catching fire to her hair, turning her beautiful pale skin to ash. He blinked, and she was gone, disappeared forward in time while he was slung back like a sling shot, a human cannonball defying all laws of physics and logic; it figured that he, the most skeptical of everyone, would be the one who was picked especially for this mission.
He remembered that day, so long ago, when he was called into debriefing, not even settled in his room on base yet and still carrying on his person the funk of the passed mission that had lasted two weeks and had kept him from the comfort of the underground bunker. The commander—a sprite of a woman with features that looked more suited to a sitting room somewhere along an upscale Parisian boulevard—nailed everyone gathered with a sharp glare from her ice blue eyes. Her lips had been set in a thin, grim line and, for the first time in a long time, Joshua had felt the first stirrings of anxiety twist his gut into knots. The commander, a Charlotte Deveaux, held in her arms a stack of paperwork that Joshua was sure was the cause of his anxiety; he knew by the way she clutched it, that what ever was held there could very well steer the course of the future, and that, by no means, bode well in his mind.
“I have assembled you all here because the group of you are the best, the brightest and the strongest soldiers that the resistance has and have been fighting on the front lines since the start of this war,” she began and set the stack of paperwork down on the debriefing table. “And because of your experiences, you must know that this war…is hopeless. The opposition is too strong, too powerful and we’re losing soldiers and fighters everyday and losing territory. Even now, our resources are dwindling and soon we’ll have nothing.”
The woman’s face, if at all possible, became even more grim and her ice blue eyes took on a look sadness around the edges. She breathed and handed the first page of the stack of paperwork to Joshua. He took it, looked it over and frowned. There was a diagram on the page, drawn in the shape of a whirlpool. He frowned and handed it off to the man that sat beside him, a stern-faced gentleman with a jagged scar that ran diagonal along his face from his right temple to the left side of his jaw. Commander Deveaux passed him another sheet from her stack, and another and another, all just as confusing as the first. Joshua couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing: numbers? Diagrams? Notes jotted down in a chicken-scratch handwriting that he couldn’t understand?
“Pardon me, ma’am,” Joshua started, and the commander fixed him with her hard blue eyes. “But what is all this?”
“It’s—”
“Perhaps, I can explain it better, commander,” came the softly spoken request from Joshua’s left and his brown eyes snapped to where it had come from and be held her.
She wore a white lab coat, clean despite the fact that water rations had been cut back again in the past month. Her brown eyes fell on his. She smiled and looked away, meeting the commander’s no nonsense gaze with a determined look of her own.
“Of course, Ms. Hollander,” came the commander’s curt reply, and the small woman stepped out of the way and allowed her, Jessi Hollander, leeway into the room and full reign of the floor. Joshua’s heart skipped a beat and he swallowed tickly as Jessi nodded and stepped further into room. Everyone was silent, all eyes trained on the brown-haired, brown-eyed woman that had done more for the war effort than any twenty, trained soldiers combined.
“What you see before you, ladies and gentlemen,” she began with a pointed look at all of them, “is hope. Hope for the future. Hope for the present. And hope for the past. In the old days,” Jessi began a slow circuit about the room, starting at the farthest edge of the debriefing table and traveling around it, picking up the individual pages of notes and research before setting them down again and continuing on, “scientists claimed that time moved in a linear fashion, and that nothing and no one could ever break through it or ever travel along its pathways.” She stopped beside Joshua and he felt a shiver run up and down his spine and sweat break out along the skin of his brow. She smiled at him and butterflies fluttered maniacally in his stomach. “But I’ve discovered a way,” she continued in a gentle whisper. Joshua swallowed thickly. “I’ve discovered a way to go back and change…everything.”
There was an assortment of protests that reverberated around the room, but Joshua heard none of it. His attention was fixed on the woman that stood before him, smiling; her brown eyes boring into his, boring into his soul. He breathed, but every breath felt like a chore. His heart thumped faster, blood rushed like a flood through his veins.
“I’ve discovered,” Jessi said louder over the din; everyone immediately fell silent, “how to go back and make right what went horribly wrong. I’ve discovered how to stop the Destroyer.”
The rest of the meeting was a blur, the rest of what had been spoken of were vague snippets of here or there conversations passing through his thoughts. All he remembered mostly from that day, weeks and weeks ago, were her eyes, brown lasers boring into him, turning him into mush on the spot. It hadn’t always been that way; he hadn’t always seen her in that light, and he knew that even with what he had grown to feel for her, her depth of emotion for him was only on the surface; he knew that he could never be HIM, and would never—no matter how long he tried or how hard—reach into those secret depths of hers and wade through the darkness and the shadows that existed.
Mere seconds were passing, he knew, but in this strange world of colors shooting passed his vision at light speed, it felt like the seconds were crawling and when tried to focus on the lights, pictures blazed passed his curious gaze. The images stung. They cut deep. He saw his life flash before his eyes: everything backwards like some cosmic hand had pressed rewind on the VCR of his mortal existence. The first time he had ever shot a gun. The first time he had ever gotten shit-faced drunk. The first time he had ever gotten his heart broken and the first time he had ever killed a man. All there, all replayed for him like some sick cosmic joke. It made him smirk in mirthless humor.
Jessi had said that when he entered the time stream he wouldn’t see a thing. She had predicted that the minute he stepped through the thin veil that was reality and time and space, he would blink and in those mere seconds he would be at his destination. But as he looked out and saw his life replaying before him—the good times and the bad—a sudden thought struck him: it was nice to know that even Jessi could be wrong sometimes. The thought was a bitter one, but Joshua blinked again, more seconds passed and he saw up ahead the vision of star lights and the sky line of a Seattle that had not yet been decimated by the ravages of war.
He saw up a head earth with the first sprigs of green grass dusting a ground that had been, only a few short weeks ago, covered in a thick layer of snow. He saw the gentle glow of a street light and the vague sounds of insects singing. Fourteen years propelled into the past. Fourteen years and he could only vaguely remember that he’d been dating Andy at this time, and that life—for the most part—had been simple.
He looked up a head and he saw them: brown eyes, wide with fear, framed by a face that had yet to be worn by the devastation of war, a face that was smooth and young without the lines of worry and the frowns of frustration. He saw her, and knew, finally:
I made it.
8o8o8
Jessi screamed as the pillar of light fell from the sky, traveling faster and faster and faster to where she stood, frozen in fear and a sick fascination, staring up at an impossible perversion of nature. Light didn’t do things like that, and the world didn’t react the way it had only moments before with a keening wail ripping through the atmosphere and the force of a whirlwind gale. Nothing scientifically could explain any of this, and even though Jessi’s mind groped around for answers, she knew that she would find none. All she could do was watch as the pillar descended and wonder which god of this messed up universe that she found herself in had she managed to piss off now.
The earth began to rumble again underneath her feet at the light’s descent, the trees began to shiver in their places and the wind began to stir like a dog being called by its unholy master. It was then that Jessi’s feet allowed her to move and at that last second, when disaster seemed imminent and her life would surely have flash before her eyes, Jessi dodged out of the way just in time, landing on the ground in a jarring roll before staggering to her feet and watching, her heart thundering loudly in her ears and her breath coming to her in ragged gasps, as the pillar of light slammed into the earth, lightning cackling around its edges and the figure of a man standing, peaceably in the center.
Jessi’s mouth parted in shock.
No, no, most certainly not. Her mind was moving faster and faster, traveling at light speed, trying to take in all that she was seeing and arrange it in such a way that logic could prevail and her universe would not be turned on its rear. But nothing could account for this. Nothing could explain this, no matter how much her mind tried to reason it out. There was just no way possible for light to exist in such a concentrated form and to cause these types of changes to the world around her and for a man—a literal human being—to be able to exist within it without being burned to a crisp.
In spite of herself, Jessi’s feet edged her forward, avoiding the active forks of lightning that licked the air, and reached her hand out to touch…
It wasn’t hot. Not like how the atmosphere had been before the pillar had arrived. There was no heat radiating from it all. Her eyes widened in fascination and she licked her lips, reaching her hand even further out. She just wanted to touch…
It was then that the man turned. His brown eyes widened and his mouth parted in a shout.
A tongue of lightning shot from the pillar with such speed that Jessi had no time to dodge and all she could do was look on in horror as it sped towards her, faster and faster, a jagged, white blazing light that would surely be her doom.
It drew closer.
Blinded her.
Jessi felt heat then pain as the tongue of lightning whipped across her skin. Her nerve endings screamed agony. Her body blazed with fire. It hurt so much that she couldn’t cry out, the sound stuck in her throat. She was lifted up, up, up—an impossible height off the ground—and tossed like a rag doll into a tree.
