Title: The Road North
Category: V, A, UST, post-ep for Closure
Rating: PG
Spoilers: SUZ/Closure
Summary: What makes a happy ending?
Archive: Yes to Gossamer. Anywhere else: I won't say no, but
please retain
all headers and *please* ask me first. I just like to know where
this stuff
goes. :)
Disclaimer: I do not own Mulder, Scully or indeed the X-Files,
all of which
belong to CC, 1013 and Fox. I merely play with Chris's toys every
now and
again for fun, not profit.
Feedback: cazfic@ymail.com
URL: http://cazq.freeservers.com
Author's Note: Many thanks to Sue Pyper, without whom I still
wouldn't have
seen these eps, to Jesemie's Evil Twin, Lucy Garner, Alicia K and
EPur for
kick-ass beta, and to Virginia, for being Virginia.
For Shawne.
*******
The Road North (1/1)
by CazQ ( cazfic@ymail.com )
*******
"What we call the beginning is often the end.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from."
T. S. Eliot, 'Four Quartets'
*******
As it turned out, the woods in Victorville, CA were not quite the
end of the
road. When he sat down in his darkened apartment and listened to
the silence
of his free world for the first time, he discovered that the road
led
on a little further. Just a little further.
He left a note for Scully pinned to his front door, right above
the '2',
which was hanging upside down from the screw again, got into the
car and
went for a drive.
*******
There is an emptiness somewhere inside his body now, a space
about the size
of a heart, of a clenched fist.
It is an emptiness that does not pain him at all, though,
contrary to
everything he ever expected. He sits on the hood of the car at
the roadside
somewhere north of Baltimore, muffled up against the chill bite
in the air,
listening to an anonymous river flowing under a concrete bridge.
He looks
out into the dark of night and feels that little emptiness, that
hidden space
expand. He feels it grow until it encompasses the whole world, as
if it is
rippling outward like a spell being cast, leaving changes too
small for the
eye to perceive in its wake.
He remembers...
Two pairs of little handprints and two scrawled names in the
concrete of the
sidewalk.
A house dying slowly away, wild grasses creeping up between the
floorboards
like the secrets of the sleeping dead.
Shadows of leaves, ragged, fluttering on the grubby white walls,
flickering
through the seasons but never falling and dying.
The voices of the calm, calm dead, whispering and rustling around
him like
those shadows moving over his skin.
She never felt him pull his hand away as they stood there in that
little
shell of a house, but Scully's hand was warm in his own, her skin
smooth
against his, her fingers gentle on his flesh, and when he let go
the warmth
lingered on, like something he could hold in the palm of one
cupped
hand.
*******
He has not spoken to anyone but gas station attendants,
waitresses and motel
clerks for four days. He drives, sleeps, eats, drives, reads a
little from
the book that rests where Scully usually sits, on the passenger
seat beside
him. Thinks. He calls Scully on his cellphone when he knows she
won't be
home, feels himself expand and breathe in the silence between the
rings.
"Hi, this is Dana Scully. Please leave a message after the
tone and I'll get
back to you."
He breathes in and out, listening to the electronic void waiting
for his words, and then simply says, "It's me. Don't worry.
I'm doing fine."
Each time, he speaks silently to her machine before he starts to
talk, tells
her in that moment's pause that he needs a little time, a little
time to just
drive around this big country of theirs with the horizon always
receding
beyond the windshield and get reacquainted with the world. With
himself.
Then he tells her out loud that he's just fine, and each time
feels a small
swell of warmth and delight to discover that perhaps he is
telling her the
truth.
*******
Another night, car stopped in the comfortable dark beside another
road. The
weather has eased unexpectedly. It is a mild night and a soft,
kind wind
blows up from the south, a wind that, he imagines, has been
following him on
his progress up the Eastern seaboard.
