From: "NynaeveSedai" Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1999 14:48:22 -0400 Subject: NEW: This And More by Nynaeve (1/1) Source: xff TITLE: This And More by Nynaeve E-MAIL: scully@accessearth.net RATING: PG CATEGORY: S SPOILERS: pretty much need to know the show KEYWORDS: conspiracy, colonization, secondary character SUMMARY: Marita uncovers a few more of those pesky memories. DISCLAIMER: Yes, I know, they belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and a bunch of other legal entities. DISTRIBUTION: anywhere, just let me know so I can arrange visitation. BTW, you will need to read the first two, "Before the Needles" and "Never Long Enough", in this series. Both are available at my website (URL) below, (after NOTES), in the "Marita Series" section. (Go figure!). Or e-mail me. FEEDBACK: of course! I keep and respond to it all. Is it too pathetic to mention I have neatly labeled folders in my inbox for all my stories' feedback? DEDICATION: To those of you who kept "needling" me to get on with it. This And More I dreamt last night. I have not had an actual dream since ... I can't remember. In my dream, there was a little girl, playing with her father. The girl was a towhead, long hair held back in two plaits. The man was tall; his voice was gruff, but loving toward the child. They were both smiling and laughing. She squealed with delight as her father romped with her - tickling her, giving her 'pony' rides on his back, spinning her around like the blades of a helicopter. She called out again and again, "Daddy! More, Daddy!" Her father called her 'His Merry.' I woke, smiling wistfully. My head ached after my experiences of the night before. I shuddered a bit. I had not learned that much about myself, and perhaps even less that was useful to me just now, but I had learned enough. I followed my daily routine automatically. A shower, long and cleansing, the water as hot as my skin could tolerate. Soap and steam and time cleansed my pores, water massaged my scalp and skin. I toweled my hair until it was nearly dry, enjoying the feel of the cloth and the small ruffling sound made as I wrung water from my hair. I grimaced as I glanced at my hair, lank, strawlike, apparently irreversibly damaged by their experiments. Looking in the mirror, I stuck my tongue out at my reflection. It was such a childish thing to do, recalling the girl in my dreams, that I giggled a bit. Before dressing I took stock of my clothing. Alex had provided nicely for me. I recognized the good cut and workmanship of the clothing that hung in the closet and lay neatly folded in drawers. Everything was serviceable; nothing glamorous. I blushed a bit to think he had chosen the soft lingerie that filled a whole drawer. Perhaps Mrs. Simpson was responsible. Wearing jeans and a green blouse, I went out to the kitchen, getting myself my usual juice and cereal. I ate without thinking, tasted nothing. In my head, I was listing what I needed to do, thinking about how I could accomplish these tiny goals of mine. Rinsing out the bowl and glass and placing them in the dishwasher, I smiled again. Baby steps these might be, but steps they were, nonetheless. Power and control had once been the guiding lights of my life. I was determined they would be again and this time I would come out on the right side. Power and control ... I stepped out onto the balcony. I hastily retreated inside, snatching up a pair of sunglasses from the top of the little-used television. Even the overcast sunlight was too bright for my damaged eyes. I returned to the balcony. A breeze from the river was blowing in gently. I leaned against the railing and gazed down. My head swum a bit as my eyes adjusted to the distance that yawned below me. The river. I had heard Mrs. Simpson call it that, but I did not know which river. My first priority must be learning where I was, determining where I would need to go when the time came. Krycek had been careful; the buildings around me carried no markings that could give me clues to my whereabouts. The television that I rarely watched was provided by a satellite feed, so I had access to no local news. I had no phone books; no daily papers were delivered to me. I doubted Mrs. Simpson would tell me and I certainly could not ask Krycek without awakening his suspicion of me. Such suspicion may be dormant, but I knew it lingered there, beneath the surface. If it didn't, he would have told me long ago everything there was to tell. I remembered that magazines come with subscription labels which give the address. I had paid little attention to the magazines Mrs. Simpson brought, not reading them, only gazing at the pictures in them sometimes. I realized now they might have an entirely different purpose. I went inside and picked up a magazine from the magazine rack next to the couch. I scanned it for a label. Nothing. I turned it over. Dammit. Krycek must have Mrs. Simpson go out and buy the stupid things. Something, there had to be something. I knew a systematic search had to reveal something. A copy of the lease for the apartment perhaps. A tenants guide that might at least give me an idea of the location. A flyer stuck under the door and discarded hastily, but not too carefully, by Mrs. Simpson, once upon a time. I was thorough, but cautious. I was certain if Mrs. Simpson suspected I'd been ransacking my own apartment, Krycek would show up again a lot sooner than normal. My efforts turned up nothing of any use, except the knowledge that Mrs. Simpson was worth every penny she was paid. The apartment was spotless. Nothing was out