Her head cracked against the wood.
She heard the man shout her name.
She wanted to ask what the hell had just happened, but her angry question came out as a whimper of pain. Her teeth were clenched, her jaw locked and her hands were balled into tight white fists. Her mind was working, fighting through the throes of agony that threatened to overtake her. She had to fight through this. She had to.
What if this was Latnok’s doing? What if this was some kind of new invention that they had decided to test out on her? She wasn’t entirely sure about the organization and how far advanced its technologies were, but if this was something that they had cooked up, then she had to pull herself together, shake off the pain that she was feeling and fight them. They could hurt Kyle. They could hurt the Tragers. She didn’t want to lose the only family that was slowly beginning to welcome her into their fold; she’d before die she ever lost that.
And so, with a laborious breath, Jessi dragged herself to her feet, leaning on the tree for support and raising her hand to the man that stepped out of the slowly diminishing pillar of light. He looked vaguely familiar, like maybe she had seen him from somewhere before, but she didn’t want to let that distract her. She went deep into her mind, where synapses fired and electrical impulses danced along the neural pathways, deep into the place where she could feel connected to the gravitational pull of the world around her, where she could see and count every single electron and proton that crashed and flew apart from each other in the small microcosm of the atomic world, and attempted to change the polarity in the world around her.
It was difficult and when she looked up the man cocked his head to the side, grinned at her with a mouth that looked like it had not smiled in a very, very long time and touched something on his wrist. He seemed to be wearing a watch, but it was nothing like any watch that Jessi had ever seen. No matter; he’d be dealt with soon enough. She turned her body’s own polarity, her body’s own gravitational force to the world outside, manipulating every piece and part of her down to the very last cell, forcing it out, at the man, in a wall of energy that should’ve knocked him over and out cold.
But it didn’t.
Nothing happened, and when she tried again, he only grinned wider and approached her weakened form on feet that barely made a sound along the grass strewn earth.
“Don’t worry, Jessi,” he said, reaching a hand out to touch her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She pressed herself closer to the tree that she was leaning on, forcing away the sharp jolt of pain that still reverberated through her and frowned at him. “Who-who are you? What do you want?”
“I—”
“Get away from her!”
The man looked up in surprise. A familiar shiver rushed up and down Jessi’s body, like someone had dipped her body in warm, soothing water and a calm stole over her mind that she had grown so accustomed to feeling that she had stopped thinking anything of it. But now, now she was glad to feel it, glad to feel the essence and presence of Kyle as he stepped out of a thick outgrowth of bushes, chest heaving and face flushed. His blue eyes blazed with anger.
In the next few seconds, everything moved so fast that Jessi had only had a split second to react, adrenaline surging through her already battered, bruised and fatigued body, and forcing her to get up and to act before her entire world came crashing down around her ears: the man turned, his face transforming from that of the tenderness and concern that he had shown her only seconds before, pulling back in a snarl of anger and a hatred so deep that it blazed in his eyes and she was sure had consumed his soul; he flicked his wrist and from the sleeve of his shirt, came a gun; Kyle shouted her name; the man raised his weapon and Kyle raised his hand to stop him.
“Destroyer!” the man spat in anger and loathing.
“Kyle!” Jessi screamed, and pushed herself up from the ground.
The man’s hand squeezed the trigger, and Jessi slammed into him with all her might as a shot rang out and Kyle went down. She hit the ground with such force that the wind was knocked out of her, but the man was up again and moving. Cocking his gun again and aiming. But this time Kyle was ready. Before the man could shoot, Kyle had it, ripped from the man’s hand, and poised, floating, in the night air. The man looked up then snapped his gaze to glare at Kyle and growl before he turned—Jessi looked up and met the man’s razor sharp gaze.
He grabbed her hand, pressed a button on his watch, and the two of them disappeared.
8o8o8
They were gone.
There one moment, and then—in the blink of an eye—Jessi and the strange man were gone.
Kyle breathed, heart still hammering against the confines of his chest, body still shaking from the rush of adrenaline that coursed through his blood like hot lava. He strained his senses, casting them out like a net, casting them so far and so wide, listening to every sound, from woodland creatures to the distance rush of a lonely car passing along empty Seattle streets.
Nothing.
No one.
He stood upright, walked to where Jessi and the man had been. Kneeled. Pressed his hand to earth. It was still warm where her body had lay. His nose twitched and picked up the faint scent of her before a gentle breeze blew it away and carried it farther than his outstretched senses could detect.
He swallowed thickly.
His hand trembled against the earth.
He breathed.
Jessi was gone.
Jessi was…
A frown creased his features. His normally smiling, grinning, smirking mouth pressed into a thin line. His blue eyes blazed in the darkness. He looked up at the star lights that had born silent witness to what had just transpired.
Jessi was gone.
He couldn’t feel her presence, the comforting warmth that stole over him when he knew she was near. He couldn’t detect her anywhere, not anywhere close.
Was this Latnok? Were they punishing him? Did they take her to ensure that he would follow through with their plans? Kyle stood.
He breathed again.
Felt anger surge through him. Felt raw fury tear through him with the force of a gale wind.
He had already lost so much tonight. He had already been taken through enough emotional upheavals to last him a lifetime. He had been pushed and shoved and manipulated, he had been attacked, his family attacked, Amanda attacked, and now this…
Now Jessi…
Kyle’s entire body began to tremble with the whirlwind of emotions that rushed through him. He swallowed thickly again.
He was going to find her.
He was going to get Jessi back.
In And Out Of Time 2/10
Title: In and Out of Time (2/?)
Author: wonderbread9
Rating: PG-13 - R
Characters: The Cast of Kyle XY, OCs here and there
Pairings: Kyle/Amanda, Kyle/Jessi
Warnings: It's going to get a bit strange...AU-ish, takes place directly after Life Support©, and will include some elements of what I’ve seen of pictures on ABCfamilymedia dot net. So, there is a spoiler-ish warning for those who have yet to check those out.
Disclaimer: I don’t KXY because if I did it’d have a season 4.
Author's Note: Took a page from Roswell’s book and decided to take a crack at the time travelling theme. To my fellow Kessi-lovers, don’t hate me too much. There’s a lot of Jessi!angst at the beginning, but it gets better, I SWEAR!!! 3
Summary: What happened in the next few minutes could be, Jessi reasoned later, entirely blamed on Nicole for never teaching her that old adage: ‘be careful what you wish for.’
8o8o8
The air was cool on her face, the stars were silent in their places and Jessi was glad that she had found the loneliest, most secluded spot above the city of Seattle. She was so high up she was able to look out over the concrete jungle and watch the human beings that scurried to and fro, in their cars or walking along the streets in the dead of night, hurrying to get home before the midnight hour set in and the crazies like her came out to play. Her rear end felt cold against her concrete perch, but she ignored the discomfort. What did it matter anyway? Even now, she was sure, Kyle and Amanda were probably wrapped in each other’s sickeningly sweet arms and she was, once again, alone with no one here to wrap her in their arms or to tell her that everything would be okay.
Nothing in her life had ever been right or good or an event to celebrate, so why had she thought—even for a second—that this would be? That Kyle would turn to her on Amanda’s stoop, look at her with his deep blue eyes and tell her that she was a fool for leading him here, that she was a fool for thinking that he wanted Amanda and that she was a fool for ever believing that he would never want her at all. How could she allow herself such hopeful thoughts? She was born into chaos, born into violence and that, it seemed, was all she was ever going to be good for.
She shifted slightly, breathing deep, and stretching her senses out, stretching herself, pushing herself to feel the shift and change in the air around her, to detect the minute rumbling of the earth below her, to feel everything around her because this was as much a part of anything as she was ever going to be. She leaned back, looking up at the billions and billions of stars that she honed her vision to see. The stars watched her back and she wished desperately for someone, anyone, out there stronger and more powerful than she to exist, to listen to her and hear her silent pleas: just make my life make sense…just make everything make sense. Please. Please. Please. Please. Just…please?
What happened in the next few minutes could be, Jessi reasoned later, entirely blamed on Nicole for never teaching her that old adage: ‘be careful what you wish for.’
Her skin, already strained by her mind to feel the movement of the air around her, detected the noticeable drop in temperature almost immediately and that, she registered quite suddenly, was very strange. Jessi’s eyes dropped from their pensive gazing at the cold pinpricks of star light above and zeroed in on the dark world around her. Her delicate features creased into a puzzled frown. She remembered studying Seattle’s geography in one of her many science classes, and in her mind’s eye she could still recall in minute detail the passage concerning the city’s Mediterranean-like weather. She knew that at this time of year the air was supposed to have an average temperature of sixty-five degrees. So why then had it suddenly dropped about fifteen degrees in a matter of seconds?
