Midnight Shadows

Jaxon didn’t need a handheld usually. He had most of his information at the ready right in his mind. Just that did not help much when trying to make a point to anyone else. So this time, he had a tablet in hand, scrolling through a list of scans he had made.

The day and past days had been very eventful, so that even Jax was still in the process of figuring it all out. His human side was causing him hiccups. He could not just brush over things, assimilate, store and index any more. This time, things made him think. Jaxon drew a breath into his lungs. It was something he still actually had to do. Even if now much less of his body required the oxygen.

The system readings had shown Caitlin Summers to be in the kitchen area. Her state had been flagged as ‘active’ in his list of things to do and look after. He wondered whether she even knew… And then he wondered whether she would believe him. It had to be early. Possibly too early for conventional methods. Then again, Jaxon was not exactly any kind of conventional.

He let the tablet drop to his side as he rounded the last corner and stepped into the kitchen area. There she was, appearing somewhat out of place – not unlike he felt right now. He had not ever actually done anything like this before.

“Caitlin”, he addressed her. “How are you feeling?”

Caitlin was staring at the kettle, willing it to heat up faster. She could actually do that but didn’t trust herself right now that she wouldn’t set the kitchen ablaze. The mission had gone well, very well even and that bothered her. Nothing went well with them. There were always hiccups. Hell they even managed to spring Wolverine free, a mutant they all thought was dead for decades.

As it seems, the man had been hanging out with Stark since the nineties. Trying to get himself cured from that damn virus that had wiped out so many of their kind.

Maybe it hadn’t been smart to dump him into Victor’s lap but there was only so much she could tell and Victor could do the rest. That is, if they didn’t manage to kill each other. She had him summoned to the training room and when the two men had seen each other, it hadn’t been Logan to go after the other man. Victor had shouted some obscenities and charged his brother.

Cait had left, locking the door behind her and putting up a ‘do not disturb’ sign.

Now she was here in the kitchen, trying to ease her nerves before she would find Gabe and tell him about the mission. Not that she needed to, because she knew he had been watching them from afar. Silly man hadn’t really tried to stay out of her empathic reach.

She jumped at the sound of a voice speaking to her. “Oh Jax!” She clasped a hand over her heart, willing it to calm down. “A bit jittery, I guess. And tired.” She frowned at that. Yeah, she felt restless but her body was demanding a time out as well. Very contradictory. It’s why she had decided on some camomile to ease her nerves.

“Do you want some tea as well?”

Jaxon noted how apparently he had managed to surprise Caitlin. As an empath, that should not be possible. Even with him. While part of his brain was bionic, much of it was not. He was perceptible to her much like anyone else. Jaxon nodded, when she tried to explain away what could only be explained as an unusual state for her.

Caitlin offered him tea, but Jaxon shook his head. “Thank you, but I will pass.”

He sat and watched her prepare her tea in silence. He figured he would get started when she was done, when he would finally have her full attention. Jaxon couldn’t help notice that she looked very tired. “Caitlin, there is something I wish to talk to you about”, he offered, putting down his tablet on the counter between them. “Would you care to sit with me for a moment?” he inquired.

Jaxon swiped across the screen of the tabled a few times, finding a list of reading along with what looked like a full body scan – just that it was the device simply putting all of the occasionally done scans together into a single picture.

“I was wondering whether you have had any troubles with … sudden bouts of sickness? Have you been feeling overly tired? Any issues in controlling your abilities?”

He wondered whether she would put together the pointers herself, or whether this would blindside her as much as his arrival had.

Jaxon declined her offer of tea and she continued to prepare he own, the water was almost at boiling point when he told her he wanted to talk to her about something. “Hmm?” She responded, looking up and seeing that he was very serious about it. Then again, he usually looked serious but now she could tell that he actually was.

She poured the hot water over her teabag and just nodded at his question. “Sure. What’s up?” She asked him, putting the kettle back on the stove and turning it off.

