Reflecting that this was happening too often to him, Sam wrapped his arms around her.  "It's okay," he reassured her, knowing that she needed to cry.

     She shook her head, shivering.  "I messed up, Sam.... really messed up with her..."  She wrapped her arms around herself but pulled herself out of his grasp.

     Sam paused for a moment and tried to find a diplomatic way to say what he thought about the situation.  "Ariel... kids like her need a firm hand, and often professional help."

     She sighed, trying to stop crying.  She hated sobbing in front of other people, a sign of weakness.  She wasn't weak, she couldn't be.  "I should have gotten her help before now... That's what Tony was trying to tell me."  Sam remained silent, and she read that as agreement.  "How bad is she, really?"

     There was a pause between her asking the question and Sam's answer, one that she thought was a indication of how bad he thought things were.  The truth was, Jean Summers had 'called' him and delivered some bad news.  "Ah– Ah'm not goin' to lie ta ya," Sam started, knowing that this wasn't the moment to tell her about Ariel's involvement with her boyfriend, "She needs a lot of help.  Sendin' her away might be the best thing for her."

     His whole demeanor was of one of weariness.  Some part of him hated her for letting Matt into her sister's life.  But more so, Sam hated the other man.  A fiery rage started to build inside of him.  Ariel was all of fifteen.  Matt was twenty-nine.  He blinked, remembering the innocent child Ariel used to be.

     Celeste nodded.  "But my temper?  This isn't me..."  She had been lashing out physically because she was mentally exhausted.

     A smile touched Sam's lips.  "Ah used ta date Tabs... And Ah thank God it was me, not a lot of guys.  She's high strung and puts her nose in where it doesn't belong." He left unstated that if someone else were poking their nose intp family business, he would feel that they pretty much deserved what happened to them.  Quietly and carefully, he suggested, "It might be a good idea to call up your psychologist, thought..."  Once she was back in therapy, he would feel a lot better about telling her that Ariel and Matt had slept together.

     Celeste nodded solemnly.  "I– I'll call Rahne's tomorrow."  She didn't feel comfortable talking to Dr. Tolen when so many of her problems were related to the environment she was in at the moment.

     Emma's urgent warning flashed through their minds, breaking the reflective spell.   Quickly, Sam picked her up and carried her back to the campus.
 
**
     "Where are we?"  Ariel asked as Jono motioned for them to stop by the river.  She was holding her side, wishing she wasn't so out of shape as she gasped for breath.  Since Jono had grabbed her, all she had done was follow him in the woods, in and out of the creek, backtracking and then racing forward.  He had disabled a couple of the sensors with his psi-blast, making it even harder for their trail to be followed.  Now, they were standing in front of a small cave on a cliff.  "Afraid to 'talk'?"

     He nodded and ushered her inside.  Emma could pick up on telepathic conversation, so he was maintaining 'radio silence', so to speak, while blocking Emma's attempts to get into Ariel's mind.  Time was of the essences here.  They needed to leave the grounds as soon as possible.

     The cave had become a favorite haunt of his of late, something he had wanted to share with her before now.  In preparation, he had stored some food in a cooler, enough to last a few days.  He also had hidden about two hundred bucks, which would last them until he could get some money out of the bank.  Part of him had been afraid it would come to this.

     Most importantly though, he had a pad of paper and a pen in the cave.  He quickly scribbled down what he knew.  "That bitch!" Ariel screamed as she read the note.  "How dare she send me away?"

     Jono shrugged, indicating he didn't understand it.  "Just hang tight," he wrote.  "We'll leave after dark," he promised.  And he crossed his fingers, hoping to figure out how to do that.

**

     As soon as Emma's warning reached the people on the campus, they stopped what they were doing and assembled in the computer room.  "Where's Sam?" Rahne asked, worried.

     Her question was answered as Sam came blasting in a second later, his jacket wrapped around a pale, white Celeste.  Rahne raced over to give her a hug, while Tony pulled up a grid by grid outline of the campus.