There was no breeze, nothing to stir the world around her, and nothing to account for the sudden drop in temperature. Jessi stood, heart suddenly thundering in her chest like a herd of wild horses, and at the edges of her senses, right down to the very core of her being, instinct was screaming, ‘something’s coming…’
Her muscles tensed and adrenaline surged through her, preparing her for…for whatever it was that was causing warning bells to ring in a frenzy in her mind. She swallowed and turned this way and that, but there was nothing and no one and the earth beneath her suddenly began to rumble, a quiet quake at first and then the trees around her were shivering in their places before the leaves started to shake and the once absent breeze swirled around her, picking up in speed, furious like a cyclone. She cried out in alarm, very really fear pumping through her as surely as her adrenaline, and she fell to the ground on all fours with a muffled, terrified ‘oomph’ like someone much larger and stronger than her had pushed her down.
The air crackled.
The hairs along her arms and hands stood on end and gooseflesh broke out along her skin.
Sparks of electricity danced before her eyes like perverted fairy lights, and no matter how hard she tried Jessi could not stand, could not push against the invisible force that held her, trapped against the earth. All she could do was tremble, apprehension curling through her, making her feel every bit like the scared teenager that she hated to be. Was this Latnok? Were they punishing her for her threat against Cassidy? She hadn’t wanted Latnok to hurt Kyle, or the Tragers, and in her mind—even now—that was all that mattered: Kyle. Keeping Kyle safe.
What the hell was going on? Her advanced brain could not process this, could not handle this confusing contradiction of nature around her, and she did the only thing that came to her that was as natural as breathing. In that moment, her mind captured and held onto the thought of Kyle: his dark, black hair, his pale, pale skin and the gentle smiles that he flashed on anyone that came under his favor. In her mind, she saw him, hand poised to knock on a door, saw the door come open and saw the girl with blonde hair and blue eyes answer, but before they could make a move, before he could reach out and grab the girl’s hand, Jessi screamed, put all of her fear and terror into one desperate thought: KYLE!!!!!
After all, he had connected to her mind when he and Nicole and Josh were in trouble. It had to work both ways. He had to hear her, had to know that she was in trouble. He was the only one who could get to her fast enough. He was the only one, the only one, who could save her.
Kyle, please. Please, hear me, she begged in her mind, and shut her eyes as the electrical charge in the air began to build and build—her own body was responding to it, her blood was rushing faster, her heart was pumping like she’d run a marathon race. Her muscles trembled, her body quaked and the world around her began to scream, a keening wail that filled the air, the dissonance filling her ears. Lightning crackled from the earth, but there were no storm clouds above, no opposite charge from the atmosphere. Jessi shut her eyes against the burning white lights as they flashed and jumped across her vision. The keening wail grew louder and louder still; she felt like her eardrums were going to burst.
Her heart was racing. Her muscles, her sinew, her very cells were on fire. She could feel the air sizzling around her with so much activity, so much energy. She could feel the temperature in air rising, burning her skin. She couldn’t breathe.
She wanted to scream.
She wanted to cry.
She wanted to be home.
The world around her screamed one last time, and then everything—the trees, the earth and the strange white lightning—fell silent. Everything stopped, stilled as if nothing had been amiss in the world only a few short seconds ago. Jessi pried her eyes open and looked around cautiously. The earth was no longer quaking. The trees stood as silent in their places as they had always done. A gentle breeze stirred her hair.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
Was it Latnok? Or was it the foolish imaginations of one very depressed girl? Jessi was able to pull herself up from the ground and stood on shaky legs, swallowed deeply and looked around once more. There was no lightning crackling in the air around her, and the breeze that caressed her was cool.
What just—? What just happened? Somewhere in the back of her mind, where logic still reigned, she knew that what just happened could not have been real. There was nothing to explain it, nothing to account for the weirdness that had just taken place. And yet, she knew she wasn’t crazy, knew that what she had just heard and felt was as tangible as the clothes that covered her back. So, what then? What perversion of Mother Nature had just taken place?
It was then that Jessi heard a noise above her head, a strange sound that disrupted her confused and still very frightened thoughts.
She looked up.
Her eyes widened.
She screamed.
8o8o8
He wanted to tell Amanda everything.
He wanted to lay out everything that he was and everything that had ever happened and everything that he had ever done before her wide blue eyes and let her see him, see what he was and why he had done the things he had done. But, as he sat beside her on her house’s front step, he could not bring himself to begin. There was just so much, so many feelings welling up inside of him, so many conflicting emotions that were clambering to the forefront of his mind to be heard: fear, terror, hope. He didn’t know where to start, he didn’t know how to open his mouth and just tell her the truth.
She had a right to know, didn’t she? She had been dragged into his crazy and hectic existence, and had never once asked or questioned him about why he did the strange things that he did, why he didn’t have a past and, most importantly, why he didn’t have a belly button. He shouldn’t have kept his secrets from her since the beginning, when all of this crazy mess had started. He should’ve let her know the danger that she was in. He should’ve prepared her for—
“Kyle,” came Amanda’s puzzled voice, breaking into his frenetic thoughts. He started, glancing at her with fear shining brightly in his blue eyes. “What’s going on? You told me you were going to tell me the truth. About everything.”
He nodded, not answering her. Instead he looked away again, breathing deep. Anxiety twisted in his gut. His mind was filled with an endless parade of what ifs: what if she rejected him? What if she forgave him? What if…what if…what if… He didn’t want to lose her, but he didn’t want her to look at him any differently than she had before. He wanted to see love shining in her blue eyes and showering him with all the devotion he felt for her.
“Kyle,” she started, her voice tinged with annoyance.
“Amanda,” he cut in, sucking in a deep breath of air. It should have fortified him. After all, oxygen was the stuffs of life. So, why, why did he feel like all of the oxygen had, quite suddenly, been sucked out of the world around him? And why, why did he have this sudden headache threatening to overtake him? It had started at the base of his skull and had moved, steadily, in the last few minutes, up his cranium and was teetering on becoming a full blown migraine that would bowl him over any second. He squinted, breathed and rubbed his suddenly sweaty hands against the fabric of his jeans.
“I just…” he stopped, started again. “This is just…It’s hard for me to…I want to tell you everything.”
He met her gaze then, trying to smile, but knew, somehow, that it must’ve looked like a grimace cutting across his pale features. The look she shot him was a worried one and when he reached out to touch her, to pull her hand into his and caress her soft, pink skin, she pulled back, retreated and wrapped her arms around herself instead.
“Maybe I should just go,” Amanda said quietly, beginning to stand. Panic took over any logical process that would’ve usually governed Kyle’s thoughts and he reached out, groping blindly, and cried, “No!”
Amanda jumped away from him, her eyes wide with concern and fear. “Kyle? Kyle, what’s wrong with you?”
“Amanda, I—”
It was then that he felt it, the headache that had been threatening to undue him for the last few minutes, abruptly tore through his mind with the force of a freight train and Kyle stumbled on the front step in his blind reach for Amanda, stumbled and collapsed. He vaguely heard Amanda’s cry of alarm, but it was soon drowned out underneath the onslaught of pain that ripped through his body, his nerve endings screaming with agony. Something was thrusting itself, like a battering ram, up through the panicked flurry of his thoughts, clawing its way up and up and up, until it broke into his conscious mind and all he could see, all he could hear, was the terrified scream: KYLE!!! And Jessi’s face floating up from his subconscious, her brown eyes wide and her mouth parted in a look of absolute horror.
“JESSI!” Kyle was violently thrown back into the cool Seattle night air, as if he had been plunged under water and held there for a very long time and was only now being allowed to breathe. He sucked in large gulps of air as his eyes watered and he looked around himself in confusion. A very terrified Amanda crouched beside him, holding his hand, and if it had been any other time, Kyle might’ve savored the feel of her hand in his. But he wasn’t, he couldn't. He was filled instead with a growing sense of panic and fear.
“Something’s happened,” he gasped, still at a loss for air. “Jessi…Something’s wrong. I-I have to—”
Amanda blinked at him, tearing her hand from his, suddenly very, very angry.
“Of course,” Amanda growled. “Of course…It’s always Jessi, isn’t it?”
He tried to protest, but his protests fell on deaf ears. She shook her head at him, silencing him with a glare. Her lips pressed into a very, very thin line.
“If you leave me now to go to her,” she hissed, venom lacing every word, “don’t you dare come back, Kyle. Don’t you dare come back here. I won’t want to see you or talk to you ever again.”
