Overweighted Chapter One By RocketMan ===== Rating: PG Categories: S, X, A, R Keywords: Mulder/Scully UST/Romance Summary: A little girl is found to have extraordinary abilities. SPOILER::::::US5 up to THE END::::::: Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe is intended. Helen Nobel is mine. ===== Often, when I dream, thoughts pass through my mind like cowled shadows, silent and remote, and disappear . . . There are also rare and beautiful moments when I see and hear in Dreamland. What if in my waking hours a sound should ring through the silent halls of hearing? What if a ray of light should flash through the darkened chambers of my soul? . . . Would the heart, overweighted with sudden joy, stop beating for very excess of happiness? -- Helen Keller: diary excerpt ===== I am myself. I have these things around me: a furry animal with a stitched on mouth, a soft blanket that tightens across my shoulders when I sleep, a wide room that inhabits the darkness perpetually. Here, in this room, people come and visit me, to touch my hands and talk. They call me H-E-L-E-N. That's a very long name. H-E-L-E-N. That's five letters that are hard to make in a row like that. And it's hard to tell an H from a G sometimes, and other times, I want to think my name is G-A-L-A-M, because of the way the letters feel. I have darkness all around me and it's like looking straight into time with wide eyes that know everything there is to know. But really, I don't know if that's true because I've never seen before. I've never seen. I've never heard. I sometimes wish I could, but not really too often. I've never done either, so I guess it's just cause I don't know what I'm missing. But I don't have to pay attention to anyone, if I don't want to, and I can stay here, in my dark room, for as long as I want. For forever. Jane, the woman who teaches me, is very nice and she stays silent the entire time we're together. I know this because I don't feel the sound vibrations when she's with me. I once had a teacher scream at me, and I could feel every unheard syllable slamming into me like a wall of light hitting my eyes. Jane doesn't talk and I wonder if she's deaf too. In this darkness, it is only me, only me and a ghost named Helen Keller that everyone keeps telling me about. Helen Keller, the one these people named me for, because we're exactly alike. I can feel her sometimes, right in the dark room with me. She touches me and her touch says that it's okay to want to be scared, it's okay to not feel like this is right. This isn't right. I'm not sure why, but what has happened to me, ever since I was born, is not right. I was supposed to be normal and seeing and hearing, but instead, I have this dark room and all its secrets. At night, in dreams, I don't like the secrets it shows me. ~~~~~ "Mulder?" "Yeah . . . I'm coming." She held the elevator button longer, her finger aching by this time, the chiming doors longing to close and start on its way back up. He slid inside and she let go of the leash and the elevator seemed to rocket skyward, thrilled at escaping the basement. Or maybe that was just her impresseion because she herself was thrilled to be away from the basement for awhile. "Sorry, I was trying to get my tie right," he murmured. It was hot in their office, since no one really remembered that they even had an office downstairs, or even remembered that it was summer and they needed air conditioning. Every day, he came in, shed his suit jacket and tie and unbuttoned his shirt all the way until his T-shirt showed, along with his sweat. She changed completely when she got there. Her hose came off, her pantsuits were discarded and she shrugged on a tank top and shorts. He always scowled and pretended he wasn't still hot while she was comfortable. She just counted on the fact that no one wanted to come down there when it was so hot. And apparently, she was right. Skinner had called them up to his floor, asking them to hurry. Scully had changed right there, in front of Mulder, because, frankly, she just didn't care. Mulder had gaped at her a second, turned around to give her a bit of privacy, then hastened to get his shirt buttoned and tie on and had still made them late. She turned to him now, quickly redid the knot and straightened his tie, all while he made choking noises and hung his tongue out. She wrinkled her nose and turned back just as the doors popped open, leaving Mulder with his tongue hanging out while co-workers looked on with knowing smiles. Scully zipped out of the elevator and Mulder gave everyone a self satisfied grin and followed her. ~~~~ Skinner sat calmly in his chair while he talked in his gruff, monotone voice about expenditures and vacation time and other schedule type things that he was required to tell his employees about. Even if they knew already and could probably recite his speech in their sleep. Then he gave them a few new potential cases that had come across his desk instead of theirs and they could tell he didn't like that he was being associated with them all the time. If stuff hit the fan, he wanted to keep his job. They walked back down to the elevator afterwards, silent and respectful, and went on down, Mulder shedding his tie and shirt as the car plunged back into hell. ~~~~ Jane comes running into my room, I can feel her panic roil in waves off her and the vibrations of her thundering jar me out of sleep. She yanks on me, pulls me up, jams some clothes over my head, then my arms are shoved through my jacket, her breath tickling my ear. I may be only four, but I can put on my own clothes. I frantically sign towards her, shoving my hands into hers for her to tell me what's going on, but all she signs is this: No time. These signs frighten me and I grab my shoes and pull them on as she picks me up, cradles me to her chest and starts running. I feel panic claw around us, choking me, pulling at me as she had been, and I know there is someone, someone here. Someone here. I sign this on her cheek, a place she will feel it if she's not watching my hands in her run. She freezes and I can feel every cell in her body screaming. Screaming into my head with voices I've never heard before. Helen, my ghost, whispers with her fingers that I will be all right. A hand closes around me, the dark closes around me: I've never been out of that room, out of this place before in my life. The hand pulls, the hand has something that I can feel is death. Death rushes past me, I can feel the heat and the speed of it, I can feel the life drain from Jane, feel the vibrations and shock waves as a person is snuffed out. She's gone, falling to the floor. I am held up by a man. I shiver and jerk and pull hard and bite and make noises but I don't know what I'm saying or screaming or maybe just whispering. *I can't see**I can't hear* I can't see. All I feel is death. Then nothing. ~~~~~ She looked kind of cute, there, standing in the doorway after a quick trip to the bathroom down the hall. "Mulder?" she said, glancing at him as he kind of stared. "Oh, new case, Scully." She nodded and he could swear that she was wearing shorter shorts every day just to get on his nerves, although it really wasn't nerves that were benefiting. He watched her walk into the office and settle herself into the chair, her toned body perched elegantly there like a dove or maybe, sometimes, like a hawk. She waited for him to start and gave him a warning look that told him she knew he was staring and wasn't appreciating it. "A little girl from a special institution in California was reported missing last Thursday. In conjunction with this, her teacher, Jane Phelps, was found murdered on Saturday in the basement; however, her body had been dragged there. We got this case on Friday, but I didn't think it warranted anything until I got the update this morning." "Mulder, this is awful, but I don't see how this is a case for us. I mean, yes, it is something to be solved, but why can't the local police, or even local Bureau handle this? And why did a runaway merit our time in the first place?" He nodded and she realized he had this look that told her he hadn't given her all the information. He liked to do that. "This little girl is four years old, Scully, and shows signs of an enmormous I.Q. in excess of Einstein or someone similiar. She's also deaf and blind." Scully sat there for a moment, her eyes never leaving his face, but her mind obviously somewhere else, thinking. "So she's been kidnapped." "I wouldn't think a deaf and blind girl could manage to escape the institution, and especially not kill her teacher. Also, her teacher was deaf as well, and it looked like she was killed trying to save the little girl." "How do you mean?" "Blood was found in the hall outside the girl's room; also, the girl's jacket and shoes were missing, indicating that someone was trying to get her to safety." "Ah. So basically this is merely a challenge for you? No X-File or anything?" "Well . . . " "Mulder, please don't tell me she's been abducted by aliens." "No, just that I think there's a lot more to this than a simple kidnapping. First of all, there is no clear motive yet. The girl supposedly doesn't have any family; she's an orphan --" "Wait. If she's an orphan, then who pays for her to remain in this institution?" Mulder looked at her knowingly, a smile of pure delight on his features. "You're turning me on, Scully." Her eyes rolled and he stood. "So, the question is, who's behind all this?" ~~~~~ end chapter one adios RM Overweighted Chapter Two By RocketMan ===== light keeps on breaking. i keep knowing the language of other nations. i keep hearing tree talk water words and i keep knowing what they mean. and light just keeps on breaking . . . --Lucille Clifton, "breaklight" ===== She watched him argue with the rental agent and his hands sort of make motions in the air as if by waving them around enough, he could conjure up a car. He let his shoulders slump in defeat and shuffled back to her. Seeing her silhouetted by the sun's birthing of night, standing softly by their luggage with a small gentle smile on her face, he couldn't help watching her as he made his way back. She cocked her head for an explanation and he shrugged and sighed. "No luck, Nancy Drew. They don't have our car." "Didn't you make the reservation?" she said, letting the comment roll of her like water on feathers. "Yes." he said testily, rubbing a hand over his face. "I really, honestly did. Somehow, though, they don't have them." "So . . .?" "So I guess we take a taxi?" he indicated, wincing at the thought of another one of Skinner's long drawn out speeches on the horror of expense reports. She sighed. "That might not be such a good idea in light of our recent beratement." He nodded and hefted his carryon over his shoulder. "Well, let's go catch the bus, Scully." She stared at him for a second until she realized he was serious. "Okay, the bus." ~~~~~ Helen Keller says things to me while I'm here. She tells me not to be afraid of them, she tells me to just play along: it's a game and it has an end. I think Helen Keller is nuts. This isn't a game. I'm trapped by darkness and trapped by silence and nothing is making it to me. I can hear things inside my head and they scream at me to do something, but I'm not supposed to hear. Oh, please, I'm not supposed to hear. Make her go away. ~~~~~ Buses had to be the most filthy and the most disgusting mode of transportation alive. The most. She had definitely made a solemn oath never to let him drag her onto a bus again. Even their somewhat cheap motel seemed like a Godsend compared to the bus. It had a nice carpet that didn't smell too much like smoke, along with heavy gold curtains that were from the seventies, and a plastic table propped against one wall. Yes, propped. And it was the best they could get. Apparently, the motel manager hadn't gotten Mulder's reservations. Apparently Mulder had made them. Apparently. She sighed and chucked her stuff on the bed farthest from the bathroom and gave Mulder a huge, you-better-pay-me-back-for-this look. He shrugged and collapsed on his bed, spread eagle and oh-so vulnerable. She thought momentarily about throwing a pillow at him, but was afraid he'd take the opportunity to do some serious damage. She sat down across from him and waited. After a long silence he spoke up: "Let's go get some dinner, Scully." She cleared her throat to make him look at her and shook her head. "Mulder, what's going on?" He winced. "How do you mean?" "Don't jerk me around here, Mulder. You obviously know something about this that I don't, because *someone* has gone out of their way to make sure we're pretty inconvenienced here. And you don't look surprised." He sighed and picked himself up off the bed, straddling the corner of it a bit so he could look off into space and not really into her eyes. "I have some pretty bad theories." "After five years, Mulder, I've heard most of your bad theories." "After five years, this is the worst. The worst for you." Scully felt something horrible growing in his words and she almost wanted to forget the whole thing, roll over and sleep away her suspicions. "Scully, have you looked at the photo of the little girl?" The deep knot of fear tangled around her windpipe and she mutely shook her head. "It's . . . it's her." She knew immediately who "her" was and it felt like a huge landslide had crushed her. "What?" Mulder stood and grabbed the casefile, pulling it from his bag and offering it to her like a peace treaty. To her, his gesture seemed oddly like a terrorist, handing over a bomb. She opened the file with shaky fingers and clumsily pushed away the paper to reveal the picture. Emily. Emily, oh God, Emily. "No." It couldn't be so bad, not again, not again, Oh God, not again. Mulder took it from her trembling hands and pulled her to his chest, frighteningly quiet in the numbness of the revelation. "It's like the Eves, isn't it Mulder?" He buried his head on top of hers, breathed in the sickly sweet smell of tears and skin, and tried to find something to say. "I don't know.I don't even know if she's . . . I don't know." Scully pushed him away and stood up, blindly making it to the window and the cheesy curtains from a long forgotten era. "Mulder, I think it's time you told me what happened. What did you find while I was sick?" Her eyes were catlike when they turned to stare into him. He was frozen. ~~~~~ I push my hair away from my face, trying to push away the cobwebs of thought snaking around in me. For some reason, my head is picking up sounds and sights, and my ears and eyes aren't. I think I have always been able to do this thing, but only with Jane. Sometimes, I knew what she was going to sign, what she would need to say to me. It was like a dormant thing, this new sight and new hearing. Now that I've re-established myself with my dark room, I can find places to hold comfort. I am in the corner of this place, crammed there and never coming out. I'm trying not to hear them; their thoughts, their sights and words scare me. Sometimes it is almost as if I can hear entire conversations in my head, because they think what they say. Othertimes, I wish I could curl up and turn this off. I don't want to hear. I don't want to hear. Please, please, make me deaf again. ~~~~~ Dinner was tasteless, but necessary. She had a feeling she would need the energy before the day was through. She had a feeling things were going to come together right here, right that night. So it was somewhat anti-climactic when they ended up curled on her bed, watching a rerun of a new Moby Dick remake, with Patrick Stewart. It was all right. She wasn't too much into it, though, considering the fact that the little girl's face kept swirling around, kept matching up to Emily's birthday photo with too much accuracy. The shadows and the lights formed by the television put her into a kind of trance and before she knew it, she was letting her eyes slide shut and her mind drift off. Just as she was about gone, she felt Mulder's arm curl around her and rest on her stomach comfortingly. She felt safe there. ~~~~~ I want to sleep. I just want to sleep. The darkness is black, black, and holding out its arms like a mother and I wish I could slip right into it. But I keep seeing something. I see a dark room with television shadows, but I've never seen a television, so how do I know that's what television shadows look like? Something is whispering to me this information. It sounds like Helen Keller, just as before, but this time, I see the woman's voice for what it is -- not Helen Keller, but someone else. And she's not really speaking to me. She's in the dark room, asleep, speaking on dreams. She has a dream about a little girl. She wants to have a little girl like that; she wants to never have to say good-bye to another little girl like that. She has a smile for a friend holding her tightly, a smile for him and a secret feeling that froths in her eyes. The television shadows flicker around her face and she tells me that things are going to be okay once she finds me. She will find me. ~~~~~ end chapter two adios RM Overweighted Chapter Three By RocketMan ===== "My eyes have seen all this, my ears have heard and understood it. What you know, I also know. . ." --Job 13:1-2 ===== I can feel her here near me. Her heart and blood are the same as mine, this woman I thought was Helen Keller's ghost. She is sleeping and dreaming of me, she is tired and wishing I was there with her. I wish I was there with her too. I'm cold. The floor is too hard. ~~~~~ "Scully?" She stirred and her eyes slipped open suddenly, letting in the meager light from the bathroom. He was standing above her, his face old looking before his shave, and his eyes dull in the dimness. "I'm awake," she mumbled. He nodded and went back into the bathroom, leaving her to find reality. Her head was confused this morning; she couldn't seem to remember what had happened or why she and Mulder were in the same room. Odd dreams were plaguing her. She sat up and stared around the room, licking her lips because they were dry and rubbing her forehead. Mulder came back out and took one look at her and smiled. "You okay?" She glanced up at him with an almost timid look and sighed. "Mulder . . . I really have no idea." He sat down on her bed and couldn't help grinning. "Wasn't it good for you?" She looked horrified and he burst into laughter, making her hit him hard. "What are you messing around for?" she said, scowling. "Sorry, too good to pass up." "Seriously, though, Mulder. I can't . . . I can't, oh." Her face cleared and she frowned. "Emily . . . and this girl." Mulder sighed and nodded, then moved to stand. "Mulder, what would you say if I told you I thought I knew where she was?" He whipped around, then stood very still as if moving would break her courage. "What do you mean, you think you know where she is?" Scully licked her bottom lip and curled up on the bed, sighing. "Never mind, I just had some odd dreams." "Scully . . . I need to tell you something." She was lying on the bed, looking up at him from the side and wishing he weren't so tall because it ached her eyes to crane that far. "The little girl, Helen, that's missing, is supposedly . . . well, I think she can associate with people's minds." Scully jerked up, feeling her heart beat painfully slow in comparison to the adrenaline surging through her. "What do you mean?" "Remember the blind woman who had that connection with her father because he had murdered her mother?" Scully nodded carefully. "Well, some of the teachers at the institute said that Jane Phelps and Helen had a special bond, one so odd that once when Helen had fallen down some stairs, Jane had known the instant it had happened." "So what are you saying Mulder?" Scully could feel things sliding into place, into places where she didn't want to go. "I think your dreams might be her attempt to connect with you, Scully. If she is . . . if she is . . . it would make sense." She sat there, feeling stunned and sick and wishing this had never happened to her. "Mulder . . . " She whimpered and buried her head into her hands, wanting to fall right through the floor. He didn't move to touch her and she was grateful for his gift of dignity. "You drive. I'll point it out." she finally whispered. ~~~~~ My dark place is big and sometimes, I can feel sun, so I think it's bright, but my eyes don't work so I can't tell. I can feel lots of dust crawling on my skin like bugs and a few actual creatures managed to make their presence known to me. I also think I felt a mouse brush by my hands. They're tied together and if I try to move them into a more comfortable spot, I fall over. I don't move; I don't want mice crawling over my face. I'm hungry and my stomach moves around in me, making itself known too. But most of all, I'm thirsty, and my lips are cracked and dry. I don't know exactly why I'm here. I've heard them speaking about things, about killing me, but they think I can help them with something, or someone. I hear their fury at each other, I see their faces twisting in rage, I hear them wishing they had not made me. They made me. How could they do that? My parents . . . I don't know my family except for what Jane said. I hope, oh please, don't let Jane be gone. I can't see her anymore, I can't hear her soft voice in my head . . . Please don't let Jane be gone. How could they make me? ~~~~ "Okay, this street?" "Scully, can you be a bit more postive than that?" "No." she said shortly. "I can't help it Mulder. All I got were little snatches of real things. Most of it was feelings." "Feelings?" "She's cold." ~~~~~ I shiver again and suddenly, the not-ghost of Helen Keller is very close to me. Very close, this woman near me, near my blood and body. I reach out my mind ears and I can hear her being mad, being sad, I can see her hands twist on the door handle and I want to talk to her. I want her to find me. What happened to Jane? ~~~~~ "Mulder!" "What!" "Here. Turn here." "But you said not --" "Do it, Mulder!" The car spun out a bit as he wrenched the steering wheel and she held tightly to the door, praying silently