     He spared her a small smile while imputing commands into the computer, trying to focus on the job at hand.  Cursing, he noted the bubbles randomly placed around the screen.  Indexing the blackout times, he got a rough idea of the two's direction, though he wasn't positive.

     Angelo waited for his go-ahead before  displaying a 3-D map of the campus, predicting the possible tangents that the two could have taken.  A few key strokes later and the campus was completely locked down.  Not even a bird could fly by without the computer letting them know about it.

     Sam, falling into his typical leader role, quickly started making assignments to the groups and sending them out.  Rahne, once she saw how Ariel and Jono had used the creek to throw off her sense of smell, decided to stay behind to give Celeste moral support.

**
     Pushing herself to the limits physically was one way Lucky focused her emotions.  She was created for a soap opera and, if she didn't control herself, could bounce from one emotional extreme to another quite easily.  Already, she had come to see her strong emotions as a liability for most things.  And if she let herself really think about what had happened to her, she had no idea how she'd function.

     So she ran, using the physical pain from her muscles to block out her emotional pain.  By sheer will power, all that she was thinking about was putting her left foot in front of her right as quickly as possible.  Not even the telepathic summons was able to distract her, though she had to promise Emma Frost that if she noticed anything odd, she would call for help.

     Due to genetic tampering, she had inherited her mother's ability to have lady luck smile down on her.   So when she ended up in the middle of nowhere, with no memory of how she got there, she didn't worry.  Instead, she picked a direction and ran.

**
     Jono quickly ushered Ariel into the back of the cave, where they sat in tense silence.  "She's won, you know,"  Ariel said in a resigned tone of voice.  "All her friends are going to make sure I go away."

     Jono shook his head.  Not if he could help it.  All she really needed was time and for someone to love her.  And he did.  It wasn't like the emotions he had had for Paige, where all they really did was sit around and complain that they couldn't act on their feelings.  Ariel had challenged him to discover ways to express what he felt, to write songs and even to laugh.  He felt more like himself with her around than when he was alone.

     And yes, Ariel was troubled.  Jono could see that.  And he didn't expect that she felt the same way about him as he felt about her, or she wouldn't be sleeping with other people.  But he was sure, given enough time and love, she'd get better.  One day, maybe even love him like he loved her.

     Ariel stood up and motioned for him to pull his scarf down.  She needed to stretch her legs so bad that they hurt.  All this quietness was getting to her.

     Seeing the large glow that he made, she shook her head and told him to cover back up.  She grabbed the flashlight and shook it, forcing more juice to flow from the batteries.  "I just want to see where we are," she explained as she started to get a feel for the layout.  The first large section, where they were, was about twenty feet by ten feet.  Moving along the walls, Ariel discovered another, tiny room that Jono hadn't told her about.  "I'm going to look in here," she explained as she slipped away.

     Quickly, Jono started to run after her.  There was a reason he hadn't told her about that room– the large sinkhole in the middle of the floor.  Her scream told him that he was too late.

**

     Emma smiled a little as she got a solid hold on Jono's thoughts.  "We'll be able to find them in a second," she promised.  Suddenly, Celeste felt like she could breathe again as she heard the words,  "They are in a cave."  A look of concern crossed Emma's face as she focused her energies on getting a firm location for the two of them.

     Quickly, the caves in the area were highlighted on the map and readings were taking to see how far the search parties were from each.  Tony paused, waiting for Emma to give him more information while Rahne grabbed Celeste's hand tightly.

     Emma shook her head.  "He's managed to lock me out again."  With a disappointed sigh, Tony started to direct people towards each of the ten caves on the map.

     Rahne gently moved Celeste's out hand away from her mouth.  "It won't do any good tae bite yuir nails now," she reminded her.

     "What am I supposed to do?"  Celeste whispered quietly, so she didn't draw attention to herself from the group up front.  She was tense, nervous, scared, and almost beyond feeling.