“But Amanda…” He winced as pressure built in his skull once more, threatening to undue him once again. He gasped; feeling like the very air was being knocked out of his lungs. The whimper of a helpless voice filled him, Kyle, please. Please, hear me.
“Amanda, just…” He opened eyes he had not realized he‘d closed, only to see Amanda retreating from his kneeling, trembling figure, tears shining in her eyes.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered, swallowing thickly. “I can’t do this anymore, Kyle.”
He could hear the way her heart beat quickened and slowed, quickened and slowed, could almost detect the way her blood rushed to and fro throughout her veins. He knew almost intimately the inner workings of her body, the way everything fit together to form the whole, the being, the energy and the light that he had come to know as Amanda Bloom, but in all of his understanding of her physical being, he could—could not for the life of him—understand a way to reach her, a way to show her that everything that he had ever been, ever was or ever would be had not come into existence until he had come to know her. He could not help her see or understand that ever thing that he had ever done had been because of her, for her and to keep her safe. And now she was pulling away from him, withdrawing that light that he had come to love so much, the emotions that he had desperately hoped for and longed for for so long; she was pulling away, retreating into the safety and comfort of her normal and orderly world, where a college scholarship awaited her and the thousand thousand possibilities of an uncomplicated life lay before her.
He wanted so desperately to shut his mind off from the pain that was reverberating through his limps, cut off the agony that seared his very cells, tore through his very organs, and join her in that normal, simple existence. But he couldn’t, and through blurry eyes filled with pain, he watched Amanda leave him, watched her open her front door and look back one last time, before shutting it, and him, out of her life forever.
And all he could do was stagger to his feet, and turn to the direction that he knew, without a doubt, the plea of help had come from. And all he could do was summon up every ounce of strength that existed in his body to propel himself forward, to run, run to the last person on the planet that would never leave him, who would never abandon him.
He had to get to Jessi.
He had to find her.
He had to save her.
Author: wonderbread9
Rating: PG-13 - R
Characters: The Cast of Kyle XY, OCs here and there
Pairings: Kyle/Amanda, Kyle/Jessi
Warnings: It's going to get a bit strange...AU-ish, takes place directly after Life Support©, and will include some elements of what I’ve seen of pictures on ABCfamilymedia dot net. So, there is a spoiler-ish warning for those who have yet to check those out.
Disclaimer: I don’t KXY because if I did it’d have a season 4.
Author's Note: Took a page from Roswell’s book and decided to take a crack at the time travelling theme. To my fellow Kessi-lovers, don’t hate me too much. There’s a lot of Jessi!angst at the beginning, but it gets better, I SWEAR!!! 3
Summary: What happened in the next few minutes could be, Jessi reasoned later, entirely blamed on Nicole for never teaching her that old adage: ‘be careful what you wish for.’
8o8o8
The air was cool on her face, the stars were silent in their places and Jessi was glad that she had found the loneliest, most secluded spot above the city of Seattle. She was so high up she was able to look out over the concrete jungle and watch the human beings that scurried to and fro, in their cars or walking along the streets in the dead of night, hurrying to get home before the midnight hour set in and the crazies like her came out to play. Her rear end felt cold against her concrete perch, but she ignored the discomfort. What did it matter anyway? Even now, she was sure, Kyle and Amanda were probably wrapped in each other’s sickeningly sweet arms and she was, once again, alone with no one here to wrap her in their arms or to tell her that everything would be okay.
Nothing in her life had ever been right or good or an event to celebrate, so why had she thought—even for a second—that this would be? That Kyle would turn to her on Amanda’s stoop, look at her with his deep blue eyes and tell her that she was a fool for leading him here, that she was a fool for thinking that he wanted Amanda and that she was a fool for ever believing that he would never want her at all. How could she allow herself such hopeful thoughts? She was born into chaos, born into violence and that, it seemed, was all she was ever going to be good for.
She shifted slightly, breathing deep, and stretching her senses out, stretching herself, pushing herself to feel the shift and change in the air around her, to detect the minute rumbling of the earth below her, to feel everything around her because this was as much a part of anything as she was ever going to be. She leaned back, looking up at the billions and billions of stars that she honed her vision to see. The stars watched her back and she wished desperately for someone, anyone, out there stronger and more powerful than she to exist, to listen to her and hear her silent pleas: just make my life make sense…just make everything make sense. Please. Please. Please. Please. Just…please?
What happened in the next few minutes could be, Jessi reasoned later, entirely blamed on Nicole for never teaching her that old adage: ‘be careful what you wish for.’
Her skin, already strained by her mind to feel the movement of the air around her, detected the noticeable drop in temperature almost immediately and that, she registered quite suddenly, was very strange. Jessi’s eyes dropped from their pensive gazing at the cold pinpricks of star light above and zeroed in on the dark world around her. Her delicate features creased into a puzzled frown. She remembered studying Seattle’s geography in one of her many science classes, and in her mind’s eye she could still recall in minute detail the passage concerning the city’s Mediterranean-like weather. She knew that at this time of year the air was supposed to have an average temperature of sixty-five degrees. So why then had it suddenly dropped about fifteen degrees in a matter of seconds?
There was no breeze, nothing to stir the world around her, and nothing to account for the sudden drop in temperature. Jessi stood, heart suddenly thundering in her chest like a herd of wild horses, and at the edges of her senses, right down to the very core of her being, instinct was screaming, ‘something’s coming…’
Her muscles tensed and adrenaline surged through her, preparing her for…for whatever it was that was causing warning bells to ring in a frenzy in her mind. She swallowed and turned this way and that, but there was nothing and no one and the earth beneath her suddenly began to rumble, a quiet quake at first and then the trees around her were shivering in their places before the leaves started to shake and the once absent breeze swirled around her, picking up in speed, furious like a cyclone. She cried out in alarm, very really fear pumping through her as surely as her adrenaline, and she fell to the ground on all fours with a muffled, terrified ‘oomph’ like someone much larger and stronger than her had pushed her down.
The air crackled.
The hairs along her arms and hands stood on end and gooseflesh broke out along her skin.
Sparks of electricity danced before her eyes like perverted fairy lights, and no matter how hard she tried Jessi could not stand, could not push against the invisible force that held her, trapped against the earth. All she could do was tremble, apprehension curling through her, making her feel every bit like the scared teenager that she hated to be. Was this Latnok? Were they punishing her for her threat against Cassidy? She hadn’t wanted Latnok to hurt Kyle, or the Tragers, and in her mind—even now—that was all that mattered: Kyle. Keeping Kyle safe.
What the hell was going on? Her advanced brain could not process this, could not handle this confusing contradiction of nature around her, and she did the only thing that came to her that was as natural as breathing. In that moment, her mind captured and held onto the thought of Kyle: his dark, black hair, his pale, pale skin and the gentle smiles that he flashed on anyone that came under his favor. In her mind, she saw him, hand poised to knock on a door, saw the door come open and saw the girl with blonde hair and blue eyes answer, but before they could make a move, before he could reach out and grab the girl’s hand, Jessi screamed, put all of her fear and terror into one desperate thought: KYLE!!!!!
After all, he had connected to her mind when he and Nicole and Josh were in trouble. It had to work both ways. He had to hear her, had to know that she was in trouble. He was the only one who could get to her fast enough. He was the only one, the only one, who could save her.
Kyle, please. Please, hear me, she begged in her mind, and shut her eyes as the electrical charge in the air began to build and build—her own body was responding to it, her blood was rushing faster, her heart was pumping like she’d run a marathon race. Her muscles trembled, her body quaked and the world around her began to scream, a keening wail that filled the air, the dissonance filling her ears. Lightning crackled from the earth, but there were no storm clouds above, no opposite charge from the atmosphere. Jessi shut her eyes against the burning white lights as they flashed and jumped across her vision. The keening wail grew louder and louder still; she felt like her eardrums were going to burst.
Her heart was racing. Her muscles, her sinew, her very cells were on fire. She could feel the air sizzling around her with so much activity, so much energy. She could feel the temperature in air rising, burning her skin. She couldn’t breathe.
She wanted to scream.
She wanted to cry.
She wanted to be home.
The world around her screamed one last time, and then everything—the trees, the earth and the strange white lightning—fell silent. Everything stopped, stilled as if nothing had been amiss in the world only a few short seconds ago. Jessi pried her eyes open and looked around cautiously. The earth was no longer quaking. The trees stood as silent in their places as they had always done. A gentle breeze stirred her hair.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
Was it Latnok? Or was it the foolish imaginations of one very depressed girl? Jessi was able to pull herself up from the ground and stood on shaky legs, swallowed deeply and looked around once more. There was no lightning crackling in the air around her, and the breeze that caressed her was cool.