that somehow this was right. Even if she might never explain it, she wanted it to be right, for Mulder to be right. She was cold. ~~~~~ When the building came to her, it was like a huge monolith, blazonly declaring its occupants. "That's it, Mulder. That's it." "Okay." he said softly and looked at her again, his forehead wrinkling up. "Is she doing it right now?" Scully's eyes were tightly closed and she clamped her hands around his upper arm to silence him. Then she jerked out of the car. "Scully!" he yelled and scrambled out himself. "It's just her. No one else." "How do you know that for sure? She's blind and deaf, Scully." Dana said nothing and simply walked over to the door and began opening it. He ran after her and kept her covered with his gun, just in case. It was bright and sun speckled in the building, its dark metal girders given a shine in the direct beam of nine o'clock morning. Scully was standing in the middle of the place, her face contorted in a look somewhere between bitter disappointment and confusion. "Mulder? Where is she?" He shrugged and slowly twisted around, his eyes peering into the more darker areas of the corners. And then he saw a small figure, huddled tightly into a ball and so very still. He ran through the sun shafts and felt her coming behind him. The little thing shifted and her face turned to the place where they were. Her blonde hair was matted and bloody, her eyes dark and liquidy, but he could tell that there was something very wrong in their shape. He slowed and crept very carefully up to her, crouching down next to her and offering a hand, hoping she would not be afraid. Her hands shot out and grabbed his possessively, her fingers moving over his palm in an effort to speak in her own language, while still tied by abrading packing twine. Scully stood off at the side, watching and hurting and not able to come closer. Mulder reached down and gathered the little girl to him, holding her as she franticly signed, her fingers traveling anywhere and everywhere to convey her message. He slipped the string off and her hands twisted. He wished he could communicate with her. He knew the letters of his name and that was about it. She was trembling in his arms and making frightened animal noises that sounded to him like a puppy caught in a bear trap. He took her fingers and stood up, then managed to spell out his name into her palm, stroking her hair as he did so. "Scully?" he called and looked to see her with her arms crossed, doubt on her face. "She's not Emily. She's not the same." "No, not really. But she looks . . . she looks almost exactly the same." Scully's head tilted and he could see she was biting her bottom lip. "She's cold," she said sadly and came forward, pushing off her own jacket to drape around the girl's shoulders. Helen smiled then and leaned forward, as if reaching out for Scully to hold her. A pause and then Dana took her in her arms and cradled her there. ~~~~~ end chapter three adios RM Overweighted Chapter Four By RocketMan ===== "But let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many." --Ecclesiastes 11:8 ===== The little girl was curled up in her arms, her head resting against Dana's shoulder and her breath tickling her neck. Mulder watched them in the semi-dark of the motel room and waited for the phone to ring, for the news to come back. The institution had finally conceded to allowing Helen to stay with them, since her captors had not yet been caught, but only after teaching them both a variety of standard signs. A limited conversation could be held and they could spell out just about anything. When they had figured out what Helen was asking the entire time, it had been very silent for a long awkward moment. She was asking about Jane. Mulder had to tell her that Jane was gone. She had made primitive mewling noises, almost like a kitten mourning for a mother. Scully had held her very close and tried to comfort the wailing child, but it seemed as if Helen had closed herself off to anyone. Now, after carefully taking blood samples from Helen, they were waiting on the results, both DNA and toxicology, just to make sure nothing had been done to her. Mulder sat anxiously in the plastic chair and hoped that this was not Scully's child, yet also, he wished it was. He had to admit that on second glance, Helen was different from Emily. She was not an Eve, but she was very, very similiar. Almost as if they had the same mother, but different fathers. Fathers. He felt a shudder run through him. Just who or *what* were their fathers? Aliens or humans, or an odd combination of both? Were Helen's blindness and deafness the effects of a human and hybrid cross? He stood and stumbled into the bathroom, retching and trying not to let that image stay in his head. He knew it had all been some kind of sterile lab experiment, but still, it made him sick to think they had done that to Scully, to Emily, possibly to Helen. The phone shrieked at him and he clicked it on before Scully or Helen could wake up. Softly he answered. "Agent Mulder?" "Yes." "Well, sir, we have the reports back on the blood. It's got some oddities to it, but nothing . . . ah, extraterrestrial in origin, sir." Mulder felt his body slightly relax. "See the real mystery is this, sir: Her DNA seems to be a match with Agent Scully's and yours." Mulder's mouth dropped open. "Mine?" "Yes sir, we typed it as a control. When we got some screwy answers, we had to start over with a new control, and that time, against yours." "Are you sure?" he demanded. "Yes, sir. I'm faxing you the report now. Good night sir." "Ah, good . . . good night." He hung up and watched in dumb amazement as the fax machine lit up and began rollng sheets of paper to him. His DNA? ~~~~~ Scully was reading it again, for about the fifth time when he came back in with the ice bucket. She looked up at him and then back to Helen, who was doing a sloppy job of eating some potato chips. Mulder could not look in her eyes; instead, he walked over to the table and plopped two cubes of ice into Helen's Coke and touched her shoulder. She signed thank-you and guided the straw to her lips. Mulder marveled at how well Helen manuevered around places, at the grace she possessed even though deaf and blind, and at the innate sense of boundary that she had for things. She caught his hand and pulled him closer then made an unintelligible noise and kissed his cheek. He smiled and ruffled her hair, then turned to where Scully was watching them. "Mulder?" "Scully, I'm sorry," he said immediately. She shook her head. "No . . . I'm . . . I'm glad it's you and not . . . not someone, or something else." He sat down on the bed and looked hard at her, making her turn her head and sit down awkwardly next to him. "Do you think Emily . . . ?" she murmured. He sighed. "I don't know. It wasn't even something I thought about. The things I saw at that retirement home . . . all I thought was how horrible it was." "Mulder, I don't think Emily was. Helen is different. She looks . . . she looks like Emily with you in her." He looked over at the little girl quickly. "She looks like me?" Scully smiled and her face saddened. "Her eyes, when she's listening inside of herself . . . her eyes are yours." Mulder grinned suddenly, his mouth turning into a huge smile of silly good fortune. "This is . . . strange and wonderful all at the same time." Scully sighed. "I keep trying not to love her . . . I don't want to be left again if they . . . if she dies." Mulder looked back at her for a moment, then took her hand. "I think that's part of love, Scully. Having the courage to love when it can all be taken away in the blink of an eye." "I don't like it much." "But really, even without . . . without CancerMan's friends breathing down our necks, we're all in danger of dying. A car wreck, lightning . . . cancer." She turned to him and her eyes were deep and dark, almost like Helen's when she wasn't focusing on things. He saw pain in them and it hurt him that she felt awful about such a wonderful gift. He'd been given a daughter; he'd been allowed to be the father of . . . her child. And she was grateful it was him. "I guess," she said softly. "Anyway, it's too late now. I'm already falling in love . . . with her." ~~~~~ They like watching me. I can feel their eyes on me and they talk to each other in softness: I can barely feel the air moving around their lips and voices. Mulder is nice to me and he's always careful to make sure I have what I want. Dana keeps her arms around me when I dream about bad things. They both are confused. But I know. Jane told me my Mommy and Daddy were important people who didn't even know they had a little girl. The air in here is so charged, so changed, I can tell that my Mommy and Daddy now know they have a little girl. I want to make them see me, I want to see through them. I drop the chips back onto the old, plastic table and stand up, reaching out with just the barest touch to establish where I am in my dark room. I can picture it with the help of my mind eyes. I can see the old mustiness of the room, the two unmade beds, the soft grainy curtains and thick carpet. I step forward to where they are on the couch and worm between them, my eyes open and trying to train on where I think their faces are. I lower my head and take Dana's palm, place it in my lap so that they both can see what I sign. I have to spell out the question part at first and I can feel their breath as they murmur the letters. And then the regular signing. I feel the dampness of her palm, the tingling of her blood through the tips, the muscles working and relaxing. I sign: Are you my mother? ~~~~~ Dana felt her hands constrict around Helen's little fingers and she glanced up at Mulder with dazed eyes. Mulder signed yes against her cheek. Helen signed Daddy back to him and took their hands in hers. The room was pressing down on them, and Mulder stood suddenly, bringing Helen with him to let her know he was not running away from her. Scully stood and they all went outside, sitting on the steps leading to their motel and smelling rain and concrete. Helen was in Mulder's lap, placed almost between them and hanging on to his neck with both hands. She was very silent and still as she processed the new environment and analyzed her new dark room. She knew they were outside by the smell of living things and rain, and she feel the cool wind across her skin drying the sweat of a summer day. Scully reached out and touched her cheek, an unconscious movement to let her know where they were. Helen laid her head against Mulder's shoulder and wrapped her baby fingers around his neck. Mulder looked to Scully and saw the same gentleness in her eyes that he had been so shocked to find in Home, and again when she was with Emily. That gentleness that was mother, that was soft sighs and caring hands, that was love and reassurance. His eyes spoke with hers and slowly, Scully signed against Helen's arm. ~~~~~ end chapter four adios RM Title: Overweighted Chapter Five By RocketMan ===== Dedication: I can't believe how many e-mails I got telling me to continue! It's so awesome that there are people out there reading, and knowing it yourself. This is for the following: Kim, Starbuck, Harriet, Polly, Angie, Scott, Natasha, Shannon, Lucy, Angela, OrangefuzE, Jaime, Jackie, Snoopy8040, and Lauren. ===== "And like the mute man I will mouth my pain so that only I can hear it." --Vanessa Len, Clock Eulogy ===== He just paces. Back and forth across the room. With one glance now and then to me, which I know simply because he is staring so hard I can feel it. He stops once in a while to touch my cheek, thinking I don't know where he is. I am curled on his couch, waiting for something to happen, for Dana to come back with whatever it is she left looking for. She's not as excited as Daddy is. She keeps thinking of the other little girl she lost and how it could happen all over again. But Daddy's joy is a wonderful wave of pure thrill that bounces around in him. Tonight, the air is still, the smells are far away and Daddy is waiting, so I wait here too. I know that Dana is my Mommy, but she's too scared to think like that, so I try not to upset her. She's afraid I'll have to leave. I want to stay here with Daddy. ~~~~~ He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do now. There she was -- his daughter -- and he didn't know what he was supposed to do with her. What could they do? She couldn't see him or hear him! After a huge mess with the Californian institution, Mulder and Scully had managed to prove that they should be awarded temporary custody, since her captors had not been caught and no clear motive had been established. Although, they both knew why she'd been taken. She was theirs, and someone didn't want that known. Or maybe it had all been orchestrated so they would find out. Helen moved slightly and her small body twisted to place her head in his lap. He sat awkwardly for a minute, then hesistantly ran his fingers through her hair. It was blonde and soft and smelled like his summers in Martha's Vineyard when things were good in his family. He smiled and she stretched her little frame out along the couch. "Don't need my bad habits . . ." he murmured, before remembering that she could not hear. He and Scully had been commanded by the state to take comprehensive lessons on basic American Sign Language, but the slightly moderated version for those that had to touch to speak and hear. It was easy for him, but Scully struggled through it, forgetting just how to hold her hands and fingers to mean a thousand different things. She was growing frustrated because she couldn't communicate with Helen, even though she was really trying. They had two more weeks of it, every night, before they were through. And after that, Mulder had no idea what would happen. There was no way they'd get custody when their availability was weighed against Helen's special needs. They worked too much, and it wasn't conceivable that they could change that. He wanted to change, just as Scully had promised with Emily, but he had a feeling that the state wouldn't see it like that. Helen's fingers went to his hands and he waited, but she made no attempt to "speak" and he let her little palms play in his. She made the letter "H" over and over as if it was a new toy, then strung together a complicated fragment of half thoughts and ramblings, almost as if she were thinking out loud to him. It was crushing his heart to think he wouldn't be able to have her. He was already in love with his little girl. Helen's head jerked up and her face tensed: the door opened and Scully came in, a stormy look of anger and fear in her face. Mulder watched her move into his apartment with a fluid grace that he saw in Helen when she manuevered around the room. She was alternating between biting her lip and crossing her arms. "I got the review back, Mulder . . ." she said and her mouth was moving even after she stopped speaking. Helen curled tightly in his arms and he tensed for bad news. "They don't think . . . they don't think we're responsible enough . . ." He watched in stunned silence as her eyes seemed to tremble, then grow watery from the tears she held back. "What does that mean?" he said softly. "We can't have her?" Scully couldn't sit down; she paced in front of his couch and glanced agonizingly at him and Helen for a few seconds before returning her eyes to the sheet in front of her. "Scully! She's ours! What the hell do they mean? They can't just say no." "They can and they are." "No. No, I won't let them do that. What would have happened if we'd had her normally, huh? They wouldn't come and take her away from us. They couldn't. They can't just . . . they can't . . ." But she was shaking her head and refusing to look at him squarely. He wanted to shake her and make her stop pacing like a caged panther, her muscles bunching and smoothing and tensing beneath her legs and jaw. "Scully, please, I'll quit the X-Files, hand everything over to you and go teach somewhere or live in Alaska where no one has ever heard of government conspiracies . . ." He placed a hand unconsciously to Helen's head, burying his fingers in her hair and biting his lip. Her dark and sightless eyes came to stare at him and he wished that for once, she could see how much love for her was in him. "Please, Scully. Tell me what I have to do. Tell me how to keep her." His anguished eyes rose to meet an equally tortured soul. She shook her head and collapsed next to them on the couch, reaching out a tentative hand to stroke Helen's cheek. Their little girl was strangely still, as if she knew and could sense the horror taking place around her. "She needs a family, Mulder. She needs a family." His eyes cut into hers desperately, his hand reaching out to clutch hers. "We can be her family, Scully. We can." "I know we can Mulder. But they won't . . . they won't see our arrangement as beneficial to Helen. Besides, they're probably right. Getting shipped from your place to mine and back and everything . . ." He shook his head violently, his eyes cast in the same light that told her he had a crazy theory. "No, we can do this together. I swear Scully . . . We can make her a family, just us. I want us to be a family." Her lips parted in surprise and she stared at him. "Us? Are you . . . do you mean . . .?" "I mean, us. A family in the same place, under the same roof, stronger together than apart. We're best friends, Scully, how hard is it to take that further?" She stood suddenly, backing away from him. "Mulder . . ." "Please, Scully. For Helen. I want to be able to see my little girl every day of my life. I want to watch her grow up and be able to protect her. If . . . I have this chance to make things right for her, for you, then I don't want to miss it. I love her, Scully. I never thought of having kids, but I like the idea." She stopped moving away from him. "So we just live together, is that what you're saying?" He nodded. "That's it." She looked at Helen, at the way the light on her face hid her more angular jaw and dark eyes and presented an Emily look-alike to her grief again. "I don't want to lose Helen, too," she said softly. She came and sat back down. "I want us to be a family." As she spoke, her eyes slid up to Mulder's and he saw a thousand wodnerful things in them that told him this would work. Helen's hands shot up between them and signed on the side of each of their cheeks, I love you. Scully and Mulder each took a hand and kissed her palm. They signed back: We love you. Scully looked up at him. "So, I get the X-Files, huh?" ~~~~~ adios end chapter RM Overweighted Chapter Six By RocketMan ===== Dedication: Okay, I got even more e-mail today and found that more people had written. So this is for Yolanda, Joseph Nichols, Melissa Rios, and all the people out there who teach sign language, especially Miss Doughty. ===== "He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light . . . He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead . . . Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men." -- Lamentations 3: 2, 6, 32-33 ===== "Mulder, I want her to go to church with me." Scully twisted around in the couch, watching his form walk along the floor like a caged panther, rippling and moving and never staying still. "I don't see how she'll get anything out of it." Dana's stubborn chin stuck out and she glared at him. "I'll sign it to her." "Scully . . ." he chided softly, a veiled reminder that she wasn't good at signing yet, let alone could she attempt to follow an entire church service. "Mulder, please . . . it's important to me." "But . . . " His protest dwindled as he realized she would do it no matter what he said. "Fine." he murmured. "Whatever." Scully sighed as Mulder stalked out of the room, heading towards the extra bedroom that he had placed Helen in. She still couldn't beleive that she had moved in with Mulder, in his apartment no less. The main reason was that he had two rooms, both of which he didn't use. His bedroom he gave to her, and the extra one they cleaned his office supplies out of and let Helen have. The court had gone for their arrangement only after they had demonstrated their seriousness, which was all made up anyway. The judge had even gone so far as to ask when they'd be getting married. Nervously, they had said there was no set date. The judge had wanted to be invited. This made Scully almost panic. She couldn't marry Mulder . . . yet what opportunities were available if she lived with him? No one could know that they weren't together or else the court would take Helen away from them. She was stuck. She had to live with him . . . maybe even marry him. She sighed as he stepped into Helen's room, wishing that somehow, things might turn out okay for them. ~~~~~ Sunday morning, Mulder made them breakfast and said that he was coming too, just to translate more effectively than she could. It was partly a barb to get back at her, and partly a need to make sure they were all right and that Helen didn't feel stranded in a new place. Scully had dressed her in a light blue sundress with large print white flowers on it. Her hair was brushed back with a white barrette and she wore white sandals. Mulder had to admit she looked adorable. Her eyes were wide and brown and dark and they made a startling contrast against her blonde hair and blue dress. Scully was in beige and green and her eyes seemed to come alive with her dress and were magnified with the small amount of make-up she applied. Mulder didn't want to say anything that might make her uncomfortable, but he smiled and kissed her forehead before herding them all out the door. As they walked to St. James' Cathedral, Mulder held Helen in his arms so they could walk faster and Scully tucked her arm through his. They waited for the light to change and pretended they were a normal couple out walking. Helen buried her face in his shoulder and closed her eyes. ~~~~~ "She's asleep," Scully whispered to him. Mulder smiled and looked down at Helen's still form, her head pillowed in Scully's lap and framed by Scully's hands. Her breathing was slow and he reached over and caressed the side of her face before lookng back at Scully. "I'm sorry I gave you such a hard time. I had a bad experience with religion and it left a bitter taste. But if this is what shaped your life, then I want it for Helen too," he said. The priest was speaking on unconditional love and his soft voice was lulling the entire congregation to sleep, despite the efforts of the choir to pep things up a bit. Scully smiled and took his hand. "What do you mean by that?" "Well, if church made you the wonderful person you are, the great friend and beautiful mother you are now, then I want that for Helen." Scully's eyes grew gentle and she smiled sadly at him, trying to understand where his words fit into their new partnership. "Thanks, Mulder . . . that's sweet." "It's the truth." He slid closer to her and placed his arm on the back of the pew, encircling her shoulders and letting his hand come to rest on the back of her neck. She wished she could figure everything out, but his words and his actions and her heart were saying a million different things. She wearily let her head fall to his shoulder, acutely aware of every sensation riding through her. ~~~~~ She stood up slowly in the room, walking to the floor length mirror that Mulder had in his bedroom -- now hers -- and watched herself for a moment. Could Mulder want this? He might. Why else come to the conclusion that they had to live together in order to keep Helen? There could have been other solutions, surely. They could have worked things out like divorced parents did. She sighed and ran her hands down her pants to smooth out the invisible wrinkles. She bit her lip and looked at herself critically one last time before turning away. The thing about the room was that it smelled like Mulder. During the day, she had to strain to catch the scent of him, but at night, in the bed that once was his, she was engulfed by his aroma. It was buried in the sheets and stamped on the pillows. She liked falling alseep to his smell. It was almost like he was there, holding her. ~~~~~ Mulder waited until she was changing in his old bedroom before he slipped into the bathroom and slumped against the wall. It was the last private place in his apartment and he needed to be alone, desperately. The thing about the bathroom was, it smelled like Scully. Her shampoo and soap and body flavor were showered onto the tile and imprinted into the air of the bathroom. He could close his eyes and feel her right there with him. He wasn't sure what they were doing anymore. At first, it was his mad attempt to hold on to what was precious to him, mainly Scully and Helen. Now, there was something slowly simmering between them. Sitting there, he wanted to throw open his bedroom door and find her stretched out on his bed, perhaps writing something or just relaxing, and go up to her and take her in his arms and just kiss her. Kiss her until she killed him, or kissed him back. It was the scent of her that now drove him crazy, just as the sight of her going off to sleep in his bed made him nuts, and the sound of her sighing at night when she thought he couldn't hear, and the feel of her when she brushed by him, and his imagined taste of her. He rose and opened the door, intoxicated on his false bravado, then happened to meet her as she was coming out of his room. Standing there, eyes locked and hearts beating too fast, he couldn't move. She brought her hands to his chest and laid them there, waiting for something within him to break. His head tilted down and his lips brushed her forehead, equally dismaying her and thrilling her. Then his hands went to tangle in her hair and his lips were meeting hers and the only thing she could think was -- ~~~~~ end chapter adios RM Overweighted Chapter Seven By RocketMan ===== Dedicated to Juliettt (J3) for her encouragement. ===== "you have three monsters thrashing in your dark room: they never brighten they take long breaks when the oven is on and cinnamon comes stretching its fingers through their matted fur. they breathe in when tiny spiders weave their unseen webs across their dancing nerves. they pucker their red lips when lunch is tuna fish and pickles and love just the same. you have three monsters grieving in your dark room: grieving for their two lost brothers." -- "for Helen Keller," Laura Bontrager ===== I keep feeling Jane. I block out my senses and there she is: breath fast against my cheek, heart fluttering like a worm in a bird's beak, hands gripping me too tightly. She yanks me up and runs . . . and runs . . . and we run forever . . . Dana is there too; I can feel her hands snatch at me as we fly by -- she is angry and wishing I had not come. I can feel them every time I sleep and they wake me up. I go to this place outside of me where I don't have to feel anything, where my mind's eyes and ears don't hear the sounds of unsaid sorrows. I wish I could stay in this place forever and never have to go back. It is silent here. Silent like it used to be for me. There are no mad people, no incoherent ramblings, no abused words, or minds, or children. I can stay away from things and feel nothing but this silence. It is so nice. So very blessed . . . I want to stay here . . . stay here forever. ~~~~~ Dana watched the little girl lying very still on her bed, her hands clutched together and tucked tightly to herself. Helen's eyes were shut and she looked asleep, but she wasn't. Scully didn't know where the little girl had gone, only that her spirit wasn't there anymore. ~~~~~ The windows were bright and let in all the light coming from the dying sun. He squinted and wished she wouldn't open all the curtains, wished she would just leave things alone sometimes. He turned on the couch and shuddered as the warmth was taken away. Looking up, he saw her standing right over him, her hands working nervously together, as if she didn't know quite what to say to him. "I'm worried," she blurt out. He was worried too. He was scared to death, actually, afraid that his stupid emotions or male hormones, or whatever, had gotten away with him and that she would never be comfortable around him again. "Helen . . ." she started, then trailed off at the look in his eyes. He sat up and his feet thumped heavily to the floor. He sighed a long, grieving sigh that ripped from his chest and across to her. She noticed how his hair seemed golden with the light playing along it, how his eyes were as deep and mysterious as horses' and how his hands gave her the feeling that everything would be all right. She moved to squat down next to him, taking one of his hands that were cradling his face. "Helen's not good, Mulder. I don't know what's wrong with her, but she's just not here . . ." His face came out from behind his hands and she jerked back. "There are a lot of us that are just not here." She stood again and moved over to the window, attempting to keep down her fear and sense of . . . of forever . . . She was going to be doing this forever. Helen would grow up with them, and she would always be running around trying to pick up Mulder's pieces. She wanted the best for Helen, and she did love her . . . she thought she did. But how hard would it be if they sent Helen back to her school? Back to the place where she was most comfortable, back where she had an entire family helping her and not some thrown together mess. Otherwise, she was going to be doing this forever. "Scully . . ." She angrily wiped the scalding tears from her cheeks and turned around. He was standing and coming up to her, his eyes no longer far away, but right there with her, looking only at her, thinking only of her. "I just want to make the most of this that we can." he whispered. She froze and moved away. "Making lemonade out of lemons, huh? That's great . . . that's great --" "No, Scully. That's not what I mean." "Then why the hell can't you just say what you mean!?" she screamed, knowing full well that she could end up hurting him, or hurting herself when this was over. "I do say what I mean! I've been saying exactly what I meant since we ever --" "Like hell, you have. Like hell . . ." she sputtered furiosuly, mainly frustrated with herself. "Then to hell with this, Scully. Forget it. You obviously don't care what happens to Helen. So why should I? I'm just the donor, or something, right? So go ahead, whatever it was you were planning on, go right ahead." She sank to the couch and watched his tirade numbly, feeling all energy seep out of her and puddle in the floor. This wasn't fair. She hadn't asked to be taken, to have something mess around with her body, to have things be created in her image. "That's not fair," she whispered. He sat came to tower over her. "I never said this would be fair Scully. No one promised you that." She wouldn't cry in front of him, no matter how much she was hurting. "My father said that --" "If your father told you that life was fair, then screw him. It's not. It never will be -- no matter how much you try, how much you go to church, how much you sit there and pretend that nothing can hurt you. It won't ever stop hurting." She stood and shoved him away with as much force as she could, then blindly reached for the door. He watched her flee and didn't attempt to call her back. She needed to think about things. He needed some time to himself. ~~~~~ Silence. It's quiet and black and forever, like the ocean is when you first put your foot in and it swirls all around you and you think you could go on swimming in it until you dropped right off into space. But it's more. It's drowning in the ocean and not needing air or light or breath. I can stay here with silence holding me up, buoying me in its swells of darkness. A jellyfish stings across my skin and I gasp back suddenly into feeling. He's here. Daddy is crawling up next to me and laying a worn hand across my forehead, then patting my cheek. I open my eyes, letting him know I'm awake. He sighs and leans over and kisses my cheek. When he leaves, I can still taste his tears and his fear like stinging tentacles of a jellyfish. ~~~~~ Dana ran from the bus stop to her own apartment, her key clenched tightly enough to make imprints in her fingers. She stomped up the stairs as if she were running for her life and slammed headlong into the old man that she used to live across from. "Ahh, Dana! I've haven't seen you in a long time, young lady." His sagging eyes were crinkled with long years and happiness and his hands shook from working hard for a living and losing his wife to cancer a few years back. "Hey Mr. James. I'm not really back. I told you I had moved in with . . . ah, Mulder?" "Oh, hunh. Nope. Can't say I remember you telling me. My mind's like a sieve nowadays." "That's all right." She wanted him to just go on, to leave her alone and let her just scream and scream and scream until she was sobbing and gagging on the floor. "Are you okay, Dana? Haven't got people after you?" She smiled sadly. "No, Mr. James. I'm fine." "No, you're not, but that's all right if you want to lie to me. I'm just an old fart anyway, right?" She gaped at him. "No, no, sir. Mr. James, you're not --" "Stop lying to me, Dana. I suspect that's your problem, isn't it? The reason you're all ready to cry?" She sighed and then snuck him a mocking look. "You always were a nosy old man." He grinned with pleasure and patted her arm. "Ha, ha! That's it, tell the truth, now. Remember, Dana, things won't work unless you tell the truth." He turned and began walking away, his gait shuffled and agonizingly slow. "Mr. James?" He turned and winked. "Thanks." ~~~~~ It was dark when she crept inside. Mulder must have pulled the curtains shut again and turned off all the lights. He liked darkness. She supposed Helen didn't care one way or the other. He and Helen were a good match, both moody and always just waiting to find something better. There would be nothing better. He was right. They had to make the best of it. Not because they were stuck together, but because they *were* together. She took a shaky breath and tucked her key into her pocket once again, but she was pretty sure she wouldn't ever feel that trapped again. Licking her upper lip, she carefully tiptoed along the hallway, stopping when she came to Helen's room. Her little girl was curled up on the floor, one arm around a teddy bear the other stretched out and grasping something. As she got closer, she saw Mulder on the floor, where he had evidently posted himself by her bed. It looked like Helen had crawled out of bed to come sleep with him. His hand was clasped in hers and his face tear streaked and old looking. She wished she could make life fair for him. For once. He seemed unwilling to face things sometimes, but also, he could be ferocious about something he loved. It looked like he was loving her. She sank to her knees and padded up to them, then sat there, watching his chest rise and fall and his hand curling in Helen's. She gently reached out, her hand shaking with tentativeness and need. His shirt was soft and cotton, his arm slack and toned under her hand. She let her fingers splay across his bicep, then slide to his back. He twitched in his sleep and sighed. She pressed her face into his shoulder blade and slipped her arm around his chest, feeling like she was holding onto him against the tug of the world. Settling down into the floor, she closed her eyes and prayed to fall asleep. ~~~~~ end chapter seven adios RM Overweighted Chapter Eight By RocketMan ===== Dedicated to John Moore, for his enlightenment. ===== "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." -- John 20:29 ===== Life comes back to me in shifting waves of thought and feeling. Cresting over my consciousness, first comes warmth, like liquid fire banked for the long journey. Troughing and sputtering, then come my remaining senses: taste, touch, and smell. There is dust and thick socks in my mouth and a layer of salt tears covering my tongue. There is rough wood and a body and a wool blanket and someone's breath like a mother's whisper across my neck. There is cologne and him, and sea breezes and her, and then the scent of Pine-Sol and floorboard and dustmotes. I reach out a hand and my dark room expands and my mind's eyes see this place with frightening clarity, as if everyone has released some great tidal wave of emotion. I am oriented. I feel him there with me, about a foot away, his chest rising and falling. I meet an arm and it is her: she is loosely holding him, as if she is content in the knowledge of him. Things begin moving and life begins taking place again. I don't want to have to help it out. I want to go back to the silence. There's too much . . . just too much. I feel the ocean crashing into me: ocean waves of nothing churning out my fear. ~~~~~ Mulder came awake in a panicked moment of confusion. Arms and warmth and three bodies when there should have been one -- his. He relaxed when he smelled Johnson's baby shampoo and Tide detergent, smells he had never before realized were there until Helen had pointed them out to him. He felt something too. An arm, snaking around his chest and a face buried into his back. He turned and his whole body hitched. ". . . Scully . . ." he whispered and it was like God had given him back something more important than sight or hearing, some other sense he had never used. As if belief was a sense. He laid back and closed his eyes, trying to imprint every detail of her into his senses. Helen had taught him to appreciate the smell of someone you loved, the taste of something you took for granted, the touch of skin gliding across yours in the briefest of gestures. First it was the touch that came to him. Her bare arm was warm, pulsing slightly with the blood forcing through the partially blocked pressure point. Parts of her skin were cool, as if the blood didn't quite reach. Each hair on her arm was soft and small, tiny antennae that whispered to his chest and set his nerves alive. Where her fingers touched him were electrical points of conducting electrons, jumping from cell to cell like dancers to good swing music. The dance crept up his chest and to his throat and made a space there to stay, throbbing and pulsing like a second heart. Then the smell of seashores and summer and sleep all mixed with something that he could never analyze but was always Scully. Lakes and rocks came to him, long talks with intellectual words used to hide true meaning, late night motel room visits with candles or computers or cases, and a certain silent strength that both bended and yielded but never broke. His lips ached to taste her, to have this memory, this sensation also. When things were still and he was certain she was asleep, he turned and managed to catch his lips on her shoulder. He breathed. It was mainly soap and sweat, with skin and something else. Maybe something that was also distinctly her. He did not know yet. With these three satiated, he listened. Listened for Helen because she could not, and listened for himself because he could. There was no way to describe the sound of love breathing next to you, in your hearing, wanting to be there. The floor felt like it was spinning away in a dizzying downward hurtle and he gasped and opened his eyes. Dana Scully, sleeping beside him. She was beautiful, to every sense he had. And some he didn't. ~~~~~ end chapter eight adios RM Overweighted Chapter Nine By RocketMan ===== "I have lain on the floor of the sea and breathed with the breathing of the sea-anemone." -- TS Eliot ===== "She makes me see things differently," he whispered. Scully's head jerked up from where she was helping Helen tie her shoe and blinked a few times. "What?" "The way she describes something makes me look at it differently. And then I turn around and something else is changed." Scully smiled and moved Helen's hands back to her laces, in the right positions so she could get it done. Her nimble fingers fumbled on it and ended up tangling herself in the string. Scully stroked her cheek and tried again. "Why don't you let her have a break?" he said suddenly. "Because she wants to do it." she replied, looking up at him. Her mouth was slightly parted and he could almost feel how her breath was, sharp and winded from frustration. "She makes me see you differently, too." She smiled. "Did we switch subjects again?" He grinned. "Come on, Scully. You've always been able to follow me before." "I just pretended, Mulder. I have never been able to follow you." But she was grinning and her voice was laughing at him. "She does." "Follow you?" "Ha. Yes. But I meant, she really does make me see you differently." "Good?" "Good." Helen made her animal noises and threw down her laces and pushed at Scully's hands. "Doesn't look like she wants to do it, Scully." "Well, too bad. I'm going to make her." "I don't think that's a good idea." "Mulder you can't go easy on her becasue she's deaf and blind. She needs to be treated just the same --" "I'm not trying to go easy on her. If this was our kid and she could hear and see, I'd still tell you to let her have a break. There's such a thing as too much. She'll begin to think it's impossible and then not ever really try." Scully glared at him and Helen shifted uncomfortably. "She is our kid." she said icily. He ignored the slip. "Scully, I did major in psychology . . ." She gently pushed Helen from her lap and signed "later" into her hands. Helen smiled and bolted for her Daddy, throwing her arms up and waiting with unseeing eyes for him to pick her up. He swung her around and nestled her to him. There was a lot of silence in their home. Silence, but words were being said, either with eyes or hands. she signed. Mulder glanced to Scully, seeing if she had caught that. "Mulder . . ." "How could she know?" he said, frowning. "We weren't yelling or even really angry. How could she know?" "She can't *hear* Mulder. How did she know?" Mulder rolled his eyes. "That's right Scully. I just said that." "You are so sarcastic today," she murmured, shaking her head. She turned to the table to pick up the trash from lunch and heard him yelp. "Mulder?" She was by his side before the dazed look passed from his face. "What's wrong? Mulder?" He jiggled Helen and then eyed Scully. "She signed . . . told me not to be sarcastic." Scully's breath came sharp, quick. "What do you mean, Mulder? That she can hear us? That she's been faking? There were tests, they --" "No, she's not faking. She's got that connection, Scully. The one that led you to her, it's back." She shivered. "Or maybe it never left." ~~~~~ It was fun playing with them. They were being mean and I wanted them to stop. I didn't want to tie my shoes anymore and I wanted to make them stop falling into the same routine. Insult, apology, insult. That's how it goes now. They can't stand being trapped together even if somewhere, they love each other, even if they love me. I'm not supposed to make it. I'm going to die and then they can go back to themselves. It'll be okay again. ~~~~~ "She makes me see you differently." "You said that." "Scully, shut up and listen to me." She gaped at him, but did. "She's made me realize that we're not too good to each other. We fight a lot, but mainly, we just don't fit. I think . . . I think we should try something different." It was as if love was being squeezed right from her body, along with all her blood. She didn't know what to say. She sank to the bed, eyes blank as he watched her. She was taking it a bit too seriously. "Why don't I start sleeping in my bed again?" She frowned, clearly not understanding. "Oh. Okay. I don't mind having the couch --" "No, Scully." "You -- you want me to leave --" "No, Scully." He was smiling, laughing almost. He dropped to where she was sitting. "What?" "I want you right here." He took her hands and placed his fingers where she could feel every inch of them. Breath. Breath. Then: "What?" He laughed. "Stay here. Right here. With me." She shook her head and lowered it. "Mulder, we can't --" Her mouth stopped moving as she caught his eyes. Her breath didn't come. "Did you ever learn to tie your shoes?" he whispered. She nodded. "Then you can." His lips fell