Scraped Knees and Sunflower Seeds Part II
An X-Files fanfiction (kind of) by Taryn "Jnco" Wander'r
Stay tuned for legalities and author's note.
SCRAPED KNEES AND SUNFLOWER SEEDS
I wish that I'd noticed all the postponements you'd said
I never told you, you were the one I believed.
If I touched you would you push my hand away?
If I listened would I have heard the things that made me run away?
I miss you more than words could ever say.
I miss you every single empty day.
-Econoline Crush 'Razorblades and BandAides'
CHAPTER FIVE (I suggest you read Part I first)
Dedicated to the memory of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who passed away on Thursday, September 28.
Holiday Inn,
Washington DC
5:23 pm
July 12th
Damned mistake, damned bloody failure. It wasn't like he tried to screw up, it wasn't like he got a thrill out of his friends' and family's disappointment. In fact, he tried very hard to succeed in the things he did. Wasn't his fault he was a damned fuckup.
Jake sat on the bed of the one of the hotel rooms, unenthusiastically lining Indestructible with Hannah. Most of the others ran around the hallway they occupied, lining as they went, grabbing costumes, set pieces, or each other as seemed fit. They had arrived back around one, and sat idly worrying until Socrates showed up, with Fox in tow.
Damned Fox! Jake stumbled over a line and bit the inside of his cheek unmercifully. Just another reminder of his failure. The teenaged boy sat with his back on the headboard, clothed in torn jeans and his infamous shirt expounding the virtues of alcohol. Scratching at his feeble goatee, Jake caught the scars up and down his arm, old and new. Christ, he couldn't even do suicide right.
When Jake and Hannah came down to the parking lot, helping pack the rented minivan with boxes to be stored at the theatre, Fox was standing slightly away from them all, bored and fidgeting. He shivered as Jake walked by, casting a suspicious glance at the young Mulder as he walked by. There was something about that kid that made Fox nervous.
Jake glanced at Fox as he walked by with Hannah, still angry, more at himself than anyone else. Fox briefly made eye contact with him, then looked away, fidgeting annoyingly. Jake was certain that kid had ADD or something.
And Jake was still fairly convinced that it was his fault.
"Hey, Fox!" Madison called the idle boy over to where she stood, supporting a wooden set piece. "Little help?"
As Fox went to gallantly assist the damsel in distress, he barely noticed a familiar car pulling into the parking lot, full of petite angry redhead.
Madison and Fox lifted the wooden door, easily, and packed it into the van along with the other pieces. An exposed nail snagged along Madison's arm, tearing off a piece of skin.
"Fuck it!" Madison cried loudly, putting her hand to her arm. A surprisingly alarming amount of blood spilled over the sides of her palm, and Jake's eyes widened considerably. Hannah cried out, and she and Fox went immediately to help the girl. Jake watched, silently, slowly licking his lips and shuddering at the sight of the red oozing liquid. The young actor had seen a lot of that in his life…far more than any child should have.
Fox was currently tying a strip of cloth tightly around Madison's wound when he found himself spun harshly to meet the gaze of a furious Dana Scully.
"What the hell are you doing here?" She demanded.
"I-"
"I don't want to hear it!" She grabbed his shoulder, and without so much as a please or thank you to the others, dragged Fox to the waiting car.
The Canadians only watched him go, except Jake, who was still enthralled by the sight of blood.
Socrates knew she didn't want to be Fox that night. She grinned and picked up a box to be placed in the van.
--
The Green Room
Beck's Main Theatre
Washington, DC
11:27 pm
July 12th
Jake sat in costume against a wall. Twisting a small blood capsule to be stored later on in his mouth between two fingers, he stared at where most of his troupe members, the ones who weren't on stage, backstage, or managing, were watching Hannah's old tape of Mary Poppins. He sighed. The movie was entirely too happy and false for him. Of course, Madison felt the same way, but having grown up encouraged to share her feelings and steady in her own confidence, she told people so.
"A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down," Hannah sang along with the movie.
"Fuck right!" Madison whispered in the unachieved silence of the Green Room. "If you start associating sugar and medicine, kids are going to start OD'ing left and right,"
Not a bad idea, Jake thought sourly. That, too, had failed him once.
"Shut it!" Jessica whispered back playfully, boisterous and laughing. "You shouldn't be watching this movie."
"No, I shouldn't," Madison agreed. "The superficial virtues of a rich industrial family are not for me. Where's the honesty? Where are the sweatshops and alcoholism and domestic abuse?"
Hannah playfully knocked Madison over, and the two laughed while the former tried to say something along the lines of "Shut up! You're so condescending!" through giggles.
