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