Title: Momma VI (1/2)
Author: RocketMan >lbontger@wmcstations.com<
Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox
broadcasting. No infringment is intended and no payment or profit is
recieved from this story.

Dedication: To Julie <Jules> who is sick and might have to go to the
hospital. Thanks for encouraging me, babe!

Momma VI (1/2)

I don't feel too good and my throat refuses to open up, so I've been
home from school recently. 
I don't mind that at all.
It's just that I can't talk and I talk all the time. Out loud, to my
Dad, to friends on the phone, friends that I have met in the street,
just about everyone.
And Dad is very nervous and he keeps looking at me with this face that
says 'I know why this is happening, but I can't make it stop,' yet he
won't tell me what he knows or why it's scaring him so much.
He paces around angrily, gun tucked in his holster even though I had
asked him not to carry it when I was with him. I hate guns: they're
revolting and dangerous. My best friend's brother found his mother's
service revolver and blew his hand off.
But Dad carries it anyway, even though I begged and pleaded and threw a
fit. 
But I can't even tell him to take it off now, with my throat gone, and I
can't make him talk to me or even just talk normally. It's very
frustrating.
Dad keeps the blinds tightly shut and I'm not allowed to go anywhere by
myself anymore unless it's down to the grocery store on Fifth or to the
Cleaners on Broad. I used to take long walks outside, roaming the
streets and meeting all the bag ladies and prostitutes and homeless men
that were out there and talk to them. One of my greatest friends is Lisa
and she's only twenty-six but looks about forty and talks about forty so
that anyone would say she's forty. She lives by the side of an antique
shop whose owners bring her lunch every day and help her keep away from
the johns constantly scouring Broad.
But I worry about Lisa because I haven't been able to see her and I
usually give her old chapstick or lotion, especially during the winter.
But Dad is afraid and won't let me out.
I thought his working on the X-Files would be great, but it's only been
hell. I can tell he thinks that someone has given me this strange throat
virus that can't be understood or treated so far, and I think he's just
plain nuts.
Of course, in a good way.
After all, he *is* my father. And I've got some of that in me.
I am going to the doctor again tomorrow because the shot of antibodies
they gave me yesterday hasn't had any effect and Dad is even more
worried and he keeps pacing the floor and receiving strange phone calls.
I really don't think it's as bad as Dad thinks - I have faith in
medicine - but also I think there's something more than just the flu.
Dad didn't go in to work today and almost didn't call in to say he was
taking the day off, but I motioned to him and he finally got it and
called.
I wonder if Mom had to take care of him like this.
"Jules?"
I look away from the window where I was trying to maybe catch a glimpse
of Lisa to acknowledge my father: proud, though anxious, man standing
before me with the cellular phone clutched in his hand.
I nod and raise my hands to him. He takes them and squeezes my cold
fingers and sits on my bed.
"Jules, I have to go in to work, all right? Something . . . they've
found something about your sore throat."
I want to say that this goes way beyond a sore throat but my voice
stills within me and I can't even clear away the haze.
I pat the bed, motioning that I'll be fine here, but he shakes his head.
"No, Jules, I want you to come with me," he says, eyeing me with his
very dark eyes in a way that says clearly I am not to argue.
I sigh and struggle out of bed and put on some clothes: jeans and a
white fitted T-shirt with my black jacket pulled over.
Dad looks at me funny, as if saying 'why are you getting dressed in
front of me?' but I mean, it's my *Dad*: he bathed me and everything. I
am really too tired to even care.
I let him lead me out to the living room and grab a book that  I have to
read for English and some paper in case I want to write anything and
then let him guide me downstairs.
We usually take the elevator.
I hate how the X-Files have ruined our nice simple lives.
But I love how happy and content Dad would come home after solving a
case.
He didn't get that fullfilment from his other work.
I let him buckle me into the car and I lean across and unlock his door
for him.
And we're off to the FBI building.
I'm even more tired than ever.
~~~
I think that this bald guy is Dad's boss, but I've never seen him before
and I can tell he's never seen me, or maybe not even heard of me, and
that hurts a lot.
He stands and shakes my hand as Dad explains what's going on and why I
couldn't say 'hello' back to him. I read the name on the door as we
leave: Walter Skinner, AD.
Okay, so what's an AD?
We walk to a flight of stairs (stairs again!) and keep going down, down,
down, until I feel dizzy and light headed, almost as if the stairs were
shaking underneath me and pitching  me back and forth.
I clutch Dad's jacket and he turns and sees my green face and holds onto
me tightly, letting me find my center of balance again.
We start down once more and after abother flight I see the hallway
leading straight to my Dad's office, just as Mom described it in her
journals.
We walk arm in arm and he unlocks the door and goes ahead of me to make
sure everything's all right and then I walk in and-
and-
and there's Mom.

end part one
adios
RM


Momma VI: (2/2)

I want to talk
I want to speak to her
but even if I had my voice I could not
for she stands there silent
dumb struck as me
her hair red and brown tinged
with the touch of death I think
and I want to run to her
but all I really know is that
she's a stranger today.

"Julia?"
I shake my head, and it swings back and forth like the clock chime, but
