Wounds from a friend can be trusted but an enemy multiplies kisses. Proverbs 27:6

***

The comforter was heavy enough to discourage her from moving and puffy enough to envelope her body. The bed sheets were tightly stretched across the bed to cocoon her body, crisp and cool to hold her still in comfort. Her favorite pillow beckoned her to lift her hair up and lay down on it so it could gently support her neck. Soft classical music, a nocturne, played on her stereo, the room was chilly, and a soft wisp of lavender circulated. Every vital ingredient was in place for a peaceful slumber, for which Celeste was grateful.

Emma was piling on the road travel as a convenient way to keep her assistant away from her boyfriend, Matt. While the work setting up Emma's mutant underground was worthwhile and needed, it meant that Celeste wasn't there for the students anymore. She wasn't even there for Ariel.

From the window, the older sister watched the younger one wait for Jubilee. She had really hoped that somehow Ariel had been able to make an internal change and finally come to peace with whatever was bothering her. The report she got last night told Celeste differently.

Celeste touched the window pane as she watched her sister sit silently on the swing. She wished she could find a permament way remove the barrier that Ariel had set up to keep her sister away. Whatever was troubling her sister-- the process of becoming an adult, discovering herself, finding her place in the world— was something that Ariel couldn't admit to needing help with.

Celeste smiled as she watched Jubilee approach her sister. Maybe, just maybe, Ariel would respond to a friend like she did to Matt, she thought as she closed the blinds.

***

Ariel could see her sister watching her, with a familiar half frown across her face. Celeste wore that expression more and more when she was home. The teenager pumped harder against the ground and climbed higher into the sky.

She was mad at herself for slipping up at Janette's party last week. The drink had been her favorite, a Singapore Sling, and she wanted just to take a sip. The sip became a cup and then Cal had had Samuel Adams, which metamorphosed into half a bottle of Jack Daniels. The next male she remembered was Matt who took her to his place and tucked her in on the couch. After that, Ariel saw no reason to continue to avoid alcohol, like she had been doing.

Celeste had enrolled her in Emma's school to give her a sense of routine, but lately the only routine she cared about was getting drunk. And she liked it like that.

***

Celeste's private line, the one that only a handful of people knew about, rang as she pulled back the sheets. She looked at her pillow and looked at the phone, debating the wisdom of answering it. Tony knew how frazzled she was so he wouldn't call. Cindy, a friend from Hollywood, was working on a movie and had no time to call. That left Sam or Rahne. With a sigh, she picked up the phone.

It was Rahne. The two women had just enough in common and were different enough to make them more like sisters than friends. "Hey, Rahne!" Celeste smiled.

Rahne's voice came over the speaker, downcast. "Can A talk tae ye?" Her normally cheerful bounce was missing.

"Sure," Celeste agreed, worried about her friend. "I'm going to need some time to relax from the trip." That was a slight lie, but it would make Rahne feel better.

"How long?" As much as Rahne needed to talk, she wasn't going to keep Celeste very long if she was truly tired.

_Three seconds,_ Celeste thought but, because this was a friend, she answered, "About half an hour." Knowing the way that they tended to talk, that would become an hour or so. Still, someone needed her more than she needed sleep. And more importantly, this someone she could actually help.

Rahne smiled and quickly divided that time in half. Celeste was tired but they both cared more about others than themselves. "Sam an' A had a spat."

"What about?" Celeste had her fingers crossed for that couple, they worked in a very real way. Somehow, seeing the two of them grow together made her believe in fairy-tale type love again.

"A was writin' when he got some bad news about the MLF." Rahne, who was a talented writer, had recently started a series of children's stories. And her oldest and best friend, Dani, was a member of the Mutant Liberation Front. "They attacked a college lab in the States for doin' research into blockin' mutant powers."

Celeste grimaced. Rahne still had hope that one day Dani would come back to the side of the angels. Sam had given up on that happening. The two of them tended to fight over her. "And?"