Caitlin watched him swipe across his tablet, while taking a seat next to him so she could see what was on his screen. It looked like body scans. Put together into a single picture. What was she looking at? Where those hers?

Apparently they were, since he started to ask about her wellbeing. For a moment she didn’t know what to say, where he was going with this. “What’s going on Jax? Am I sick?” She had been tired but had blamed the new arrivals. She had been sick a few times but all had been related to overuse of her empathic skills, which she had also blamed on the new people in the building.

“I’m sick aren’t I? Am I going to die?” Why she thought that was on the table, she had no idea but it would fit the day she was having. This would be the horrible thing in which it could end since the mission had gone flawless.

Caitlin’s response surprised him. So she really had not noticed any of the signs? He found Caitlin to generally be someone who paid close attention. As an empath more so than most. To a point – and he and her had had this conversation before – where she overexerted herself. She needed to close herself off at least partially. She would run herself into the ground eventually if she kept reading at a 360 degree level.

Jaxon swiped back, to a screen of her midsection. It was a schematic more so than a picture of her actual body. It showed different stats. A doctor may have been able to catch the indicator in the digits alone. The number listed next to the three little letters HcG was usually a giveaway.

But any layman may not put that together – even a woman might miss it if her mind was occupied by so much else. “No”, he said, simply and to the point. “You are not sick. You will one day die, but I am not privy to that kind of information. Maybe Wanda.” He shrugged, then realised that maybe this was not the kind of thing she needed or wanted to hear right now.

“Anyway. It appears, Caitlin,” he turned around to face her, swiping over twice more to pull up the visual that would be readable even to her. It showed a schematic of gestational stage at the earliest stages of pregnancy. A little more than a dot, but the shapes around it – the uterus and the lower body of a woman – would certainly give it away.

To the right bottom corner of the schematic, a few words and a single number were written in golden hues. Gestation: approximately 6-8 weeks.

“It appears you are pregnant.” He pushed the tablet a little closer to her. “I find it concerning that you have missed all the signs.” Jaxon added in a softer tone, allowing his voice to sound a little more human. He remembered the day in the room of Scott Summers – and how she had not even realised how defenceless she had been against the emotional turmoil of her brother in law. That paired with the indicator of her emptying her stomach from something she should and would otherwise be absolutely able to regulate, were crystal clear to him.

That counting out the first signs for her had still not raised a bell… Jaxon contemplated whether he would need to talk to Gabriel after this. Caitlin needed to take it a lot slower, especially given she was pregnant with her third child now.

Caitlin could just smack herself for jumping to conclusions too fast but she wasn’t in her right mind at the moment. Jumpy, jittery and staring at those scans… well… What was she looking at? Jaxon told her she wasn’t sick nor would she die right now but someday and she let out a sigh of relief. Okay so not sick but what then?

Then he showed her something else, an enlarged image of her midsection, particularly where her womb was located. And there was a dot inside it.

What the effing… She stared and stared and the numbers told her six to eight weeks, give or take and she swallowed. The fact that Jaxon had to tell her that she was pregnant made her want to throw up on the spot. He found it concerning that she had missed it. He found it concerning?

“I’ve been occupied.” She murmured, her eyes still fixated on the little dot that was apparently growing inside of her. That was quite the understatement.

Gabe was going to have a stroke. And a fit. Yes, both. And he was going to go all nuts on her and demanding things he knew he shouldn’t demand because it hadn’t worked the first time and and and… He would love this too. Would love another addition to their family. Not that they had talked about it, but when did these things happened planned anyway? Tony and Lexie hadn’t.

“Did you make a full scan? Can I hear the heartbeat?” She asked on a whisper. Not sure what Jaxon actually could do, besides noticing her being pregnant before she had.

So much made sense now. Her tiredness, her empathic abilities going on a fritz and then there was the fact that she had been crying a lot. She wasn’t the crying person but lately… Even Gabe hadn’t known how to react to that.

