[all-xf] NEW: Untitled: Scenes for Quiescence by JET
eviljesemie
by Jesemie's Evil Twin
evilj...@yahoo.com
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Spoilers: Post-"The Truth"
Category: Shmaltz Bizarro
____________________________
December 2003
Still, IL
Sing patience, patience
Only still have patience
-- Robert Graves
There is such unexpected light in the house, pale sunshine filling up
all the corners. It must have something to do with the land, she
thinks, flung out in all directions flat and razed for winter, with
occasional, spiky trees to break up the horizons of long thin roads
and fields. She has tripped walking ahead of Mulder, and the warm
towels bump out of the basket onto their child, who looks up from his
spot on the couch in surprise and laughs once. This first laugh
since she sent him away (since she was given him again, she corrects)
has no room to echo in the small room full of second- and third-hand
furniture, but it reverberates in her throat as she smiles at him and
then looks up into her husband's warm eyes.
"What do you miss, Scully?" Mulder asks.
She takes a long time choosing her answer while she stirs a skillet
of buttery onions. She misses her mother and brothers, lined suits
when they were fresh from the cleaners, the flare of pulling her gun,
Y-incisions, Skinner's grimace of annoyance when she and Mulder were
on the other side of the desk. She misses Doggett and Reyes and
knocking up against people in grocery stores, on subways, in
airports. She misses the bed where she and Mulder undressed each
other so carefully that first night, their hands coaxing from their
bodies another language, one their hearts had long heard.
The onions sizzle and pop. William sits on the kitchen floor,
stirring imaginary food in a saucepan with a badly abused spatula,
and watches her with an expression of dawning comprehension, as
though he's concentrating on this recurrent conversation, is just
about to figure out the entire situation. Occasionally he glances,
curious, at Mulder and Mulder's growing pile of potato peels on the
kitchen table.
"I miss Starbucks' coffee," Scully says finally, and Mulder smiles,
shaking his head.
They'd decided in New Mexico that daily exercise was essential
therapy, and a long walk down to the street's end pushes exhilarating
air into her lungs. A frosty morning, the landscape smudged in soft
pastel ivory, and she stretches up on her toes.
The urge to run and never stop is strong today, dangerous as a live
wire sparking after a storm.
Returning, she finds William giving Matilda (he whispered her name to
Scully a few days ago, one of only four or five words he's spoken
aloud) a drink of milk. Mulder makes quick work with a damp paper
towel and William studies him with patience. Matilda remains stoic
during the scrubbing/blotting ordeal. When William is finished with
his triangles of toast, he eases out of the red folding chair (the
only chair he'll sit in) and takes Matilda, smoothing her dark hair
as he walks, to his tiny room off the hallway.
Mulder tucks a strand of Scully's long hair behind her slightly
sweaty ear and kisses her hello.
"I bet he loves that doll as much as Samantha did," she tells him
before kissing him back.
An odd look passes over his features and he replies, "She was my
doll, actually."
"Oh," she says, letting his eyes find hers before reaching up to
touch his temple, his jaw.
The folding table opposite the washing machine rattles during the
spin cycle. Her pencil jerks its way to the edge and jumps. She's
bending to pick it up when the cold pricks the back of her neck.
She straightens up and the washer clicks off.
A moment: "What do you want, Krycek?"
The barest rustling. Scully turns and the translucence of the man
coagulates into a firmer shadow. He doesn't speak. Between two
fingers he holds a scrap of paper. He lays it on the washer, nods,
and vanishes.
One address, for a warehouse that belonged, at one time, to Strughold
Excavation, Quartzsite, Arizona, 1800 miles from Still, Illinois.
After she tells Mulder that evening, they sit in the silent living
room until the snap of tension -- that hit of adrenaline, fear and
indecision, terrible incomplete knowledge of what's next, the future
like a train jumping its tracks -- fades and they each stand without
words. Later, her hands will come into focus like an image sharpened
by a magnifying glass, her reddened hands flat on the wet cold shower
tile as Mulder slides roughly, perfectly, in and out of her, one of
his arms around her waist, his hot mouth on the side of her throat
tying her to the present.
Still, still, still
One can hear the falling snow
Snow drifts onto the fields and casts its glow through the drafty
kitchen windows. Using fat generic crayons, William has been marking
a large pad of newsprint with toddler hieroglyphics. He brings
Scully a torn piece featuring a large depiction of either Santa Claus
or an exploding ketchup bottle. She strokes his hair and he smiles
at her, just a little, around the thumb he's sucking.