He places the battered little book on the warm hood of the car
beside him
and lets it fall open where it will. He takes it up, cradling it
in his
hands like a holy relic, and begins to read, hearing the cooling
engine
ticking in the silence beneath him, a comforting sound.
*******
"August 21st, 1976
It's too hot even to go out of the house today. Jeffrey says
these are the
dog days of summer. He says they're called that because it's so
hot that
dogs get all hot and tired in their fur coats, and just lie
around panting
with their tongues hanging out. I don't know if he's telling the
truth.
There aren't any dogs on the base except the guard dogs, and they
have to
walk around all the time whether they want to or not, so I can't
look and
find out if he's right.
I'd like a dog. A little puppy-dog, with scruffy fur and a stubby
little
tail and big pointy ears. I'd teach it to fetch and roll over and
play
dead.
Jeffrey has a new catcher's mitt and ball, and when it gets cool
enough,
when the sun goes down, we'll go and play catch in the yard. I
think
Jeffrey's afraid of being hit in the face with the ball or
something,
because he gets this funny, nervous look when we play catch and
he isn't
very good and drops the ball a lot, but he wants to get better.
I'll throw
the ball gently."
*******
He buys a baseball glove and a ball in a sports store somewhere
in
Maine, but he has no one to play catch with. He sits on the bed
in his
motel room watching CNN and idly tosses the ball from hand to
hand.
The headboard in the next room begins to bang against the wall at
his back,
accompanied by a woman crying out like a small pained bird, and
when he
finds himself throwing the ball back and forth in rhythm with the
thuds
against the wall he gets up and wanders out into the dim, chilly
dusk. The
sun has just about set, although the screen of grey clouds
obscuring the
horizon makes it difficult to tell. The ball is in his right hand
as he walks
along, idly rubbing his forefinger back and forth over the ridged
seam of
stitches. The pristine whiteness of the ball bothers him a
little, but
there's plenty of time to get it worn in.
He comes across a grassy vacant lot where a group of kids are
playing some game of their own which seems to mostly involve
running and
shrieking. He pauses and watches as a little girl, probably no
more than
nine or ten, trips over her sneaker laces and sprawls in the
dirt. He
expects a storm of weeping to erupt, but she simply sits up,
examines her
grazed knee and elbows with scientific curiosity, and then picks
herself up
and sprints off after the others.
He would stay and watch longer, but would rather not be taken for
an
unsavoury character by some concerned passer-by, and so he moves
on,
taking a meandering course back to the motel. He figures by now
he's given
the couple next door sufficient time to complete their antics.
*******
In the lumpy motel bed that night, he dreams he is watching an
adult Jeffrey
Spender play catch with the little girl with the skinned knee and
elbows, in
the long grass behind the house at Quonochontaug.
Mulder would like to join in, but his hands need washing and he
mustn't get
the new ball dirty, so he sits and watches instead. He is wearing
shorts,
and the long grass stems tickle the sensitive skin behind his
knees. The
girl drops the ball and points behind him, telling him to look,
look at the
pretty fireflies, but when he turns round all he sees is his
little sister,
winking at him.
*******
He sits in a diner yards from the steely, heaving ocean and
writes to
Jeffrey Spender. Beside him a slick of milk scums on the surface
of an
untouched cup of coffee, and a half-eaten plate of French fries
grows cold,
sweating oil onto the plate. The waitress leaves him alone,
content to lean
her bulk on the counter and shoot the breeze with her only other
customer, a
trucker whose whiskey-warm Southern accent declares him to be a
long way
from home. That seeds a thought that Mulder likes, and he finds
himself
writing it down on the cheap notepaper:
"Spender,
We're all so far from home, in one way or another. Me, Scully,
Skinner...you
and my sister, though, are there now, I believe. Scully is down
the road a
ways ahead of me, probably yelling at me to get a move on and
figure out what
I'm doing and where I'm going. And I'm coming a little closer.
I'm a long way
off yet, but I believe I may find the way now.
