DISCLAIMER: in first part.
A Laying On Of Hands: Part Sixteen
by Cascade
Dana woke up the next morning in a foul mood. She had a touch of a headache from being shielded by Cable, and she felt rather insecure not knowing the moods of the others in the house. She got dressed in a huff and marched downstairs for breakfast.
The smell of smoke hung in the air and made Dana's eyes water a bit. Bishop and Bobby had managed a major culinary disaster. The smoking remains of something waited forlornly in the sink for someone to clean up.
A half a dozen boxes of cereal were scattered in strategic spots on the table. Dana sighed and grabbed a bowl and a spoon from the cupboard and found an empty chair near the box of Frosted Flakes. She reached for the box despondently and shook out its contents over her bowl. She was rewarded with three Frosted Flakes and a small pile of Frosted Flake Dust. She grumbled about the inconsiderate person who took the last of HER Frosted Flakes, and stood up to throw the box away.
"Are there any other boxes I can throw away while I'm up?" she asked, trying to be polite.
She was handed three, two of which were her second and third favorite brands of cereal. She glared at Remy who was munching away obliviously on the last of the Rice Chex.
She snarled quietly as she stalked to the trash can and back. She made a swipe at the Honey Nut Cheerios on her way to her seat, but found Bobby's hand was already on the box.
He smiled up at her pleasantly as he tried to wrench the box out of her grip. She clenched her jaw and stubbornly refused to let go.
"Dana, I had them first!" He tugged sharply on the box again.
"Eat YOUR cereal. One of your way-too-sweet ones that no one else will touch!" She spat through clenched teeth, as she pulled on her side of the box.
"I'm not in the mood for Lucky Charms!" He iced up her hand, before she could react with her powers. She yelped and let go of the box.
He emptied the last of the contents of the box into his bowl, and handed her the empty box. "Would you throw this away for me, please?"
"I'm going to kill you, Drake!" she yelled as she smashed him over the head with the box and yanked his chair out from under him, sending him sprawling on the floor. She would have leapt on him and started punching if Scott hadn't acted quickly and held her back.
Bobby eased up into a sitting position, and glanced up at Sam who was looking at Dana with a somewhat scared and shocked expression on his face, his spoon frozen halfway between his bowl and his mouth. "Guthrie? You wanna try and control your girlfriend?" he asked with an eyebrow raised.
Sam shook his head slightly, but put his spoon down and approached Dana, who was still breathing hard and glaring at Bobby with such passionate hatred it made him flinch.
Dana looked at Sam as he touched her shoulders, but her gaze only softened a little. She stiffened and forced some composure on herself. "I'm sorry. I think I need to go outside," she announced to everyone. She didn't sound particularly repentant.
She quickly walked to the door before anyone could remind her that she was supposed to eat something. She heard Sam's footsteps follow her out the door.
"Dana? Are ya okay?"
"No!" she yelled back. Wasn't it obvious? She was losing it.
She heard him blast, and expected him to fly off in frustration. She was surprised into clumsiness when he suddenly fell just in front of her and she tripped into his waiting arms.
"Dana, you've gotta relax. You're too tense ta think clearly."
She struggled out of his arms and tried to walk past him, but he reached out and grabbed her again. She thrashed in his grip and tried to push away, but his strong arms wouldn't yield and she gave up with a sob, sinking to her knees on the snow. He knelt next to her, his grip never slackening.
He whispered soothing words to her and gently rocked her back and forth in his arms.
"What's wrong with me?" she asked him.
He stroked her hair. "Nothing's wrong. Ya just need ta get used ta yer own emotions again."
"What if I never loved you?" she asked quietly.
She felt him tense. She wished she could feel exactly what he did.
"What do ya feel now?" he asked quietly after a moment.
"Right now I love you with all of my heart." His shoulders slumped in relief. She hadn't realized that he'd been holding his breath. "But just a moment ago I hated you with equal passion. Everything is up and down." She broke into another sob. "And I'm crying about everything!"
She felt his chest move slightly as if he was repressing a chuckle.
Anger rose in her, but she found enough control to stuff it away somewhere.
"Even if ya don't love me, Ah'll still be yer friend."
"And my pseudo- big brother?"
He nodded fondly at her. "But right now, Ah think ya should just relax."
She did as he told her, and she went limp in his arms, leaning against him. She let his soothing accent wash over her. There were no harsh sounds when he spoke, it was all open vowels. She shivered slightly as she let the last of her strong emotions flow away from her. She let go of all her stresses, her responsibilities, her life. Her entire universe was only his heartbeat and his voice.
They stayed like that for at least an hour. They came back into the house silently. The only word breathed between them was Dana's whispered words of thanks.