When Mulder sits down at the table, William carefully edges closer to
her.
"He doesn't like me, Scully," Mulder said earlier as they dressed for
the day. In a quiet voice, he said, "I think he remembers you,
somewhere in his subconscious, but I'm, I'm a complete stranger."
"He watches you all the time, Mulder," she said. "Haven't you
noticed? He watches you constantly."
"That's not the same thing," he said, sadly squeezing her shoulder.
He cuts strips of newsprint, polka dots them with William's red and
green crayons, and begins to form a chain. He shows the small boy
how to put a smear of paste on one end of a strip, fold the other end
over through a loop, and hold. William catches on quickly, miniature
hands sticky by the end of the chain. He splays his fingers while
Mulder wipes them, and Scully watches the child's gaze never leave
Mulder's face.
The paint smells sharp and toxic, whitening the walls in the
untrained swaths Mulder creates with a long-handled roller. The
house is old, the last remnant of a bankrupt farm, and was cheap,
isolated, and inconspicuous. Somehow Scully hadn't thought it could
be more nondescript outside or in, but Mulder seems determined to
clean it up in the most neutrally decorated way possible, the polar
opposite of a thousand motel rooms they stayed in over the years.
Not that they have access to money for anything fancier.
The dryer buzzes and she goes to unload the bedclothes. Her
meticulous files, with their spreadsheets, charts, maps, lists of
contacts, lists of projects, secret bank accounts, remain where they
were three days ago, despite her visitor and his contextless
information. She's researched what she can, and she expected Mulder
to contact someone through twisted back channels, to jump to his
intuitive conclusions, to have a next step, a tentative plan. But
the folding table is untouched.
William is introducing Matilda to the three Christmas trees -- all
less than 15 inches tall, made of painted aluminum or faux greenery,
and purchased in thrift stores by Mulder the year he fled for his
life -- in the living room window when Scully comes back. Mulder has
started working on the trim with a horsehair brush.
"You're nesting," she blurts out.
Mulder stops painting and turns on his ladder to peer down at
her. "What?"
"You're nesting," she repeats.
He squints at her, confused, and asks, "What does that mean?"
"I don't know," she says, taking the sheets to the bedroom, trying to
ignore the uneasy sourness in her stomach.
"What would you like for Christmas?"
Scully helps William into his footed pajama bottoms and Mulder lobs a
tiny long-sleeved t-shirt at her.
"I can't decide," she says as William plays with the button on her
shirt's left cuff (the right one has been missing for weeks).
She really doesn't know -- their funds are limited and their
necessities are paid for for the time being. What she wants most
won't fit in a box.
"What do you want, Mulder?"
The question falls away in the room as he holds out his hand to
William, to help him down from the bed, and William climbs down on
his own, wandering out into the hallway (with a stride like a duck,
she thinks not unkindly).
Mulder seems to shrink a bit, and steps back when she moves toward
him. She wraps her arms around him, presses a kiss to his throat.
He lays his cheek on top of her head for a minute and she listens to
him breathe.
I want so much for you, Mulder, she thinks, for us.
The day has passed and he hasn't made a phone call, hasn't talked to
her about a strategy. He wants her to show him how to make sugar
cookies, so that's what they're going to do tonight, with unspoken
weight surrounding them.
Soon she's rolling quick dough on the kitchen counter, William beside
her, hanging on to her jeans with one fist. A tray of perfectly
browned cookies is cooling next to a floured blob of dough. She
sprinkles powdered sugar on the hot cookies and causes more mess than
intended, snowing William with sugar by mistake. Startled, he steps
backward onto Mulder's shoes, grabs Mulder's hand, looks up at him as
he's steadied like a penguin on his father's feet.
After 24 hours without any communication from Mulder, Scully swings
William into her arms and walks to the Still Just a General Store, a
mile south. There's rain, and shifting wind -- William helps her
hold the umbrella -- and more dread in Scully's mind than she can be
expected to tolerate.
Nathan, a farmer who lives on the property behind hers, opens the
door for her at the store, and she gives her thanks as William
wriggles down. She unzips his dripping jacket and he tugs free of it
before strolling up to the counter where the locals order hamburgers.
"He's a quiet kid," Nathan observes. "You all having lunch?"
"I, uh. Yes." Scully hasn't actually thought far enough ahead for
food, but William likes hamburgers; she tells the teenage girl
working the counter to pat a thin one for him. He holds her hand
while she fishes the $1.25 out of her pocket and puts it in the
change box on the condiments table.
