Saying Goodbye, Part II

Posted on Mon Jan 9th, 2023 @ 5:54am by First Lieutenant Bethany Harrison

Mission: The Mutant Underground
Location: Underground Base
Timeline: Present Day

----------

Content Warning! Some Adult Themes.

----------

When you cried I’d wipe away all of your tears,
When you’d scream I’d fight away all of your fears,
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have, all of me.

~Evanescence, My Immortal

----------

At that time, she didn’t understand why Jon didn’t just put her on a bus, destination anywhere, and walk away. His life would have been a lot easier if he had. He had told her that there was no way he could just leave her on her own, that he’d never forgive himself if something happened to her and he could have helped. Now she knew better. Now she knew that he didn’t want to walk away from her.

In each other they had found a partner that could almost read what the other was thinking. They came together and worked seamlessly as a strike team, taking out safe-houses and drug dens that Morty controlled. They destroyed the drugs, released captives, and took any guns and money they found, then disappeared into the desert, to the numerous places that Bethany had ferreted out over her years of exploring the lands north of Reno.

Some of the memories from that time were hilarious. Like Destiny and Jade trying to teach her how to be a girl. Makeup, hair, clothes, nails. It was all so much, and she still didn’t really get into all of that so much. She was a soldier, not a Barbie doll. She dressed up for Jon sometimes, but she wasn’t exactly a fashionista.

Trying to teach her how to dance had been embarrassing for her, but some of her better memories. Jon was good at it, and that just made her feel foolish. She could barely keep her feet on heels, which was always an annoyance to her, but when they added dancing to the mix, she felt like the most uncoordinated freak on two legs.

The fact that she had realized that she had feelings for the much older man hadn’t made that any easier. It was all for the mission, to take down Morty, so she pushed through it as though it were any other form of training. Besides, he was in love with another woman, so her feelings were pointless.

When one of the guys that they had fought at one point showed up to the party where they planned to take Morty down, Jon had pushed her against a wall and suddenly kissed her to keep them from being recognized. It had gone a bit further than that, and she had suddenly found herself very willing to let that little distraction, completely distract her from the mission.

If Jon hadn’t been there with her, she would have likely been killed. As it was, she had to spend weeks taking care of Jon after he’d nearly been stabbed to death by the same goon that he had kissed her to avoid.

That had been the first time that she had nearly lost him, and even then she knew that it would destroy her. It was then that she had decided that she wouldn’t let him risk his life in the planned raid against her father’s compound. She knew it was a suicide mission, that the chances of her escaping both her father’s men, and the HYDRA soldiers that had been sent to collect her should she return, were slim to none.

The night before the raid, both of them were emotional, and things had gotten a little steamy between them. But Jon had pulled away before it could get too far. She hadn’t understood at the time. He had wanted to be with her, but couldn’t bring himself to sully her in such a way. In a cave, right before a huge fight that it was likely neither of them would walk away from.

They had set out in the middle of the night, knowing that a night time strike would work better to their advantage. About halfway there, Jon stumbled and Bethany froze.

“Luv, something’s...not...right,” he managed to slur out, fighting to right himself once again.

Tears rolled down her face as she turned and caught him when his knees buckled, and gently lowered him to the ground. “It’s okay. You’re just going to take a little nap, and when you wake up, this will all be over. You have a reason to live. Find Cecily, love her, take care of her. Be happy,” she said, soothing him as the drugs dragged him under.

When he reached up and touched her face, Jon said, “No, luv. I...” then he fell silent, his voice robbed from him by the drugs that she had used, his hand dropping from her face limply.

She had kissed him on the forehead, like he had done to her so many times, a gesture that she had grown rather fond of. Then she covered him up with some nearby shrubbery, to keep him hidden from sight until he woke up, and left him clean canteens.

The operation had definitely gone bad. Her father gunned her mother down in front of her and all semblance of control left her. She, in turn, gunned down her father and had already killed a good number of people by the time that they managed to drop her.

Then she awakened. Not that she remembered it, but she had slaughtered everyone and destroyed everything within five hundred feet in all directions, even leaving a glass-lined crater in the desert sands north of Reno, where she was found right in the center.

Bethany had been surprised to see Jon sitting at her bedside when she woke up, reading to her from some classical book. They were at Drake Academy, somehow, and he had opted to stay with her, watching over her protectively.

“Don’t ever take my choice away from me like that again,” he had said to her.

“I’m sorry. I won’t. Never again,” she swore to him. Though she was secretly glad that she’d left him far enough away that she hadn’t vaporized him along with everything else when she awakened.

Things didn’t really work out well for her at the academy from the start. The lighting in the building was actually starving her, which they didn’t find out right away, since they had no idea that she now required sunlight for proper nourishment, and to recharge after the use of her powers.