The X-Men busied themselves readying the mansion for the annual X-Team holiday get-together. It was hosted at a different headquarters every year, and this year it was at the mansion. In theory it was supposed to be non-denominational, after all, not all mutants celebrated Christmas, but Bobby had managed to thwart that ideal a bit. Years ago, trying desperately to be funny, had crafted an awful pun calling the gathering the X-Mas party. Everyone had groaned, but the name stuck. Bobby was insufferably pleased with himself whenever someone called it by that name.
For her part, Dana was excited to finally meet the other mutants involved in the fight for respect. Especially a young mutant named Paige Guthrie. Sam had had access to her brother for months now. They'd become great friends. She was pretty sure they also shared secrets about her.
Well, turnabout was fair play.
Dana placed a tray of cookies on the table. She frowned as she rearranged them a bit.
"Stop fussin', Dana." Rogue placed a bowl of potato chips next to the cookies. "Next you'll be arrangin' the chips."
Dana grinned. "Well that one there does look a bit out of place..." she teased.
Rogue slapped her hand away from the bowl and shook her head at Dana. "Go back to the kitchen and get some more food." She waved Dana away from the table. "And get that lazy boyfriend of yours to stop watchin' and start helpin'."
Dana turned to see Sam looking at her admiringly. She smoothed her hands down her sides and grinned self consciously at him.
"Go on..." Rogue motioned them out of the room.
Sam came and took Dana's arm in his and they walked together toward the kitchen.
"Can Ah just say... ya look gorgeous," Sam said to her as he admired the dark green blouse she wore.
"Flattery will get you nowhere... at least as long as Hank and Scott are around..." she teased. "You don't look half bad either, by the way." He was wearing the blue shirt she liked so much.
Dana waited patiently by Sam's side as the passengers on the plane disembarked.
"That's her," Sam whispered to her before a teenaged blond hurled herself at him.
"Sam!" Paige Guthrie embraced her older brother and laughed.
"How ya doin', Paige?"
"Good, now that I finally get to meet this mysterious Dana you keep tellin' me about." She extended her hand towards Dana. "You must be her.
Brown-haired, hazel-eyed goddess. Yup. Checks out." She exchanged a handshake and grinned as she watched her brother's cheeks color. "So, how have you managed to put up with him for a whole year?"
"... and then he turned around and screamed like a girl! He ran away so fast..." Paige paused to gasp for breath. She and Dana were howling with laughter, at Sam's expense, of course.
Sam jumped at the break in conversation and grabbed Dana's arm with a jerk. "Excuse us Paige... Ah think Dana and Ah are gettin' a little thirsty..." He pulled Dana away towards the punchbowl.
Dana bit hard on her lip to keep from laughing and wiped the tears from her eyes.
"So much for salvagin' muh dignity..." he muttered.
"Sam, we're not laughing at you, we're laughing with you!" she teased.
He narrowed his eyes at her.
"Oh, don't you even start to feel picked on... It's not like you and Marc don't ever talk about me."
"We don't ever say anythin' bad about ya..."
She rolled her eyes and snorted. "As much as I hate to bring it up again... You seem to have forgotten the "invisible friend" fiasco again."
Sam snickered. "Oh yeah... That's right. Ya know Marc tells those stories really well. Ah've tried to tell them and they don't sound half as funny. Maybe it's because he does the voices." He started to chuckle.
It was Dana's turn to be annoyed. She smacked him on the arm.
"Hey!" Sam exclaimed as he rubbed his arm.
Dana sighed and grabbed a cup of punch. She leaned back against the table and surveyed the room. "Well, it looks like almost everyone is here." She took a sip of her drink and sighed. "How am I ever going to remember all their names AND their code names on top of that? There's so many of them."
"It's not that hard." He smiled at her and they walked away from the table. She followed him around for a while, trying to commit names and code-names to memory, but eventually he fell in with a couple of his old teammates, and she felt a bit out of place. She made a graceful exit and looked for someone that she knew.
She made her way back to Page Guthrie, who was standing with a group of other younger people.
"So anyway, when I was with the X-men..." a young oriental girl was saying. The rest of the group groaned and started to move away.
"You were with the X-Men?" Dana asked, slowly moving into the group.
The girl smiled, obviously thrilled at having a new person to tell all her stories to. "Yeah." She extended her hand. "I'm Jubilee."
"Pleased to meet you." Dana acknowledged taking her hand. "I'm Dana Hawkes."
Jubilee looked over to Paige. "She's the one Sam's goin' with?" Paige nodded in response.
Jubilee put her hand to her forehead. "I am forlorn, my heart is broken! My dear hayseed has found love in the arms of another woman!" she said melodramatically before she dissolved into laughter. "Good for you. Tabitha was a real nut case. Glad to see that Sam's finally given her the ol' heave ho."
"Tabitha?" Dana asked slowly. "Who's Tabitha?"