     Rahne sat down and looked at her sincerely.  "A'm a big fan of prayer at a time like this," she reminded the other woman.  "A haven't stopped since we found out that she's gone."

     "A lot of good it's done my sister," Celeste hissed.  "She might be in danger, and all you can do is pray!"  Muted hysteria could be heard through her words.

     Rahne smiled, knowing in a way that she couldn't express that her prayers were doing some good.  "At least A'm not pacin' every few seconds, anticipatin' the worst."  The shocked expression on her friend's face told her that she had hit home.  "A've been here more times than ye.... A have a guid feelin' of what ye are feelin', and A ken that A'd be useless out there, almost as much as ye would be."  She could track down stray scents but, with as much water as those two had run in, it would end up being an exercise in futility.  She was better off inside with her friend.

     "I don't know..." Celeste sighed.  "It's not that I don't believe in God– I'm still a Baptist– but I... right now, He seems so far away."  Since she had stopped going to church and let her work take over her life, He did seem distant.

     Rahne smiled gently.  "Just try tae pray... at least ye donnea feel sae helpless."  Celeste folded her hands and closed her eyes to Rahne's satisfaction.  It was the only thing they could do.

 
**
     In a moment of sheer panic, time loses all meaning.  Seconds became hours as Ariel fell down the sink hole.  She struggled, reaching out in the dark for anything, anything at all that might slow her down.  In a period of time too short to pray but long enough for her life to flash before her eyes, she braced herself for what she knew had to be coming.  "God!" she screamed as she fell.

     And somehow, her fingers  managed to find a small crevice on the bluff.   She reached out, trying to get more of her hand on the ledge, but it wasn't big enough to hold more than her fingers.  Desperately, she threw her other hand over and, mercifully, she found she had enough room for her other hand.  Already, her hands were hurting from the sheer strain of supporting her body.

     Carefully kicking around, she found a place to rest the toes on her right foot.  Hoping against hope, she tried for a place to put her left foot.  Finally, she found one at a sixty-five degree angle.  By the time she was settled, every muscle in her body was complaining.

     *Ariel?* Jono called for her, a pain evident in his 'voice' that he hadn't imagined possible.  What was left of his heart had stopped beating when he realized she had fallen.
 
 "Please help!"  Ariel yelled.  "I'm barely hanging on..."  Jono quickly shot a blast of pure energy down by her.  "How bad is it?" she begged.

     His answer was to try to pull her up telekentically.  "No!" she screamed as she felt the jostling.  He wasn't that strong.  If he couldn't lift fifty pounds in the gym the day before, there was no way he was going to be able to lift her hundred and twenty pound frame now.  "Go get help!" she begged him.

**

     Lucky scooped down and picked up a handful of water.  Allowing some of it to hit her fevered brow, she enjoyed the coolness of it before sipping some.  She wasn't about to allow herself to get dehydrated, as she was prone to do because of her skin coloring.

     A second later, she heard a female scream from somewhere close to her.  *Did you get that?* she directed to the telepath listening to her thoughts.

     *We're zeroing in on your location now.* the voice came back.
 
     *I'm going in,* the girl told her, ignoring the sudden telepathic urge to be careful.

      *I'll have someone there shortly,* Emma said in a bemused tone of voice.  Somehow, having employed Domino on several different occasions, she doubted she could have stopped the woman's daughter from doing what she wanted to.

**

     The pause told Ariel that Jono was afraid to go, so she begged.  "I'll die..."  Die if she didn't get help.  Even as the tears streaked down her face, she realized the bitter irony of that.  Her sister, the bitch, was sending her away for help so she could get over her habit.  And if Jono didn't let her go, she'd die because she didn't get any help.