"A told him he was an insensitive, arrogant lout with ..." Rahne started laughing as she remembered the exact wording. "Let's just say A used yer trick of cursin' in more than one language."

"Southern American English meet Scottish English, the battle of the accents!" Celeste tried to make her friend laugh again. "And then what happened?"

"Meggan complained of the headache we were givin' her so Sam 'n' Pete took off to the bar," Rahne sighed as she thought about the fight. "What do ye think?" Celeste debated internally about what to say, then decided to confront the matter. "Rahne, let me ask you a question. Would Dani ever attack you?" "Never!" The very thought appalled Rahne. "That's what Sam thought, but he was wrong." Celeste said. "Sam told me about the whole thing, about how she attacked him with her powers when he was in X-Force." "He has nae told me." Rahne didn't like the idea of Sam keeping a secret about Dani from her. "If you'd asked, he would've told you without hesitation, but otherwise, he didn't want to hurt your feelings. He knows about your friendship with her, so his heart was in the right place. Remember how I told you that Sam walked in on a flashback?" She continued quickly so Rahne couldn't answer. "He told me about all this then, to kind of assure me that we all have our own fears to face." Celeste shut her eyes briefly, then continued. "Sam's distrust of Dani comes from what she did to him. He'd been in the middle of getting over becoming aneXternal when Dani's powers pulled out his worst fears of seeing all his loved ones dying while he lived. Yourself included. There was no way Dani could have known what her arrow would've done, and Sam recognizes that intellectually, but his emotional attitude towards her has been colored by that event ever since."

Rahne thought about that for a moment, then decided to get to the heart of the matter. Her's and Sam's problems had more to do with the fact they were talking about marriage. "Ye know, in the past few weeks, we've gone from sayin' 'if we get married' tae 'when we get married' and when Sam said 'when we get married, are ye gonnae tae feel comfortable with her in our house?'and really set me off..."

Female friendships, especially the bond that Rahne and Dani shared, were hard to end. Through Tony's connections, Celeste had met with the MLF and Dani a couple of weeks ago and personally could see both sides of the debate. Dani was an honorable person but the MLF was a dangerous place. "And your answer?" She fingered the notes that Dani had given Tony to slip to Rahne and Sam. The perfect moment hadn't presented itself yet.

Rahne sighed. "Nay, A donnae want her in me house until she's back wi' the X-Men, or at least away from the MLF, but that wasn't the point. I miss her so much sometimes." Celeste opened the note for Rahne and wished she had a way to tell her what it said. Dani missed Rahne too.

Biting her cheeks so she wouldn't yawn, she asked gently, "What was?" Sam and Rahne were going a little too fast, semi-planning to get married. Personally, Celeste would have been happier if Rahne was a little older and Sam a little more experienced in the world. Not that she would wish her experiences or life on them, but they really didn't understand real life. Then again, her Granny used to say that some things, like marriage, it helped to be a little blind.

"The point?" Rahne sighed. "It's like when Mummy helped me get muh new car. A loved the car, A wanted the car, A could afford the car, but A was afraid of buyin' the car." Rahne nodded as she understood what she was feeling. She wanted to marry Sam, but she also was experiencing a form of buyer's remorse. "And Sam and A need tae talk about that more."

Celeste smiled and got settled into the big comfortable chair she kept in her room as she told Rahne, "Gal, I'm just waiting for you and Sam to really talk about raising children." She wanted to see the two of them have pre- marital talks with Sam's minister after they were engaged.

"Last night's fight," Rahne informed her. "A donnea mind all these fights, we work things out because of them, but this is a hard point." Rahne didn't want her children to live in constant danger, like they would if they lived with the X-Men but all Sam could really wanted to do was lead a team. They were at an impasse. "An' A know, talk it oot. Get help if we need it." Rahne read her friend's mind.

"Bingo!" Celeste said with a yawn.

***

Jubilee found her best friend swinging under the tall oak tree. She waved to draw her out of her funk and sighed. It wasn't that easy anymore. Ariel wasn't the same person that Jubilee had known.