I don't want this now, not now.
I turn to Daddy and he holds me and sinks down to me so that I can see
his tears and he is saying I'm sorry and wiping them off my face.
"You couldn't know..." he whispers, and I hate him for keeping my mother
from me for so long that I do not even know her.
"Jules?" 
I turn and it's her right there, her eyes the same as I could imagine in
my heart and her hair shining like Daddy always described it and no
wonder Daddy came home happy and content and spent long hours in his
job.
"They gave her back to us, Jules. Just the other week. I didn't want you
to be upset and then they did this to you....I was afraid..."
I look over hesitantly at my mother and her eyes are hurting, weeping
great lamb tears as Uncle Charlie calls them.
I bite my lip and she quivers where she stands, her body shaking in fear
at my reaction.
I want her to come over here but I cannot talk and I have to open myself
to her.
I walk slowly and she opens her arms, but I do not run into them like on
sappy soap operas. I walk to her and look at her carefully and watch her
eyes flicker with fire at me and I can see all of what I have read about
her, from her own hand, and I see my mother.
Momma.
I step into her arms and bury my nose into her shoulder: we are the same
height, I may be a bit taller.
I always wanted to know what a mother smelled like.
It is: roses that are dead but still alive somewhere and remind you of
the joy of getting the flowers and:  the beach when it rains and you can
feel the salt in your bones, all the way down to your marrow and:  soap
that is used only on special occassions or when you're sick and you want
to feel clean again and: it is love and fear and clean and blue, like a
good thing that you know has to end.
"Oh, Julie, baby, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."
She clutches me tightly and I feel Daddy come in behind us and hold us
both. I can hug her now and not be afraid of what will happen because my
Dad will always protect me and now, now, so will my Mother.
I let my eyes close because I am so very tired and all my emotion is
being spent in trying to feel as much as I can while I still have her.
I think it's darker in here than when I first came in, but I can't seem
to get things straight and it feels so good with Momma's arms around
me....
~~~~
"Jules? Jules, babe, are you all right?"
My eyes open and vision swirls up and through and away and I close my
eyes again.
"I know you're tired, love, but you have to stay awake."
I open my eyes again, thinking that I will try just for my mother's sake
(my mother!) and I see her face peering down at me.
I'm in Daddy's office still, on his couch that he couldn't get rid of
even after he stopped seeing patients, and Momma is holding my head and
rubbing my forehead.
"Are you feeling better now?"
I nod and actually it's true, I do feel better. I also feel a sharpness
in my arm and I suspect I was given a shot while unconscious.
"Can you try and talk for me, babe?"
I try to say Momma but all that comes out is a garbled mess and I feel
so frustrated that all I feel like crying.
Here's my mother, alive, and I can't even speak to her.
"It's all right. It's all right. I gave you medicine that should kill
off the bacteria and let you talk soon, all right? You're going to be
just fine."
I nod and wonder if this is why she was given back to us: to cure me and
help Daddy....
I hope she's staying. I'd like to have my mother.
She stays right by me, caressing my hair and smoothing away the worry
frowns on my forehead. "You're so beautiful, Julia. Just like your
Daddy, huh? I can tell you're very stubborn. Mulder told me all about
you when I came, told me everything you did from that steel trap memory
of his word for word. It was like knowing you through the radio and
through a slide show. But you're more alive than he said."
More alive? What is that?
"Thank you for not questioning, baby. Thank you."
She kisses my forehead and looks up to Daddy who is standing and looking
out the small window.
I want to tell her that I read her journals and knew her mind better
than I knew my own at times and that I loved her no matter what had
happened, but I couldn't talk and I let my eyes say what I so
desperately needed to say.
She hugged me and continued to lull me back to sleep with her motions.
~~~~
Sometime during the sleep I felt myself drifting toward their voices and
I heard them echo across me:
Mom: "She'll be fine Mulder. I told you it worked before."
Dad: "Yes, but, she's not what you think. I mean, there's somethinf
different about her, Scully. She can do things....."
"Mulder, don't be -"
"No, listen. You don't know!"
I hear her harsh breath break away and Dad moving to her.
"I'm sorry, Scully. I know you did it for her. I wish you would have let
me go instead of you. I didn't know that was the price. But I'm glad,
glad they let you come back....."
"They-they didn't let me, Mulder. I left. I had to. I finally had a way
to get out and I took it. They wanted Julia dead, Mulder. They wanted
you back in your despair. I couldn't let her die.....not after
everything..."
What were they talking about? What was going one? Why was everything so
upside down?
"But, Scully, are you sure, she-"
"Mulder, her fever will break and she'll be fine. Trust me."
I don't understand this. Let me away from this dream, let me leave,
please, make it go away.
Make it right again.
~~~~
My eyes open.
Daddy. His smiling brown eyes like charcoal on a cave wall and I laugh
and feel my throat working again and surely it was all a dr-
"Jules?"
I turn and there is my mother. Regal and beautiful and just a bit
frantic looking, but wonderfully alive.
"No more slide shows, Momma." I whisper and she grins and takes me up
into her arms like a baby.
And that smell.
That mother smell again, only this time it isn't many different things
it is one thing:
Familiar:
Momma.


end 
adios
RM