to hers and remained. ~~~~~ Everything's okay again. Maybe I am supposed to stay. ~~~~~ end chapter nine adios RM Overweighted Chapter Ten By RocketMan ===== "In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed; But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted." -- "A Dream" Edgar Allan Poe ===== "Mulder! I wish you'd tell me when --" "But look. She loves it!" he said, shushing her with a hand to her lips. Helen was burying her face in Mulder's present: a large old dog of mixed breed with a black coat and dark eyes. The dog was licking her face and whining. "Mulder . . ." "What? She needs something, Scully." His voice was suddenly strained, reaching out to her with its pitch and timbre. "I know," she whispered, feeling the same sense of loss rising in her. Mulder shook himself out of his intensity and reached out a hand to pet the dog. "What's his name?" "Sam. He's seven years old and the lady said he was perfect for Helen." "Why's that?" Scully asked absent-mindedly as she carefully eyed the dog. "His owners had three kids, youngest age was two, so he's gentle. They had to get rid of him because they were moving to Alaska and he's so old, it would hurt him." Scully turned to him again, sitting on the couch next to where Helen was eagerly petting her new dog. "What's that in doggie years? Forty-nine or something?" He smiled. "You like him?" She reached out and cautiously put her hand to his head. Sam twisted and licked her fingers, then her knee. "Yeah, I do." Mulder's grin grew wider and he leaned back against the couch, sprawled carelessly in the floor to watch Helen play with her dog. He took her hands and signed Sam into her palm. She thought for a moment and then made him a special sign, beginning with an "s" and shaking her hand back and forth. Sam barked and Mulder could have sworn he knew exactly what Helen was doing. Helen stood and bumped into the couch, then twisted and ran for her room, Sam tagging on her heels as if he were a puppy. Mulder craned his neck and was pleased to see that Helen made it all the way to her room without knocking into anything. "That was good, Mulder." He glanced back to Scully, turning his face so he could see her. She was perched on the edge of the couch, her hair falling into her face and chin resting in her hands. "You think so?" She nodded. "She's been so . . . gone. I'll sign to her and she won't even know I'm there. I think she's sad about Jane." "That must be a powerful grief, Scully. She's gone inside herself. Like she's listening to something in her. I thought maybe the dog would give her a connection to the outside." Scully gave a lonely sigh and he imagined he could feel her breath dancing along his skin. "It must be so hard, Mulder. To have all that darkness and all that silence. It would be so easy to cut off from the outside world." "And that's what she's doing." Scully blindly reached out with her hand for his, entwining their fingers without even a glance. He closed his eyes and let the rhythm of the apartment and his heart lull him into a drowsy state. The slick hardwood floor was dusty and itched his nose, and the leather on his sofa made his head slip forward. His fingers in hers pounded and thrummed and he almost could feel her own heartbeat through their touch. She was lying back into the couch now, her body slumped and relaxed in ways it had never been, her mind content with roving from subject to subject with no apparent reason. She flicked her wrist and he cracked open an eye. "Why hasn't anything happened?" He lifted an eyebrow at her and tasted the air's feathery summer dust. His tongue ran across dry and cracked lips and he breathed in deeply, thinking. "Happened how?" "Why haven't they come for her?" He could smell rain in the breeze coming in from the open window and he knew it would have lightning and thunder. The window rattled as the wind picked up, then settled again. "I'm not sure. I think they're waiting for something." She felt protected in the cocoon of his couch, the way it melded to her body and meshed with her mood. It was sticky in the summer heat, but perfect if you didn't try to move. Her head felt too heavy for her body and she let her head dip down a bit. "Scully, you awake?" She nodded and her mouth moved to answer but no sounds would come. She squeezed his hand and moved slightly. He rolled to sit in front of her, still sacked out on the floor, and propped his head on the cushion. The leather was chilly against his cheek and his eyes rolled as he looked up at her. Her hand was still tangled in his and he brought it to his lips, leaving her skin there when he closed his eyes again. She whimpered. "S . . . s . . . SScully?" he murmured. "Ants . . ." she whispered. "In my head . . ." He felt them too now. Little colonies marching across his brain like kids on a field trip. "Not right . . ." she muttered. His eyes slipped shut. ~~~~~ Sam is large and strong and his muscles are thick beneath his coat. His face is smooth like seal skin and his nose is cold and wet. He stays perched beside me on the bed, his head on my stomach because he seems to like the up and down movement when I breathe. I sign things to him, against his side where he can feel every finger moving and I feel the vibrations when he whines. He's been whining a lot. I can feel something with my mind, something crawling like those bugs were in the place I was taken to. I shake my head and drop to the floor, feeling shaky and confused. I can't remember which side I'm on, where the door is, or what direction I'm facing. My hand is clutched tightly to Sam and his side vibrates deeper, like a growl. He moves forward and I follow. I'm blind, oh, please, help, I can't *see*. It's never been this open, this completely dark and totally vast. I'm shaking and scuffling along the floor forever until I hit something. I panic and Sam smacks into me and knocks me down and suddenly, smell and touch and taste come back. I'm in the living room. I'm okay. I'm okay. Sam's bulk is panting over me, and I move him away. I can taste my own fear and something else. Something funny in the air. It's acidic almost and it's got a metallic after feel to it. I spit and it's still there, magnified because now I know it's there. It's awful, like having a piece of aluminum in your mouth. I lick my lips and my throat is very dry, scratching and killing. I can feel the floors underneath and they are too cool, too chilly for summer. A sudden draft from the window clears out the horrifying smell of gas and the taste of metal. Gas. That's it. Something's very wrong. Something's wrong I can feel things moving around, moving into place and waiting for one thing to come: death. Vultures are here. I scramble to the couch and feel Daddy slumped against it, pitifully moving as if he knows too that something's about to happen. He's half here and I move past him to Mommy. I shiver. She's cold. I yank on her arm and when she slumps into me, I feel death again. Death rushing past my face and stinging into the couch. The place where Mommy was. I think I'm screaming, or maybe again, whispering. Daddy moves, his arms are wrapping around me, the bullets are around us, it's waking him up. Sam is dragging something, I feel his growl, his teeth clenched over cotton. I'm holding tightly to Daddy and he's helping Sam and we're moving too fast I can't keep up, I can't find out where we are or what's happening. Something hits. I scream again. Maybe whisper. It hurts. ~~~~~ When the bullets started, Mulder was jerked awake. He saw dimly and realized that Helen was attempting to pull Scully from the couch even while a firebomb was being crashed through the window. Shards of glass spiked into Helen and Scully and he grabbed them both, quickly, pushing Helen around his neck and surprised when Sam began dragging Scully's limp body to the door. Fire began eating his couch and he choked on fumes and inched forward on the ground to avoid stray bullets. Helen slipped from around him and he tucked her into him, shielding her from anything else, unsure of what had happened, or how. It looked like they hadn't forgotten them after all. Sam was panting in the floor, growling and whining ocassionally and guarding Scully's body with his ferocious looking teeth. Mulder cradled both his women in his arms and shoved open the door as flames began licking his feet. He bit down on his tongue to keep from totally panicking, and slid out the door, watching at every step for someone to come from the shadows and shoot them dead. Sam prowled on ahead and kept his body low, slithering along like a snake at times. The very air around him seemed to be igniting and he figured something had been introduced into the vents to make them sluggish. He bit the inside of his cheek and shuffled forward, making it to the stairwell on a coughing fit and weak, trembling arms. He half fell down the first flight and as he was making it down the second, he slipped. On blood. Scully's blood. It was bloomed across her shoulder and down her back and dripped, like a leaky faucet, to the ground. He glanced back and saw a whole trail of it leading and smearing straight to him. He felt his stomach heave and he whimpered; he couldn't figure out what to do. Either staunch it, or get the hell out of the fire. He chose fire. He stumbled out of the building and dragged three bodies to her car. His body, hers, and Helen's. Sam was right behind. Actually, he was thinking his car had been fire bombed, but hers was intact. And he had the keys in his pocket. It had to be God. It was the only answer for that wonderful stroke of luck. He shoved Helen into the front seat and Scully in the back and drove. ~~~~~ The motel room was very small and very disgusting, but Mulder had only been carrying twenty dollars with him, Scully only ten. Helen was strecthed out on the ratty couch, a blanket underneath her and his steady hand removing the bits of glass from her arms and neck. She was crying and clutching Sam's fur as he pulled the tiny shards out. He couldn't look at her face or his hands began to shake and his own eyes teared up. So he concentrated. When the last sliver was out, he smeared antibiotic cream across it and kissed her cheek. She laid there very still and Sam jumped up to the couch and laid his head on her stomach. A tiny smile came to her lips and she asked how her Mommy was. Mulder signed . Sam whined and Mulder stood up, taking in a deep breath and turning to see Scully. She was on the single bed, her face pale and drawn and her lips twisted in a grimace of pain. She looked like hell and smelled of blood and anitseptic. Mulder had taken her to the Lone Gunmen right off and within seconds, a doctor had arrived to treat her. She hadn't woken up the entire time. He looked away and bit hard into his lip to keep his tears back, then strode to her side. He grabbed the tweezers and washed them in the basin of water on the night table. Slowly, he regained control and began digging out the shards of glass from her face and neck and arm. The slivers were wet with her blood and shining, as if waiting for some explorer to find their worth. He placed each piece on a washcloth and lined them up like the bloodied bodies of fallen soldiers. She groaned and her eyes fluttered as he was digging for a piece deep in her neck. A gasp of pain and her eyes were open, staring directly into his. "I'm sorry," he whispered. She seemed not to be able to hear. He leaned down and kissed her forehead. When he sought her eyes again, they were closed. ~~~~~ It took three hours to carefully extract the slivers of glass and one hour to wash her clean of blood and sweat. He then helped Helen take a sponge bath, carefully keeping the soap away from her fresh cuts and open wounds. Sam insisted on keeping his wet nose over the edge of the tub, watching and wagging his heavy tail. When she was dressed in one of Byers' borrowed T-shirts and settled into the couch with Sam resting beside her, he finally took a look at himself in the foggy mirror. He looked old. His eyes were sunken and dimmed, his face bagging and sagging, his lips bloodless. He was in one of his old, smelly sweatshirts -- something Frohike had stored away for some odd reason. He really didn't want to know. He especially didn't want to know why Frohike also had one of Dana's old sweatshirts. Which she was now dressed in. The sweatshirt only. He had dressed her. Frohike had been nowhere in sight and Langly had blacked out every camera so that Frohike couldn't possibly be recording it. It would have been fuuny except it made him want to cry. He shivered and crawled away from the mirror and over to the bed. She was sleeping easily for the moment and he moved in beside her. She shifted, as if she were about to turn over and rest against him, but she stayed flat on her back. He curled up next to her and slipped an arm around her waist, pressing his face into her good shoulder. She sighed, then whimpered. He pulled away in hurt and watched her face ease again once his touch was gone. All he could figure was that she was bruised somewhere. He slid to the floor and waited for sleep. ~~~~~ I can feel nothing. This new dark room is strange and I don't know where things are. Sam is here and he's protecting me. He knows where things are. It's okay. I can feel Daddy's subtle panic, riding on the edges of his love. I can't feel Mommy. It's making me afraid. Sam whines again and nudges my chin. It's okay he says. It's okay. ~~~~~ end ten adios RM Overweighted Chapter Eleven By RocketMan ===== "Come to me now And lay your hands over me Even if it's a lie Say it will be all right And I will believe . . . Seems like every time I try to make it right It all comes down on me Please say honestly You won't give up on me And I shall believe . . ." -- Sheryl Crow, "I Shall Believe" ===== Sam is swimming in my dark ocean. His huge paws take great strokes and he pants, his tongue hanging out. He turns and bumps into me: I jerk out of the water, back to feeling, back to the shore. It's not okay. Something's wrong. I can't see. I can't hear. I don't know how to do this. Something's wrong with Mommy. I taste my panic like bitter salt dissolving in my mouth. It fizzes and slides uneasily down. I want to throw up. Something's wrong with Mommy. Sam's gone. I feel the rough scratchy weave of the couch, imaginging golds and greens and blues. I am tightly meshed into one corner, curled up and facing the back so that my cheek is pressed into its side. I lift a hand and fumble it over the back. Nothing. No fur or collar or muscle or heat. I can almost hear him whining at me, though. He's saying hurry, something's wrong. I take a deep breath and stand. Things spin around, twisting from me. I want to sit back down, find comfort and an anchor. There is nothing. I'm too panicked, too out of touch. I have to feel. I can't feel. They're all asleep, or unconscious . . . or dead. I can't feel. I have to feel. I lower myself to the floor. It stinks. Rotting fabric and wet dog and old smoke. That's one thing. And Daddy. I smell him here too. Fresh, clean, alive. Then blood. That would be Mommy. Bleeding and reeking of death. I don't want to smell this. The tiny carpet-fingers brush my skin, abrading my nose and cheeks like eager hands. They carry with them the promise of forever shag and molding bathrooms. I can smell. I have to feel. It's cold. Cold and damp and tinny. A storm outside. That's it. Sam's probably afraid of the storm and went to hide under the bed. But something's still very wrong. Too much death and blood. Okay. I need to feel. Deep breath and close eyes and grip the carpet. It's rough. Rough and prickly in some places, soft in others. Very worn and clumped. Carpet. A dark room with things in it. I inch forward and spread out my hands along the floor, then stand. Things go dizzy again, the world dropping away from me, but I am anchored to the feel and smell of motel room shag carpet. I know this ground in my dark room. I picture how it feels in my head. Soft expanse of squishy carpet and then the bed, then more carpet and the couch, off to the left the bathroom. Okay, so I can get to Mommy, and then Daddy from there. I creep forward. Another inch. I am where I think I am. I straighten and begin to walk, veering off to the right. I smack hard into the wall and come down. My face stings and my eyes sting and I can't figure out where the stupid wall is supposed to be, or where I am or where the bed is, or Daddy and why isn't he coming to help me? I want to sob. I panic and stand and careen into the bed and topple over it and hit my face smack into Mommy's leg and I hit her so hard, I can feel her shrink back in pain. I'm sorry. I'm sorry Mommy. I can't figure out where I am. On the bed. Find my way. I reach out hands and feel smooth, bunny soft blanket and stiff starched sheet. Then a foot. The edge of the bed looms up fast and I teeter there, then regain my balance. I run my fingers along the bed, deciding not to trust my own internal map, but to make a new one. Here is the bed, here are its edges. Something . . . else. It's not a sheet, but it's cool and thin and near Mommy's arm. I don't know what it is. I've never felt it before. No, it is the sheet, but something else. Like someone spilled water all over. It stays on my fingers, sticking and sliding. I quake and pull away. I fall off the bed and into Daddy's lap. He jerks and I think he probably yelled too, and then he grips my arms. I hold my wet fingers up to his face, streaking it across his cheek. He reacts violently, shoving me into the chair and tripping as he sits up, reaching for Mommy. Something's wrong with Mommy. ~~~~~ He was having a horrible dream. Scully exploding with bullets before his eyes, their sharp metal ripping right through her body as she said his name. He let out a sob as he woke, and found sightless eyes staring soulessly into his. Her baby fingers came up and touched his cheek. It was blood. He scooped her up and set her in the chair, then clambered to Scully. She was bleeding. Bleeding all over the bed and soaking the sheets in it. Her face was so white he panicked and reached over to begin CPR. But she was still breathing. He felt another sob crawl up his throat and he carefully removed the bandages covering her arm and peered at the sutures. They were a mess of black thread and red blood and yellowed skin. He pressed more cloths into the area and grabbed for his cell phone, quickly hitting speed dial number three to get the Lone Gunmen. Byers answered. "Who was that doctor?" Mulder tore out of his throat. "Mulder? Hold on." A long wait as various recording devices were unhooked and then Frohike picked up the extension. "Yo, Mulder. That was one of our most --" "He killed her!" "What?!" "She's bleeding and I can't make it stop. What the hell did he do to her?" "Mulder, he did what he could without going to the hospital. Man, if you want to save her, call 9-1-1, not us." "I can't . . ." he cried and buried his head into her side. He felt Helen's hands on his face, coming and wiping the tears streaming ceaselessly down. She planted her lips on his cheek and gave him a baby kiss, crawling into his lap. "Mulder, call," he heard Frohike say. Byers made a noise. "Look, if she's bleeding a lot, she needs a blood transfusion. This isn't something you can just --" "I know, I know. If I do, they're sure to find us." "Mulder, we're hanging up. It's your call." "You punk! You better not let her die!" Frohike yelled. The line went dead and Mulder stared at the pale form before him. She was dying. She was. All her life was now slipping from her in great gushing waves and he had it smeared on his hands. He also had Helen in his arms. His hand trembled and he began to push in the numbers. A shaky breath as he listened and then he started: "Yeah, I need your help." ~~~~~ end chapter eleven adios RM Overweighted Chapter Twelve By RocketMan ===== NOTE: Inspiration for this came from a Gillian Anderson interview on Leno. ===== "For God speaks in one way, and in two, though people do not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on mortals, while they slumber in their beds, then he opens their ears, and terrifies them with warnings . . ." -- Job 33:14-16 ===== Her white Keds squeaked down the super clean, sterile halls. White bounced off white and Margaret Scully wished more than anything that she did not know this hospital so well. ICU was one way and she knew this way all to much. All too much. She'd had a dream of this. Walking and walking and waiting for news. She had been happy and sad at the same time, fearful and excited. Now she understood her dream. Somewhere down this hall was her baby girl, shot and bleeding, and in this room was her baby's baby, cradled in the arms of its father -- Fox Mulder. The room was suddenly on front of her -- 221. A good number for hospitals to use, a number that indicated old high school memories and talking with friends after English class. She didn't want to have such associations here now. Mrs. Scully opened the door without looking through the window, knowing that all courage came from ignorance. If she did not know how bad her own girl was, then she did not have to be afraid. If she did not see her granddaughter's blindness and deaf ears, then she would not have to be nervous. The room was dormant, yet precariously alive. The machines monitering her little girl hummed and beeped and kept constant movement, while the three figures that were supposed to be alive and vibrant, were asleep and pale. She took a good long look at her daughter's vitals, at the numbers that indicated good things this day, then turned her attention to the sleeping two in the chair. Fox was slack-jawed with his feet propped up on Dana's bed and his head tucked on top of a child's curly blonde hair. His hands were gently around her, love emanating from his every line and every limb. Margaret didn't want to look at the little girl. But she made herself. Her granddaughter. A little thing with fair Scully skin and blonde hair that made her lashes stand out from her face. Freckles that lined her chin and nose and cheeks like scattered seed, and pouty Mulder lips that asked to have their way. Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail, in the same fashion that Margaret had done Dana and Melissa's hair when they were little. Tendrils curled around her face where the hair had escaped the rubber band and for one instant, the little girl look so much like Dana that Mrs. Scully had to turn to the bed to make sure her own daughter was still there. It made her hurt to see this. They were a little family: Fox and Dana and this girl -- Helen. It made her hurt because Dana hadn't wanted her to see Helen until everything was final, until she knew for sure that this was indeed her child, and that they would be able to keep her. And then she had never called. Never asked if Margaret wanted to see her. Maybe she had thought she didn't want to, after her emphatic denial that little Emily had been Melissa's. Mrs. Scully had never gotten to see Emily, but she had wanted to. She loved her Dana, and she loved anything that was created from her children. Helen. It was amazing to see how wonderful the girl was, how wonderful a mixture of Scully and Mulder had been. Despite the unseeing eyes and deaf ears, Helen was beautiful. She wanted to be a part of this. Even if Dana didn't think she had a family -- she did. Mulder stirred then and sighed. Mrs. Scully slipped her daughter a kiss and then planted a soft one on Helen's cheek. After a hesitation, she gave Fox a kiss too. Then she pulled up a chair and began the wait. ~~~~~ end chapter twelve adios RM Overweighted Chapter Thirteen By RocketMan ===== Dedication: This is for Jaimes, cause she needs a happy ending. ===== "Weren't you adored." -- Foo Fighters, "Walking After You" ===== There was the hiss of a respirator and the smell of lotion and Clorox. He twisted in the seat and blinked and found himself in a hospital room. He remembered the bad things happening. The way her body had arched as the bullets went in, The way her face had crumpled into nothing and the fear and sudden panic striding across her features. He opened his eyes more and saw Mrs. Scully sitting down, her body rigid and waiting, as if expecting her daughter to wake at any minute. He sighed. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Scully. I --" "Fox. It's okay. Dana's going to be all right." He shifted and his little girl murmured against his chest. Mrs. Scully saw him smile and stroke her cheek. "Mrs. Scully, this is Helen." he whispered. She nodded and smiled. "I figured that out. Do you know why Dana declined to tell me about her?" Mulder's frozen face was testament to his ignorance on this. "She . . . she didn't tell you?" He felt his breath constricting. Scully hadn't told her mother. Hadn't told her, as if she was embarrassed or afraid of what her mother would say when she said she had a child with him. "Do you . . . you know about her at all?" he said softly. "I deduced some things Fox. You're the father?" He nodded dumbly and winced. "Sorry. Probably not what you wanted to hear." "Why do you say that, Fox?" He shifted and looked down at Helen, twirling her blonde hair with one of his fingers. "I . . . I'm proud to be her father," he said suddenly. Mrs. Scully smiled. "You shoulde be. She's beautiful." "Yeah. She looks like Scully." "She looks like you." His head shot up and he gave her a considering look. "You don't mind?" "What? Why would I have a problem with it?" "I didn't think you particularly would find this --" "Fox. You're a good man. Kind. Loving. You're good for my daughter and I know you'll be good for my granddaughter." He gulped down his fear and ran his hand along Helen's back. "So . . . do you want to hold her for awhile?" Mrs. Scully grinned and held out her arms, letting Mulder place her in her lap. "She's so warm and adorable, Fox. She's a blessing." "Who's a blessing?" came a voice from the bed. Mulder turned and found Scully's eyes flickering and her tongue moving over her dry lips. "You are," he breathed and went to sit on the bed. She looked up at him and then back to her mother. "I'm sorry," she whispered again, and her hand came up to clutch Mulder's. Mrs. Scully smiled. "What's done is done, Dana. Just forget it. I'm glad you're back." Scully gave a worn out smile and looked back to Mulder. "You okay?" she said, voice cracking. "Fine. Fine. Helen's fine too." "Good . . . good." "You feeling okay?" She nodded then winced. "No, not okay. But getting there." He bent down and kissed her forehead. "You scared me. You going to be okay?" She moved a bit and smiled. "I'll live." "That's all I'm asking." He bent down again and she moved her face so that his lips brushed hers. Pulling back, he saw her smile faintly, eyes slipping shut. "Sleep, Scully. You can do more of that later." ===== end thirteen adios RM Overweighted Chapter Fourteen By RocketMan ===== "Would that I had died before any eye had seen me, and were as though I had not been, carried from the womb to the grave . . . Let me alone, that I may find a little comfort before I go, never to return, to the land of gloom and deep darkness, the land of gloom and chaos, where light is like darkness." -- Job 10:18-22 ===== Mulder watched her eyes dart around, from the social worker to the doctor and then to him. He felt his own heart crushing. They were going to take Helen away. He clutched his baby girl tighter, pulled her deeper into his arms, buried his face into her hair. "You can't." He glanced up, saw Scully's tightly drawn face, her pinched eyes and fear flashing. "She's only safe with us. If she's taken somewhere else, they'll get her . . . you can't let that happen." "Ms. Scully, it's clearly obvious that she is not safe with you and Mr. Mulder. Despite the fact that you are biologically responsible, your care for Helen has --" "You don't understand. She's mine. I want her." Mulder was surprised at her quaking voice, at the way she almost seemed to plead with the woman. Mulder stood, shifted toward the hospital bed that Scully vainly tried to lift herself from. "Let us just find a safer place. We can take care of her without a problem. She's in danger wherever she goes," he said, rubbing a hand along his girl's back. "She was kidnapped before we even met her. It's not us that's at fault here." The social worker pursed her lips, tilted her head back. "I'd like to talk to Helen alone." Mulder felt his mouth run dry. "You . . . you can't." "Mr. Mulder, I will talk with her --" "No, I mean. She's deaf. She can't --" A faint smile lit the woman's lips. "I know that Mr. Mulder. I meant with ASL. I can speak her language." Mulder felt his face turn hot and he glanced to his daughter's wide eyes. He signed an explanation to her and set her on the ground, steadying her with a hand. She reached out and took the social worker's hand, then gave his palm a kiss. Mulder felt his heart tighten as they left Scully's hospital room. "Why now?" Her strangled cry made him turn, pull her into his body and hold her tightly, just as protectively as he had held Helen. "I don't know. I don't understand. They don't want us to have her. They want her dead, Scully." "Because she's ours? Is that why?" A slight chuckle from him made her bones vibrate deep within. "Little arrogant, hunh? I don't think it's so much that, Scully. I think it's because of what she can do. They messed up with her, gave her seeing and hearing on a different level. Maybe they didn't even realize she was empowered like that until just recently." "So you think it's because of her . . . connection that she's being hunted?" "It's my only theory." Scully fell back into the bed, closing her eyes briefly. "What about Sam?" Mulder blinked. "Oh, the dog. He's fine." Mulder's grin made her cock her head at him. "What?" "Well, let's just say I got the nurses on this floor to hide him for me." "Where is he?" she asked, startled. "Down the hall. They let him out at night and he comes in here with us." Scully's face broke into an honest smile. "I feel better with that dog." "I do too. He's always got this goofy grin on his face." "The dog?" "Sure. Dogs are just as human as we are." Her eyebrow raised for a brief moment of suspended thought, then fell back as she let the present crash back into her. "I don't want to lose Helen. I don't want to lose us." He clenched her hand tightly. "Whatever happens, you will never lose me, Scully. Never." It wasn't exactly what she wanted to hear. ===== Margaret Scully took the social worker aside after her talk with Helen. "Look. Ms . . .?" "Lannigan. April Lannigan." "I know you're doing your job, and so do my daughter and Fox. They want what's best for Helen, and they know that being with them is what's best for her. It may not seem like they'd be very good at raising a child, but I promise, they --" "Mrs. Scully? It's okay. I know they can. It's just the risk here. Their jobs are very threatening. I have documented several incidents where a known killer has managed to break into one of their apartments. Thankfully, they were caught, but how many times can that happen before something goes wrong?" "Ms. Lannigan, if my daughter believes that things will change, if she knows that it isn't dangerous, then I assure you . . . Helen will be well taken care of." April Lannigan shook her head. "That's not really up for me to decide. I'll be speaking in behalf of Helen, recite the facts of the case, and let another panel make the final ruling." "How will you speak for Helen?" April turned to her. "Helen wants to stay. She's afraid that if she leaves, she'll never have love again. Now, I told her that simply wasn't true but I'll still convey it." "You can't convey a little girl's desparate need to be with her family. Not properly." April took the older woman's hand. "I think it will be all right, Mrs. Scully. They've got someone high up pulling for them. It's the only reason they were allowed to keep Helen in the first place." ===== (one week later) "Frohike promised me all the mess would be cleaned up by the time we got there." Scully rolled her eyes. "Sure. Cleaned up for Frohike is stuffing underwear in the closet and those videos under his bed." Mulder gave her a blank look. "Wait. That's not cleaning?" She gave him a look and swatted at his arm. He gave her a mock groan. "Well, at least I know your shoulder is better. Sheesh, you hit hard." Helen jumped between them, Sam nosing his way to her and sniffing at Mulder's pants. Scully laughed as he tried to carefully pry the dog away from him, and pick Helen up at the same time. She finally grabbed his collar and tugged, causing him to jerk to a sit, then stick his tongue out and pant there, acting for the world like he was the best dog. She rubbed his head and rang the Lone Gunmen's bell a third time. "Where are they?" "Right here, my little --" "Frohike . . ." Mulder warned, gutting him with a quick elbow as the door swung open. He shot Mulder a dirty look and led them all inside. "Okay, short tour. Here's the back room. It's the biggest one we could clear of junk. The couch here, this bed, then the futon. However you arrange the sleeping, I don't want to know . . . Unless, of course, the lovely Agent Scully is by herself --" Mulder's hand clapped his shoulder roughly. "You ought to be thankful my baby girl can't hear you, otherwise I'd string you up for ruining her innocence." Scully cast him a withering look. "What about my innocence?" Mulder shot her a lewd look. "I didn't mention that now, did I?" A baleful glare from her made him stop smiling quite so big. "Let's unpack, Mulder." He kept quiet and nodded, winking at Helen. ===== Scully walked softly into the room, careful not to wake Helen or Mulder. Sam stretched and stood, padding carefully over to her with his tongue lolling out and his eyes laughing. She patted his head and whispered, "Good doggie." He yawned, teeth bared and mouth wide, then went to sleep beside Helen again. She felt her heart ease. She felt safe again. Even with the Lone Gunmen outside, probably listening in on every move she made. Well, maybe just Frohike. She slipped up to the bed, stood over it a moment, watching Mulder. His face was slack, eyes moving in sharp jerks. She could smell his sleep, taste the dust of the room and their unpacking in the back of her throat. She wanted to feel too. Letting the cold sheets chill her wonderfully, she crawled in next to Mulder, edging right up to his back. Her nose touched his spine, ran along the bumps there, then let her mouth reach his skin. She kissed his back very softly, very gently, still not quite sure of herself, still really very unknowing of what she was trying to do. He continued to sleep. She placed a hand to his broad shoulder, let her fingers dance along the softness of his warm touch, slid her palm to his chest. She closed her eyes, tucked her arm around his waist, and buried her mouth right against his neck, content with feeling whole beside him. She drifted off to sleep hearing the breathing of the family she loved, and the silent wuffles of a dog chasing rabbits in a wonderful dream. ===== end chapter adios RM Overweighted Chapter Fifteen By Rocketman ===== "As you turned to go I heard you call my name. You were like a bird in a cage, spreading its Wings to fly 'The Old Ways are lost' you sang as you flew And I wondered why" -- "The Old Ways" Loreena McKennitt ===== Mulder slid across the small bed, opening his eyes to the darkness of a room without sunlight. Scully slept still, her body washed in shadows and night, her breathing the only assurement of her life. He put a hand to her shoulder, touched the thin T-shirt there, let his fingers slip down her arm and tease her palm. She murmured, turned over, and gave him the view of her back, the short expanse of muscle and skin and bone under a white top. He lifted it from her back, slid his hand up to her neck, and rubbed her shoulders and arms and skin as she slowly came awake. A content sigh left her lips before she turned over, gazing up at him. "What's going on?" "They found a place for us." She frowned, let her eyes adjust to the darkness and her mind to his words. "Who did?" "Skinner and the whole team. Very, very clandestine. All in all, the Consortium might know about it, but it's unlikely." "They'd reveal themselves if they went after us. It'd narrow down the suspects to an incredibly short list." He nodded, bent forward and kissed her nose, then sighed and let his lips taste hers. She clutched his neck, pulled him farther into her, panic seeping into desire. "Do you think they wouldn't sacrifice one of their own to get her?" Mulder frowned. "I don't know. I hope not. Let me tell you who knows. Three people besides us." Scully's face registered shock. "No way. How?" "Skinner made it possible, somehow. He didn't talk to anyone in the FBI or even in the Witness Protection Program. He went straight up." "Up where?" "Actually, I guess sort of diagonally up." She poked him and shook her head. "Tell me, Mulder. You have this annoying habit of making me wait for everything." He smiled and lifted himself up, pulling her to a sitting position beside him. "I can't tell you right now. The Lone Gunmen think they have the place spotless, but you never know." She raised an eyebrow. Listening devices? Here? "I have a meeting, Scully. You stay here. I'll be back in exactly an hour." She shifted in the bed, glanced to the clock. Two in the morning. "So I did hear the phone?" He nodded softly in affirmation but said, "No," shaking his head at her to remain quiet. His lips reached for her ear. "Say nothing. Pretend to be asleep. But don't -- watch for things instead." She licked her lips and nodded, then watched as he left the room. She fell back into the bed, slowed her breath until it was a steady rhythm, let her eyes slide half closed. For all intents and purposes, to those watching she was asleep. The shadows around the room made her feel anxious, the moans and creaks of the place the guys called home were suddenly the footsteps of an army of assassins. She waited, watching and listening for a signal. ===== He was amazed at how quiet his family could be when they needed it. Helen was silent, no noises, no accidental bumping into things. She glided through the room, putting on the dark clothes he had brought for her, making no movements when he smeared grease paint on her face and hands, letting nothing shake her as he tied up her hair and tugged a cap down over her ears. Scully and himself were similiarly clad: darkness their friend tonight as they moved on foot. It seemed excesive, but they needed to be careful that they *were not* seen in this first leg. Dummies were propped in place, even one for the dog. Sam's tail was tied to his back leg to keep it from swishing and knocking something down, a muzzle clamped to keep him from barking. Scully felt awful for it, but to keep the dog meant asking for trouble, and Helen needed, wanted her dog. Sam didn't seem to mind. It was as if he knew. He also crept silently, making not even a growl in his throat. There was no note left, no explanation; the Gunmen knew the day or night had been coming, knew that they were either gone of their own volition, or taken. Nothing could be done either way. Mulder used the heightened senses he had only begun to cultivate, due to Helen's influence, to make it through the city streets undetected. At the corner, in a car with the lights off, slumped down far, was a man. He was watching for them. He thought nothing would happen at three in the morning, so close to dawn and daylight. He was asleep. Mulder skirted wide of the car and carried Helen as he led Scully by the arm to a building on the other block. It was dark, dank, reeking of fish and wet cardboard boxes. The air had a heavy, stuffy taste that caught in their throats and clogged their lungs. Scully kept a hand on Helen's foot, following Mulder down through the darkness to the stairs. It was like the Underground Railroad. A man met them, a blind, she hoped -- not one of the three who knew the entire thing. He led them to a back tunnel, a door carved into the rotting wood, pushed them into it while saying nothing. The door slammed shut behind them and they were suddenly plunged into an ocean of night. Of the deepest dark that could never be breached. Mulder moved his foot, connected with something and yelped. He hushed quickly and placed Helen in Scully's arms, giving her comfort in the dark. Helen was not afraid, this was her home. Her dark room. Mulder sighed. "It's a chair, and here's another." His hands came from the black and touched her; still she saw nothing. They guided her to sit and immediately she felt a wet nose lunge into her hand. She stifled her heart slamming fear, and relaxed as she remembered Sam. Quickly, she untied the yarn on his tail and loosened the muzzle, letting him yawn and work his jaw a bit. She leaned down and felt for the floor. It was dirt. She crunched it with her feet, smelled the reek of fish and mustiness. Sniffed the air for anything else, gas maybe, or a bathroom, or fire. Nothing. She felt Mulder touch her hand, reaching out for a connection in the isolation of the darkness. "We're to stay here until they come." "How long?" she whispered. "Days. We have to be sure the alarm is out and that the people looking for us have moved on." "Why let them know?" "Because they'll know anyway; it's better to be safely hidden when they do." "The man who showed us in here . . ." "He's a relay. He knows nothing about us, only that we are being placed here. He may even think we're gone. He asks no questions. And if someone does trace us here, he'll have no answers." She nodded, let her head fall to Helen's with relief. "Scully?" "Yes?" "At any time, the plans could change. Be ready." She steeled herself, took in a deep breath that did nothing to make her calm. "I'm ready. I have to be." He nodded. The smell of fish was making him sick, sticking to his clothes and drowning his other senses. "When we get out of here, we leave these clothes behind." "What? Why?" "The fish. It's easily traced back. We'll change out there, throw the clothes back in here and leave. I have a set of clothes for each of us tightly wrapped in a plastic bag." She sighed. "How is it that you can think of all of this?" "I don't know. Survival instinct?" The dark was still soup-thick. She wanted to sleep, wanted to escape it for a little while. "Is there a bed?" She felt Helen touch her cheek, sign yes to her face. Scully shivered at her child's insight again, was reminded why they were running like this. Helen crawled from her lap, sank to the floor, then pulled her mother along behind her. When she met damp cloth and a soft, thick blanket, Scully sighed. "Mulder?" His voice came startlingly close to her ear. "Yes." "Here's the bed." He tripped over her arm making his way to her, then managed to find the edge of the pallet and collapse into it. Helen wedged between them and they curled in, touching hands over the bridge made by their little girl. She listened for sounds, for roaches and mice, making sure they would be alone on the floor. Everything was silent. Calm. Dark. It was strange how suddenly, everything was changed. "Scully?" "Mm?" He tightened his grip on her hand. "Our old life is gone. We can never go back." She shivered, still unsure if she was ready to make that sacrifice, knowing only that she had to anyway. For Helen. ===== end chapter adios RM Overweighted Chapter Sixteen By RocketMan ===== "And you you regard my life Surrounding me with love that is kind And I stand amazed, I am in awe Cause nothing compares to you Nothing at all. . . There's no one There is no one like you." -- 'No One Like You' Kim Hill ===== It's too hot here, with their bodies pressing tight against me. They're afraid. I know this fear. Fear of darkness. But I can feel things they can't. And I know things they are blind to. We will not make it. What is fear? But having no knowledge of what is to come. I know what will come. It will be our deaths. And nothing will stop its coming. I am resigned to this. I wish it were different; I wish I could have a family with a