What just—? What just happened? Somewhere in the back of her mind, where logic still reigned, she knew that what just happened could not have been real. There was nothing to explain it, nothing to account for the weirdness that had just taken place. And yet, she knew she wasn’t crazy, knew that what she had just heard and felt was as tangible as the clothes that covered her back. So, what then? What perversion of Mother Nature had just taken place?
It was then that Jessi heard a noise above her head, a strange sound that disrupted her confused and still very frightened thoughts.
She looked up.
Her eyes widened.
She screamed.
8o8o8
He wanted to tell Amanda everything.
He wanted to lay out everything that he was and everything that had ever happened and everything that he had ever done before her wide blue eyes and let her see him, see what he was and why he had done the things he had done. But, as he sat beside her on her house’s front step, he could not bring himself to begin. There was just so much, so many feelings welling up inside of him, so many conflicting emotions that were clambering to the forefront of his mind to be heard: fear, terror, hope. He didn’t know where to start, he didn’t know how to open his mouth and just tell her the truth.
She had a right to know, didn’t she? She had been dragged into his crazy and hectic existence, and had never once asked or questioned him about why he did the strange things that he did, why he didn’t have a past and, most importantly, why he didn’t have a belly button. He shouldn’t have kept his secrets from her since the beginning, when all of this crazy mess had started. He should’ve let her know the danger that she was in. He should’ve prepared her for—
“Kyle,” came Amanda’s puzzled voice, breaking into his frenetic thoughts. He started, glancing at her with fear shining brightly in his blue eyes. “What’s going on? You told me you were going to tell me the truth. About everything.”
He nodded, not answering her. Instead he looked away again, breathing deep. Anxiety twisted in his gut. His mind was filled with an endless parade of what ifs: what if she rejected him? What if she forgave him? What if…what if…what if… He didn’t want to lose her, but he didn’t want her to look at him any differently than she had before. He wanted to see love shining in her blue eyes and showering him with all the devotion he felt for her.
“Kyle,” she started, her voice tinged with annoyance.
“Amanda,” he cut in, sucking in a deep breath of air. It should have fortified him. After all, oxygen was the stuffs of life. So, why, why did he feel like all of the oxygen had, quite suddenly, been sucked out of the world around him? And why, why did he have this sudden headache threatening to overtake him? It had started at the base of his skull and had moved, steadily, in the last few minutes, up his cranium and was teetering on becoming a full blown migraine that would bowl him over any second. He squinted, breathed and rubbed his suddenly sweaty hands against the fabric of his jeans.
“I just…” he stopped, started again. “This is just…It’s hard for me to…I want to tell you everything.”
He met her gaze then, trying to smile, but knew, somehow, that it must’ve looked like a grimace cutting across his pale features. The look she shot him was a worried one and when he reached out to touch her, to pull her hand into his and caress her soft, pink skin, she pulled back, retreated and wrapped her arms around herself instead.
“Maybe I should just go,” Amanda said quietly, beginning to stand. Panic took over any logical process that would’ve usually governed Kyle’s thoughts and he reached out, groping blindly, and cried, “No!”
Amanda jumped away from him, her eyes wide with concern and fear. “Kyle? Kyle, what’s wrong with you?”
“Amanda, I—”
It was then that he felt it, the headache that had been threatening to undue him for the last few minutes, abruptly tore through his mind with the force of a freight train and Kyle stumbled on the front step in his blind reach for Amanda, stumbled and collapsed. He vaguely heard Amanda’s cry of alarm, but it was soon drowned out underneath the onslaught of pain that ripped through his body, his nerve endings screaming with agony. Something was thrusting itself, like a battering ram, up through the panicked flurry of his thoughts, clawing its way up and up and up, until it broke into his conscious mind and all he could see, all he could hear, was the terrified scream: KYLE!!! And Jessi’s face floating up from his subconscious, her brown eyes wide and her mouth parted in a look of absolute horror.
“JESSI!” Kyle was violently thrown back into the cool Seattle night air, as if he had been plunged under water and held there for a very long time and was only now being allowed to breathe. He sucked in large gulps of air as his eyes watered and he looked around himself in confusion. A very terrified Amanda crouched beside him, holding his hand, and if it had been any other time, Kyle might’ve savored the feel of her hand in his. But he wasn’t, he couldn't. He was filled instead with a growing sense of panic and fear.
“Something’s happened,” he gasped, still at a loss for air. “Jessi…Something’s wrong. I-I have to—”
Amanda blinked at him, tearing her hand from his, suddenly very, very angry.
“Of course,” Amanda growled. “Of course…It’s always Jessi, isn’t it?”
He tried to protest, but his protests fell on deaf ears. She shook her head at him, silencing him with a glare. Her lips pressed into a very, very thin line.
“If you leave me now to go to her,” she hissed, venom lacing every word, “don’t you dare come back, Kyle. Don’t you dare come back here. I won’t want to see you or talk to you ever again.”
“But Amanda…” He winced as pressure built in his skull once more, threatening to undue him once again. He gasped; feeling like the very air was being knocked out of his lungs. The whimper of a helpless voice filled him, Kyle, please. Please, hear me.
“Amanda, just…” He opened eyes he had not realized he‘d closed, only to see Amanda retreating from his kneeling, trembling figure, tears shining in her eyes.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered, swallowing thickly. “I can’t do this anymore, Kyle.”
He could hear the way her heart beat quickened and slowed, quickened and slowed, could almost detect the way her blood rushed to and fro throughout her veins. He knew almost intimately the inner workings of her body, the way everything fit together to form the whole, the being, the energy and the light that he had come to know as Amanda Bloom, but in all of his understanding of her physical being, he could—could not for the life of him—understand a way to reach her, a way to show her that everything that he had ever been, ever was or ever would be had not come into existence until he had come to know her. He could not help her see or understand that ever thing that he had ever done had been because of her, for her and to keep her safe. And now she was pulling away from him, withdrawing that light that he had come to love so much, the emotions that he had desperately hoped for and longed for for so long; she was pulling away, retreating into the safety and comfort of her normal and orderly world, where a college scholarship awaited her and the thousand thousand possibilities of an uncomplicated life lay before her.
He wanted so desperately to shut his mind off from the pain that was reverberating through his limps, cut off the agony that seared his very cells, tore through his very organs, and join her in that normal, simple existence. But he couldn’t, and through blurry eyes filled with pain, he watched Amanda leave him, watched her open her front door and look back one last time, before shutting it, and him, out of her life forever.
And all he could do was stagger to his feet, and turn to the direction that he knew, without a doubt, the plea of help had come from. And all he could do was summon up every ounce of strength that existed in his body to propel himself forward, to run, run to the last person on the planet that would never leave him, who would never abandon him.
He had to get to Jessi.
He had to find her.
He had to save her.
[FanFiction - Kyle XY] - [Title - In and Out of Time] - [Rating - PG 13]
Title: In and Out of Time (1/?)
Author: wonderbread9
Rating: PG-13 - R
Characters: The Cast of Kyle XY, OCs here and there
Pairings: Kyle/Amanda, Kyle/Jessi
Warnings: It's going to get a bit strange...AU-ish, takes place directly after Life Support©, and will include some elements of what I’ve seen of pictures on . So, there is a spoiler-ish warning for those who have yet to check those out.
Author's Note: Took a page from Roswell’s book and decided to take a crack at the time travelling theme. To my fellow Kessi-lovers, don’t hate me too much. There’s a lot of Jessi!angst at the beginning, but it gets better, I SWEAR!!!
Summary: “D’you…”Kyle stopped, started again. “D’you think I should tell her? Tell Amanda the truth?”
Nicole paused, thinking, before she met Kyle’s gaze sympathetically. “Kyle…I know how you feel about her, and…if you feel that she’s strong enough, and that you’re ready, then tell her. What do you have to lose?”
8o8o8
“I swear I’ll melt if you touch me at all,
But then I’ll ask you to do it again, and again.”