Then toss a young woman that had never even seen the inside of a classroom into the middle of a full-blown academy setting. She had tested very high for intelligence, but her education had been lacking, regardless of the fact that she spoke three old languages and could calculate an accurate trajectory with very little effort. She also had a working knowledge of chemistry, as she was a bit of a firebug, trained by crazy survivalists that came from various walks of life.

Add on top of that the fact that she had a minor meltdown while working out in the gym and managed to devastate the entire thing. Luckily no one had been in there at the time, or they would have wound up in the academy morgue resembling something akin to smoked swiss cheese, as her powers had turned the sands in the large punching bag into molten glass shrapnel.

She had struggled to get along with other students, having come from a world very much devoid of any modern amenities, and had only started watching old movies with Jon a few months earlier. Trained as nothing more than an expendable soldier her entire life, modern popular culture was lost on Bethany, which made it very difficult for her to relate to anything, or anyone, around her.

To put the proverbial cherry on the top of it all, while she had been given the choice, the nano-armor had pretty much been something she had been cornered into. Not that she really minded having Julius as a backup when things went wrong, but it felt like there was just no other way to stop her from hurting innocent people otherwise, which terrified her beyond belief.

Bethany didn’t really want to stay at the academy, as nice as the staff seemed to be. She wasn’t meshing well, but she bit her tongue, because staying there was what Jon seemed to want. He was afraid of her now, and that broke her heart. She would do what he wanted though, doing her level best to learn how to deal with the world around her if it meant that he’d stay. She hated herself for that, but it was what it was.

----------

They had managed to stick around for a few months. Bethany still struggled to fit in, but Jon was there to help hold her up, so she kept putting one foot in front of the other. He helped her to study, still trained with her every morning, and they went out on little adventures from time to time. On one such adventure, they were out to eat at a new restaurant, when she noticed him go pale.

“Feel like taking a road trip, luv?” Jon had asked, motioning to the television mounted on the wall.

Bethany’s heart sank when she saw Cecily on the news after some kind of disaster in Chicago. She smiled and nodded. “Let’s do it,” she said, giving a bit of a shrug.

By the time that they reached Chicago, the plan was set. Find Cecily and her brother, get them to safety. Then she’d return to the academy, and Jon would disappear with the missing British nobles to continue to hide them from their twisted uncle. And so that Jon could be with the woman that he loved.

In that time, she had also lost all reason to keep fighting. Before, she had kept fighting for her mother, then she kept fighting for Jon. With destroying HYDRA becoming her only mission in life, she went dark, cold, performing the task at hand proficiently, but with little concern for her own wellbeing.

She had taken a blade meant for Cecily. It went into her lung, barely missing her heart. She knew she was a goner as soon as the blade tore away from her. She managed to keep from burning down everything around her by using what little she had left in her to direct her explosive powers in a certain direction, burning down the man that had attacked Cecily, as well as a few more. And half of a log cabin set back in the woods, lighting fires that rapidly grew as the winds picked up.

She turned and stumbled forward a few weak steps, before collapsing to her knees, a bright bubble of blood bursting from her lips. Cecily helped her back up onto her feet and got her back to the others, but she wasn’t going to make it, she could feel her chest tightening with every breath.

Jon had managed to cut a hole in her chest to try to release some of the pressure, but she was still bleeding out with no way to stop it. “Leave...me. Run...” Bethany managed to say, her voice barely a whisper, choking on her own blood.

“Never, luv,” Jon said, shaking his head. There was no way he could have run, but she didn’t know that. He’d been shot in the leg that was already bad, and he was as stuck as she was.

The annoying British noble that they had rescued from the clutches of his girlfriend’s evil father, surprised everyone when he awakened in the middle of that mess. The winter storm that was already brewing kicked up suddenly, the winds bending trees over to the point of snapping them in half, and a sudden, freezing snow blasted down on them, all of them thrown by a powerful concussive force.

Jon pulled Bethany into his lap, cradling her, trying to protect her from the storm, trying to cover her wound that just kept pouring blood into his hand. “Come on, luv. You can’t die on me,” Jon said, kissing her forehead and trying to smile.

She smiled up at the man that she loved. Bethany could think of worse places to die, and worse reasons for it. She reached up and gently drew her blood-stained, shaky fingers down his face where she had once left garish scratches. “We’ll always...have...Reno...” she said, giving him a weak grin over the cheesy joke about the first movie that they had ever watched together, her voice barely audible above the winds. Then her hand fell limply to her chest as her struggle for breath suddenly ceased, her body going limp in his arms. The last thing she remembered hearing were his panicked, agonized screams as she faded away.

----------
TBC
----------