Both Paige and Jubilee raised their eyebrows. "He didn't tell you about Tabitha?" Jubilee asked.
Dana shook her head.
Jubilee was about to say something, probably not at all complimentary by the look on her face, but Paige elbowed her in the stomach and beat her to words.
"Tabitha was Sam's ex-girlfriend. I'm not sure what finally broke them up. They just stopped seeing each other. I'm betting it had something to do with when Sabertooth escaped from the mansion, and Betsy got hurt so badly. Tabby was partially responsible..."
"Partially!?" Jubilee began before a sharp look from Paige sent her into silence.
"Tabby was partially responsible," Paige began again, "and she took it rather hard. She changed her name from Boomer to Meltdown, and she's angrier now. Shorter temper, quick to judge... I don't think their relationship was ever the same."
Dana pursed her lips into a line and nodded. "I've seen pictures, but Sam never told me that she was anything more than a teammate."
Paige snorted. "For being an X-Man he can be incredibly dense sometimes."
"They're all dense sometimes. Like this one time, when I was still with the X-Men..." Jubilee was interrupted by Paige sticking her hand over Jubilee's mouth.
Sam Guthrie and Roberto DaCosta stood in the corner of the room surveying the group.
"So, anyway, Tabitha said she'd be a little late, but she should be here soon. It's been a while for you two right? Don't do anything too mushy for your little reunion, right?" Bobby teased.
"Tabitha?" Sam asked, startled. "What do you mean mushy?"
"Sam, I know it's been a while for you two, but you can't have completely forgotten your girlfriend, have you?"
"Girlfriend!? Ah thought she hated me! Ah thought she wanted to break it off!" Sam's face fell and he put his hand to his forehead and groaned.
"Man, she's been talking about you non-stop for the past week! She feels really bad about never getting in touch with you and wants to get back together."
"Ah can't get back together with her! Ah thought we had broken up! Ah found Dana!" He sighed. "Now what am Ah supposed to do?"
"Who's Dana?"
"See the brunette over by muh sister? That's Dana Hawkes."
Bobby looked to where Sam was pointing and examined Dana with a critical eye. "You and her?" He cocked his head to one side and examined her again. "I mean, I'm sure she's a great girl and all, but I think Tabby's got her beat in the looks department."
"Maybe so, but fortunately, that's not the only thing to judge women on. Dana's one of a kind." Sam shook his head. "I don't know how to describe it. She's just perfect for me. She wants to be alone when I need some time by myself, she wants to be with me when I need her... She loves me as much as I love her. It's like she was made for me." He looked at her and smiled, but memories of the past few weeks began to color his thoughts.
"Or she was..."
He sighed and leaned back against the wall. He finally had come to terms with what Cable had said about Dana changing. Truly she wasn't the same person anymore. Her fits of uncontrollable emotion had become less frequent, but every time she did have one it was left up to him to get her under control, him being the boyfriend and all. During those times he almost wished she'd been sent away to learn control. She said things during those times that he didn't want to hear. She said she hated him, but then she'd say that she loved him. Somewhere in between lay the truth, and the only thing in between was friendship.
He slammed his hand against the wall and cursed. She was slipping from his grasp. One day he would lose her completely and another man would be there to catch her. She'd love him like she once did Sam, and Sam envied him with all of his heart.
He watched her again, laughing and talking with his sister and Jubilee. He wanted to walk over to her and prove himself wrong. He wanted to kiss her, and have the rest of the room go away. She'd look up at him with her flashing brown-green eyes and tell him that everything would go back the way it was.
Lately, though, she'd been a little shy around him. Like she had at the very beginning of their relationship. He had to initiate everything. And then there were always the times when she'd pull away from him...
He felt very tired all of a sudden.
"Uh, excuse me Bobby. Ah'm not feelin' well. Ah'm gonna go find somewhere to sit down." He moved away from the wall leaving a rather dumbfounded Bobby in his wake.
"Excuse me, are you Dana Hawkes?"
Dana started at the tap on her shoulder and turned away from Jubilee and Paige to face the slim blonde that had tapped her.
"Yes, I'm Dana."
"I'm Meggan, and this is Dr. Moira McTaggart." Dana shook hands with both women. "We're with Excalibur."
Dana nodded, wondering what the two women could possibly want with her.
"I heard you were a healing empath, and I thought I should come over and introduce myself as a fellow empath," Meggan continued. "I also heard you were having a bit of a problem with your shields."
Dana flinched at the mention of her shields. It was rather embarrassing to think that it was common knowledge.
"Don't worry." Meggan smiled at her. "I had problems too, except I happen to be a shapeshifter, so It's a little more noticeable if I get caught up in someone else. I once transformed into a female version of the elf over there when he was feeling lonely." She pointed over her shoulder at Nightcrawler "I just thought I'd offer my services as a teacher if you can't solve your problem here. I know how hard it was for me to learn to separate my thoughts from others, and I'd hope that I could make it easier for you."