--Angels & Airwaves, The Gift
Stepping out of the hospital and into the sunlight of a Seattle spring, Nicole breathed in the scents that came to her: the warm grass, the breeze, the scent of flowers and their perfume wafting across her senses; she was finally free of the cold, sterilized walls of Seattle General and could finally breathe a sigh of relief. He’d been stuck under the doctors’ care for little over a week after the accident and kept on close observation after her “miraculous” healing from her injuries. The doctors had wanted to monitor her, just to make sure that nothing was going wrong with her body, but once scan after scan and check up after check up revealed nothing amiss with her body, the baffled doctors had no choice, but release her; with a promise, of course, that she would check back with them if she felt any unusual discomfort. It had been a pretty close call—the accident. Too close, in fact; it left her shaken, even after she had found out that there was nothing wrong with her physically. She had come so close to death, so close to her life’s ending, and if it hadn’t had been for Kyle…
She turned and glanced back at the young savant in question, watching as he loaded the few bits of luggage that Stephen had brought for her into the trunk of the car; Josh was helping, telling a joke or some such that caused a brief grin to flicker across Kyle’s face for a moment and a twinkle to spark in his eye. Despite her injuries, despite the occasional pain that she still felt, it was nice to him smiling, nice to see him happy even if only for a little while. It was nice to see all of her children happy; so much had happened in the Trager household, so many changes that might’ve broken any other family had only made hers stronger. It was nice to see, a nice reassurance to have, that if anything had happened to her, her family would’ve been able to stick together, would’ve been able to wrestle through the dark time, leaning on one another.
Even Lori and Jessi were getting along, something she not expected to happen many months down the line, and it brought a brief, but welcome rush of contentment and pride to her being, giving her hope that maybe, just maybe…everything would work out fine.
“Ready to go?” Stephen asked, surprising her from her reverie. She turned to him and the car door that he held open for her, smiled gratefully and nodded.
“More than ready,” she admitted, smile still in place. She stepped up to her husband and kissed him ‘thanks’ before getting into the car and settling in the seat, ready, and more than happy, to return home.
“Alright, everybody,” she heard Stephen called to their wayward teenagers. “We ready?” She didn’t see their four nods of unison, but soon the car was full of pushing and shoving teenagers, each fighting for leg room to sit and be comfortable for the drive.
“You know your feet are in my way,” came Jessi’s saucy complaint. Nicole glanced back just in time to see Lori shoot the dark-haired girl a glare of annoyance before shifting and pushing herself into Josh.
“Hey, space much,” Josh growled in aggravation and tried to push his sister over. Lori gave a cry of protest and Kyle looked on at the two of them in alarm. Nicole sighed. A mother’s job was never done…
“Alright, you three,” she chastised, looking back at the still pushing and shoving teens. They stilled their movements and looked at her with equal looks of guilt. “Cool it,” she continued in a calming, motherly tone. “We’ll be home soon and then you guys’ll have your own space again. Sound good?”
The three nodded, and Nicole grinned, turning back to sit straight in her chair, glancing at her husband. He shot her a smile of his own, and whispered, “Welcome back.”
Nicole’s grin widened and she settled deeper into her seat. She wouldn’t have had it any other way…
8o8o8
Latnok.
Latnok.
The mysterious organization had been an uncomfortable thorn in his side since Adam had told him about them nearly a year ago, a shadow organization that was more than willing to use any means necessary to get what they wanted out of people, and now…now Kyle had signed away his freedom, and possibly his life, to the devil. He didn’t know what that could mean, what they were going to do to him, and telling himself that it had all been for Nicole’s benefit, to save the only mother that he’d known, was slowly fading to a pitiful whimper at the back of his mind. The truth was he was scared. He was terrified. Latnok had kidnapped Amanda and had nearly harmed her and her life with their technologies, and now, he was agreeing to help them and who knew what kind of trouble that could mean.
“It was…pretty close, wasn’t it?” came the quietly spoken inquiry from behind; Kyle turned with a start. He’d been so wrapped up in his thoughts that he had not expected anyone to come out onto the front porch but he; his usually adept hearing hadn’t heard the soft, padding footsteps of Jessi as she approached. He smiled for her benefit, even if the smile didn’t reach his eyes. He had so much to think about, so much going on inside, that he didn’t think he could deal with anyone else right at that moment; not even Jessi. She came to stand beside him, gave him a small smile before looking out from the front porch to the strange, strange world that lay beyond.
“It was pretty close,” Kyle replied and shrugged, letting out a gust of air as he did so. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d lost her.”
“You and me both,” Jessi admitted quietly. She glanced at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he trained his ears, strained them just that little bit and listened; gently tapped keys were playing in the distance, an idle tune that he didn’t know, but was glad to hear. Amanda was at her piano, probably just idly lingering there, maybe dreaming, maybe just thinking. The thought brought a sad smile to Kyle’s face: she wasn’t thinking about him; she wasn’t playing for him. She was probably imagining what college life would be like, what endless possibilities lay before her, and he wasn’t included.
“Kyle?” Jessi called, her tone uncertain. His concentration broken, the sound of Amanda’s playing fading, he turned to Jessi, meeting her brown eyes with his deep blue. “What’s going to happen with Latnok?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, his tone as uncertain as hers. “I just don’t know. I keep…” he hesitated, and looked deep into her imploring brown eyes, and figured that the only person he had left to talk to about this was Jessi…”I keep trying to tell myself that it was all for Nicole, that going to them was the right thing to do, but…” He stopped, feeling the familiar rush of conflicted emotions wash over him: was he right? Should he have trusted them? Had there been a better way and he’d just missed it? Was he doing the right thing?
“It was the right thing.” Her voice was firm. “If you hadn’t, Nicole would be dead and…and we’d be alone. You saved her, Kyle. Always remember that.”
He nodded, craning his head, wanting to hear, just once more, that comforting sound of keys playing, lightly strummed, notes hanging poised in the air, but there was nothing, only silence, and Kyle’s heart felt heavy in his chest. He didn’t think he could do this, live this way, be who he was.
“You’re thinking about Amanda again,” Jessi stated glumly, and Kyle looked at her, shrugging helplessly.
“I think…I think I should tell her,” he replied. “Maybe if I did, maybe…Everything would be so much easier.”
“For who, Kyle?” she asked, suddenly annoyed. “You? The Tragers? Precious Amanda? You know what Foss said. Dragging her into this, this whole messed up world that we live in, is that really what you want to do to her?”
“Jessi,” Kyle pleaded, his eyes swimming with emotions that he just could not express: confusion, hurt, pain. “I just..I just want her to know the truth.”
“I’ll bet.” Jessi pressed her lips into a thin line, shook her head and looked away. It was a while before she could speak, a while before she could look at him with steel in her eyes and lacing every word in her voice. “Fine. Tell her. Drag her down, kicking and screaming. I’ll bet she forgives you, and you can live a lie of normalcy, as if you’re not better, smarter or greater than anyone else. Go on. Tell her, Kyle. Tell her. Bring her into our crazy, messed up, secret world.”
She left in an angry huff, her foot steps heavy against the hardwood floor of the porch, before she walked through the threshold of the front doorway and slammed it with the force of her anger. Kyle could feel the house shake minutely and winced. Great, just great. He’d managed to anger Jessi once again, and he knew—when Jessi got into one of her moods—not even he could pull her out of it. Kyle’s shoulders slumped and looked out over the quiet street of the Seattle suburb that he’d called home for nearly three years of his life. It was so still, so silent. Not even the birds were flying or squirrels playing leapfrog with one another on his or the neighbors’ lawns.
He wondered how a world such as this, so quiet, so peaceful, could be home to such secrets as his, such lies and deceptions, such trickery. He wished he could wave his hand and make everything make sense, wished he could just fit this world and its jigsaw pieces into such an order so that nothing in his life would ever be chaotic again. But he knew that no matter what he wished, no matter what he wanted, it would always be this mess. He sighed and looked to his right, where Mrs. Bloom was stepping out of her home, a self-satisfied grin spread across her face and…Amanda trailing after. Kyle watched her, watched as Amanda pointedly ignored him and his longing gaze, getting into her mother’s car and the two of them driving off. He watched the car as it sped passed his house, willing for just a moment, for Amanda’s gaze to fall on him, for her to see him, notice him, see the pain that he was in, that his heart was just as broken as hers had to have been.
But no…
Her gaze stayed resolutely forward, and the dagger that was twisting in Kyle’s heart dug just that deeper. His shoulders slumped, his spirits sank even further, and he felt more dejected than he had in a very long time.
8o8o8
She had seen him, before she’d even stepped outside into the warm spring air, standing on his front porch; his face creased in deep thought and, in spite of herself, wondered what he was thinking. What could be troubling those impossibly perfect, pale features, creasing them with deep frown lines of worry? Was he thinking about school? His friends? Was he thinking about Jessi? Or, and her heart leapt just slightly in her chest, was he thinking about her?
She watched him from the one window in her bedroom that gave her a vantage point of the Trager’s front porch, where she saw Jessi talking to him before storming off angrily, and it gave Amanda a vicious satisfaction before she caught herself and shoved those thoughts and feelings forcefully away. She chastised herself soundly: she couldn’t be thinking about him, spying on him and wondering about what was going on with him. The Kyle and Amanda chapter was done. Through. Over. Finished. Finito.