It appears all the farmers in the area are eating here today, the
pant legs of their overalls damp, their heavy boots muddy. An older
man makes room for her to sit on the old church pew that serves as
seating while she waits.
"Bad day, cold as hell," he says.
"Yes," she agrees, choking down all the things she wants to scream at
the top of her lungs. I let him go alone to check the post office
box, to make the calls, I let him go alone, she doesn't yell -- I
promised I wouldn't leave for three days if he didn't return right
away, I promised but what if he's hurt, oh god, what if he's missing
or hurt or gone forever?
William's hamburger is ready. She tears it into pieces for him and
he eats calmly, unaffected by her tamped down panic.
"He's such a good boy," the teenage girl praises, grinning at them,
and Scully looks at him -- he isn't just unruffled, he knows
something.
Mulder walks in then, soaked to the bone and pale, relief flooding
his eyes as he sees them, and she realizes she shouldn't be amazed
that he's arrived.
Lea, their closest neighbor, has just put two jars of homemade
blackberry jam on the kitchen table when a loud "Ow!" resonates from
the bathroom. Scully gives a hasty apology and hurries to the back
of the house.
A suds-covered William sits in the tub, slapping together two
washcloths and seeming entirely unperturbed. She peeks in the big
bedroom and finds Mulder standing by the dresser, looking spooked.
"Are you okay?" she asks.
Mulder says, "He bit me," holding his right hand like it's been
mangled.
Scully opens and closes her mouth before saying, "He's two and a
half."
"He bit me," Mulder says, sounding bewildered.
She repeats, "He's two and a half. That's what two and half year
olds do. He probably just wanted to see how you'd react." She
gently takes Mulder's hand, examines it. Small tooth marks are faint
on the back and she swallows a laugh. "Although I doubt anyone
would've expected you to run out of the room."
"What do I do now?" Mulder seems so genuinely baffled she wants to
hug him.
Instead, she says, "You go back in there and tell him not to do it
again." She skips the lecture about how little water it takes for a
child to drown and leads him into the bathroom.
"Don't bite," she admonishes William, leaving Mulder to deal with his
attacker in private.
After Lea goes home, Scully sticks her head into the bathroom, where
William, looking grouchy, is coloring the back of Mulder's hand with
an orange soap stick.
"I'm making him disinfect the wound," Mulder says.
The alley was slimy with rain, leaves, moss, trash, and the bird was
huddled against the garage wall. She picked it up and it began to
squeak, a constant terrible bleat of sorrow and alarm. Its feathers
were wet fuzz, spread out like ink leaking into the crevices of her
palms.
A nest was visible, built between pipes that connected the buildings;
if there was a mother bird, she was choosing to disregard her
daughter's keening.
The baby's eyes never shifted to Scully's, but the heartbeat beneath
its delicate bones was a fast flutter, an inexplicable pulse in a
broken body. There was no place to take the bird where it would be
safe, no shelter as rain poured. She couldn't leave it to die and
she had to, forced herself to put the bird on the sole patch of grass
that grew through the pavement cracks.
She walked out of the alley, the weakening screech trailing her,
smearing all other noise until it was static in her head.
The heartbeat still flutters in her hands as she wakes, rain drumming
the roof.
It takes probably ten minutes before she notices Mulder isn't in the
bed with her. She goes to William's room and finds them both,
William fast asleep, curled in a ball, Mulder on the floor beside the
bed, his hand on William's head.
Mulder shifts, and she sits beside him. He looks at her and the
haunted hollows beneath his eyes show her it's happened again, his
dreams and hers bleeding together. This, she thinks, was a memory,
something that happened to him while he was on the run, something he
will never tell aloud.
"He's fine," Mulder says, voice rough.
"I was just checking on you," she says.
Scully touches William's curled hand and remembers him in Mulder's
arms, as a newborn, the hoarse, hungry cries of an infant in early
hours of the morning. The sob breaks from her before she can cover
her mouth. She remembers Opal nearly throwing William at her, the
frantic trip to the hospital, Mulder coming into the waiting room,
Wyoming's state flag hoisted beside a wall-mounted television, and
saying that Terrance and Rachelle were okay, the chips had arrived in
time, We have to go tomorrow, the last vial of their mingled blood
dripping into their child, the timeline that had to be accelerated,
the punch of horror over every bump in the road, the drive to
Illinois with William's scared eyes on every move they made.