Ariel jumped out of the swing, landing perfectly, just like they had been taught in class. "Want to do something?"

Jubilee sighed again, feeling the same sense of regret she got whenever they talked. "We were going to do something, homework, remember?" The blonde shook her head. "You owe three papers to Frosty."

Ariel shrugged, honestly not caring. School, once her favorite thing, was meaningless. What did it really teach her about survival? Getting a job, paying bills, and having fun weren't covered. "Why bother? Paige, Ev, and M will get the A's in the class, you a B+, Angelo, Jono, and I will get C's." Emma graded her history class on a curve.

Ariel would be lucky to get a C, Jubilee knew. The girl didn't care anymore about anything important. "You used to get the A's, remember?"

"Point?" Ariel shrugged. "Let's go do something fun."

Jubilee heard her fireworks start to explode around her as she felt her temperature rise. Her friend shouldn't get away with this. Celeste was buried in work, Ariel was mad at Angelo for some unknown reason, and no one else really wanted to have this talk with her. Jubilee was going to give her a piece of her mind.

***

"Ye lied tae me!" Rahne said as Celeste yawned broadly for the second time. "A could have talked tae Kitty, ye know. Ye need tae sleep."

Celeste sighed. Rahne's problems were more important than rest. Ariel's she could do nothing about, at least she could help someone else. "It's okay," she reassured her friend. "I can't sleep without nightmares right now anyways."

Instantly, Rahne was worried. "What happened tae ye?" Something in her tone of voice was very familiar, Celeste noted with a smile. It was the same thing that she heard when she was being Madre to the team.

The truth was that Emma's underground had found out that Xavier's underground had known about a child, Gracie, who was being abused and molested, but had failed to change the situation. Xavier's underground focused on making changes from the top, on the authorities and lawmakers, while Emma's was more about the mutants themselves. Like every civil rights movement, it was a combination of the two that would succeed, but Gracie wouldn't be there to see the day that it finally happened. Celeste had gone in alone after social services had failed to follow up on Gracie. The child's father had caught them leaving and tried to shoot Celeste.

The truth wasn't something that could be repeated to Rahne, not without risking that the X-Men would find out about Emma's underground. "I knew too much about one of Emma's projects and someone wanted that information-- one way or another. I made the mistake of saying over my dead body, and they wanted to agree," Celeste lied.

***

Ariel turned around at the explosions. "What?" she asked, surprised.

"You!" Jubilee paused, wanting to slap and strangle her best friend at the same time. Ariel was throwing her life away, and she wasn't going to allow it.

"What about me?" Ariel reached in her jacket and stroked the flask she had stashed in the inner pocket. She just wanted a drink.

"Dude, you have a 'tude that is unbelievable!" There was a faint cloud of fireworks around Jubilee's head.

Ariel shrugged, not caring. Nothing really mattered, nothing but satisfying her deep longing for the vodka Matt had given her.

Jubilee nearly lost it at that shrug. Laying into her friend, she asked her, "What's the problem?"

"You are!" Ariel shouted back. She could handle herself and didn't need people worrying about her.

***

"Ye okay?" Rahne asked, stunned. Normal people didn't have to worry about someone trying to kill them.

Celeste paused, remembering holding the young mutant in her arms as she faced the child's father. She remembered the way the gun sounded as he pulled back the trigger. That long moment she would remember for the rest of her life. "Shaken, but Tony was there." Tony had disarmed the man and arranged for some people to pay the father a little visit. The next day, as Gracie was getting settled with her new family, her father's body had been found floating in a river.

Rahne was surprised in a unsurprised way to hear about the attempt on her friend's life. She knew Celeste's job was more than her friend said it was. Otherwise, Tony, Emma's head of security, wouldn't be with her so often. Whatever the true story, if Celeste could ever tell her the truth, it would show two brave souls. "He watches out for ye," Rahne told her with a grin. "A'm glad ye are okay."