And yet, here she was…thinking about him again and wishing that there was just someway….some way that she could just go over to the Trager’s house and…
Stop, a voice commanded firmly in her head that sounded oddly like Hilary’s. Just stop. You ended it with him, remember?
But she couldn’t help the longing that overcame her and the memories that haunted her. In her dreams she saw him, his pale skin, his strong hands and arms surrounding her. She felt safe with Kyle, despite it all. Despite everything that happened, she still believed that Kyle still cared for her, still wanted her, still wanted to be with her. She couldn’t deny the feelings that still stirred in her gut when she saw him and the anger that still possessed her when she saw Jessi anywhere near him. She shook her herself all over, wanting to get rid of the images of Kyle…of Kyle kissing Jessi and the sickening feeling of betrayal that had slammed into her and nearly felled her on the spot.
She had wanted to kill both of them: Kyle for making her believe stupidly in love and that he wasn’t like any other guy that she had ever been with, and Jessi for getting something from Kyle that only Amanda thought she deserved. But all she could do was storm out of that house, her hands clenched at her sides in tight, white fists of rage. She’d gone home immediately, not even wanting to slam her emotions out on her piano. No, she went straight to her room and cried. Even, now she hated herself for that weakness of emotion, and the love for Kyle that had still persisted under the wild tumult of her rage.
Even at the recital, when she had felt justifiable fury rushing through her, wanting to possess her and do serious harm to him, she allowed him to touch her, allowed him to just…be Kyle, simple, weird, strange Kyle one last time.
Amanda sighed in frustration, rolling her eyes, and when her mother called her, she was grateful—for once—for providing her with a much needed distraction. And, when she stepped off the front porch of her home, she pointedly ignored Kyle, even though everything in her being was screaming at her to give into her longing and plunge head first into Kyle’s arms.
But no, she got into her mother’s car, a cage of steel clamping down over her emotions, over the ache that surrounded her heart and choked it. She slammed the car door, slamming it in the face of his yearning, slammed it in the face of the confusing whir of sadness, anger, hurt and love that she felt for the boy that watched her, desperately wanting her to acknowledge his presence.
She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
She wouldn’t.
She wouldn’t.
She—
But when her mother made a left on the main street that crossed hers and Kyle’s street, Amanda looked back, her body trembling, her lips quivering and tears wanting to fall.
8o8o8
Even though she was home and was supposed to be resting—doctor’s orders, came the stern echo of her treating physician’s voice in her head—Nicole couldn’t help be feel that there was something amiss in her household. Maybe Kyle’s extrasensory perceptivity was rubbing off on her or maybe she had just been a psychologist too long and could recognize the undercurrents of a problem that could seriously blow-up in everyone’s faces unless someone did something about it.
First there was Jessi, skulking to her room after coming from the front porch, and Nicole could too readily identify the look that curled about the young girl’s features. It had something to do with Kyle. It always had something to do with Kyle whenever Jessi got that look on her face: something akin to devastation, but not quite ‘end-of-my-world-as-I-know-it’ there. She wanted to tend to Jessi first, but she knew that—if Kyle were the source of it—it would be best to talk to him first. Even if he didn’t think it, Kyle had a great deal of sway over Jessi’s emotions: one kind word or look from him could brighten up the girl’s day or even couple of days.
So, Nicole stepped out of the kitchen where she had been drinking her tea and attempting to take it easy, taking her still steaming mug with her and going out to the front porch where—sure enough—Kyle stood with a pensive look on his face that told all the world that this was a young man who held an enormous weight on his shoulders. He turned swiftly at her approach, a defensive look clouding his features before he realized it was her and his face relaxed into a wry smile. And had Kyle’s smiles ever gotten wry? Nicole made a mental note of that and sent him a mothering smile before coming to stand next to him and asking, in her best psychologist’s voice, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Kyle sighed and looked away. “Not really, but…” He shrugged, trying to shake himself free of some unfathomable trouble that Nicole could only imagine.
“Don’t worry, Kyle,” she said soothingly. “Just take your time.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, just stood beside her, watching the quiet neighborhood around them, his blue eyes focusing and unfocusing as if he were reliving an entire lifetime in that one second.
“It’s just…” he struggled. “It’s just the accident and Latnok and Jessi and Amanda and just…everything. I don’t know…I just don’t know how to handle it anymore. I want to tell Amanda the truth, but…I don’t want her to…to look at me like I’m some kind of…” He stopped, and turned to her helplessly. “I just…And if I tell Amanda, and she forgives me, then Jessi’s going to be…And now, Latnok wants me to…I just…”
Nicole immediately put her mug down on the surface of the porch railing and pulled Kyle into the tightest, most reassuring hug she had in her arsenal. His arms circled around him and she could feel the desperation radiating off of him in waves. So calm and collected, usually so in charge of himself and any situation around him, Kyle was now truly revealing the scared, unsure teenager that he truly was. It was then that Nicole felt a motherly sense of protection and anger come over her: it wasn’t fair that Kyle had to have the weight of the world fall on his shoulders. It wasn’t fair that everyone had to depend on him so much, when he had the right to just grow up and be normal.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said, running a calming hand through his dark hair as his body trembled and sobs shook him. “Just let it all out. Just let it all go. Kyle, you’re only a teenage boy. You’re not supposed to figure everything out. You’re not supposed to know everything or what to say or do to make everything alright. You’ll wear yourself thin.”
“But…” he started, and she pulled back, meeting his teary gaze with her own.
“No,” she said, firmly. “Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t put this kind of pressure on yourself, alright?”
He nodded, and she couldn’t help but think that he looked like such a lost little boy at that moment, his gaze so trusting and his emotions shown so freely. She had dealt with so many cases and so many troubled children and teens that his willingness to talk to her was refreshing.
“One day at a time, okay?”
He smiled at her and nodded again.
She smiled at him, wiping his tears, before she picked up her mug. “Feeling better?”
“A little,” he admitted gratefully, his smile going a bit wider. She breathed a relieved sigh.
“Good. Now,” she tapped him gently on the nose. “I’m going to go check on Jessi.”
The happy look immediately dropped from his face and he looked towards the direction of the house and the stairs that led up to the second floor.
“She’s pretty mad at me,” he acknowledged, a troubled look clouding his features. Nicole smiled for his benefit.
“Don’t you worry about her,” she said taking a sip of her tea. “I’ll take care of it. You just stay out here and relax.”
She turned on her heel to go inside and deal with the other wayward teenager that had come under roof, but stopped when Kyle called her name. She turned back to him and raised her eyebrows.
“D’you…”Kyle stopped, started again. “D’you think I should tell her? Tell Amanda the truth?”
Nicole paused, thinking, before she met Kyle’s gaze sympathetically. “Kyle…I know how you feel about her, and…if you feel that she’s strong enough, and that you’re ready, then tell her. What do you have to lose?”
He nodded, and she smiled on last time before turning on her heel and searching for Jessi. She didn’t have to search for long and found her seated with her knees to her chest, in Kyle’s tub. She stepped carefully in the room and Jessi glanced at her before looking down in her lap and saying in a muffled tone, “I hurt him again, didn’t I?”
Nicole winced, hating the defeated sound to Jessi’s voice. She had to remember that this girl—this young woman—had been through so much and had to continuously live with the memories of the things that she had done and the things that had been done to her; the way Jessi knew was to lash out in anger. It would be a long time before she learned to turn that instinctual reaction to any negative stimuli to something positive. Nicole stepped deeper into Kyle’s and Josh’s room, setting her mug down on Josh’s dresser and sitting herself next Jessi, carefully avoiding her still healing stitches.
“Jessi, Kyle just has a lot to deal with,” Nicole replied in a placating tone. Jessi shrugged helplessly and turned to the older woman, tears shining in her eyes.
“That’s all I ever seem to do though,” she protested, her voice as helpless as she looked and frustrated. “I just hurt him, and keep hurting him, and I don’t mean to. I just…” The dark-haired teen stopped abruptly and looked away. It was times like these that Nicole was thankful for being a trained psychologist. If she weren’t, if she were someone else, she knew she wouldn’t know how to approach this situation. But she did, she was a trained professional, and she knew that all she had to do was wait.
And, like magic, Jessi continued. Haltingly at first, but getting stronger with each passing moment: “It’s just…Sarah left me and, and my father…he abandoned me. Emily lied to me and everyone hates me, treats me like I’m this ticking time bomb that’s just going to explode…or, or this animal that needs to be caged. I’m trying, Nicole. I’m trying so hard, but everything…it’s all so confusing and sometimes things just don’t fall into place and everything’s this jigsaw, and Kyle’s the only thing that makes sense. He’s the only one…And I just…I keep hurting him, and I don’t know how to just stop. I just…I want to stop.”