     God!  she begged, Please help me...  And her memory was assaulted by another time she had thought she would die, when at a party she took a wild combination of heroin, speed, meth, and scotch.  Inch by inch, her body grew cold as she felt her heartbeat slow down.  She fought going to sleep with everything she had, begging her friends to take her to the hospital.  But they had refused, afraid for themselves and their reputations.  So she had sunk into the darkness, fighting it every inch of the way.

     And when she woke up again the next morning, she had promised that that was the last time she'd touch any of that shit.  A promise that was broken before the week was out.

    Maybe I want to die, Ariel thought to herself.  It would all be so much simpler if I were gone.  And no sooner did she think that then her left hand slip.  It would be so easy.

     But she fought, struggled to regain her grasp on the ledge.  And in doing so, she realized something on a level she hadn't realized it before.  She was slipping down a dark hole in her daily life and she wasn't fighting her drug problem.  Her drug problem.  She had one.  It was killing her as surely as this abyss was.

     Taking a deep breath, she ordered Jono this time, "Go get me help!"  Hearing the pause, her sweat drenched body started to tremble, which she couldn't afford.  "I need help!" she yelled.

**

     Lucky followed the voice into the cave, allowing her enhanced senses to compensate for the darkness of her surroundings.  Quickly, she found her way back to the other room and, by the dimmed glow of Jono's body, saw the sinkhole.  Looking down, she saw the woman dangling at the end of the ledge.

     "We've got to do something," Lucky shouted at the shell-shocked Jono.

     Wide, pain filled eyes looked back at her. *Wot?* he asked her, slipping into a helpless form of shock.

     Lucky buried her snort.  There were advantages to time travel, she realized.  Until now, her Jono's claims to be a pathetic goth, holding on to the pain of the past, seemed impossible to believe.  "Give me your wrap," she demanded, hoping her voice would be enough to stun him out of his shock.  One didn't hang around X-teams most of one's lives without learning how to handle an emergency.

     He blinked and slowly, as if moving underwater, started to hand her his scarf.  Each layer was removed carefully, as if he couldn't remember how to make his hands work.  Finally, he handed her the material.  Lucky tore off his belt, unwilling to wait for him any longer.

   She fastened the two together and around his middle. *Wot?* he asked again, not sure what was happening.

     Lucky groaned, and started to mentally calculate her chances of pulling off her rescue with his help vs without it.  Blinking, she decided he was a big hindrance, and could make a fatal mistake.  And, with her mother's trademark impatience, she set out to fix the situation.

     Another advantage of being from the future was that she knew Jono's weak spot– two inches down from the breast bone, one centimeter to the right.  A blow of about twenty pounds could stun him.  Thirty pounds would knock him out.  She hit him with about forty pounds of pressure for good measure.

**

     Above her, Ariel heard just the tone of voice as someone demanded something.  Help, she hoped.  A loud crackling smack could be heard.  Looking above her, she saw the faint blue light fly across the cave before slowly moving towards her.

     It was a girl, Ariel realized.  And she had situated an unconscious Jono so that his psi-energy fell down to her left like a flashlight.

     "I'm coming down," the girl yelled.

    How could someone so small help me? Ariel wondered frantically.

     Her question was answered as the child expertly rapeled down to her left.  "I'm going to wrap this belt around you," she said when she was next to her.  "And then, I'm going to need you to climb up with me."
 
     Afraid to talk, Ariel nodded.  "Good," the girl told her as her hands fashioned the belt into a harness and slipped it around her.  "Okay," she exhaled.  "In my time, you never gave up.  You're going to need to be that way now.  Can you not give up on me?"  The voice inspired confidence, even in the face of the fifteen foot climb.

     Again Ariel nodded, this time finding her voice.  "Your time?" she whispered.

     "Long story," the girl informed her briskly.  "One the count of three," she said as she got footholds.  "Ready?"

     "I think." Ariel said as she looked for places to put her hands.

     The girl smiled, "I've got faith in you."  In her time, Ariel was one of the strongest people she knew, both mentally and physically.  This climb should force her to tap into her hidden strength.