Celeste smiled and wished she could tell Rahne the true story. Saving little Gracie was part of her personal penance, just as her involvement in the mutant underground was part of her hair shirt. But to tell her friend everything would risk everything. "Tony does look out for me. It's nice to need someone instead of needing someone."

Rahne smiled when she heard the last sentence. Celeste and Tony were a wonderful team, one that she wanted to see together for a long time. "The story A want tae know is why ye've forgiven him for holding ye hostage." Rahne said, trying to cheer her friend up. Sam had gotten the story from Paige and told her and it was funny.

Celeste smiled and laughed. Tony had saved her life three times, once when he took her hostage, another during the past trip, but the second time was cute. She'd met with someone about Emma's underground and nearly had gotten involved in a mafia hit. Tony had been nearby and told the guys to leave her out of it, and out of respect for him, they did. "We were outside a restaurant, and Tony told me that Emma had hired him as head of security. I kneed him in the groin, hit him in the back when he doubled over, kicked him in the shin, stomped on his foot, and then smiled as I said 'Nice to meet you-- what did you say your name was again?'"

Rahne giggled. "And ye started tae pray for him..." Celeste had explained that she was determined to give Tony a chance to understand and act on the difference between right and wrong. She had started to pray for the strength to help him change.

"I was praying as he was groaning, that's for sure!" Celeste laughed. Tony never said a word about her reaction besides he deserved that.

Rahne chuckled again and smiled. She knew she wasn't getting the full story about Celeste's job, but she knew enough to be glad that she had a friend with her, one that cared about her enough to tag along behind her. Maybe Tony wasn't the perfect person to go through whatever Celeste was going through with her, but he was the best. A perfect person wouldn't have chemistry with Celeste, constantly challenge her, and would let her stand on her own two feet. Tony did all that and Celeste needed it, now more than ever.

"A donnea know if Sam ever said he was sorry for attacking Matt..." Rahne said after a moment. Her boyfriend's heart was in the right place. "He was tryin' tae protect ye. He says that no one used tae look out for ye and, as much as ye mean tae him and me, we need tae try." Sam had a habit of adopting the family-less and, with the current troubles with Ariel, Celeste was really all by herself.

Celeste smiled, hearing the compliment in her words. "Rahne, I can actually do a good job protecting my own hide. Sam damn near made a bad situation worse by attacking Matt. The next night, he pulled back to hit me and I'm still afraid that he might." It was a hard thing to say out loud.

Rahne sighed, trying to balance what she wanted to say against what she could say. If Sam ever told her a fifth of the things that Matt said to Celeste, she'd break up with him. She'd grown up under the Reverend's care and knew personally the struggle Celeste would have to face to repair her self-esteem. But finally, knowing the older woman like she did, Rahne simply asked, "Why not just break up with Matt?"

***

Jubilee shook her head and sighed. Ariel was troubled and she wanted to save her friend. "How much are you drinking these days?" she asked bluntly. It was one thing to sneak into Banshee's liquor locker, it was another to constantly drink. Jubilee and Ariel used to do the first, and Jubilee suspected that Ariel was doing more of the second.

Only enough to get up in the morning and to go to sleep at night, Ariel wanted to answer. She was drinking more and more and needed more to get drunk. Matt was nice enough to leave the heavy stuff out where she could find it. "I'm not," she lied.

"Taking?" Jubilee knew Logan would tear into her if she ever got high, so she didn't touch the stuff.

"I'm not!" Ariel looked at her friend, insulted. She wasn't taking anything, she was smoking it. At least, it was the good stuff. She took the money from Celeste's purse or from Matt's wallet when she needed it. Once in a while, she'd steal something from the store and sell it. And she knew if she really needed the stuff, Harry would gladly work out a trade.

