Thanks again to Nancy and Carol. As always, they made this chapter so much better.
PART EIGHT
*~Ellie~*
The worst thing about Kryptonite is that after an exposure, every single joint in my body is sore. I guess it feels kind of like it would if I twisted an ankle or something, but instead of the pain just being in one spot, it’s all over.
I had woken up when I heard someone come in the door, but had been too tired to follow the conversation. I was soon asleep again, but I didn’t sleep very long before Jay’s lamp snapped on and flooded my face with light. Even though I scrunched my eyes shut, the light still managed to filter through my eyelids and cause my head to pound harder than it already was. Although most of his apartment still looked like an empty room, a lamp was one of the few purchases Jay had actually made. Figures.
“Turnnit off,” I mumbled incoherently.
“In a minute,” came the reply. “I need to see what I’m doing.”
It was Aunt Lucy. She spoke softly, something I was grateful for at the moment. I kept my eyes screwed shut, but was able to feel the light pressure on my wrist.
“How am I doing?” I asked her, after pausing to allow her to concentrate.
“Pulse is a little rapid, but within normal range,” she replied. “How are you feeling?”
“Crummy.”
“Well, I don’t know why you would’ve expected anything different.” The hand moved to my forehead. “I think you’re a little warm. But you’ll be okay.” The light finally snapped off, and I decided it was safe to open my eyes. “No powers?” she asked me quietly.
I shook my head slightly.
“About how long do you think you were wearing that thing?” she asked me.
She knew about the necklace.
“I’m not sure.” I mentally tallied up the time in the lab, the time it took me to get to Jay’s place by cab, the time we spent here… “Half an hour? Maybe forty-five minutes.”
Aunt Lucy wasn’t one to get upset, but she did frown, and exhale heavily when she heard this news.
“The amount was small, but considering the length of time and the proximity of the Kryptonite…” She was trying to say that it had been a pretty severe exposure. I had miscalculated how much it would affect me.
“How much did Jay tell you?” My voice was small and timid as I asked that question.
“Just the basics,” she said. “He said that any more would be a violation of your privacy. But he did need to explain why on earth you would think that exposing yourself to Kryptonite would be a good thing.” There was a harder edge to her voice, and I swallowed guiltily.
“So you know all about the… issues we’ve been having?”
Aunt Lucy nodded. “Ellie, why didn’t you tell us that something was wrong?” She spoke in a soft tone, gently probing for answers. Somehow, that upset me more than if she had just gotten mad at me.
I shrugged, feeling a prickle of tears build up. “It was just so… embarrassing. And I thought I could handle it myself. I knew that the only time it was happening was with Jay, and I didn’t want Dad or anyone else to try to stop me from being Nebula.” And what would happen now that Aunt Lucy knew? “Are you going to tell Mom and Dad?’ I asked her.
“*I* won’t, but you should,” she told me. “And we’ll have to explain to Brad what happened as well.”
I nodded. “Is there any way we can hold off on telling my parents?” I wanted to put off that conversation as long as possible. “Maybe wait until tomorrow or something?”
She shrugged. “It’s up to you, but I think you might have a hard time explaining to them why you need someone else to take care of all the calls for help tonight. It was your night tonight, wasn’t it?”
Darn, it was. “I guess I didn’t really plan this out,” I admitted.
“Why did you even try it in the first place?”
“You know why. I was trying to find a way to kiss Jay without crushing him.”
“That’s not what I meant. You know how little we know about Kryptonite exposure. There’s no way you could’ve gotten a good result with this stunt. But you went ahead and tried it anyway.”
“I guess… I just got a little crazy,” I confessed. “We’ve been trying to deal with this problem for so long. And it just… It really scared me!” I felt an incredible release in finally admitting that. “I shouldn’t have that kind of problem anymore. I’ve been dealing with these powers for over ten years now! I should be able to handle them. And of course the only time it ever happens is when I’m with Jay. So something that’s supposed to be normal for two people dating has become all screwed up and painful… And I hurt him, Aunt Lucy! I wouldn’t want that to happen with anyone, but when it’s with him…” I wiped away at the flow of tears trailing down my face. “He doesn’t deserve that. And I couldn’t keep doing it to him anymore.”
