Disclaimer: These characters belong to Marvel, not me. This could be Psi War Challenge. Or the Weird Pairings Challenge, sort of. Short, alternate universe. --L.

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She screamed. Screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed

And then sat up, in fright. There was still that faint smell of salty sweat, sticking to skin in a cold film, and the room was much too stuffy. She gasped a few times, racing to be free so badly that she fell off the bed in haste. Once the cool air hit her damp skin, she felt a little better. The nightmare, though alive and palatable in wakefulness -- in her mind --had retreated a little bit. Enough to let her know she was real, the world was real. But there was still no way of knowing how long she'd been immersed in the blankets, been tied up in the stiffling fabric, bound and chained, tied in the binds of her mind.

Their mind. Their shared body. 'Don't forget it,' Psylocke hissed, too frightened by the apparitions to be even a little polite, and Jubilee returned the angry flash. The terror instinctively made them reach out, but the nightmare made them rage, violent, dangerous. Bright light melded with grim shadow, and again they were as one-- forced together from fear of a common enemy. The shadowy fireworks display raged on into the night, and they fought away the mental nightmares, taken form from Jubilee's terror and Elisabeth's fragmented psyche.

Some time passed while they were curled up on the floor, but they didn't notice-- too swept up by visions that refused to fade with awareness. The static raged on inside, while outside, in their dark room, the world was eerily silent. Jubilee's face twisted into a grimace, horrifyingly adult and jaded. A blink, and it was innocence, wide eyed and fearful.

They knew, in a way, that it was disconcerting for friends to see Jubilee with such a secretive glance, or have Psylocke's words coming out of a fifteen year old's mouth. The body snatching that was becoming so much more in these twilight hours, right before the dawn and the pitch dark. More than possession. The shadow and the light was mixing.

They couldn't do anything about it. They were still pulling their weight for the good guys, still able to perform on missions. Better than before, except for the nausea, so bollocks to the team. It was the sort of thing Elisabeth, back when she was still Elisabeth, might have said.

The shadows whispered about how long ago that was-- how many years since she had been Elisabeth-- and the dream phantoms howled on.

The Shadow King-- 'It was always shadows with you, wasn't it, 'Lisabeth?' a voice murmured -- had taken Elisabeth and almost buried her, gutted her mind and smashed her soul. But Psylocke had remained. With the help of the dark and the Dawn and the things she couldn't face alone, would never be strong enough to face alone, in the place between, she'd triumphed without her body.

And Jubilee, being frightened and young and trusting, had given her a new one.

They achieved a measure of success in hiding the storm, the rage, and the twilight during the day. The team couldn't sense it, barely realized they were a spliced person. Psylocke demanded she wear sunglasses. The sunlight was so harsh, stark. Jubilee had aquiesced. She was the only one who knew how much it pained Elisabeth to see the brightness without the shadow, an escape route, and what hurt Elisabeth hurt her too.

'Psylocke,' she whispered back fiercely. They weren't under any delusions here. Elisabeth had drowned, dead, and the dark provided with a sense of calm that swirled and mixed and reacted with the sparks in Jubilee. There was barely a soul between them-- Elisabeth was gone.

The girl that was Jubilation Lee was gone.

They'd stolen from each other, corroded each other, battled, stolen, stolen... 'You're the reason I'm not pure anymore, not allowed to be. It used to be so easy, so numb...' Bitter, hard, cold. Dark.

The light retaliated in kind, with, 'You snuck into my head and ate my innocence.'

The war raged on, the dance pulling the elements together, fighting intensely to keep them apart. Seeing the benefit in shared resources—a little gap here, another woven thread there, a little closer now, and we'll be stronger, yeah...

Finally: 'I don't want to fight with you,' Jubilee replied. 'We can handle this. We're awake now, Locke.' Jubilee sat up, and to prove the world to herself, looked in the floor length mirror beside the bed. She felt Psylocke shifting within her, trying to keep herself separate, ignore the face, but Jubilee refused to look away from the lying glass. They faced the Asian features, dark hair, sensual lips that twitched in her knowing and seductive smile involuntarily, open face that was so young, hollow and lean cheekbones, and eyes that showed--

'Nothing. They don't show anything, Locke.' Jubilee padded into the bathroom, and threw up involuntarily. It always went like this. The dark storm, the sparks, the lightning, fireworks, blanketing blackness attacked by the colorful personality that saved her every time. Psylocke tried to apologize, reeling from the ill, trying to separate herself from the splinter of mind that was spewing. She backed away into a corner, and Jubilee's vertigo and vomiting lessened. The mutual self disgust pushed down a little further.