mother and father and my Sam. But I was destined to death, even as I was destined to a seeing, hearing, silent darkness. I was never supposed to exist; a mistake in my creation. They'll find us. There's no fear in that. ===== As one, they jerked from an exhausted sleep to the sounds of yelling, terrified they'd been discovered -- caught. Her chest heaved in breaths that would not come as she attempted to see in the absoluteness of no light. The vision would not come and she was forced to panic in the rushing noise of feet. Mulder's hand on her shoulder caused her to suck in more air than she could breathe out, and she gagged. Terrified. Terrified. "Work, Scully. It's a fish canning plant. People are at work." She nodded, her head jerking sporadically, nostrils flaring like a horse that has run too far, too fast. Scully's hand reached out, clutched at his clothes; her fingertips felt the evidence of his own panic as his blood rushed under clammy skin. She was not the only one. It gave her an odd sense of comfort. Mulder buried his head into her neck and nodded, as if he were laughing at himself. "We're okay. We stay silent; they won't know." She nodded back, words something she could not find in the spaces between aborted fear and edging hysteria. Helen's small body curled up and into her stomach, her hands a strange warmth of relief on her thighs. Scully let a not quite steady hand drop to her head, caressed the blonde hair that was damp and tangled from grease and dirt and fear. Helen let out a tiny breath that seemed to echo the relief of her family; a breath that was short and glad to simply exist, let alone with such comfort. Scully felt even more exhausted from her momentary panic, destroying any good the hours of sleep might have done. She shivered and let Mulder's arms wrap tightly around her, more for his own security than any need of hers. Could she live always like this? Always with fear choking a noose around her neck? ===== Momma's pants are rough under my cheek, her hands too possessive, too clutching to make me feel any better. I wriggle around in her arms, move my head to her shoulder, close my eyes because they are aching again. My sightless eyes, which have no purpose, are the cause of aches and pains that make me wish I could scratch them out and never feel them again. It's not like I *need* them anyway. Her chest rises and falls in a more regular rhythm now, but I can still feel how her blood and heart race around, like chastised servants. Her lips whisper a kiss across my forehead and I hug her harder. I am awed by the ferocity of her love for me. No one has ever wanted to love me so much. No one has ever risked this . . . risked an entire way of life, an entire crusade for loving me. For loving me. I shiver. If there's any way to make it . . . any hope of love . . . she carries it. She holds it to her like a panther crouching over her cubs. With her and God both on my side . . . what is fear? ===== Mulder listened to his stomach growl ferociously under his hand, felt the dizzying waves sweep him again. He closed his eyes, refused to give in to the pain of hunger. He hoped Scully and Helen were not feeling this. He had missed out on any kind of dinner the night they stole away, but they had enjoyed a huge meal, compliments of Langly. He prayed they were still okay for now. As the work day tapered off, as the crunch of machines and smell of fresh fish grew to the silence of janitors and the stink of refuse, Mulder felt his body tense into waiting. He was waiting; it would come now, or not at all. There was silence. Darkness. Silence. Flashes of Scully's pale face. His whispered commands to move to the side. Helen's trembling chin. The crick of a door. A door. Mulder let out a scream intended to throw the man off guard and launched his coiled body into an attack. The man screamed himself and went down, fighting with his whole body to gain back his advantage. Scully dug frantically into the dirt of the floor, hands scrambling in a panicked search for her gun. Her gun, oh God help me, where *was* it? Mulder let out a grunt as their would-be assassin pummeled a fist into his face and scratched at his cheeks with long, ragged nails. Throwing the tired, starving Mulder to the floor, the man raged up, intending to kill. A shot exploded in the tiny dark of the room. A sickening sound of bone shattering, blood gushing, a man gurgling his last breaths. The killer collapsed, a heap of blood and death beside the man she had protected. She pushed Helen from her, gathered Mulder's head to her and dragged him away from the puddle of a killer's life. "Mulder!" His groggy grunt made her heart leap; she gently shook him awake. "Scully!" He jerked upright, coming to a crouch as the silence reigned heavy. His breath was the only intrusion. His breath and the quiet river of blood trickling in the dirt floor. She shivered. She had killed a man. She had killed. She was the killer. "We have to get *out* of here. Someone *knows*!" Mulder's hands fumbled with hers, drew her to her feet, reached for Helen and everything they owned in the tight garbage bags. She trembled, wiped her hands on her pants repeatedly, feeling the film of blood on her palms where she had cradled Mulder's head. He was splattered in blood . . . blood that could have been his own. Mulder rushed to her stock still form, grabbed her arm and shoved her violently to the door. "How'd you know?" she whispered. He did not hear, simply propelled them forward, Helen riding piggy back as he attempted to step over the fallen man. Reality slammed into her. Knocked her to her knees and raped the breath from her. *Death*. She had *killed* a man. In a blind hysteria, she grabbed at the man's chest, placed her hands to the tiny hole there, clamping down on her trembling lips with her teeth. Mulder paused, shaking, furious. "Come *on*! There could be more!" She could not hear him, could not see. Only this man. He could NOT be dead. She could not have simply killed him. She had to help him, had to stop the blood from pouring out like wine at the altar. She had to stop it, stop the blood, stop the death, there was always too much death always too much dying and hate and pain and blood, oh God make it stop, there was blood everywhere! "Scully!" he yelled, yanking her up by the arm and shoving her to the door. Her bloodied hands quivered and she stumbled forward, entering the sunlight beaming brightly from the high windows, blinking and shaking in the sudden onslaught of light. She couldn't see. Couldn't move. Dead inside. She was dead inside. She had thought she was prepared for this, ready for the sacrifices, but she was not. She could not afford to sacrifice her own humanity to this. Mulder grabbed her by the arm and half ran, half dragged her to the outside, fear gnawing him. Where had his brave Scully gone? What would happen to him without her strength? ===== end chapter adios RM Overweighted Chapter Seventeen By RocketMan ~~~~~ "Didn't I make it all right When everything was ruined." --Didn't I? Carly Simon ~~~~~ They melted into the shadows of Arlington, Virginia, letting the twilight mask them as a family on its way home from an all day excursion, doing nothing to show untoward haste. As the people out walking grew fewer and fewer, Mulder increased the pace subtly, sliding into the alleys and out from shadows as if he'd been born to such subterfuge. Scully simply walked. She heeded the sharp tug of his hand on her elbow, and let the numbness of shock glaze her. She was reacting. They stopped at the first motel they found, a seedy place with questionable patrons; had anyone known they were FBI agents, they would not have made it in alive. Signing them in under one of his false names, Mulder secured them a room with two beds for the night. It cost thirty dollars and Mulder realized that money would become a treasured thing. They could not afford to waste money on anything. They didn't have the money to even make it a week. Their room was dark, lit by the flickering neon sign and the dim parking lights filtering through the heavy drapes. Mulder laid Helen on the bed closest to the bathroom, farthest from the door, and tucked her already sleeping body into the covers. Thunder sounded loudly around them and he jumped as lightning lit the inside of their temporary sanctuary. Scully made no moves to sit or get comfortable. She showed no reaction to the August thunderstorm. Sighing, he grabbed her by the arms and pulled her to the bed, pushing her weak, stiff body into the sheets and covering her up. She closed her eyes and said nothing. With a sharp feeling, he leaned in and kissed her forehead. He'd never seen this happen to her before. Mulder shivered in the damp, moldy air that blew hard from the vents, and walked to the window. The rain slashed across the street, their motel room facing the city, making him feel insecure, unsafe. As he watched, the wind made patterns of rain splatters on the window, racing the drops to the bottom as the storm picked up in intensity. It had been secure, the plan beyond Them, out of Their loop. It meant that one of the three men was with Them, one was their enemy. He thought again of the names that swirled around in his mind. Only he and Skinner knew of the three men who knew the whole thing. The other three knew only the part they had to play in Mulder's situation. It was a lesson learned in VCS. Learned to perfection or the VCS would not waste time with people who could not perform, could not find the killers. Think through. Three men. John Cauklin Emerson Concho Wilson Price One of them was a traitor. One of them was one of Them. Mulder would find him. Find him in order to survive, find him to keep his family intact, find him because Scully was hurting. Find him. And then Mulder would kill him. ~~~~~ I wake up slowly, feeling dampness leaking into me like dye. The sheets are damp and the air carries the tears of heaven. I take in a long breath and smell Momma, her body resting but not asleep, the smell of long ago soap and fish. I crawl from the bed, slip to the floor, and feel the movements as Sam flops down beside me. His wet nose nudges my chin and his tongue licks my cheek. I smile at him and grab his collar. I push my hand forward, sliding it along the thick, shag carpet, horrified at the sudden thought of roaches that could be on the floor. I jerk my hand back and Sam pushes his body forward, letting me know there is space. I inch forward, wait for him to move again, then follow. It takes four slides along the floor to reach Momma on her bed. I lift myself over the side and scramble up next to her. Almost as a reflex, her hand snakes around my head, smoothing my hair. I let myself relax, my eyes are already closed. Her breath is soft; she shifts me closer, kissing my forehead. I can feel her chest rise in a sigh and then sink down, like her spirits. I cannot seem to place Daddy in this room, so he must have left. Momma's hand curls around my ear, her other arm encircles me. I feel her tears slip into my hair, the shaking of her body. I wish I could see her. ~~~~~ Mulder roamed the street, glancing over his shoulder nonchalantly as he made his way to the second pay phone for that night. He had placed his first call, muffling his voice and saying a variety of panicked words, sounding to a traitor like he had bungled the job he was sent to do -- murder the little family. The reaction had been confusion, bewilderment, all expected of one who did not know. Of course, a master, a traitor for so long, so high, would know how to sound surprised. He placed his second call. A grunt answered the phone, as if the man were waiting for such a call. "Skinner." Mulder breathed softly, licking his lips. "It's Mulder, sir." "Mulder? Are you all right? I got a call from Cauklin! He's in a frenzy! Someone called him saying you were dead! Do you know --" Mulder hung up. Cauklin was free. Or at least he was following the right procedure. Confirm, confirm, confirm. Mulder walked quickly from the pay phone to the underground subway system, depositing a token in the turnstile and moving on through. In a quick move, he dashed behind a pillar in the deep gloom of shadows, looking for a tail. It was a long moment, then a man dressed in a trenchcoat, carrying nothing on him, hopped over the turnstile. The man had not expected to take the subway, had no token. The man was following Mulder. The tail glanced around, letting his eyes casually stroll as if he were simply assessing the crowd, perhaps looking for a friend. There was no panicked look of escaped prey, simply professionalism. The man moved deeper into the crowd and Mulder eased over the turnstile and back out onto the street, moving as quickly as possible away from the underground. He had lost the man following him. On to place his third call. ~~~~~ "Mulder! Don't you dare hang up! Why the hell is everyone calling in and asking why you're dead?" Mulder slammed down the phone in frustration. All three had called in to report the news they'd heard. All three appeared to have his family's best interests at heart. All three had seemed surprised. Where had he gone wrong? Mulder darted out of the phone booth and checked the sidewalks behind him. Nothing appeared to follow him, no shadows shifted into the light. He still couldn't be sure. He couldn't very well go to the motel without confirming that no one still followed. Where had he gone wrong? Mulder walked normally along Duke Street, glancing to his left and right ever so slightly, always cautious for a trap. It was midnight and deserted; perfect timing for a quick kill. A Taco Bell shone fiercely in the night and Mulder diverted his steps toward it, not knowing what his plan was, only that he had to use all opportunities as they came up. Taco Bell would be his diversion, just as the subway had served his purposes. Mulder walked in, practically ran to the bathroom, and hid himself in the stall. He waited. Would anyone come? Could he take the chance of coming out -- only to be followed again? He heard the silent, soft sounds of the restroom door being eased open. It was his shadow! Mulder crouched on the toilet, holding his breath, making no noise as the man crept in. The lock was in place on the stall. Mulder's mind flashed and he suddenly lifted the lid and sat down, letting his feet show and relieving himself -- plainly showing that someone was indeed in there. The man jiggled the door and Mulder let out a string of dirty expletives designed to mask his voice and hide his identity. The man mumbled a quick apology and headed out. He would think there was no one in the bathroom but an angry old man, maybe even half drunk, certainly a redneck since the Taco Bell in Arlington was the redneck's hangout. Mulder waited for thirty more minutes in the stall, making absolutely sure they had given up. ~~~~~ It was silent when Mulder found his way back to the motel, silent as he entered the room at two that morning. A twisted series of turns and streets and detours had ensured that he was not being followed again, and since he was not trained enough to recognize professional tails, he had repeated his Taco Bell performance three times with minor differences. No one had followed. He glanced to his bed, found that Helen had crawled in beside Scully, both sleeping heavily. His own body ached. His mind was shutting down on him. It'd been a long time since he'd had to keep going for days on end. His body was slowly becoming used to it, but he still needed some decent sleep. He'd read somewhere that rest was a weapon. Rather than trying to make room with Scully, he collapsed on Helen's abandoned bed and closed his eyes. He would go over his phone calls tomorrow. Tomorrow he would find where he had gone wrong. Tomorrow he would find the traitor. ~~~~~ end chapter adios RM Overweighted Chapter Eighteen By RocketMan ~~~~~ "There is no tomorrow for the restless ones." ~~~~~ She woke up suddenly, coming to full awareness with only a slight trembling. It was dark. The room smelled of rain and wet dog, like a man had been jogging through a thunderstorm. She opened her eyes and blinked slowly, knowing that something was happening and that something had woken her up. There was no movement, no noise, no breath. She tensed. Then there was life again, as if she'd been deaf for those short few minutes and every night sound had fallen into a vast silence. She slipped from under Helen's tiny body and stood in still in the explosions of noise greeting her straining ears. His loud breath crashing into her, his every movement amplified by the pounding in her brain, the soft movement of his lips as he spoke in dreams echoed with a fierceness she could not escape from. Helen had come to her in the night, to give comfort, and now, Scully would go to Mulder in the early morning, to give comfort. She stretched out along the bed, about a full foot from his heat radiating body, and simply reached out and touched his cheek. Instinctively, he nuzzled forward, found her body warm and inviting, and buried himself into her softness. She closed her eyes and stroked his hair back from his forehead. His entire twitching body stilled abruptly and the noise of his ngihtmares that had wakened her earlier, were ceased into nothing. She tried to push her mind back into that catatonic state where she felt and thought nothing, but it would not slip back. Reaching out to save Mulder had forced her to save herself. ~~~~~ It was five o'clock in the morning when he woke panicked and sweating. He had to get them out of there. This was the only thing in his mind. And as he became aware, he felt her nestled into him, her distinct warmth and smell coming to him in the midst of his fear. And then the panic overrode him again and he remembered. He'd been followed. They knew where he was. He may have shaken whatever tail he'd had last night, but they had *picked him up* from here, and therefore, none of his family was safe. He woke Helen first, bringing her from her dreams with a soft kiss and a touch on the cheek that made her smile in lazy appreciation. He handed her clothes and Sam's collar and guided her to the bathroom to let her change. Then he moved to Scully, praying she was snapped from her zombie daze and ready and able to deal with the things they would have to do today. She opened her eyes when he touched her cheek and was instantly alert. "Scully?" She blinked, rose up from the bed, then glanced up at him, her face etched with a sort of blank look that made him despair. "Where's Helen?" He breathed easier with her words and nodded to the bathroom. She swung her legs over the side and then reached out to touch his cheek, tracing the weary lines around his eyes, the huge bags that marked him deeply. "You need to go back to sleep, Mulder. You only got two hours of sleep." He glanced in surprise at her. "You were awake?" She shrugged. "No." "How do you know how much sleep I got then?" She gave him a smile. "I woke up at three thirty and moved over here. You always start dreaming after thirty minutes. It was a safe bet." He sighed and shook his head. "I can't sleep now." Helen came out and walked straight to her father and then climbed in his lap, her fingers going to her mouth. Scully pulled them down and signed no into her palm, then resumed her conversation with Mulder, signing idly into Helen's hand. "Why not?" "We have to get out of here right now. Find someplace safer." She was signing the alphabet into Helen's hands and Helen was signing the letter back, then thinking of an object and spelling it out. That's when Scully noticed. "Mulder." "Look, Scully, we don't have time to --" "No, Mulder. Look. She's spelling." Mulder paused and looked into her hands, watched Helen's fingers forming the word 'dog' in rapid movements. "Did you teach her to spell that?" Scully asked, her face lifting in a mixture of joy and excitement. Mulder smiled and signed praise into Helen's hands. "I tried to, in the hospital. So she could show you something when you woke up. Except I was mainly doing it to keep my mind off of things." Scully hugged Helen hard, signing love and joy into her hands with shaky fingers and a smile. Her daughter's love was wonderful at easing her guilt. "Scully. We need to get out of here." She nodded and stood, picking Helen up from Mulder's arms and clipping the leash onto Sam with one smooth movement. Ever since Helen had taught them to speak with their hands, Mulder had been noticing Scully's far more often. And now, he was entranced, caught off guard by the smooth expanse of palm and fingertip that handled their child and kept her close. He reached out and brought her fingers to his lips, making a sort of oath as he did. Today he would kill the traitors who made her hurt. Today he would kill the man who had caused her beautiful giving hands to take someone's life. ~~~~~ The place was the worst, was unthinkable to live in, was extremely unfit for a child, let alone blind and deaf, to reside in. And yet it only cost twenty dollars and they were fast running out of money, and options. She spent the morning trying to convince him that they should withdraw everything from their accounts and run like hell away. He spent the morning planning out the quickest, most effective method of ferreting out the traitor, the man who would kill them, and then killing the killer. She could see this in his eyes, and so when they all settled down to actually get some sleep, she positioned her body so close to his that he would wake her if he left. He left. She woke. "Mulder." Her words were a warning, were a threat that he'd better not walk out on them. He'd better not. He turned in the door. "I have to do this. We'll never be safe. It'll never stop." "Mulder." This time, it was allowance. It was a recognition that they were doomed unless something could be done. And it was also a plea. >Please come back to me.