You were a brother to her after all, and I never knew it. Were
you a good
brother? I think you were, from what she has written. I wish she
could have
had a brother who was a little better at baseball and climbing
trees and all
the things I can't imagine you enjoyed too much, but I think you
were enough
for her. You had to be.
I wish I had been there. But since I wasn't, if anyone had to be,
I'm glad,
somehow, that it was you.
Mulder"
As he finishes writing his actions strike him as ridiculously
melodramatic,
this business of writing letters to the dead, and he considers
walking
outside and down the beach to toss the sheet into the waves. But
that too
seems a little too daytime-soap-opera for his tastes, and so he
simply scrunches it with one quick, decisive movement into a ball
and
leaves it perched on the plate next to the cold fries.
He pays and goes out to the car to drive a little further.
Looking at his
hands on the wheel, he sees that the cheap pen he bought in the
gas station
has leaked on to his fingers, leaving blue smears and splotches.
Leaving him
marked, tattooed.
*******
Five miles out of town he pulls a U-turn on the empty highway and
speeds
back the way he came, fingers tap-tap-tapping on the wheel,
seized by the
desire to rescue that little piece of paper and the words written
on it in
heart's blood. When he races into the diner and looks around,
though, the
dull-eyed waitress has cleared the table where he sat. He heads
slowly back
out into the parking lot and the whipping, chill wind off the
Atlantic,
feeling the salt spray off the rolling waters mist across his
face.
*******
She has left him a message on his voicemail when he returns to
the car and
his cellphone. Shivering a little, he slides into the driver's
seat and turns
on the engine so that the vehicle will warm up. It begins to
rain, and he
watches the fat drops snake and wiggle down the outside of the
windshield
like living things as he presses his phone to his ear and listens
to her
speak.
"Mulder, it's me. I got your last message. You have another
week, if you
need it. I cleared it with Skinner. You had a lot of vacation
days stacked
up anyway."
A pause. He can hear faint background noises on the recording: it
sounds as
if she was in her kitchen, stirring something in a saucepan. He
pictures Scully cooking herself dinner and smiles to himself.
"So. It was good to hear from you. It snowed here again
today, you know.
Wrap up warm, wherever you are, okay? Take care of yourself,
Mulder.
When you decide to come home...call me. Whenever you're
ready."
There are a few seconds of silence after that before the click of
her
hanging up, and he imagines her standing in her cosy kitchen, a
pot of pasta
bubbling away behind her, holding the phone in her hand and
staring at it
for a moment, finger hovering over the disconnect button.
Snow on the ground in D.C. But none here, though he is far north
- at
least, not yet. In fact, there might just be an easy winter here
this year,
he thinks, putting the car into gear and heading out of town for
the second
time that day.
*******
Later he sits propped up against the pillows in the cold motel
bed,
listening to the rain spatter against the windows over the muted
murmur of
ESPN. At his side, a grease-spotted pizza box lies on the
blanket, the
mozzarella congealing on the last slice of his Four Seasons
Special.
He slides a little further under the blankets, picks up a paper
napkin and
wipes his fingers clean with meticulous care before he opens the
book.
*******
"March 27th, 1978
They brought me back later than usual this time. I woke up in
bed, like
always, and I guessed it must be Sunday night. I lay there for a
while,
waiting for my legs and arms to stop tingling, and then the door
opened a
crack and Jeffrey snuck in. He knelt down by the bed and stared
at me. I
could see his eyes all big as saucers and all staring and white
in the light
coming in around the door. He'd been crying. He always thinks I
can't tell
when he's been crying, but I could see.
"Sam, do you know what day it is?" he says in this
shaky little whisper.
"Sunday," I told him, and then I realised my throat was
all sore and my
voice sounded all raspy.
"It's Tuesday," he says, "where have you been,
Sam, why didn't they bring
you back on Sunday like normal, what did they do?"