Aunt Lucy softly shushed me as she rubbed my arm, the closest she could really get to me given our position.
“You’ve been keeping that in for a while, haven’t you?”
I nodded wordlessly.
“Have you talked to Jay about any of this?”
“Not really,” I replied. “I don’t think he would really understand a lot of it. Dad always told me how important it was to be in control of my powers because being careless leads to people getting hurt. And here I’ve gone ahead and hurt someone close to me without even realizing it at first.”
“But this isn’t your fault, Ellie,” Lucy told me. “And now that we know, we’ll help you find out what’s causing it.”
I nodded wordlessly in agreement and thanks. She shifted in her seat until she was sitting cross-legged beside me.
“So Jay doesn’t know about any of the stuff that’s been bothering you?” she probed.
“Well, we’ve talked about other stuff having to do with this,” I explained. “But I don’t think he knows how much the lack of control means to me. He doesn’t need to know, anyway. It would just put too much strain on us.”
“Ellie…” She sighed. “Look, I don’t know how much your mom ever told you about my divorce…”
“Not much,” I replied. “I was pretty young at the time.”
Aunt Lucy nodded as if that was the answer she had expected. “There were a lot of problems with that marriage, but there was one issue that was really difficult for us to work through. Again, you may not know this, but I struggled with issues of self-esteem for many years. And one of the things that really helped me to pull out of that cycle was working as a scientist. But I never really explained that to Tim. So after I gave birth to Alex, Tim didn’t see why I was having such a hard time staying home while he was out at work. We never really talked about the impact that was having on me, and we ended up having a lot of fights about related issues as a result, but never really making any progress because we never managed to attack the core issue.
“I’m not saying this as some sort of cautionary tale in order to scare you, Ellie,” she told me. “But I do want to stress how important it is for you to know where the other is coming from in a relationship. You have more reason than most people to feel in control, and it’s completely understandable how this situation would scare you. You’ve got higher stakes than anyone else.”
“Sometimes I just wonder if life would be easier if I could just get rid of my powers,” I grumbled.
“You don’t really think that, do you?” Aunt Lucy asked sharply.
“No, not really,” I relented. “But I wonder if Jay might feel that way sometimes.”
“See, that’s another Relationship 101 thing,” she told me, smiling wryly. “You’ve got to love people just the way they are. Wanting to change something fundamental about the other person never leads to good things. And the same goes for pretending to be something that you’re not. Even if it is for the sake of the other person. There’s only so long you can keep up the charade. And as for Jay, I think his reaction to this latest stunt is enough to tell if he really wants you to change.”
“What do you mean?” He had seemed calm enough when we talked earlier.
“He’s really upset, Ellie,” Aunt Lucy told me. “He didn’t really talk to me about it much, but I could tell.”
“Where is he?”
“On the balcony.” The words were accompanied with a nod in that direction. “I told him that I needed some space, but I was just trying to make him get some air.”
“I should go talk to him,” I said. I pushed myself up off the sofa, moving delicately as I tested the extent of my physical ability.
“If you’re going to be okay, then I’ll leave you two. But Ellie…”
“Yeah?”
“We’ll figure this out. I promise.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
* * *
*~Jay~*
***
You always know when things are serious because that’s when grownups tell you to be quiet. Me and Kaylie were playing on the chairs in the waiting room, and Dad kept saying things like “Stop making that noise!” and “Sit still!”
But I didn’t want to sit still. I wanted to see Mom. Dad told us that we were gonna see her today, but all we had done so far was sit still in chairs for forever.