"I appreciate your offer, but I'm going to try to work on it here first. I'd like to stay with the X-Men if at all possible, but if push comes to shove, I'll give you a call." Dana smiled in thanks.
Moira spoke up. "Och! I'll bet that blasted blue McCoy dinna even ken the extent of yer powers!"
"What Moira means is that she'd be happy to help you learn the limits of your healing abilities. She's working on a cure for the Legacy Virus and she feels you could be a great benefit to her research." Meggan winked.
"I didn't know there were mutant headhunters," Dana said smiling.
"I'll think about it, really, but right now there are just too many reasons to stay here. I've got support from friends here, and I'd hate to leave them unless absolutely necessary."
Sam's quest to find a chair was a fruitless one. The few chairs in the room were already occupied. He sighed and made his way out of the room to get some fresh air. The number of people in the room were almost suffocating. He passed under the arch of the door and froze.
"Sam! How come you never write anymore!" Tabitha's voice stirred old memories and feelings in him. He swallowed and turned to face her.
"Sorry. Ah've been a little busy lately."
"You're always busy!" She dismissed his comment with a wave of her hand and embraced him. "It's been so long! I've missed you so much! Is it too much to ask that you fly out to see me every once in a while?"
She felt so much different than Dana in his arms. They were completely different body types, but more that. Every time he held Dana now-a-days he'd needed to comfort her. Tabitha was demanding nothing more than a hug.
She stepped back from him and looked up. "Sam! Look! We're standing under mistletoe!" She smiled broadly and pointed at her lips with one finger, the nail of which was painted a blinding neon pink.
Time froze for Sam. Thoughts of Dana still clung to him, and tried to pull him away, but with Tabitha back in his arms, it was just too much. She was asking nothing from him. She wouldn't keep him up at nights with worry, she didn't need him to bring her back from the brink. If she flipped out, it was on her own terms.
And then, she was still as beautiful as he remembered.
It was too much, and it all overcame his thoughts of Dana easily.
He lowered his head and kissed her deeply.
"Oh my God..." Jubilee exclaimed quietly as she looked over Dana's shoulder.
"What is it?" Dana asked, starting to turn around.
Jubilee reached out and grabbed her, preventing her from turning all the way. "Don't! It's... uh... nothing," she stammered.
Dana turned to look at Paige, who was staring at the same thing as Jubilee apparently. Her mouth was open in shock.
"Okay, that's it! I want to see what's going on behind..." Dana stopped in mid-sentence as she turned and saw her boyfriend Sam kissing his ex-girlfriend Tabitha under the mistletoe. Deeply.
"Geez, hayseed, come up for air, will ya?" Jubilee muttered before Paige punched her in the arm.
Dana felt lightheaded. Her knees almost buckled and she reached out to steady herself against the wall. She leaned her head against its cool surface while emotions warred in her. Betrayal, loss, anger, sorrow...
"There's gotta be a reasonable explanation for all this," she whispered to herself, trying to calm the emotions raging in her. She wished she could reach out to him and read his intent. Cable's shield was more than a little frustrating. "He wouldn't just..."
Jubilee came over to her side, and Dana grabbed the front of her jacket like a lifeline. "They're underneath mistletoe. They're just friends following tradition." She told Jubilee as her grip on the jacket became more fierce.
"Dana, like ,I'm sorry, but friends don't kiss like that."
Dana turned to look again and knew Jubilee was right. She was saved from looking for long by the tears that blinded her.
She breathed deeply and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
She took careful steps towards the doorway, hoping to slip out before she got out of control and made a scene.
Luck was not kind, however, and Sam and Tabitha broke apart the second before she got there.
Sam swallowed hard at the sight of her. Tabitha looked at her questioningly.
"Wow. What's wrong?" Tabitha reached out to her.
Dana sniffed and backed away from her outstretched hand. She ignored Tabitha completely and looked at Sam. "I always wondered why you'd chosen me. I guess I know now that it was because there was no one else around to compare me to. Was I always just a substitute for her, or did you even once really love me?" She pressed her lips together hard to prevent from sobbing and left before she could get an answer.
#Dana, what's wrong?# Cable's concerned voice echoed in her mind.
*Leave me alone!* she thought back at him harshly.
What started as a calm walk to her room turned into a uncontrolled sprint by the time she reached the stairs. She controlled her sobbing until her door was closed, but once it shut she sagged against it and let the tears fall, knowing full well that the hysteria she was about to work herself into was of a magnitude that only Sam would have been able to help her out of.
She fell forward onto the floor as sobs racked her body and wanted nothing more than for Sam to come up and take her into his arms, and she loathed herself for wanting him.