of place. Not one single thing. Disappointed by my fruitless search, I sank to the couch, gazing dismally at the wine stain on the rug. Nearly used to the voice that assailed me, I jumped at the sound in my head. "A little club soda, dear, and even wine will come right out." It was not her voice, the voice I once had, before the needles. It was a new voice. The distinct possibility that I was slowly going mad occurred to me. Then I realized I knew the voice. It was my mother's. As an automaton, I went into the kitchen and found a bottle of club soda and a rag. I never drank the stuff, so I could only assume my baby-sitter read the same household hint column my mother always had. Rubbing at the stain I began to wonder. I could remember my childhood, large parts of it, anyway, although adolescence was still a void into which I would no doubt stumble sometime soon. I recalled college with good clarity and the nature, if not the specifics, of my work for the Syndicate was coming back to me. Why hadn't my parents, the father who swung me around and called me 'his Merry', the mother full of advice about carpet stains and club soda, w hy hadn't they looked for me? I stared at the diminishing stain. It was never going to quite go away, but the club soda had done well. It was not very noticeable. Still staring, I spoke aloud, "My mother is dead. She died in a car accident just before I left for college." I inhaled sharply, then exhaled with a slight whimper. "She had been driving on the freeway when she apparently suffered a heart attack. Her car slammed into a concrete underpass at about sixty miles per hour. The doctors were never certain if the heart attack killed her or the crash. She had been forty-six. We buried her, my father and I, on a sunny August day, three weeks before I left for my first semester at college. "We had been the only mourners. Mom and Dad had never had a lot of friends. Mom always told me that Dad's line of work was not conducive to long term friendships. After she died, Dad's face seemed to set, as though in cement. He became dour and gruff. I knew he still loved me, but he rarely showed me any affection after that. Never once, in the years that followed, did he call me 'his Merry' again. When I went to college he pushed me to major in biochemistry. He told me it was an up and coming field and I could really make a mark." I finished my rambling monologue, hardly realizing at first that I had spoken aloud. It was even longer before I realized something else. I had remembered something, simply remembered it. No dizzying falls into the lowest circle of hell, no stumbling around in the dark, searching for things for which I had no words. This was not a visual memory. It was just a memory. I sighed deeply, feeling an exhilaration at this knowledge. A few tears made their way down my face and I wiped them away with the back of my hand. For all my memories of her, I barely knew the woman whose death I had just recalled. The Syndicate's experiments had taken my memories and even if I recalled every detail of my previous life, it would never be the same. It was like watching a movie or television program. Flat, unreal. I found that as much as I may have wanted to, I no longer knew how to mourn, though I am certain I mourned her at the time. I left the question of my father for later. I had remembered so much in the last few days. It was taking its toll on me. I wondered idly, as I replaced the club soda, why everything started coming back in the last few days. True, I had been remembering bits and pieces for a while now, but in the last few days it was as thought the flood gates had been opened. Not having an answer to that perplexing question, I considered the other query it raised. How long had I been here, wherever here was? I looked at the clock and realized Mrs. Simpson would be here soon. She usually checked on me around lunch, bringing me a sandwich or soup, or groceries so I could fix my own food. She would leave a meal I could heat up for dinner. Yesterday she had surprised me, arriving only with a sandwich and explaining 'that nice Mr. Blackley' would be bringing me dinner. She had thought that since it was to be a special night, I might want to 'fix my face' a bit. She had brought me make up. I suspected Krycek had asked her to get me some, as it was all new, and matched my skin tones quite well. She had offered to help, but I had declined. Putting on makeup must be - what's the expression - like riding a bike for women; we never forget. The makeup. It had not been store brands, nor any of the kind they advertised on television. It all came in little pink capped bottles, pink tubes, flat pink compacts. An utterly nonsensical picture of a perfectly made up woman driving a pink cadillac flared up before me. I whispered the words, "Mary Kay." I was in the bathroom almost instantly it seemed. The compact was lying on the counter. I turned it over. A name, the name of the independent consultant. And a phone number, with an area code. And yes, blessedly, an address. "I'll have you on *your* knees yet, Alex..." I muttered. Jeanne Rosenthal lived at 2116 Riverview Glen, Indianapolis, Indiana. He'd buried me in the Midwest. I was about as far out of the action as could be. This might as well have been China for all the good it would do me. I had no contacts here, knew very little of the local area, and getting back to DC or New York was going to be difficult, if not damn near impossible. Her voice spoke inside my head again, "Fox Mulder can help you." "Lovely," I replied to no one except the