Lady Lazarus
Before her death, Emma deLauro would have called the rest of the Mutant X team her family. Adam was the father figure, Jesse and Brennan her brothers, and Shalimar her big sister. One big, superhuman family. After her death, Emma started wondering.
Adam liked to roam Sanctuary at the wee hours, and sometimes she'd run into him. Sometimes, when she walked into the kitchen for a glass of milk he'd be there, thoughtfully eating from a bowl of cereal.
Not wanting to disturb his thoughts, she'd pass by him surreptitiously, grabbing her glass as quietly as possible. He'd look up and smile slightly, say hello, and get back to his cereal, as though it were as important as whatever research went on in his lab.
What went on in that mind of his, she'd never know. He was supposed to be the genius, the man with the answers. But sitting there, in that kitchen, he looked like a little boy. Felt like one.
After those late nights, Emma had trouble reconciling that image of him with the man who would be their leader. She'd find herself looking for a weakness, a sign that the man was more like a child, extremely gifted and talented, but a child nonetheless. How many times had he sent them on fool's errands? How many times had they (nearly) died because of him? But they never questioned him, not Adam. Not the man who had, through his genius, through his mad desires, created them.
She'd never, ever ask Jesse or Shalimar whether they thought he was putting them in danger even as he tried to make amends for his past sins. They'd been with him so much longer, truly were his children in a way Emma didn't believe she or Brennan were. Jesse, the sensitive boy-man, would have followed Adam to the grave without thought. Shalimar, for all her independence, for all her pseudo-questioning, always found herself on the right side of things, on Adam's side. Maybe it was part of the feral in her; Adam was the alpha wolf, and she was part of his pack.
After Emma returned (what kind of death could stop one of them, mutants and super-heroes?), things were different. Someone new had arrived, conveniently and neatly to fill the place she'd left behind.
At first meeting, Emma thought she would resent Lexa, dislike her for taking her place. But she didn't. More and more, she saw how convenient it was to have Lexa around, the fourth side to the quadrangle. It left Emma open to stand on the periphery, to peer into Mutant X with fresh eyes. During group meetings she'd hang back and listen, all too aware of her new position as fifth wheel. Every once in a while Shalimar would look back at her, concern written on her face. But then, someone would say something important and the moment would be over. Shalimar would lean against Lexa and smile at her new best friend.
She would have thought Jesse'd be the most attuned to her, the most aware of her presence. That he'd try to include her. Ironically, it was the least sensitive member of the team that seemed the most aware.
Brennan liked to say that he'd never really believed she'd died. That it had seemed too strange to be real. Emma would shake her head and smile sadly at him. Of course I died, she'd say. But I came back.
Emma knew Brennan and Shalimar were having an affair the minute she stepped back into Sanctuary. The air crackled around them and when they thought no one was looking (but Emma always looked), they'd touch hands.
It wasn't such a surprise to Emma that the development in their relationship left her more disconcerted than anything else did. When she stood near them, sometimes she'd feel waves of lust, hitting her as hard as if they'd been made of something solid. She'd rise from her chair, or push herself off the wall she was leaning against, almost dizzy from it, and have to escape to the more proper sanctuary of her room. There she'd lay in bed and try to make sense of the jumble of images, of limbs entangled, flesh against flesh. A voyeuristic thrill kept her from feeling too much guilt at her intrusion.
Sometimes, though, instead of Shalimar, Emma would see longer, thinner limbs warring with Brennan's. The hair he ran his hands through wasn't long and blonde. It was shorter, darker. It belonged to her.
Lexa avoided her, mostly, and Emma got the distinct impression that she scared her a little. This wasn't something Emma could understand easily, not without a little bit of prying, the gentle nudge of her mind in someone else's. It became a cheap, perverse thrill to know that Lexa felt her position in Mutant X tenuous, that with Emma's arrival perhaps she'd be displaced. Emma did nothing to ease her doubts.
Last they'd seen battle, they'd faced off against a mutant much more insidious than any Gabriel Ashlocke ever could be. Ashlocke had been a blowhard, a show-off. No, the last mutant they'd faced (and lost against), had reminded Emma much of herself, and not just because he was a high-level telempath. He'd successfully mind-warped all four in the quadrangle, one by one. Their powers really had been no match for his. Hanging back, as had become her custom, Emma shielded herself against the attack, actually gave as good as she got. He hadn't been defeated, but he'd been scared enough to run. Out of their trance, the quadrangle eyed her with newfound respect. And near imperceptible fear.
Brennan sat with her as she watched television, an obscure film noir with unknown actors and shoddy production values. He pretended to read a dog-eared copy of Song of Myself, but she knew he was watching her watch tv.
"Whitman again?" she asked, not bothering to look in his direction. He responded that Whitman was better than bad television any day. She couldn't argue, though she didn't like Whitman. She told Brennan so.
"Why not?" he wondered.
"I prefer simplicity," she replied.
"Nothing simple about people," he countered. "You should know that."
"Right," she responded calmly. "So when I read or watch tv, I don't want to have to dig through layers to get to meaning. I do too much of that already."
"I thought," he said, confused, "that you read people's feelings as you get them. Unfiltered. Why are there layers?"
She raised a brow. "You think people always know what they're feeling?"
Adam tried to test her, put her in that machine of his, the one that read their DNA, catalogued their powers. It didn't take much -- a slight push into his mind -- to convince him otherwise.
It was still a mystery to Mutant X, the new team, just how Emma deLauro had managed to find herself back from the dead and onto their doorstep one fine Saturday afternoon.
She didn't bother explaining to them that, for her, death had been a temporary sleep, a kind of stasis that she'd let herself fall into until she could emerge, like a butterfly from a cocoon. Her crypt became a haven from thought and feeling, and heroes and villains, and right and wrong. Death made no such distinctions. It welcomed all into it's cold embrace, promising shelter from the world, from the mind.
"Why'd you come back?" Brennan asked one morning over breakfast. Shalimar and Jesse turned and glared at him. With all their loyalty they would never have asked that question, no matter how much they'd wanted to know the answer themselves.
Emma wasn't bothered, was in a way beyond such concerns. Still, the best response she could come up with was, "Where else would I have gone?"
And so she waited. She waited until Shalimar and Brennan's lust burned out. She waited until Lexa got tired of knowing where she belonged on the team. She waited and waited until it all sorted itself out, the way she knew it would.
Emma forgot about death, she forgot about good and evil, and teams. She concentrated on life. She became a strategist of the highest order and when Brennan cornered her in the gym one morning, it wasn't much of a surprise. It was relief she felt flowing through her, the relief of knowing she was right. When he pressed his lips against hers, it was fate. He wouldn't have known it, no one would have, but she had.