A lady had come over to talk to us, and Dad had called her the nurse, even though she wasn’t wearing a white hat with a red cross like nurses are supposed to. I didn’t really like her because she talked to me and Kaylie like we were babies. She gave us some books to read, but they were little kid books with Elmo and stuff in the pictures. I wanted to tell her that I was reading bigger kid books now, and the last book I was reading with Mom even had chapters in it! Well, they were small chapters, but Kaylie hadn’t gotten that good yet, so I think that meant I was a pretty good reader. But I didn’t tell the nurse that because Dad was looking at me really hard and I knew that meant I should just say thank you and nothing else. Besides, we didn’t get to read any more of that book with the chapters since Mom came to the hospital, and that was a while ago.
The nurse was talking to Dad with some other people, and finally Dad came over to me and Kaylie.
“It’s time to see Mom,” he told us.
“Your Mommy is very sick right now,” the nurse said. “So that means you have to be gentle with her, okay? And she’s going to have some tubes in her, but they’re only helping her feel better so there’s no reason to be scared.”
I nodded, and Kaylie did too. We didn’t want to do anything that would make the grownups decide that we couldn’t see Mom.
The nurse hadn’t been lying when she said there were a lot of tubes in Mom. She had a bunch stuck in her arm, and there were some funny wires attached to her too. But I don’t know if they were really helping her because she still didn’t look very good. She looked sick like Kaylie did that one time when she was throwing up. And then I got sick right after, which wasn’t very fun at all.
But when Mom saw us, she opened her arms in a big hug, just like I knew she would. She wasn’t too tired to see us like the nurse said she might be.
“Mom, I just made a new picture in school! Do you wanna see it?” I put the picture in front of her face so she could see it good.
“Wow, Jason. This is really good!” She held the picture in her hands and traced along the lines.
“It’s for you,” I told her. I was happy that she liked the picture. “I made it to put in your room.”
“Well, I’m sure we can find a good place for it.”
“I used a lot of red because that’s my favorite color,” I explained.
“I made my picture for you with blue!” Kaylie said. She gave Mom her picture. “Because that’s my favorite color.”
“It’s lovely, Kaylie,” Mom said to her. “I’m sure we can find a good place for both of these.”
“What’s your favorite color, Mom?” I hoped that she would say red.
“Hmm…” she thought for a bit. “I think I would have to say… Purple!”
“How come?” Kaylie asked. She probably thought Mom would say blue.
“Well, what do you get when you add red and blue together?” Mom asked both of us.
“Purple!” We both said together.
“That’s right. And my favorite part of the day was having my favorite people in the whole world come to visit me. Thank you so much for coming.” Mom gave both Kaylie and me a hug at the same time. But this hug wasn’t as strong as the one she gave us when we first came.
“The nurse will take you back to the waiting room, okay, kids?” Dad told us. “I need to talk to Mom and the doctors for a bit longer.”
“Okay,” we both agreed.
Even though I didn’t want to go with the nurse who thought I would still like baby books, I went anyway because I promised Dad that I would be on my best behavior today. So I gave Mom a goodbye kiss and left with Kaylie and the nurse.
We didn’t make a fuss when we were leaving, but I think if we knew what was going to happen next, we might have. See, that’s the last time I ever got to see Mom. By the next morning, she was already gone.
***
* * *
It was cold out on my balcony, but I didn’t really care. The image of Ellie collapsing played over and over in my head. How she had just dropped like a discarded marionette. And then the way she was so still, even after I got rid of the necklace. Waiting for Lucy to show up had been hell. There was nothing I could’ve done for Ellie, which left me to sit and alternate between watching the clock and Ellie’s frozen face… It was the stuff nightmares were made of.
I don’t think I had ever been more scared in my life. In the NIA, they teach you all sorts of fear management techniques. Deep breathing and stuff like that. They say that fear is crippling, and causes agents to make mistakes where they normally wouldn’t. I had been a good soldier and applied those techniques while out on the field, yet this caught me completely off guard. I was capable of dealing with the kind of danger that gets your heart pumping and your stomach churning, yet this… Reminded me of things I’d rather not think about. There was a reason why I never went to hospitals.
