JENNY: It had been coming on two weeks and things weren’t that much more clear for Jenny. It was obvious why she’d sorely missed Bebe: her future self had died, and that had created a wound that had never fully closed. Or so she gathered, but that made a little more sense. It was the rest of the conflicting mess that she hadn’t been able to sort through, and there was enough… she didn’t know what to call it, but for once in her life she didn’t seem to be in such an eager rush to find out by demanding the story from one of the visitors. That was because, well, she was dreading it. There was some nagging doubt that was warning her away from the whole thing even if it meant tying herself in knots and having restless days and nights. The images flashing around her mind of the wartorn future, Sentinels and mutants fighting, of Nikki, the closest and maybe only friend she had left, slaving away in the Kick lab to provide them with enough drugs to keep surviving, told only of a horrid, hellish future where everything was hopeless.
And, okay, maybe on this side of that, with memories of loss and pain Jenny Takeda wasn’t quite as brave as she thought she was, or maybe it was the fact that she’d she already still acutely felt the loss of Bebe as it was. Equally, there was a chance her subconscious was warning her somehow. Maybe. She didn’t know, she really didn’t know much at all truth be told. The miasma of future memories was difficult to see through, but she still felt their presence. Was the urge to be alone because she was dealing with this? Was it because of something in the future? Was it because she really didn’t want to talk about things?
But there was Bebe here in the present, in the flesh, and dying to spend time with her which Jenny herself also sorely wanted, and for all the conflicting, agonizing feelings that this was a bad idea, she wanted it herself. That’s why she was sitting in an otherwise vacant classroom, seated across the table from her best friend, working on homework. Because being together felt so right and so wrong at the same time and she just couldn’t—
It was so distracting, and she kept glancing up, her math homework not getting done, to make sure Bebe was there, that Bebe was okay, that Bebe hadn’t vanished off into the void or invisibility altogether.
The French girl hadn’t; she was still sitting there doing her own work, pencil making marks on the papers. With a heavy sigh and a shake of her head, she reached for the the pencil sharpener having broken her lead again with too much force (she was so absent-minded these days it was ridiculous) and then, because she wasn’t paying attention, she knocked over a glass of water that Bebe had been sipping sending it all over the table and over the edges of their worksheets. She swore and started moving things as best she could within her stupid suit, gloved hands mostly just pushing papers out of the water of the water. “Shit, fuck, sorry, it’s my fault—”
Her fault. It’s not your fault. And all at once that final piece of the puzzle had crept up on her, flitting up from her subconscious of Bebe’s ravage form, of her reassuring her best friend that it wasn’t her fault, that —
It was already gone then, but Jenny looked up at Bebe in horror, the spreading water already forgotten. Bebe Gallais had died from radiation sickness.
Stunned into silence, Jenny seemed to slump in her chair, but only for a moment before she seemed to regain her senses. She pushed back with her feet causing her chair to groan loudly against the floor in an attempt put more distance between them. “Holy shit. Fuck.” Really intelligible, but she didn’t know what else to say right now. It was her, in the end, not the Sentinels or humans or any of the the dangers in the future, that he caused the death of her best friend. “It was me.”
BEBE: Things were almost back the way they were supposed to be. Only almost because it would be a while, a long time, before all the pieces of the Xavier's jigsaw were back in place and correctly aligned. Robbie was still deeply shaken in ways Bebe knew she couldn't yet fully understand, and she wasn't convinced that Victor or Riley or any of the others were much better off than him under their brave faces. And then there were the people who'd disappeared along with those who'd been hand picked by the stranger from the future, plagued by fragments of memory since their return, teased by the almost-knowledge of what had become of them in Layla's horrific world. It wasn't clear that the clouds would ever fully part for them, the spectre of having to find a way to live with these shadows of potential doom looming before them. Not to mention that future itself, a threat declared upon them all.
But things were almost the way they were supposed to be and after the last month, Bebe was willing to take that. They would get each other through it, just as they did after those poor drugged mutants descended upon the school. The important thing was that everybody was home. Jenny was home. She'd longed for this so long and so hard that Bebe couldn't help but feel nothing but delight that roommates had been switched and classes had started back up because it meant things were getting back to normal. It meant her friends were safe. There was still work to be done, wounds to heal and dangers to fear, but she was starting to learn that, under this roof, such things were to be expected. They'd come home. Good enough.