     Ariel wanted to tell her that the faith was misplaced, but they were too busy climbing up the sheer cliff.

**

     Finally, four feet from the top, and when Ariel thought she couldn't make it any farther, she saw Berto fly down.    "What did you think you were doing?" he demanded of the girl as he gathered the two in his arms.

     "She would been hurt bad if I hadn't," she explained with a different attitude.

     He flew them to the top and gently set them down at the front of the cave.  Turning his attention to the girl, he told her,  "That was stupid, Lucky... you both could have been killed."

     Ariel, feeling as if she had been suspended in a giant piece of ice, looked at the two, and for the first time realized how small and young the child was who had rescued her.  Suddenly, she started to shake, feeling all the energy leave her body.  "I could have died..." she whispered.

     Berto looked at her with contempt.  "Isn't that what you want?"  With an arrogant gesture, he pulled off his jacket and wrapped it around her.

     "No..." Ariel answered.  "I–I want to live... I want help."  And to her surprise, she meant it.

      Lucky helped her to lay down and elevate her feet.  Once Ariel was prone, the girl shrugged her shoulders.  "I'd say you finally hit bottom."  With a reassuring smile, she told her, "You'll relapse from time to time, but you're over the biggest hurdle."

     Ariel nodded, comforted by those words.

**

     Once outside of the cave, Berto grabbed Lucky and shook her.  "Did you want to be killed?" he demanded of her.  "Because I know easier ways than dragging someone up fifteen feet of rock."

     Terry was next on the scene and, from the stern attitude that Berto was displaying and the mud stains on the child's front, she knew what had happened, and suddenly felt sympathy for X-Strike.  It was no wonder that Lucky had been left behind whenever possible.  She didn't think her way through logically, but instead reacted to the situation at hand.  A fine quality for a soap opera star but, given her genetic make-up, a trait that could get the child killed.

     Lucky looked like she was going to start crying, a trick that Terry recognized from her soap viewing days.  "Don't even think about it– It didn't work for Sami and it won't work for you."  She watched 'Days Of Our Lives' and 'The Young and The Restless' religiously.

     "But..."  Lucky started, trying to explain away her actions.

     Terry shook her head.  "Don't want to hear it."  So this was what it was like for the X-Men with Jubilee and Kitty, she thought with a sigh.  Thank goodness Domino was on her way.

     "I saved her life...."  Lucky trailed off as Terry started to march her and Jono through the woods.  Terry had decided that it would be easier to separate the love birds than to let them stay together.

     "Was I ever that young?"  Berto wondered out loud, and instantly knew the answer.   Ariel stood up woozily and looked at him.  "Ready to go?" he asked roughly.  People like her, who had made their mistakes, didn't garner much sympathy from him.  He'd support them when they started to change their lives around but not when they were addicts.  Which was why his company gave money to rehab programs but not to those that gave needles to junkies.

     Ariel nodded.  "So what's going to happen?" she asked.

     "Your sister is going to take you away tonight... and if you're smart, you'll accept her help."  Berto was thinking about his childhood at that moment, remembering all the foolish stuff he had done.  At least, he never messed up this bad.

     Ariel nodded.  "I am ready to get help," she reminded him weakly as Sam and Celeste found her.

     It was an almost anti-climatic moment when the two embraced.  Celeste knew that her sister knew she had a problem.  Ariel understood that her sister loved her.

     Words wouldn't really do the job at that moment.  Sisters whispered that they were sorry to each other... sorry that there was a problem, sorry that they hadn't faced it before, sorry that it was going to take so long to address all the problems that Ariel had accumulated in her short life span, sorry that Celeste had her own that had blinded her to her sisters, sorry that it had come to Ariel nearly dying to understand that she did have a problem.

     Words couldn't express all that very neatly.  So they held each other and simply promised that they wouldn't give up, that the problems would be overcome.  But most importantly, they held each other.