Psylocke murmured, 'You know was I miss, Lee? Quiet.' Jubilee didn't reply. Psylocke already knew the answer. They both heard the undying echoes inside them, the neverending static, noise, and hum. Ears heard nothing, silence, but minds never still.

Shadows and sparks rustled, and suggested the healing, the weaving, the complex patterns of light and dark, comfortingly sweet. The little tendrils of thought curled out, tried to bind them closer to ward off the ill feeling and the chill, tone down the noise.

'We'll never be whole until--'

'We'll never be whole.'

But everything was so easy to absorb, suck away, share completely. Both of them tried to sense the other minds around, see who was about and had possibly heard them. Tense, the start of a fight over the coveted psi talent -- the beginnings of another maelstrom -- and Jubilee deferred. The little Psi talent that Elisabeth still possessed was hard for Jubilee to use. In the beginning, she'd fought tooth and nail to keep it from the teenager, violently attacking the mind that housed her. Only when Jubilee gave into the darkness that terrified her, the shadows that were Psylocke's all, was she able to see with those eyes that telepaths used.

Jubilee didn't fight too hard. Telepathy was the one thing of Psylocke's that Jubilee didn't have automatic access to. Since the only thing Psylocke didn't have access to -- for the most part -- was the body, they'd agreed without words that it was a fair deal.

Words were so rarely needed anymore, but they were comfortingly distant nonetheless.

In a half formed thought: 'If you can let me in, we can at least get back to sleep.' They weren't sure which had spoken it. Never were. The harsh barriers that kept them apart were bending, dissolving into the soft water that was an imagined peace. 'I'm just so tired.'

Jubilee washed their mouth out, and Psylocke forced her to stare into the mirror again, raising a hand to smash it. The shattering echoed in the bathroom, the glass tinkled down, and it was a chorus of singing -- no, screaming -- fragments.

Which was singing? Which was screaming?

Jubilee looked down at her hand, cut and bloody, and felt the noise echoing.

They moved back into the bedroom, too tired to fight each other for control. Darkness gave into color, and color faded to black -- both in the name of exhaustion. Laying back down into the bed, they tried to be comfortable, curl up within a wall of Self, try not to hear and feel the other Self snaking around within them. The part that recognised itself as more Jubilee mentally played solitaire to try and get to sleep.

'Always playing games, eh Lee?'

'Me? You're the one stuck in another Asian body.' But their hearts weren't in it, didn't have the power or the energy to fight to stay apart. Sleep, dreamless sleep, was the only thing they craved.

The part that remembered Psylocke knew that eventually she'd tear what was left of herself away, and go to the astral plane -- the only place Jubilee couldn't follow her -- and just not come back. And soon. Tomorrow, maybe.

She could still do that. She could.

Jubilee shifted under the covers, and wished fleetingly for some company in the bed. She might not be an adult, but whether they knew or not, she was no child. She heard the mental snort as a part of herself, and wondered suddenly if the longing for company had been her or not. She clutched her fist tight, and desperately tried to hold on to the piece of brightness not tainted by twilight. Psylocke laughed bitterly in her head, and they thought in tandem, 'Tomorrow, I should get a haircut.'

The fright came back, three times as terrible. Ironically, they clung to each other when it washed over them instead of drawing apart, only banishing the fear when they banished the loneliness. It was the only binding force, the only thing they had in common. Binding, alluring, fearful, peaceful, and quiet. Fear of losing sight of the horizon, the walls... and the strength they found together... well, it only made it worse.

One mind thought, 'No,' and it was an echo, refracted into a thousand tiny particles all dancing around, waiting to coalesce into the one entity it needed, yearned, and 'God help me,' *wanted* to be.

'But... We. Not I. We. Us.' The storm broiled beneath the cloud cover of sleep, and they tossed and turned in between the grey sheets.

'Not me.'

'Us.'