It wasn't easy to really hide her addiction, but she had managed it. Celeste searched her room but hadn't looked in the winter jackets, the flour, or the toilet tank. Emma knew something was up, but she wouldn't read her mind to find out the truth. Tony had to know something was wrong, it was in the way he looked at her, but he didn't say anything. But as long as no one really knew, Ariel felt safe.

"Then why are you walking around like some thins stuck up yer crawl?" Jubilee asked, half worried, half angry. She didn't let many people get that close to her, not really close, and Ariel was hurting her.

"Because I'm sick of being the last person my sister worries about!" Ariel had a fear of being abandoned, deeply rooted in the time following her oldest sister Stella's death. She had accidently been left at the funeral home for hours before she had been discovered. Celeste being out of town when Ariel needed her the most had reawakened that fear.

"Yeah, right!" Celeste did her best to be there for everybody who needed her. Jubilee knew that she could count on the older woman just as much as she could count on one of the X-Men. Whatever Ariel's real problems were, it didn't start with her sister being absent. "When Wolvie left me, I didn't do this number."

Ariel was silent for a moment, remembering Jubilee telling her about the incredible amount of loss in her life. Both girls had lost their parents in a car wreck. Jubilee had lost her second father figure when Wolverine left the X- Men, and was cut off from her adopted family when she moved from the X- Men to the school. As a peace offering, Ariel offered, "I'm sorry."

***

"He reaches Ariel," Celeste sighed. Her sister was so much easier to live with after Matt talked to her. Even to her ears, those words were beginning to ring hollow. "I want to break up with him, but I can't do that to her." Celeste fought back a mental picture from a PSA about a battered woman who claimed that she had to stay with her boyfriend because it was best for the kids.

Rahne nodded, knowing that Celeste felt guilty for being on the road so much. It was a case of over-compensation plus inexperience that led Celeste to even think that keeping Matt around was good for Ariel. "And you can hurt yourself?"

That hit Celeste in the heart. "Maybe... or maybe I can't break up with him and hurt my sister." Celeste was Ariel's legal guardian after their parents had died in a car wreck. She had given up her own daughter trying to find a way to save her sister's life. That, and the fact that she had a very slim chance to have any more children, made her super-protective of her sister.

One thing both women shared, in addition to a mothering instinct, was a fear of being controlled by others. Celeste knew she had been bought and paid for by Emma, but that was the only person she would allow to own her. "Ariel controls ye, ye know that. She's pervertin' your need to protect her into a way not to face up to what she's doin'."

The silence on the other end told Rahne she'd hit pay dirt, and she felt awful for doing so. Sometimes, friendship was holding a mirror up to a friend's face and allowing her to see herself clearly. It didn't mean that it was easy. "A'm prayin' for ye." Rahne promised, knowing not to push any more. Celeste weakly yawned. "Now get tae bed."

***

Jubilee looked at the girl who was her best friend and tried not to cry. Ariel wanted to drift away from everything, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Drugs, brooze, or whatever was more important to her best friend than she was.

"Look, dude," Jubilee started. She held back her tears and shook her head. "I like getting good grades, I love you. But, girlfriend, I can't do it anymore." Something had to clue Ariel into how bad she had gotten.

Ariel looked stunned at her friend. "Do what?" she whispered. "Put off homework?"

"Stand by and let you bring me down." Jubilee flipped down her sunglasses so the tears wouldn't show. "So this is it. Either tell me what's buggin' ya or we— we're not friends anymore." Her heart felt like it was made out of lead. If she was a stronger person, a better friend, then these words would never have had to be spoken. She could have held on to the friendship and could have found a way to be there for her best friend. But the price and the pain were too great.

Ariel paused and opened her mouth. She wanted to tell all, but something stopped her. Part of her willed her voicebox to speak, and part of her wanted to keep her secrets to herself. Jubilee stood there and waited until Ariel closed her mouth. Then, even knowing what would happen, she waited a moment longer.

The silence was overwelming, and then Ariel turned and walked away. Jubilee let her. Sometimes, friendship was letting go and waiting for the other to come back. No one ever said friendship was easy.