And then fear set in. They couldn’t bring in another child on this Earth, could they? He or she would be hunted. What if the little bean had her family’s power immunity? There would be another set of Summers walking around, wanted for testing. Her hand moved to her tummy, rubbing it lightly. She felt her eyes burning, tears ready to be shed but she held them back.

“Oh god, Jax. I’m pregnant.”

Caitlin was, without a doubt, beyond surprised. Her reaction was proof beyond what he had expected that she was out of tune with her own body. He let her digest the information – though he doubted she could fully assimilate these news right now in no more than a few seconds. Eventually, she turned to him, her eyes somewhat hopeful when she asked about a full scan and about a heartbeat.

Yet it appeared, right in this moment, it was not an answer she needed. She was still processing. He could see it in her face, in her body language – the pieces were clicking into place. Was she noticing her own irritability? That her powers had possibly been greater than they ought to be? And quite possibly completely unregulated. Then that expression shifted, and he could see the brows furrow just that little and the colour of her eyes darkened. The protective hand on her tommy and the added moisture in her eyes. The realisation just what world she would bring yet another child into.

The words that followed made him smile. Maybe it was scare, possibly not exactly what they had planned for. But it was beautiful nonetheless. Maybe the world needed mutants, needed omegas. Just the kind that Gabriel and Caitlin apparently were capable of making. “You are”, he responded, and reached out for her to gently place his hands on each of her upper arms. “I think congratulation are in order. You are going to be a mom again.” He offered her a smile and then gently pulled her in for an embrace.

“It will be fine”, he said, his town low, soft in its deep cadence, and only for her eyes. “You will be fine.”

Jax acknowledged her own statement once more and she was still at a loss. Pregnant. Again. He placed his hands on her arms, congratulating her on being a mother once more and she didn’t know if she should laugh or cry. Jax however smiled at her and pulled her in for a hug. One she didn’t realised she needed until he embraced her.

The tears came this time, and she didn’t try to stop them. “Will it be fine?” She asked him. Because she wasn’t so sure.

“How can it be fine? We’re stuck in a theatre. My kids haven’t been outside in forever…” She sobbed. “… and now I’m going to put another child on this earth and keep it locked up.” It wasn’t fair, none of it was.

Not even using Jaxon as shoulder to cry on. Man up Cait. She thought to herself, but that was not that easy. “They will hunt them if they ever find out what they can do.” Referring to Tony and Lexie. “Who knows what this little bean can do with his brother and sister.”

“They want them as trophies.” She was working herself up into a frenzy, so much so that she felt sick all of a sudden. She pulled away from Jax and barely made it to the sink where she tossed out the contents of her stomach. Yeah she most definitely was pregnant.

The tears came almost instantly. Jaxon had calculated the likelihood at just above 85 percent. And apparently, his calculations were still spot on. She held onto him for a moment, and Jax did what he believed was needed. He hugged her, held her. Her word were, however, heartbreaking to him. It went hand in hand with what he had felt after watching the video about Scott and Emma. It was growing increasingly hard to keep the despair at bay.

Was the hope they all had, the reason they were fighting worth it all?
Would there ever be a place to peacefully live for their kind again?

“Yes, you have to believe.” He tried, wondering whether his words sounded less hollow to her than they did to him. And Caitlin made it ever so much harder to keep trying to give her the pick me up talk as her questions became harder and harder to answer. How could anyone paint a pretty picture about a handful of young kids stuck in a theatre? All of them would eventually need serious psychological if not psychiatric help. Especially these children.

Trophies. The word made him shiver, and he was amazed that his body was still capable of such very human feats. “We will protect them, Caitlin”, he murmured, unable to calm her down before her raging emotions made her dash for the sink. Jaxon followed her, his hand gently rubbing up and down her back.

He picked up the pitcher of water sitting just down from her on the workbench and poured her a glass of water. “You need to calm down, Caitlin.”