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