Why had she even tried this in the first place? Did I really seem that anxious to jump in the sack with her?
Okay, obviously I had thought about it. And not just a few times, either. I don’t know how anyone could date her and *not* think about it at least occasionally. But clearly we couldn’t do that right now, and I was more than willing to wait until we could.
Yet she had acted as if I resented her for that. Hopefully, our talk earlier had helped to clear away her fear, yet the consequences of her experiment had removed any comfort I had gained from our conversation.
I heard the latch click, and I turned to see Ellie step onto the balcony. She was pale, yet was still able to stand on her own. I closed the distance between us, and wrapped my arms around her, squeezing tightly as if that would reassure me of her health.
“Don’t you *ever* do anything like that again, okay?” I got a mouthful of her hair in my mouth as I spoke, but I hardly noticed.
“Oof,” she replied.
“And now I’m crushing you. God, Ellie, I’m so sorry.” I stepped back to give her some air, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I had to be able to see for myself that she was okay.
“A bit of a role reversal, huh?” she remarked dryly.
“Are you… okay?” I asked hesitantly. She looked better, yet I could tell she still wasn’t back to her regular self.
“I’m fine,” she assured me. “I don’t have any powers right now or anything, but other than that I feel fine.”
“Good,” I sighed in relief. “I found the necklace you were wearing, but I wasn’t sure if that was it or if there was more that you had…” I drew in a shaky breath, disliking the memory. I had felt so desperate then. “And… And what were you even thinking?” I exploded. “How could you pull a crazy stunt like that and just leave me to puzzle out what the hell you had done to yourself? You were damn lucky I found that necklace! What do you think would’ve happened if I hadn’t been able to find it, huh? And what if you had done something besides just a necklace? That would’ve meant… Ellie, you could’ve…” I gulped, unable to continue along that topic. I was gripping the railing so hard that my fingers were getting numb.
“Jay, I’m so sorry,” she told me, her voice catching as she spoke. “I never meant to… I wasn’t thinking about… I’m just really sorry, okay? And I promise I’ll never do something like that again.”
“Okay. Thank you,” I said. “And I’m sorry I yelled at you. That’s probably the last thing you want to hear right now.”
She didn’t speak. Instead she leaned her head against my shoulder as we both looked out over the balcony. On a clear day, you could see all the way to the river. But today, the clouds made everything dim and foggy.
“I have to tell my family,” she finally said.
“I thought so,” I replied. “Well, I already had to tell Lucy some of it, and I figured that everyone else would just kind of follow. Are you okay with that?” Although I didn’t have much choice at the time, it had been me who told Lucy in the first place.
“Yeah,” she shrugged. “I probably should have told them sooner, but I just couldn’t work up the guts. Or maybe the humility. Or maybe… I don’t know. Anyway, I was supposed to watch the city tonight, but I obviously can’t now so I’ll have to let either my dad or Jon know anyway…” She shivered against me, and she hunched her shoulders against the sudden breeze.
“You’re cold. Here, come inside. You’re hardly dressed for the weather.” Although I had been stubbornly ignoring the chill, it must’ve been very uncomfortable for someone who was unused to feeling the cold. She still looked a little chilly once we had come inside, so I dug up an old sweatshirt of mine for her to wear. Lucy was nowhere to be seen, and I guessed that she had slipped out quietly once Ellie came to see me on the balcony. “So… do you want me to come when we tell your family?” I asked her. “For moral support?”
“Well, you don’t have to go,” she hedged. She slipped the sweatshirt over her head. It was hopelessly big on her, but she ignored that and simply pushed the sleeves up past her elbows.
“I think I should.”
“Okay,” she nodded, burying her nose into the collar of the sweatshirt. Although she hadn’t voiced it, I could tell she was grateful of my offer. “Thank you,” she whispered into the folds of the fabric.
I merely nodded.