< He leaned in to her, placed a dry kiss to her forehead, then ran his thumb along the sensitive part of her stomach, around her belly button, telling her, in a way, that he knew all of her body, and that he was coming back to claim it. ~~~~~ Mulder reviewed the conversation in his mind, nitpicked every nuance of the voices on the telephone, recalled every pause, looking for the one that would reveal to him the traitor. And he felt humbled and ashamed when he could not find a single incriminating accent. Walking lazily downtown, waiting for a tail to spot him, to pick him up, Mulder gazed into the glass fronted stores with faked interest, his mind taken up by two things. One was his replaying of the recorded voices in his head. The other was the look on Scully's face when she realized she had killed that man. Both fueled him with a drive unprecendented before in his own futile history. ~~~~~ His aimless walking had attracted the right attention; he spotted two tails on him, one being the man who had followed him into the subway station. They must not think he was being very careful about who was following him today, because they acted *un*professional. He managed to shake one so that it looked as if it'd just been an unfortunate accident, and then he darted into an alleyway he had preapproved, and waited. It took long minutes, but finally the man cautiously entered the alley. Mulder was on his toes, ready to spring, when it happened. The tail he thought he'd lost came in, shaking his head. "He didn't come out. I circled around back. In fact, I don't think he went in here at all." The first one shook his head. "How could you see? He pretended to dodge you and you were out of sight." "Look, he's not here. I think he went down there -- didn't you see that flurry?" The man grunted, glanced down to the next alley, shook his head. "Okay. Well, sure. I saw it. All right. But if we lose him again, Cauklin's going to be pissed." They rumbled off, loping around to the next block. Mulder was frozen. Cauklin was the traitor, the wolf come to slaughter the sheep. Except he didn't know, Cauklin had no idea. These sheep were really mountain lions, and this particular lion was ready for the wolf. Ready to kill the wolf. ~~~~~ The room was dark when he entered and it threw him for a moment. Then there was the cold edge of metal to his throat. He cried out hoarsely, felt her small body relax behind him, then slump into him with relief. "I thought you wouldn't be back for at least hours." she explained, then sank to the bed. He turned to face Scully, taking her hands in his. "It's okay. I came back because I found out some things. We need to move again, a little farther out of the city." "Out of the city?" she murmured, slipping her hands past his, and touching his neck. She hissed in her breath as she felt the blood she'd drawn with her makeshift knife and brushed her fingers along his Adam's apple. "Yeah. As far as possible, while still being close." She then chuckled, still half not there with the events of the past few days and the blood she felt at his neck. "I forgot." "What?" he said, staying perfectly still as she ran her fingers down his bloodied skin. "There's a sort of boat house we have. Well, actually, it's not ours, but we always went there as kids." "What do you mean? Scully, what are talking about?" He was sort of frantic, feeling the effects of her fingers stained with his blood and the erotic sensations of her skin against his. "A boat house. On the coast. It's close to DC, where I assume you're headed. We can go there and hole up for a long time. It's even got a few staples. No one knows about it because it's not on any records as us having owned it. We don't really . . ." "OKay, okay. We have a plan now. We'll go there. Get whatever we need." "Then?" "Then I'll leave." She became still. "And?" He shook his head and brushed his lips along her collar bone, bringing her hands from his blood, which had already stopped. She shivered and kissed his lips hard and hot, pressing full into him without shame. "And then I'll be back," he whispered. She kissed him again, as if to give him enough reasons to come back. "I'll be back," he promised, and he was rewarded with a third image to fuel him. The look on her face when he touched her, the look that said -- >Don't leave me.< ~~~~~ end chapter adios RM Overweighted Chapter Nineteen By RocketMan ~~~~~ The sounds of the water greeted them with a soft, mothering lullabye. The faint ripple of sea against the weathered dock reminded him of animals licking their wounds, attempting to right the wrong of the manmade attachment. It was the touch of cool relief against hot rage and burning fear, the touch of phantoms on his skin, like her fingertips on his brow when she thought he was asleep. The whisper of a mother's lips to his soul. He shifted Helen's weight onto his other arm, then tucked her head into his shoulder. Sam bounded up behind them, pulling at the leash Scully held as she dragged her exhausted body forward. She hadn't slept in hours, and even then it had been a little nap when Mulder had gotten back. Helen was asleep in his arms and she walked in wearily, guiding Mulder to the back, sneezing in the dust and ancientness of their old boat house. "I remember when we first came here. I was six. The water was attractive to me and Dad had to keep reminding me that it was also dangerous, that I could never go off by myself." Mulder glanced absently to her then nodded his head to the piles of tarp, used to cover boats. "We could lay those out for Helen, let her sleep on it." Scully turned inward, recognizing the tone of voice he snapped in, the one that said he was anxious to get going, not willing to listen to anything she had to say. "I think that would be good," she murmured. Mulder handed Helen to her and yanked on the green plastic, a grimace of disgust planted on his face. Scully cradled her daughter closer and pushed Mulder away with an angry shove. "Go ahead and leave, Mulder," she snapped, picking up a loose end of tarp and gathering it to her. Mulder stared at her for a moment and then hung his head. "Sorry. I got a lot on my mind." "Well, I do too, Mulder. And it all concerns your safety in this. And the longer you stomp around here, the more I worry." Mulder glanced away from her, digging his nails into his palms, gritting his teeth. "This is never going away, Scully. Don't you get it? I have to do this." Scully finished making Helen's bed and carried the girl to it, putting her back to Mulder as she attempted to keep control of herself. Helen settled into the thick pile of heavy duty tarp and Scully pulled one of the moth eaten boat blankets around her. As she turned back around, Mulder caught her body and pulled her roughly to him. "You've got to understand, Scully. They're not going to leave us alone." She dipped her eyes back to Helen's sleeping form, to the blonde curls framing her round face. The innocence and very life of this child was held in their hands, and Mulder was willing to do anything to keep her protected, keep her loved. "Tell me you understand, Scully. Tell me you understand." Scully leaned her head onto his shoulder, her nose pressed into his pectoral muscle, her breathing hot against his T-shirt. She took one of his hands and pressed it to her cheek, wishing he would actually listen to her for once. "Let me go with you," she said, impulsively, tightening her grip on his fingers. He released her and went to sit next to Helen, pushing a tendril of hair back from her eyes, lifting the blanket and tucking her in tighter. "Scully," he began, his words trembling. "I know. I know, never mind." He nodded, chewed on his bottom lip for a moment, then sighed. "I have to do this," he said and gazed up at her for one long moment. She couldn't say it. He needed to hear her say she understood, but she couldn't. It wouldn't be the truth. "Just come back, Mulder. Everything will be fine as long as you come back." He watched her a long time before rising to his feet and shuffling to the door. He didn't look back. She was glad; she didn't want him to see her crying. ~~~~~ Mommy's hands are soft, trembling in my own, her round fingers skimming across my palms as she attempts to describe the boat house to me. It keeps her mind off Daddy, and it lets her work on understanding my language. She is halting, her fingers awkward at first, her mind not ready to remember strange things like arch and wood and beam. She uses her hands to walk me through the room, her finger formed words shape the vision: broad long boards, weathered with water and salt, stretching from one end to the other: the look of dungeons and castles and moats because of the reflection of the water across the ceiling and the thick stone walls: a soaring roof, raising to the tops of trees, peaking at the center with a funny twist in the stone work, the imitation of the Zephyr, the god of wind, blowing the boat to sea: etched waves lapping into the bottom stones, carved in intricacies and sweeps like Chinese dragons. She takes my hands and leads me to the walls, brushing my fingertips into every crevice, touching every rough unpolished stone, following the still waves' journey around the room. I thank her and lay down into the tarps piled up for me, letting my ears open as she signs to me the sounds assaulting her: the gentle gurgle of water trickling in through every one of those cracks I felt: the creak of old wood finding a rhythm in the unsettling movement of the waves: her steady in and out breathing matching time to the continuous call of birds across far distances: the ghost reminders of long ago memories and forgotten times. I curl into my mother and lay my head on her lap, knowing through her words, through the stiff way she holds herself, through the jerky motions of her chest, that she is afraid. She's afraid Daddy won't come back. ~~~~~ Caulkin was alone for the moment, his broad back displayed as he leaned over to stuff some papers in the trash. Mulder removed the binoculars he had bought from a pawn shop, then hunkered further down into the roof of the building. Caulkin was acting safe, acting secured, as if his prey had no gotten away, when in fact, Mulder assumed he and Scully had. As this finally drifted into thought, Mulder stiffened. Caulkin didn't seem too worried. By now, he should know that he and Scully were gone, by now there should be some sign of fear at their disappearance. Unless . . . Unless he already knew exactly where they were. Mulder slumped against the high wall running around the business office's roof, burying his head in his hands. Caulkin knew exactly where his family was . . . and he had left them alone. ~~~~~ As her cellular phone rang, Mulder prayed she had brought it with her, and that she had remembered to turn it back on. He thought back, remembered the hospital, saw it clearly in her hands that day they had left, remembered back to their sudden flight. In that fish factory, in the hole where she had killed a man . . . his attention to detail waned. Was the small black phone in her coat pocket at that point? Had she thought it too risky and chunked it sometime during their walk to the motel? The phone continued to ring, Mulder began to sweat, and Cauklin calmly sat in his high rise office, assessing important facts on white sheets of paper. Too calm. He was too calm for any of this to be good. ~~~~~ Scully felt a twitch at her side; her eyes refused to allow in the light. Helen's small hands touched her forehead and pushed at her eyelids, then a kiss on her cheek made her smile and respond. It was then that she heard the shrill jangle of her cell phone. Scrambling for the phone, half in fear that someone would hear it and come looking, and half in fear that it was someone calling about Mulder, she slammed her thumb into the 'talk' button and breathlessly answered. "Scully," was her whispered dread. "It's me. You have to get out of there. I think they followed us. I think they know." Coming from any one else, it would have sounded paranoid, even in their current situation, it would have been crazy. There was no possible way for anyone to have followed them there. They had been so careful. But Mulder didn't call in a panic for needless worries, he didn't sound agonized through the phone lines because of some sort of notion. He knew. And she had that faith. "Okay. Where?" "I don't know. Someplace safe, hell, Scully, there's no place they can't follow. In a crowd, all right? Crowds. It'll keep them away." She suddenly felt the itching at the back of her neck, the slow crawl of ants up her back and to her brain that she had felt before, felt as fear claimed her. Only this time, she knew it as something different. Not fear. Not the sudden knowledge of being hunted. But the sudden knowledge of being tracked. Tracked through the implant in the base of her neck. The implant that had saved her life. "Scully?" She had stopped breathing. She had stopped thinking or feeling or being. Listened. She had listened to her body as it sent and received signals to a foreign intelligence. "It's me," she whispered. "What?" "It's me. They know where we are because of me." "Wait, you're not mak --" He stopped. She felt the air between them grow heavy. "Mulder, you have to come get Helen away from me. I'll drop her off to you somewhere. Then you go take her somewhere. Away from me, don't tell me, don't even hint." "Scully . . ." He sounded ripped apart, torn between saving his daughter and not hurting her and killing Caulkin for everything that had been done to them. "Mulder. It's the chip. I can feel it. You have to get her away from me. Now!" The panic in her voice made him snap into a decision. "Okay. Okay. Meet me halfway. On that bridge between --" "Castle Ridge?" she interrupted, and the haste in her voice made knots of tension squeeze in him. "Yes. Castle --" She had already hung up. Mulder pushed himself up and began to run. ~~~~~ Scully wanted to have Helen walk a few yards in front of her, but she was afraid Helen would get into trouble that way so she carried her, half running and half briskly walking all the way to the corner. A taxi jumped immediately to help them and Scully waved it on, not trusting the man's eagerness. After three passed by, Scully grabbed the fourth and hustled inside, panting the address to the driver. She pulled Helen close to her and explained as closely as she could to the truth about what was going on. All she managed to sign was -- Daddy's coming to get you for awhile. Helen began to cry, already frightened from being rushed from one not so familiar place to an entirely strange place and then the pounding, crushing panic that her mother radiated didn't help either. The driver looked at them briefly, disconcerted by Helen's strange animal noises that went for sobs, but Scully glared at him and he turned back around, the question dying from his lips. Cradling Helen to her, Scully stroked her cheek, wiping away the quivering tears and smoothing her blonde hair back behind one ear. As Helen calmed down a bit, the driver glanced to her in the rearview mirror. "Lady, there's a navy blue car following us. I thought you might want to know." Scully swallowed thickly and nodded appreciatively, faintly wiping her eyes closed with a weary hand. "I won't ask too many questions, but I need to know. Are you in trouble with the law?" Scully felt the tears rise bitterly again but she shook her head and shoved them away. "No, not with the law." The law was no longer being upheld itself, so how could she be in trouble with the law? As far as she knew, they had abandoned law a long time ago. Abandoned the Bill of Rights and essentially the very freedoms that had formed their country. Helen was testament to that. Helen was the the last living proof of their deceit. She felt her body begin to tremble again. ~~~~~ Overweighted Chapter Twenty By RocketMan ~~~~~ "It's me who is my enemy, me who beats me up. Me who makes the monsters, me who strips my confidence. And it's me who's too weak, and it's me who's too shy to ask for the thing I love." --Paula Cole ~~~~~ Scully stopped before the bridge, turning her head to check behind her, the nervous feel of her stomach making her want to throw up. Helen clutched at her with a ferociousness she hadn't seen before, a connection to the outside world that Scully had never witnessed in this blind and deaf little girl. She kept asking for Sam. Scully didn't want to tell her that Sam was gone, all she said was that Sam had gone someplace safe. Truly, Scully had no idea where the dog was. He had run off on their way to the boat house while Helen was asleep, and she and Mulder had not really had the presence of mind to notice until they had settled in. It was a sad omen for their little family. A sound behind them made her twist awkwardly to jerk around, her eyes quickly ravaging the landscape, looking for anything that told her they'd been found out. The crawl of ants started across her neck, slithering into her skin and down her back. She shivered and began to walk around, away from the bridge, sure that this was the signal being given to their enemies, the betrayal of their location. Helen dragged her down a bit by latching onto her leg and trembling, refusing to move. Scully couldn't stand it anymore. The feelings washed over her and she couldn't control it anymore. Too much fear, too much hiding and running and looking over her shoulder. With the desparation borne of enforced fear, Scully grabbed Helen up and began sprinting away from the bridge. She couldn't let them even get close to her daughter. ~~~~~ Mulder scanned Castle Bridge once more, his mind replaying the horrors he knew could have befallen them. It'd been an hour since they had talked. An hour. He rubbed his forehead and slumped back into the bushes, feeling his legs collapse under him. Now was not the time to let his sleep deprived body shut down. He licked his lips and poked his head back over the bushes. Still no sign of them. Earlier, thinking they might be hiding, he had blatantly showed himself all around the park associated with the bridge, but she had not come out. She wasn't there. That was the blindingly clear suggestion that his mind turned over every single second. She wasn't there. He felt the panic surge again, threaten to blind him in the sheer volume of intense fear he felt for his family. This was altogether a different panic that infused him, different from the panic of Scully getting cancer again, or taken. This time it was for his wife, his baby girl. His family. ~~~~~ Scully hunkered down further into the bushes, trembling with the cold, keeping her body wrapped around Helen as best as she could. Helen was shaking in the chill of the evening, her pale skin frighteningly white in the moonlight. Peering once again to the main road, Scully found it deserted. No guards, no men in black waiting for her. No dark sedan following her either. The tickling in the back of her skull had disappeared for the moment. Everytime it went away, she attempted to go back to the bridge, and every time, it had started back again, right before she got there. She hoped Mulder was still waiting. It had been three hours. Had he given up, assumed the worst? She shivered and darted for the road, travelling quickly up to the actual bridge, darting between the lengthening shadows for protection from the moonlight. Suddenly a figure shot from the park, barrelling into her with a force that knocked her breath from her. Gasping, attempting to escape the crushing hold, she yanked Helen away from her assailant's hands. "Scully!" She relaxed and let his embrace support her. "Mulder . . . you stayed . . ." Mulder moved her back into the trees, away from the road, and led her to a bench. "What happened? I thought you were . . . gone." "I can feel it Mulder. When it starts to give me away. I couldn't take the chance that it would lead them straight to you. So I ran. I kept trying to come back, but whenever I got close, they'd turn it back on again." "You're okay? Helen?" Scully hugged her little girl harder and kissed her forhead. "She's cold. But we're both okay." With a slow reluctance, Scully pushed Helen into his arms. Mulder stared straight into her eyes, promising to come back for her, no matter what. "Take care of her, Mulder. I'll be fine." Mulder shook his head and cradled Helen to his chest, not letting her move away from him. Helen obviously knew she might not see her mother again and she was trying to squirm away from them. When he glanced back to her, he saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes, but she was valiantly pushing them back. "Scully, I can't do this without you," he muttered, choking back his own tears. "Yes, you can." she said calmly, laying a hand on his arm, granting him an odd sense of peace with her movements. Leaning forward, she guided his mouth toward hers, teasing his tongue with her own and the promise of a tomorrow. The sharp tickle crawled through her neck and shot electric like pain into her eyes. Wincing, she realized something with the sharp clarity of a woman's last moments. "Get out of here. They've trapped us. Oh, God, please." Her prayer cut short as she felt herself tumble to the ground, then the cold of the grass soaked into her shirt. Mulder fell beside her, urgently whispering her name. "Leave . . . leave . . ." He shook his head. "No, no, I can't leave you." "*Leave*" she hissed between the waves of pain originating from her neck. He hauled her up, pulling her to her feet and holding her close to him. "Helen," she vaguely recalled, shaking her head. "She's okay." Helen was clinging tightly to his back, letting him free his hands to pick Scully up. He began pushing forward, half dragging her, half carrying her. She struggled at first, tried to get him to leave her behind, but when it became evident he wouldn't, she stopped, seeing that her struggle made them slower. The sounds of a helicopter thwacking through the air made her skin break out in goosebumps and she attempted to put away the grinding in her brain and concentrate on running, moving forward. One step, then another. The far away feel of grass under her sneakers, the foggy touch of Mulder's hands grasping her shoulders, the whispery touch of air in her mouth. She wasn't going to make it. When he