Jesse watches as the stretcher rolls away.
They're taking her. They're taking Emma and he can't do anything to stop it.
He wants to cry. He wants more than anything to feel the burn of tears down his cheeks but he doesn't.
He wakes, screaming, but still no tears.
He sees Emma's lifeless body covered by an orange sheet and all he can remember is that she loved him. He loved her. But he can't cry and it's scaring him. Because more than anything, Jesse wants to cry for the woman he promised his heart to.
Jesse's shivering. His body hurts from shaking and this is something he's never felt before.
This helplessness.
This emptiness.
There's a hole in him so deep that he's fallen in and he can't find his way out. There's a feeling every morning that he wakes up, the feeling that this day is purposeless, just like the rest and he hates the feeling that he has nothing to live for anymore.
But Emma is still gone and his heart is still shattering.
The cold air hits his face like a pail of ice water and he loves every minute of it. He can't breathe and he loves that too.
On top of the mountain, Jesse feels like he doesn't have to be in control of anything.
Not even himself.
"Emma," He whispers into the wind. "There's so much I wanted to tell you. Too many things that I didn't say-" His voice cracks and the wind carries the sound over the cliff. "I wanted to tell you how much I love you. How much I needed you. I still need you. I wanted to tell you-" He takes a deep breath. "I wanted to tell you that I love your smile and the way you scowl when you're angry. I love the way you are with Brennan, like brother and sister because sometimes I forget what that's like. I love that you made Shalimar open up, and how you were always there for her when I couldn't be. I love you for how beautiful you were...are, and I, I just need you to come back to me. I need you to stand beside me again because I think I'm too tired to do this anymore. I'm too tired to...I can't lose you. Not like this. Emma, God, all I want is for you to come back. I want you to come back and explain how Adam could lie to us like that. How he could let you die. How he could expect us to trust him and you're not standing here with me. I need you to help me understand because without you I don't think I want to."
Jesse sits, more of out neccessity than anything else and his breathing is shallow and sporadic. He buries his face in his hands as the tears fall.
Three hours later, Shalimar finds Jesse sitting on top of the mountain. Shaking, shivering so hard Shalimar can hear it clear as day.
There are tear stains down his cheeks and crescent shaped cuts in his arm where he squeezed to hard.
The early day chill has given way to a cold even Brennan's leather jacket can't keep out.
Shalimar walks towards her friend. His back is hunched like only grief can perpetuate and all she wants to do is wrap her arms around him and make all of this go away.
She slides her arm across his shoulders, reaching him as Brennan does. She wraps her arms around him so tightly she's afraid of hurting him and he leans into the heat of her body.
Brennan, for all the masculinity he displays, knows what this is and how Shalimar feels, because he feels the same. Jesse is their family. The only real family either of them have left and sometimes, even family isn't enough to get a person through the day.
He sits down next to his friend, his kin and wraps his arm around his shoulder. Jesse doesn't flinch, or move away. They've long since gotten over any fears, or stereotypes, because really, being a new mutant meant more than just being a freak. It meant you didn't quite belong to society or it's standards.
Jesse shudders and they both feel his breathing stutter as he tries to hold back the tears.
"Honey, it's ok to cry. You know that, right?" Shalimar whispers as she rubs his back gently.
"We all miss her." Brennan squeezes his shoulder softly.
There's something almost surreal about this whole situation and Jesse likes that feeling. Being just enough away from reality that he doesn't have to make sense of anything. It's easier that way.
It doesn't stop the pain in his heart, or the way it gets harder and harder to breathe evey day he wakes up. But it's a change.
Jesse doesn't say it, but he hopes Shalimar and Brennan know how thankful he is for the both of them. Right now, they're the only things that keep him going. He can't imagine disappointing them, not anything like Adam did.
The tears begin to fall again, and they feel as if they're freezing midway down his cheeks. He doesn't move to wipe them away. Instead he revels in the brief trail of warmth they leave before freezing.
He knows he must be tired because he can find the similarity between the feeling of his tears and Emma's life - and death.
The warm burning that comes with the tears, its like knowing her. Like living with her, living for her. When you meet her...when he met her, there was a warmth in the pit of his stomach and he knew with all he was worth that she would be everything he ever wanted. And he loved that feeling. Everything that Emma was, convened in his heart, this burning, like the sun living in his chest, made him love her with everything he had, and then some. And he loved that feeling too.
But the freezing. He hates that feeling. Because it's what replaced the warmth in his stomach and the burning in his heart as he watched them wheel her away.
Jesse hates this. All of it. The feelings, the fact that Emma isn't sitting beside him, the fact the Adam lied and Jesse can't, at least, hit him.
"It gets easier." Brennan offers as he squeezes his friend's shoulder.
A day when it was raining outside, and they'd lost one of the mutants they promised to protect, Brennan sat down with Jesse. He told him more in that one night than he ever thought to learn from a man so different from himself. In his lifetime, Brennan had lost 7 of his close friends to the street. Gang violence, police raids, wrong place at the wrong time. It didn't matter how they died. It mattered that they weren't coming back. But Jesse can't help but wonder how Brennan is sitting beside him, telling him it will get better, if it feels like this. How Brennan has done this so many times, Jesse can't imagine and he doesn't think he could ever be as strong as his friend.
Jesse doesn't respond, and Brennan doesn't expect him too. The three of them sit quietly, holding each other as the cold air rushes over them, carrying with it their tears and silent whispers.
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