Jenny had been... not quite herself since reappearing from her unexpected voyage to the future. Bebe wasn't exactly worried about that because it would have been odd if her friend had experienced such a thing and brushed it off as if it were nothing, but she was concerned. Lots of other people at the school were going through a similar brand of unfocused confusion, but it was Jenny she was seeing up close and she wished she could do something to help, wave her magic wand and make it all go away. Since she was unable to do that, not blessed with a mutation which could have an effect on the situation in any way, she settled for just spending time with her best friend instead. This was how she'd deal with any other kind of issue Jenny might face, through support and friendship and smiles, so it seemed the best course of action. Hopefully it was? Despite time travel to dreadful future dystopias apparently being commonplace at this school, the administration had yet to produce a guidebook on how best to deal with it. Bit remiss of them.
So she was quite happy to be sitting in this empty classroom with Jenny Takeda in her sights, even if they were having to spend their time on homework. It felt so normal she could almost trick herself into believing all of this had never happened. A sip of water and then she was back to making notes in pencil in the margins of her paper, the tip of her tongue poking out invisibly from the corner of her mouth. Everything was calm, and then it wasn't.
A squeak yelped from her throat when the water was overturned, hands automatically moving to shove worksheets out of the way even before she'd registered exactly what had happened. A smile jumped to her lips though because, as much as she tried her best in school, the sanctity of her homework wasn't high on her priority list so she was all ready to laugh this off. So much so that a wisecrack was on her lips, ready to go, when she was cut off by the hard scrape of Jenny's chair. Her gaze lifting, she caught the look passing over her friend's face and froze. Something was wrong, something was so wrong.
"It's... it's okay, it's only water," she responded feebly. Bebe looked down at the soggy paperwork as if she could make this be about the toppled glass if she willed it hard enough, but she could already tell this wasn't about that. "Jenny... Jenny, what is it?" Tentatively, she took a step around the table to get closer. "What was you?"
JENNY: Pushing herself up from the chair, Jenny stood and then took her longest strides to the other ides of the room, hands coming up to the sides of the hazmat suit’s helmet as if she sorely needed to press them to her temples to stabilize her raging head. She couldn’t though, the gloves instead pressing against the suit’s exterior and keeping herself sealed off even from herself at such a critical juncture. Both a blessing and a curse, really, given the subject matter at hand. Jenny stalked to the corner of the room, pressed herself into the corner as if that somehow, impossibly, gave her some more comfort, and then finally turned to face her friend.
Bebe was about halfway around the table. Jenny was good at keeping tracking of her friend’s movements, because of course she was. They were best friends, up until the moment Jenny had actually killed her with her very presence. No wonder she never finished grieving. Not when she being around her was a danger, was the reason that killed her ultimately. How could she? Getting over it would have been the worst thing in the world she could have. She was brash, arrogant, fighty, and a whole host of negative traits, but she wasn’t unemotional. Not in the slightest.
“I just,” she said, trying to find her voice again and holding up a yellow-gloved hand in an attempt to get Bebe to stop moving. “Just stop. For right now, okay, let me—” she wrung that hand then before giving herself a once over, hands sliding over her suit to make sure there were no tears or anything. After that slid down to a seated position in the corner. This was the worst case scenario in her mind. Losing people to Sentinels? That seemed common. Sad, absolutely, but common. Losing the most important person to her to herself? That was something else.
But for all Jenny was, she didn’t shy away from things. Bebe had a right to know, and so she looked back up to make sure Bebe was actually keeping her distance… and then realized it wouldn’t have mattered anyway if she’d been this close if there was actually a breach. It had to be all or nothing.
“When you died in the future, it was was radiation sickness. I don’t know how you got dosed, but I just got the part of you actually dying and — saying it wasn’t my fault which looked really painful.” She took a deep breath, and then wrung her hands again as if to remove some phantom taint from them. “That makes sense to why I came back feeling I was a danger to you.”