That was a really stupid question, because it's not like I can
ever remember
much about the tests normally anyway, and I was going to tell him
that, but
his voice had gone all high-pitched and fast and I thought he
might cry
again and wake everybody up, so I told him to go back to bed
because I felt
just fine and I'd talk to him in the morning. I knew he wouldn't
want to
talk about it then because even if Jeffrey's scared of the dark,
I think
light scares him more. He's only brave enough to talk about the
tests and
the doctors and stuff when it's dark and no-one can see. So then
he went
away, and I got out of bed and started writing this down in case
tomorrow
or the next time they take me I forget.
I don't remember much, like normal, but this time there was a
white room,
I think, with lots of pictures being flashed onto the walls
really fast,
and I wanted to shut my eyes but I couldn't. My arms and legs
have stopped
tingling now but my head hurts, between my eyes.
I just want it to stop. I want to be free."
*******
He sits on the steps of the summer house at Quonochontaug,
huddled up
against the cold wind coming off the water, and scribbles away
furiously
on a yellow legal pad. He is making a list. He is writing down
every
explanation for his sister's disappearance and every lie about
where she
was that he was ever told.
It takes him more than an hour.
When he is done, he tears off the sheets of paper and sits
shredding them
methodically, watching the wind snatch at the scraps of paper and
send them
dancing and whirling away into the gathering darkness of dusk
like bright
confetti. He looks up to see if the stars are coming out yet, but
the sky is sleeping under a feather blanket of thick clouds. A
half moon
peeks at him through a gap between the scudding cumulo-nimbus.
Everyone who has ever lied to him about Sam had their reasons,
their
obscene, twisted reasons, and none of it matters now, he realises
with
marvellous clarity, like a small crystal bell striking a clear
tone in his
mind. Their lies only ever hurt him, not her, and he has always
known that
they could do whatever they liked to him, it wouldn't matter,
just so long as
Sam was all right.
And she was. She was.
The wind stings at his eyes and he takes a deep, heaving breath,
wiping
at the moisture on his face. There were the tests and the lost
time and the
lost memories, and a girl's throat ripped raw from screaming, but
then it
stopped. Then she was free of all that.
*******
And then, so many years later, he was free.
*******
Driving back down south early the next morning, very early. The
interstate
is quiet, unspooling before him all the way back down to D.C. He
sips at the
black coffee sitting in the cup-holder every now and again, but
he doesn't
really need it. He is awake enough already.
Near the stateline, he picks up a golden oldies station, and is
mildly
appalled to discover that the Kinks are considered golden oldies.
He taps
his fingers gently on the steering wheel and sings tunelessly,
"As long as I
gaze on Waterloo sunset, I am in paradise" as he sails along
the open road.
On the dashboard, a piece of folded yellow legal paper sits. He
knows
the words printed on it in careful block capitals by heart
already, but he
still unfolds it and reads it through to himself every time he
takes a rest
stop. It is the What Now list. On it he has written the things
left standing
after the recent blowing apart of his world. These are the things
he will
use, not for reconstruction, because he hopes not to rebuild the
old world,
but for opening the door to the new one.
It reads: "Scully. Our work. Knowing that Sam is at peace.
Hoping that Mom
and Dad are. My friends. The Knicks. The Yankees. Believing that
this is a
kind of normal life." The word 'Scully' is underlined,
twice, with quick,
sharp, decisive pen-strokes.
It begins to rain, hard. He laughs out loud in delight as an
eighteen-wheeler
passes two lanes away and he sees a swarm of rainbows in the
spray it
creates.
He hits her number on the speed-dial without taking his eyes off
the road,
and when her sleep-husky voice comes through the phone he feels
his face
stretching in a genuine, wide, toothy grin.
"Yes, Scully," he tells her, "I'm on my way back
now. I'm on my way back."
*******
"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first
heaven
and the first earth were passed away....
....and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying,
neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are
passed away."
Revelations 21:1-4
*******
FINIS
cazfic@ymail.com