And for the second time that day, Nicole felt that mothering instinct take over. Both Kyle and Jessi were two extraordinary beings, forced into the crazy and hectic life that neither of them wanted, and Nicole just wished that someway, somehow she could make their hurting stop, make it all simple and uncomplicated.
“I’m so sorry, Jessi.” She pulled the girl into a tight hug over the tub’s rim, and the girl clung to her like she was the only life line the teen had to this world. “If you feel like you’re hurting him, then all I can say is just…just try to understand things from his point of view. You’re both so much alike, but you’re also so vastly different. You’re both these two extraordinary human beings with so much to give to the world, but we seem to forget sometimes that you’re just kids, that you’re just trying to figure things out. And this is one of those things, one of those tough, tough things that you’ve got to wade through. But understand, I’m here. I’m here for the both of you and if I can help it—” she pulled back and cupped Jessi’s face tenderly in her hands—“I won’t be going anywhere any time soon.”
Jessi nodded and smiled a shaky smile at the older woman. “Thanks. Thanks, Nicole.”
“Any time, kiddo,” Nicole replied playfully. “Just…try to be careful with one another. Try to see things from each other’s points of view. Try to understand Kyle bears a weight on his shoulders and that you do too, and that…you’re not supposed to have everything line up in a perfect order. Sometimes, life is a messy, crappy place and we’ve got to clean it up.”
“Okay,” Jessi replied. “I get it. I-I get it. I’ll try not to be so…I…I know what I have to do.”
A frown creased Nicole’s brow for a split second. “And what’s that?”
“See things from his point of view,” Jessi answered, looking away. “Be…Be sympathetic.”
Nicole smiled, even though something was firing off warning bells in her mind. Her smile wavered. “Jessi?”
“Yes, Nicole.” Jessi looked up, a set expression echoing in her eyes. Nicole looked at her squarely.
“Just…don’t do anything…brash.”
Jessi smiled again, but this time it lacked any warmth and appeared sad around the edges. “Don’t worry.
“I know what I have to do.”
8o8o8
She had found him that night, holed up in his room while Josh and Andy were downstairs playing up a storm on G4, Stephen and Nicole in the kitchen talking quickly and Lori commandeering the house phone in her bedroom to get some ‘Mark and Lori alone time’. The look that she saw creasing his features was one of longing and need, and deep in her heart—in the place, the secret place that she let no one touch; let no one see or caress—Jessi felt a pang, a sharp thrust of heartache cut through the wall that she had built up around herself. Kyle was seated at his bedroom window, eyes glued to the warmly lit window that sat directly across from his and permitted him, at one time, long ago, a glimpse of the one girl that he had cared for the moment he had seen her. Jessi breathed and looked away, angry at herself for feeling any sense of sympathy or remorse. After all, it wasn’t like the separation of Kyle and Amanda was her concern. She wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe, given a little time, he’d forget, he’d forget the gentle way she smiled at him, the way she would touch him and just see, see that she was here, that she could touch him and caress him too.
But seeing him now, looking at him, watching the slump of his shoulders and hearing the way his heart beat faster at even the hint of Amanda’s shadow crossing her bedroom window, her mind went back to earlier that day and the conversation she had with Nicole. She wasn’t here for her own selfish reasons. Throughout this entire time, she had allowed her own selfishness to override any other emotion that she had felt. Nicole had told her to see things from his point of view, to try and understand the world from the way he perceived it. And while she could admit that she couldn’t quite angle her mind to that feat, she could at least understand: for now, for now, she could give in and give him something that he craved, that he desperately wanted even though he didn’t need it.
Not like the way she needed him, not like how she needed him to make everything make sense, not like how she needed him to be there, to see her and be the only one who had looked deep into the secret places in her mind and never hate her for the darkness he found there. She stood in the door way, her eyes glued to every movement that he made, every shift of his body, her wanting, needing, to reach out, to caress him and feel his arms wrap around her, threatening to envelope her, ensnare her in its poisonous embrace.
“Kyle,” Jessi called out, and walked into the room as he turned to look at her, unshed tears in his eyes. She wanted to cry herself, could feel her heart breaking in the cave of her chest, knowing that what she was going to say and what she was going to do was going to hurt for a very, very long time. His blue eyes met her brown and she smiled sadly, taking his hand in hers and tugging him into a standing position. He frowned at her, but when he went to ask her what she was doing, she shushed him quiet and pulled him to follow her.
It was all she could do to keep herself from breaking down right then and there, the steady beat of his heart beat kept her going, the way his hand circled around hers in a cocoon of warmth; she savored all of this, every small, minutely fine detail, locking it in her memory for always. She knew that no one would ever love her, not the way Kyle loved Amanda, but she could take this, she could take this tiny trust that he gave her, the way his breathing quickened and slowed, the way the muscles played along his arm as she held him tightly and pulled him outside, down the steps of the Trager home and along that short, short distance to Amanda Bloom’s.
Her feet were heavy, her body trembling. She looked back and saw Kyle watching the house with a sense of awe and wonder. It hurt to see that look on his face. They stopped at the stoop of Amanda’s front steps and Jessi swallowed painfully, staring up at him, and wishing fleetingly for something, anything to hear her pain, to see her heartbreak and show her that the world wasn’t really this cruel, cruel place.
“Go,” Jessi said quietly. Kyle, startled, looked at her, hope shining from his blue, blue eyes. She didn’t meet his gaze, just dropped her eyes down and stared hard at the ground. She released his hand after a final squeeze, letting hers fall to her side and shifted away from him.
“Jessi,” he started. She cut him off.
“Just go.” She swallowed thickly and pressed her lips into a hard thin line, lest he see them trembling. He lingered beside her for a few seconds more.
“Thank you,” he whispered quietly before bounding up the steps. The shard that had been driven into Jessi’s heart since this whole mess had started was plunged deeper and all she could do was breathe, feeling the tears want to fall. She turned on her heel and, with one swift surge of power, broke into a run. She ran away from Amanda Bloom’s house, away from the welcoming warmth of the Trager’s household and, more importantly, away from Kyle and his blue, blue eyes that seared her soul. She ran, feeling the Seattle night air slapping her face, pulling her hair hard behind her. The stars above were cold witnesses to her fleeting form as it darted in and out of the glow of street lamps, passed parked cars and out, out somewhere, somewhere lost in the suburbs and city that she wanted so desperately to call home.
She didn’t know where she was going, and didn’t care.
Anywhere was better than here.
8o8o8
His hand—his whole body even—was trembling as he raised it to knock on Amanda’s door. Emotions rushed through him—hope, fear, joy, terror—and memories streamed across his vision—hands, lips, the ethereal sound of a piano’s gentle playing; the first time he was kissed; the first time he kissed her. All he could think, all he could feel, was the low hum of his body and blazing hot rush of adrenaline surging through his limps. His breathing was ragged, his senses trained on any and every movement that was made in the house before him, from the creak of the flood boards to the sound of feet coming down the steps—his heart beat sped up faster—and walking to the door. A blurry face peeked out at him from stucco glass window beside the door—blonde hair, blue eyes and lips the color of ripened cherries—and it came open to permit one very annoyed Amanda Bloom.
But that didn’t deter him, that didn’t stop him. He was going to tell her, he was going to tell her everything. He could feel the rush of exhilaration wash through him and he smiled at her and she was caught off guard. She frowned at him, pursed her lips and looked back to where he was sure her mother was seated on the couch, probably reading, probably drinking her fair share of wine. He couldn’t tell and didn’t care at that moment.
“What are you doing here, Kyle?” she asked quietly, meeting his gaze with hers. “I have nothing left to say to you. I have nothing—”
“But I have something to say to you,” he cut in firmly before she could start an angry tirade and slam the door in his face. He heard her heart beat pick up, saw her face flush and wanted so desperately to touch her, to cradle her face in his hands and kiss her until she was breathless and dumb with passion. But he couldn’t, he had to tell her, he had to tell the truth. Everything he wanted to say was burning at the back of his throat, was torturing him like hot lava that needed to be released.
“Amanda,” he began, breathing deep and steeling himself for any reaction that she may have to what he was going to say. “All this time I’ve been hiding, I’ve been trying to keep you safe from what I am and who I am…but with all my secrets, I-I drove you away and that was never my intention…I just wanted to keep you safe, to keep you away from all of this.”
“Kyle, what are you talking about?” she asked, her face creased in puzzlement. “What does this have to do with what happened?”
He breathed deep, swallowed, and met her questioning gaze head on. “Amanda…it’s time I told you the truth.”
8o8o8
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