BEBE: It was like Jenny was trying to physically extend the distance between them, going so far as to cross the expanse of the room and squeeze herself into a corner. Bebe couldn't understand it, couldn't guess what had happened to so suddenly change the atmosphere in the empty classroom, but her blood chilled all the same. It was something bad, something terribly bad, and she wasn't going to be able to fix it with a cheerful smile and some kind words. That much was already obvious to her. This would be like when she talked to Robbie. All she'd wanted to do was help him, pat down the fires tormenting him, but it wasn't that simple. Some things were too big, carried too much weight, to be so easily dismissed. Some burdens never grew lighter. Looking at Robbie, how shaken he was, how shrunk up inside his own skin he'd become, she'd understood that and it hurt. It wasn't right. Something like this shouldn't happen to a lovely soul like Robbie Baldwin.
And it shouldn't happen to Jenny either. She'd been through so much, continued to suffer every day from within the prison of her hazmat suit, knowing she could never touch another person again. She didn't deserve to face another trial. Bebe just wanted to protect her from whatever this was but there was a dread creeping across her skin like ice which told her she wouldn't be able to do that.
She froze in place when Jenny ordered her not to come any closer, her transparent hands flying to her chest, fingers clasping together anxiously. For the first time, the thought entered her mind that this might be her fault, that maybe she'd done something to offend Jenny or upset her. Standing like a see-through statue a footstep away from the desk they'd been happily working at just moments ago, she shook her brain to see if any pertinent information fell out. As far as she could recall, she hadn't done anything wrong but she had a whole future life, one which was unknown to her. Was Jenny remembering something? Some horrible act of betrayal? Was Bebe capable of that?
When Jenny continued talking, her voice sounding hollow from behind the faceplate in her helmet, she realised she'd only made it halfway to a correct guess. This was a flashback (or a flashforward, more accurately) and it did involve Bebe, but it wasn't the French girl who may have done something disastrous. "Oh. Oh, Jenny."
Radiation sickness. It was absurd, really, that she didn't know more about what that may entail, considering who her best friend was. One might have expected her to do some research on the subject, for exactly a reason such as this, avoiding a potentially deadly fate. But that was a reflection of how safe she'd always felt in Jenny's company. She knew, logically, that spending time with a living nuclear reactor was risky but it hadn't seemed like a real risk. Jenny had her suit so there'd been no reason to worry over what would happen if something went wrong. Bebe knew with absolute certainty that her friend would never hurt her. Never. And yet. "It's... no, it must have been an accident, Jenny. It must have been! Maybe it wasn't even you who did it, no? You said you don't know how I got sick so... so maybe it wasn't you, maybe I got poisoned some other way." As excuses went, that was a feeble one. How likely was it that she'd been irradiated from some other source when her best friend was radioactive? "And it... no, no, this does not matter, Jenny. It does not, you must not think about it because it hasn't happened and it won't happen. It won't. Please don't blame yourself. It's not your fault." It's not your fault.
JENNY: There was a good chance that Jenny would have laughed, hollowly, if she had any idea that Bebe’s first instinct was that she had done something, as if Bebe was actually capable of doing something cruel or gutting to cause a reaction like this out of her. Bebe was pure, she was a saint at the worst of times, and from what Jenny could surmise from the future that hadn’t changed. No, Jenny Takeda was the issue here in this friendship, and she always would be. They weren’t that much alike, in all honesty, where Bebe was sweet and kind, Jenny was a brash, antagonistic asshole. But fate had brought them together, it had given them both an outlet early for their frustrations with the way the world worked and what other students could do when they couldn’t participate.
It was just never going to be Bebe that was the issue. It was always going to be her that broke something between them or ruined things so much that they weren’t reparable.
Killing Bebe with radiation definitely qualified even if it hadn’t happened yet. Maybe it never would, but the risk now was so much more real and overwhelming. It all made everything appear with such clarity as the last piece of the puzzle had finally revealed itself and let her piece together all the disjointed parts and feelings she was experiencing.