woman I used to be, "Would you care to tell me who Fox Mulder is? A phone number would be helpful. I'd settle for an address." She was silent. I was going to have to figure that one out on my own apparently or wait until that particular memory chose to come roaring back into my life and hope it left me clinging to what was left of my sanity. I knew where I was, in general. It was time to determine how long I might have been here. Time lost any semblance of meaning when I was being experimented on. At first a small, desperate part of my brain tried valiantly to keep track of the days. Though controlled by the alien oil, there were things of which I was dimly aware. I could feel my heart beat, pumping the oxygen carrying blood my body needed to sustain itself. I could feel the intubation tube and vaguely knew it was forcing me to breathe, a habit at that point I would have gladly given up. I could see, but it was like wearing nearly opaque, dark glasses made of oil. I could hear, which was probably the most terrifying fact of all. To hear people, doctors, scientists, observers, discuss your condition coolly and dispassionately, to understand you are nothing more to them than a convenient lab rat, is a feeling beyond words. I had no way of knowing how long they experimented on me. I recalled the first test with their vaccine, stolen from Krycek. As bad as the pain had been when the alien entity invaded my body, the battle that was waged in my blood stream upon receiving the antidote was worse. I became aware of every vein and artery as the oil was driven through my body, consumed it seemed by the vaccine. The vaccine was weak though and unable to work swiftly. It burned pathways through my circulatory system in the manner of a slow, controlled forest burn. I could have sworn the insides of my body were as charred and smoking as those cars I had seen in Russia. Yet I had lived. Unfortunately, I had lived. Once they knew they had a vaccine, they knew how weak it was. Once they knew how weak it was, they knew they needed to make it stronger. With me as a test subject, their scientists could try as many different formulas as they could devise. It was, I think, a bit like being in Hell's version of Baskin Robbins. My father had suggested I could make my mark in biochemistry. I don't think that was exactly how he pictured it. I knew that locked in my brain, were the memories of exactly what they had done and why. The human brain, I remembered this from a college course, is the most powerful computer ever built. It remembers everything that is ever input into it. It is only our inability to access all that information that holds us back. Or keeps us sane. Somewhere in my brain then, was the knowledge of what had been done, formulas had been recited, procedures explained, of that I was sure. This was what Krycek was banking on, too, waiting for me to remember it all. This ... and more. In my previous position with the Syndicate, under the cover of my U.N. job, I was one of the people still alive who knew ... what, exactly? What do I know? The bees. There's a reason the bees frightened me. I must know about the bees. I sigh. The memories will come. Memories I want and ones I don't. They will assail me as I sleep. In the day, they will tear me from the comfortable moorings of daylight and toss me into the eerily lit panorama of my own personal hell. They are the only chance I have to escape, to change what my life was. They are the reason I am alive, here, protected by Alex Krycek. And they are the reason he will kill me once I have served my purpose. I sit on the couch and turn on the television. I find the weather station. It has a convenient feature, I realized about ten minutes ago. Its content is always time and date stamped. My mouth falls open as I read the stamp on the screen. "Oh my God..." I whisper harshly. I begin to shake my head, disbelieving. It is simply not possible I want to tell myself. They stole so much time from me. There is so little time left, time to do what I must. The date is set ... How can they ever be ready? "They who?" I hear her ask coyly. My brain responds, "Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, Special Agents with the FBI, investigating X Files, and trying to fathom this unfathomable conspiracy" "The date is set..." runs through my mind idiotically over and over. I have to warn them. I have to remember so I can tell them what I know. "This is not possible," I murmur. February 3, 2000. I've lost nearly two years... God help us all. END AUTHOR'S NOTES: Yeah, yeah, yeah - I'm setting Marita up to be the 'it girl'. I figure, she deserves a chance. I mean, look at poor little Gibson Praise, being the key to everything in the X Files wasn't exactly the big break he'd probably been hoping for. And Cassandra, well, it's had to be the key to anything when you're as nice and crispy-toasty as she is (maybe). So, I figure - why not give Marita a chance. Weirder things have been done ... really. Second of all, if you don't know, Mary Kay products do indeed come with the consultant's name, phone number, and address on them. It explains why my Mary Kay lady's name has never made it into my address book. Lastly, there is an ending in sight to this little fairy tale of mine. That means I've written the ending and have one or two explanations of my sleeve. If you've made it this far, thanks. Now, I have to ask for more patience as I try to coax the rest of the story from my brain. Nynaeve Sedai's Homepage: NynaeveSedai's Homepage or: http://members.tripod.com/NynaeveSedai/NynaeveSedai.html