"Shh," Mulder says, but he's crying too. He rocks her until they are
both quiet again.
Outside, the rain turns to snow.
"We'll need to start packing after New Year's," she says from the
couch.
He puts down the file of cross-referenced genetics facilities. He
waits for her to continue speaking.
"Maybe I could get boxes from the general store after the holidays,
when they're switching out some inventory," she says.
"If there's enough stuff worth taking, if we have time."
"Yeah," he says, "that's always the question."
"Mulder," she says.
"I know," he says, biting his lip.
"We can't stay here."
"I know."
"The longer we stay, the harder it will be on everyone. These
people, our neighbors, they're good people. We'll be putting them in
danger if we don't keep moving.
"We'll be in danger if we don't keep moving. Krycek left that
address for a reason--"
"--Yeah."
He wrinkles the edge of the folder, glances at William, who's piling
matchbox cars on Matilda's stomach. The longing she sees Mulder
blink away causes her eyes to burn, and she pushes her face into the
cushion.
A blip of time, and she's floating on a tranquil wave, Mulder
carrying her to bed. He puts socks on her cold feet. She opens her
eyes when he takes off her jeans -- "You don't have to stop there,"
she whispers, and he strokes his hand up her leg and underneath her
sweater. They strip each other naked, so slowly, in the faint
snowgleam.
They drink each other's moans.
The flashing mirrors of the snow
keep turning and returning still:
To see the lovely child below
and hold him is their only will;
Keep still, keep still
-- WR Rodgers
She's listening to the radio announcer read Christmas poems when,
from the window, she can see William running through the snowy yard
toward the house in new display of exuberance. She made Mulder take
him to town for last minute shopping; in a second, she hears the
front door bang open, the wind getting away from Mulder.
Before she can utter a word, William sobs, "Sklee, Sklee," rushes to
her. She scoops him up, his whole body heaving with cries, and he
presses his hot face into her neck and holds onto her like the wind
might steal him away.
Mulder closes the door and stands apart, looking altogether ill.
"He just started crying and I have no idea why."
Scully rubs William's back. "Did he, has he been coughing or doing
anything to indicate he's sick?"
"No, nothing, we were coming back and he suddenly, he just, he just
started crying." Mulder's voice quakes.
"Okay. It's okay," she tells them both. She takes William into his
room, lays him on the bed and feels his forehead, his glands, presses
on his stomach, does her doctor's routine. He wears himself out with
cries and sleeps, exhausted, cheeks damp.
In the kitchen, Mulder sits at the table, trembling. "I realized...I
checked the car," he says, "the backseat. The map we keep in the
pocket behind the passenger seat -- it was on the floor near the baby
seat. I didn't move it, Scully."
Oh, then, she thinks, taking Mulder in her arms; tears streak her
face; please, God, her repeated prayer.
Night comes, Eve with a roast in the oven, a scatter of wrapped
presents on the windowsill, all the hush in the house like a roar.
William awakens, comes into the kitchen, brushes his fingertips
against hers, seeming strangely wise, acquiescent now. Marvelous,
brave child, she thinks, second equal wonder of my life. She watches
William put a thumb in his mouth and go to Mulder, whose grief is
barely contained -- William pats Mulder's knee gently, Mulder holds
out his hands to him, palms up, and William climbs into his lap,
leans his head against his chest. Unmoving, Scully watches as
Mulder, hands shaking, holds his child fully for the first time in
such a long time, she watches as snow splatters the windows behind
them, the future becomes so clear, awful and awesome as rising fire,
as the silence of the moment shows itself a blessing, her two dearest
loves finding one another once more.
____________________________
An end
____________________________
As my cousin's wife said recently, in a rare moment of lucidity,
happiest of holidays to you whatever or however you celebrate, and
may the new year bring you something your heart has always desired.
Annoying Author's Notes;
Or: Annoying-Author's Notes
* This is unbeta'd. In case you couldn't figure that out. ::rolling
eyes:: Trust me, this all made a lot more sense in my head.
* Still, IL is not a real place. Moonshine, IL is, and they have a
general store run by a woman that sells and serves burgers until
12:30p on the dot; if you don't have your burger ordered by then, too
bad.
* As a self-imposed exercise -- brought about by seasonal insanity --
each scene here has a specific number of sentences; namely, the
number that corresponds to the day on the calendar. There are 12
sections in honor, er, of the song (I left out the partridges). I
promise not to make a habit of this sort of thing.
* I have never in my life used the word 'quiescence' in casual
conversation.
December 2003
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