Stretching out and no longer looking like she wanted to entirely curl into herself and out of existence, Jenny looked back up at Bebe to catch her eyes. “We both know that’s not true,” she rebutted, sounding resigned and hollow. “I guess it could be true, but we know it’s not likely. You wouldn’t have said it wasn’t my fault if we didn’t think you got dosed from me.” That made sense, even if the interpretation could have been taken literally that this radiation exposure wasn’t from her. How likely was that, though? It didn’t matter, Jenny of the future clearly believed it had been her, and there wasn’t a way that she was going to think otherwise. What were the chances Bebe was digging around in an old nuclear reactor or something?
She shook her head at Bebe’s reassurances, sweet though they were. “It matches with the feelings anyway of being a danger to you. Fuck.” Despite that, she pressed on, “I’m not going to tell you to stay away or anything because I know you’re not going to, but goddamn we have to make really sure we’re being careful. I need to be fucking careful because its your life on the line, not mine.” That was the truth of it. Jenny having a mishap would never hurt her, but it would hurt everyone around her especially including those that spent the most time with her. “And this fucking sucks, let me tell you, because I don’t want to be sitting here—” she was still literally sitting on the ground bemoaning this, she realized in the middle of her words and how dramatic this was “— whinging over something that hasn’t happened, but it did to me err us or not us or whatever.” She clicked her tongue in annoyance then. “But I can’t make it just go away, Bebe.”
BEBE: Panic was starting to bubble in Bebe's chest. Jenny wouldn't want to be around her anymore, would she? She'd be afraid that history, albeit future history, would repeat itself, that her fate in Layla's timeline would come to pass in the here and now. And she could hardly blame her for feeling that way, of course her friend wouldn't want to be responsible for harming or even killing someone else. Her flashes of memory were a warning. A red flag. Bebe wasn't going to be able to convince her otherwise. And that meant she was going to lose her.
Her greatest fear was being left alone, having nobody to love her, nobody to be her friend. To be invisible in the truest sense. Even before her mutation had manifested, that had been the notion which preoccupied her. Her family home was a revolving door of visitors, a hub of parties, and while that was fun and exciting and even a little glamorous, it also meant that it was easy for a curly haired slip of a girl to fall through the cracks. She'd felt that she didn't really matter and that it was far too easy for others to overlook her. Then her powers had come along, her whole body turning transparent, and her fear became literal. She wondered, sometimes, if she'd brought this on herself, that maybe she'd inadvertently willed this mutation into existence. Back then, pre-powers, she hadn't known how lucky she was. She should have enjoyed it while it lasted instead of angsting it all away.
And now it was going to get worse. Her best friend would pull away, she wouldn't be able to stop it and that would be that. It felt like an inevitability in some ways. Jenny would fall away and others would follow for one reason or another and then she would be alone. She was genetically designed to be untraceable. This was her fate.
So when Jenny said she wouldn't tell her to stay away, all the breath in Bebe's lungs came out in a rush of relief. This wasn't over. There was a way through, no matter how circuitous that way may prove to be. She still had her friend.
After a moment's hesitation, Bebe slowly dropped to a crouch, wobbling a little as she balanced on her toes. She needed to be at the same height as her friend. "This is why you felt so... what is the stupid word," she hissed at herself, her English skills deteriorating because her brain was too busy feeling fright to focus. "Conflicted, this is why you were conflicted. You wanted to see me because I'd been... gone for so long. But you didn't want to see me because you blamed yourself and you didn't want it to happen again." She shook her head. "You shouldn't blame yourself, Jenny. You really should not. It must have been an accident and accidents can happen to anybody. Especially people like us! Almost everyone we know could hurt their friends if they lost control or something went wrong. Not me but most people. This is just the way of things for mutants, I think."
She was desperately searching for an argument which could convince the other girl that things didn't have to change. At her side, water dripped distractingly from the edge of the table they'd been working at and she reached up with a cluck of her tongue to wipe the side of her hand across the gathering puddle to sweep it away from the table's rim. "I know you can't make it go away and that is okay because... it hasn't come between us before and it won't now. I won't let it. We will be careful, extra careful, always. But we can't let it beat us. I am staying right here because you're worth it, Jenny. You're worth the risk. I've always believed that."