had to stop and sweep her up into his arms, she knew she would not make it. And neither would her family. She beat on his chest, yanked his ear with the last of her stregnth. "Dammit, Mulder. Leave me NOW." There was warmth and then, the cold, cold wet of park grass. The cold cold wet of surrender. ~~~~~ Overweighted Chapter Twenty-One By RocketMan Warning: This part gets a little sad. ~~~~~ "she blames him, at the last, for backing away from his bones and his woman, from the life he promised her was worth cold sheets. she blames him for being unable to see the tears in her eyes, the birds hovered by the window, for love being not enough, for leaving. he blames her, at the last, for holding him back with her eyes beyond when the pain was more than he was prepared to bear, for the tears he could neither end nor ignore, for believing that love could be enough, for the birds, for the life so difficult to leave." --'man and wife' Lucille Clifton ~~~~~ He woke and there was light. And it was not good. It coursed through him like waves of pain, and fried the insides of his body with small burns that leaked him of thought. He pretended it did not hurt, that this was nothing; he pretended the men didn't ask things that he could answer, and he pretended that he was not afraid. The light surged. He closed his eyes and pretended no more. ~~~~~ She woke and there was light. Oh, God, not again. Too much, too much and it was everywhere, in her, all over her, inside her womb growing with diamonds patterns like she was precious gemstones and everything was fire. She closed her eyes and thought no more. ~~~~~ I come awake and see nothing, hear nothing. That is blessed relief. My ocean claims me as the heat does, and the two battle for control. Heat and boiling ocean, and pain and nothing. Still, the water is larger and it sucks me into its coolness. I gladly close my eyes and think no more. ~~~~~ When her eyes opened again, she could see the whiteness of the after room. It made her afraid and she looked first for Helen. Seeing her little girl, soulless on the table, made her retch and she vomited on the floor of the white after room, the sickness that of her soul remembering. She scrambled to her feet and gathered her child into her arms. Helen had cut off again, pulled down deep inside her, let the world go on without her. Scully took her back to her own bed, cradling the child with her arms even as her muscles shook. She knew what had happened, knew now the horrible fate for her little girl. This was the *after* room. After the treatment, after the harvesting, after the pain. After the chip, the implants that would control her life, or kill her with cancer. Scully bit back a sob and buried her face into her daughter's blonde curls. She had told Mulder to run. Why couldn't he listen for once? He had played the hero and now, now their little girl was doomed. ~~~~~ The light surged within him and great waves of pleasure-pain buffeted his senses and his prone body like electric shocks. Writhing in this effect, his body trapped between ecstasy and agony, Mulder felt the shame as his seed spilled from him in tides of current, like erupting geysers. The light surged and came with him, drove him higher and further, creating a never ending arc of pain-pleasure that stretched him so taut that he shut down. He exploded again and again and still, it did not stop. His only thought, the one thing that his fractured mind could grasp was her. Scully. Three months of this for her. Three months. He sobbed into unconsciousness. ~~~~~ Scully woke to feel warmth, body warmth and not the electric heat of the white light. The after room was gone and Helen was gone and there was only one body next to hers. It was Mulder. He was not breathing. She jerked out of her half sleep and pulled him to her mouth, forcing breaths into a system that simply had no energy to live. She felt her bitterness disolve at the thought of really, really losing him this time. There was nothing in him to respond. He had no life. It had spilled from him in long, unending waves of pain, never to be restored again. She sobbed and continued, not willing to give up, determined not to let him leave her this time. She had demanded it before, now she recanted. Not now. Not this time. ~~~~~ I can see light and it is sweet. It tells me to open my eyes. It calls me Little One and it says nice things. It sounds like my mother. I don't want to come up for air yet. It's too nice down here. Quiet and dark with no fear or thoughts to make me tired. Peaceful. It is a peace that passes all understanding. It is home. ~~~~~ When his mind came back, he felt things only barely, as if he were wading in a thick pool of brine. He could not open his eyes. It took all his efforts to keep breathing. He felt her near him, felt her body pressed close and was afraid. There was no stirring in him for her. No primal urgency surging through him. There was nothing but an impression of pain and a faint, faint light. Love. There was warming love. And he was so so tired. ~~~~~ Scully let herself slump against him when his body began to breathe, her relief a bitter taste on her tongue. She closed her eyes and placed one hand on his heart, afraid that if she laid on his chest, it would collapse and he would not be able to breathe. If his heart stopped, she would know immediately, and his breath came out right on her arm, and so she would be able to keep him alive. Keep him alive. He had fallen into a deep, energy restoring sleep. To keep him alive. She closed her eyes and tried not to think. ~~~~~ This time, when he woke, he could smile. He smiled and then went limp, every ounce of energy exhausted. He hoped she had seen his smile. It had been for her. ~~~~~ Watching him sleep, she realized what it reminded her of. After. It reminded her of after they made love. She tilted her head and eyed him better, watching the flush of red across his cheeks, the deep, deep breathing and the entirely slack muscles. She frowned and ran her fingers along his inner thigh, trying to gather more information. She was surprised when there was nothing. No stirring, no shift in position, nothing. So . . . that couldn't be it. He was usually so . . . responsive afterwards. His eyes fluttered and he groaned deeply, causing a flush to rise in her, because for all intents and purposes, he was acting like the morning after. He reflectively pulled her into him and snuggled deeper into sleep. She bit her lip and kissed his forehead. What had they done to him? ~~~~~ I feel the soft white light like mother fall deeper into me. I open my mind, come back to them. It is not my mother. I don't understand. Where is my mother? She was supposed to be here. Where's Mommy? Where's my mom? MOMMY!!! ~~~~~ Scully jerked up, feeling as if a cannon had exploded in her head. She took in rapid, deep breaths and glanced around. Helen. It was Helen. She shook Mulder, pulled him from his deep, needed sleep. "Mulder!" He turned over, back down into sleep. She stood up and blinked, willing Helen to open up to her again. There was just silence. And then the silent, soft murmuring of a child, repeating over and over, "mommy, mommy." She trembled and ran forward, only to be swallowed in the blinding light. ~~~~~ When she came to, there was Helen, curled in a corner, trembling and signig 'mother' with her hands as her mouth sputtered animal noises. It made Scully sick and she crawled forward, gathering Helen into her arms. Her touch brought Helen back from the panic and she relaxed, letting her cheek fall to her mother's chest. Scully stood awkwardly, then looked around. Surprised, she found herself still with Mulder too. Walking unsteadily, she managed to get back to Mulder and carry Helen with her. Mulder's eyes fluttered and he licked his lips before coming awake completely. "Sc-Scully? I . . . oh . . . crap . . ." She laughed softly, more from dizzying relief than anything else. "What . . . Helen?" "She's right here. Right here." "Okay?" Scully didn't know to respond to that, didn't know what to say. "I don't know. They . . . they took her. The light and . . ." Mulder swallowed and coughed at her admissions, wincing. "Ah . . . Scully . . ." "I think something happened to you, Mulder. I don't know what, but don't try to do much. You're exhausted." He gave her a shameful chuckle. "Ah . . . yeah. They uh . . . took a donation." "What?" His eyes flickered open and the shine in his eyes shocked her. "A sample. Except it was more like the entire supply." She stared at him for a moment and then glanced to Helen. Their little girl was curling up into Mulder, her small head nestling into his shoulder as he dragged his arm around her. Her mind comprehended what he said but she couldn't seem to face it. "O-okay." Mulder closed his eyes again and concentrated on breathing. She slid in close to him. "I never made you this exhausted." she said suddenly. He gave a half snort of laughter to dismiss her lingering fears. "I'm very glad. You tired me out, but I could always come back around, Scully. I can't even lift my finger, let alone anything else. How's that good?" She pressed her face into his neck. "As soon as you're okay . . . we're getting out of here." He licked his lips and patted her head with a heavy hand. "Ok. Ok." She felt him fall back into sleep. ~~~~~ end chapter adios RM Overweighted Chapter Twenty-Two By RocketMan ~~~~~ "He said that a stern sense of the duty he owed his Maker, not less than his fellow-men, would permit him no longer to remain silent." -- "Thou Art the Man" Edgar Allan Poe ~~~~~ Mulder opened his eyes and laid still for a long moment, his mind racing forward and back and everywhere at one time. There was light and explosions of pain and Scully's face swimming above him and pain pain pain in every part of his body, rocketting out to the very ends of his fingertips and through his mind until there was only the light, the light, and no. No. He took in a deep breath and turned his head, feeling the warm bodies pressed against him. Helen on his right and Scully curled up on his left. Gently, he touched Scully's cheek, caressing the soft skin, skimming his fingers lightly over the red scratches there, wishing he could remember what had happened to them. There was the park, trying to get her and Helen out of there and then -- then, nothing. White light. And nothing. He felt the prickling in his stomach and the stirring deep within him. The white light pulsing pulsing exploding him into shattering pieces of fragile glass. She had picked him up, put his pieces back together and understood. Mulder brushed her eyes with a light touch and she opened them, blinking to rid herself of sleep. "Mulder?" "Are you okay?" he whispered, raising himself up to his elbow, looking down at her with soft, bedroom eyes. Bedroom eyes. It was an odd look on him, but the smoking way his dark pupils followed her every twitch made her suddenly too warm. She raised her hand to his cheek and brushed her fingers along the creased skin, the effects of sleeping on him. "I'm fine. They didn't . . . need me, I guess." Helen stirred beside him and he turned to pick her up, determined to be there, a comforting presence to her when she woke and remembered what had happened to her. "Hey baby," he said softly, brushing his fingers over her forehead, kissing her nose and gazing down at her. She tilted her head and blinked, hard, a tinge of panic rising in her face, her eyes starting to focus on the round edges of his face. Mulder glanced over to Scully with a hint of fear, his eyes touching hers with the pleading look. "What's wrong with her?" he said sharply. Helen flinched violently and jerked from his arms, raising her hands to her ears and making an unintelligible noise, something akin to panic. She began whimpering and Scully reached out to her, more out of instinct than any ability to calm her or offer reassurance. "Mulder, --" Helen shrieked and moved her head between them, glancing from one to the other. A low keening began in her throat and Scully felt the tears slipping free from her eyes as she grabbed her little girl and held her close. Signing calming words into her hands, Scully brushed her hair from her forehead and rocked her back and forth in time to her wails. Helen's hands were fumbling to meet Scully's, and Mulder grabbed them and let her sign into his palms. Her words were panicked attempts to explain something she could not. Mulder stopped, a look of horror and sudden joy racing across his face. He touched Scully's arm and she turned to see him, her mind still caught up in trying to calm her baby girl. The look on his face made her still. "She . . . she can see. Scully. She said she can see us. And hear." Scully glanced down to Helen, who was tightly closing her eyes and pressing her hands over her ears, whimpering. "See. And hear?" Mulder nodded and touched Helen's arm. Helen turned to him, slowly opened her eyes and squinted, trying to keep down the visual overload. He signed Daddy into her fingers and she shook slightly, then nodded and turned to the woman holding her, looking. Seeing. "They changed her back, Mulder. They changed her back." He shook his head. "What?" "They took away that connection. It's gone now, I can feel it. But they gave her sight and hearing back." Mulder touched Helen again and signed to her "I'm going to say your name." He waited until she understood, then softly said, "Helen." Her face lit and she slowly let her hands fall from her ears. Grabbing his hands, she asked him to say it again. He did and she glanced to her mother, then asked her to say it. She looked surprised when the sounds were different coming from Scully. She opened her mouth and tried to repeat the attempt, only found that the sounds were missing. No beautiful words came from her mouth. Scully looked to Mulder, frantic. "She can't talk, Mulder." "Of course not. She's never heard it before. I don't think she ever will be able to talk though, Scully. She's missed too many critical periods. The formative years are basically over now for her. She'll be able to say a limited amount, I think." "How can you be sure?" "Not sure. But children have been found in the jungle, raised by either monkeys or just left there. Feral children is what they're called. They can't speak obviously, and even when they're taught, the words don't come. The children even died much sooner that usual. Most committed suicide." "Suicide?" "But those were feral children. The same concept applies here. She's never heard the language. Signing *is* her language and in order to keep her grounded in this new world, we've got to sign to her, Scully." He glanced over to Helen to see her head following them, her eyes wide as they talked, taking it all in. He smiled and ruffled her hair, just as he always did, and then kissed her nose. Helen closed her eyes and smiled, then opened them and attempted to stand up. She pitched forward and weaved and ended up hitting the floor hard. Making a noise of frustration, and then surprising herself when she heard the guttural growl, Helen closed her eyes and stood easily, then moved towards them, positioning her body in Scully's lap. She sank into her arms and snuggled deep, keeping her eyes closed. "See? Life for her is this darkness. She operates better in it. With time, she'll come to understand it, process it, but now, things are too much all at once." Scully nodded and stroked Helen's forehead, kissing her softly. "So what do we do?" she asked, unaccustomed to being at a loss. "We get out of here." They both stood, Scully cradling Helen and waiting for Mulder to gain his balance. He stepped away. "I think you'd better carry Helen. I . . . I'm a little unsteady." "You probably haven't gotten your strength back." He nodded and they moved around the room, exploring walls and seams and wishing for an easy way out, just once for them to get lucky. He paused. "What if we're on a space ship?" She raised her eyebrow and shook her head. "I'm more than convinced now that this is run by our own government. They're using humans to further their genetic testing and the idea of the super race. They're trying to create superhumans, Mulder. And they're using our genes and our DNA to do it." She was ready to start yelling, her face flushed and her arms shifting Helen's weight. Mulder glanced over to her and then back to the walls. "But if it's aliens, Scully. What if the governement is simply copying their experiments? What if this is a race to find the breed of humans that are impervious to the aliens' colonization efforts? What if the aliens are testing to come up with a better, bigger, stronger virus?" "Mulder. We can argue the finer points later. Right now, we have to get out of here." "But if this is a space ship and we go ripping a hole in the wall, we might get sucked into space." She rolled her eyes and put his questions out of her mind. "Keep looking Mulder." ~~~~~ She leaned against the wall, resting her arms as Mulder sat down, panting, his energy nil at the moment. Helen was sitting at Scully's feet, her head sweeping the entire room with enthusiasm. She seemed to be doing better about suddenly being able to see. Mulder leaned back and sprawled onto the floor. Suddenly the room went too bright. Too white. Helen whimpered and pressed her face into Scully's leg. Too white. It was enveloping them, erasing every thought and scouring their minds. Then there was blackness. A yawning void that swallowed them whole. ~~~~~ end chapter adios RM Overweighted Chapter Twenty-Three By RocketMan ~~~~~ "the fox came every evening to my door asking for nothing. my fear trapped me inside. . ." -- 'telling our stories' Lucille Clifton ~~~~~ When the noises intruded, he realized he was somewhere else. There was the sound of buzzing, like a doorbell, and then the pouding of his blood through his tender head. A voice was calling him and he reached out suddenly, catching the person who was murmuring his name. The skin was soft and warm, and the smell of the person reminded him of something he should be familiar with, but he couldn't get his brain un-fuzzed. "Mulder?" His eyes managed to open and there she was. "Scully." He pulled himself up and glanced around, confused, unsure of what all he had experienced, of what was truth and what was dreams. "What . . . where . . . Helen?" Scully motioned behind her and he turned his head to see Helen, sitting quietly watching them, her eyes wide and blinking as she attempted to make sense of the images she now saw. "Are you all right, Mulder? You've been out longer than us." "How long?" "At least thirty minutes. I couldn't even get you to the couch." "The couch? Where are we?" "Your apartment," she said and her face was just as confused as his. "How'd we get here?" "I guess . . . guess they returned us, Mulder. I don't know . . . I don't understand why." Mulder glanced over to Helen, holding out his hand to touch her leg, reestablish some contact with her. She took his hand and squeezed it tightly, signing hello into his palm. He pulled her to him and pushed her head to his shoulder, kissing her forehead, then glanced to Scully. "They changed her back, Scully. They 'fixed' her and now they can be sure she won't ruin them. We have no evidence of anything." "I don't care what they did, Mulder. I'm just glad she's alive . . . glad you're alive." Mulder stood and carried Helen to the couch, tugging on Scully's shirt to get her to follow him over. As soon as she was sitting, he touched her cheek, softly following the contours of her face with a reverent hand. "Maybe they'll leave us alone now. We're no threat to them anymore, right?" She watched the frantic play of emotions across his face, the way his eyes still held doubts about her, and the twitch of his finger as he smoothed over her skin. She took his hand and kissed his knuckles, shaking her head. "We're no threat. We're a family," she said and leaned in to him, glancing her lips across his with a hint of seduction. He smiled and nodded his head toward Helen, winking at Scully. Taking Helen by the hand, he pulled her up from the couch and led her towards her room, signing bedtime into her palm and promising her that everything was all right now. When he opened the door, a dog barked and bounded over to them. Helen skirted away, backing into Mulder's legs as he laughed. Scully came in from the living room and saw Sam, wagging his tail excitedly and barking with excitement. Scully signed 'Sam' to Helen and scooted her forward, letting the dog sniff around her and thump his tail in greeting. Helen buried her face into his furry side and began crying, clutching at the dog like a lifeline. Mulder quickly went to her, rubbing her back and asking what was wrong. She shook her head and signed nothing, then pulled on Sam's collar, urging him to the bed with her. Scully tucked them both under the covers and kissed Helen's cheek, then stroked her forehead, smiling and saying out loud, "I love you." She signed as she spoke and Helen's eyes went wide, then she held her arms out and hugged her mother fiercely, making a furious attempt to say the words back. She mumbled out something that, to her, was 'I love you' and Scully beamed brightly, wiping tears away with her hand. Mulder kissed Helen's cheek and signed and spoke the same words. Helen turned over in bed and buried her face into Sam's side, shutting her eyes tightly and relaxing into the bed. Mulder crept out with Scully as she clicked off the light, realizing that they had always turned off the light, and only now would that matter. She could see. She could hear. Scully turned to Mulder and smiled radiantly, standing on her tiptoes to kiss his mouth. He grabbed her roaming hands and brought them to his lips. Then, staring straight down into her soul, he signed "I love you" across her cheek, following the words with kisses across her face. She closed her eyes and whispered, "I love you too." He nuzzled her neck and breathed in the gentle smell of home and her. "They won't come after us again. We're safe." She hugged him against her. "We're safe." ~~~~~ end adios RM THIS ENDS IT ALL!!