JENNY: Jenny said nothing while her friend agonized and finally, blessedly crouched down to reassure her that they could make this work. She’d exhaled a breath she’d been holding giving her facemask a slightly foggy appearance for a moment while she took in what had just happened. Because despite all Bebe’s own worries Jenny had another fear: in her own arrogance to explain the situation, to tell her friend that she wouldn’t tell her to stay away because she wouldn’t… Jenny didn’t know that Bebe would want to be around her once the situation was confirmed. It was a shield she had been holding onto tightly in those brief moments where Bebe had to weigh everything. As reassuring and positive as her friend was, Jenny was not sure nor convinced that she’d want to risk her life once the very real possibility had been shoved in their faces. They both knew there was a risk with Jenny’s mutation, but knowing how it could end — potentially one of a million instances, or far more frequent was impossible to tell — was something else altogether.
No, though, Bebe was too good to tell Jenny to hit the road and not come near her like Jenny suspected (but not knew). Things, maybe, would be alright.
With a nod of her head, Jenny affirmed what Bebe was laying out between them. “Yeah. I missed you because you were gone. Just you.” Which was both very endearing and sweet, but also pathetic Jenny realized once the words had come. That there was no one else at all she felt so strongly about losing, that Bebe really had been her only friend up until the end? Losing Bebe here clearly wasn’t an option. “It makes sense now why I felt the way I did. I should have realized sooner.”
Idiot.
That was enough of this though, and she started pushing herself up. “Okay I’m fucking pathetic,” she announced. “We’ll make it work, you’re right. You’re worth it too, even if I have to quadruple wrap myself. I just wish I knew how it actually happened.” The last part was ground out between grit teeth as she stood up, and then moved up to stick a hand out to help Bebe to her feet. “But I think we’re doing with homework tonight, I can’t anymore.”
BEBE: Abandoning her friendship with Jenny was never going to be an option. They could receive glimpses of a thousand futures in which Jenny blew her up or lethally dosed her with radiation or some other terrible thing, and it wouldn't matter to Bebe. Well, that wasn't true. It mattered. It was difficult to hear about your own demise without a sliver of ice piercing the heart. But still, it wasn't going to change anything, not while Bebe had any say in the matter. The future wasn't now, and after everything that had happened in the last month or two, it never would be. There were a few hundred people living under this roof who would do anything necessary to ensure their fates, every one of them dreadful, would be averted. She had faith in the X-Men and even more faith in Victor and Robbie and her other friends who'd witnessed this wasteland for themselves and taken on the burden of defying it. Everything would be okay in the end.
Besides, she couldn't turn her back on Jenny. That would be cruel. Life had been cruel enough to Jenny Takeda as it was.
It was with no small amount of relief that Bebe watched her friend pick herself up off the floor and cross the distance between them. Jenny even offered her hand. She wasn't keeping her distance, wasn't tentative about making contact. These were good signs. They'd both said they'd make this work but here was the first evidence that they would be true to their word. The French mutant found herself smiling up at the other girl, taking the gloved hand and lifting herself to a standing position with a minor wobble. "No more homework, I can get on board with this idea!" Letting go of the glove, she turned and began to gather up their papers, not caring about the water stains drying the paper, making it rough and crackly. "We will dump these things in our room and then... go for a walk? Yes, let's go for a walk. It will do us good to get outside and clear our heads, I think." A little reminder that they were living on a blanket of autumnal browns and greens, not a dystopia.
Clutching her folders and books to her chest, the papers turning invisible in her embrace, she turned her smile in Jenny's direction again. "This is... I think it's nice, in a way. Not what happened in the end but..." She shrugged faintly. "This means that we will always be friends. Even when the whole world has gone wrong, we will still be taking care of each other. I think that's a lovely thing." Her smile had turned dreamy because rather than being newly afraid of the future because of the accident which might befall them, she was choosing to see the bright side. If only death could prise them apart then that meant here, now, in this world, they had a relationship which was strong enough to withstand anything. Friends for life. Knowing that was wonderful. Bebe Gallais and Jenny Takeda would not be broken, not even by an apocalypse.
"Come on," she said, still smiling as she began heading for the door. "If we're quick, we'll catch the sunset."