Jake winced at the happy laughter, knowing his to be truly false. Even after the first act, halfway into their American tour, Michael had laden down on Jake note after note of 'constructive' criticism. Was it so impossible for him to do anything right?
His mind went back to Fox and that redhead who was always there with him. Well, he thought, it was about fuckin' time he started to right the wrongs he did.
The boy crawled over to were his daypack lay, full of everything to satisfy the shortened attention span of a disillusioned teen, and pulled out his book of shadows. Lisseth had helped him find the paper, the leather, helped him bind it. The spells were mostly hers, or Caspin's, passed down on pity. But some were his. The sloppy Gothic penmanship in Gaelic and Latin words he had Madison teach him one day, after her insisting queries of "Why? What is it for? Why?" Madison had a thirst for knowledge, that's why she took it up, but she knew Jake to be exactly the opposite.
Jake took his book of shadows and his daypack and went into one of the focus rooms, shutting the door and turning out the lights.
He lit a few candles, in a circle, trying to remember the positions and the chants for each one- it was hard, but he was sure he did it. He flipped a few pages in his book, certain that this time it would be right, he wouldn't fuck it up like so many times before.
"Alright, Fox," he muttered, mentally preparing himself for the spell and accompanying expel of energy. "Time to go back to the land of the yuppies."
Meanwhile, in another part of town-
Scully awoke in bed and realised she was thirsty.
The redheaded agent pushed back her covers and felt for the floor. Walking to the bathroom felt strange…different than every other time she had before. Her body felt different, the way the weight was distributed.
Dana was a few steps from the bathroom door when she did completely unexpected, especially for her.
She tripped. Tripped over her own feet. Landed on her hands and knees, confused. Her new young charge must be exhausting her more than she thought, she reasoned, and got to her feet again.
In the bathroom now, pouring herself a small glass of water. She drank, and looked into the mirror.
And staring back at her was an image she hadn't seen since she was fifteen.
CHAPTER SIX
Hannah crept out of her bed and stared into the darkness, pushing her hair behind her ears. She glanced at Jessica sleeping soundly in the other bed, and sighed. It had only been recently that she had been having trouble sleeping. Hannah had told Jess about this, who in turn told her to talk to Madison, a self-proclaimed insomniac.
In the course of a month, Madison would experience a few nights of okay sleep, with slowly increasing fitfulness. She'd complain of sleeping less and less and waking more and more often, until eventually she'd be awake for three or four days sleep. Then she'd fall into a few nights of deep, dreamless sleep. Sometimes she'd have nightmares, if it was particularly bad. And then came another night of okay sleep, and the cycle would continue.
Madison had always been that way, and chalked it up to hormones and an age thing. It would come and go, usually with deadlines or other stressful events triggering it.
Hannah never used to be this way, except maybe around final exams, or performances, when she was very nervous. But there was no reason for her simply not to be able to sleep.
She felt around for her glasses and padded her way to the door connecting her room to Madison and Michael's, wearing her pajamas of plaid pants and an old Canadian Air Force shirt left over from her army brat days.
Hannah slowly pushed the door open and peered into the next room, glowing in the blue wash from the television. Madison sat on the floor, watching an almost silent rerun of the original Star Trek. Her brother was in bed, feet at the head, his face tilted towards the television, snoring peacefully.
Hannah moved in silently and sat beside her friend. "Trouble sleeping?" She asked quietly.
Madison glanced at her, green and pink hair in it's natural state of curliness. "Yeah. Just passing away another quiet night. You okay?"
Hannah nodded. "Yeah…couldn't sleep is all."
"Nervous?" Madison couldn't understand Hannah's nervousness over every performance, the writer was sure her actress friend could never go wrong.
"A little," Hannah stared at the television screen, now expounding the virtues of a phone-in psychic.
"Caspin was just here." Madison mentioned in passing. "Couldn't sleep either. She and Michael shared a joint. She left when he fell asleep."
Hannah smiled softly and didn't say any more. She didn't know how to explain her 'recovered memories', her sudden doubts about her past. She had spent most of her early life on a Canadian army base in Ontario, and all her friends knew that. Madison, in her cynical, society-bashing way, cracked the occasional sarcastic remark about conspiracies and enclosed army bases, and Canada's unseen role on the world stage.
Hannah had never been like that, Hannah had never tried to 'read between the lines' or see the unseen. She never bothered to question her past. But just now, lying awake in bed, she had realized she never actually saw either of her parents' work on the base, never really knew what they did. She knew they were both in the Airborne platoon, knew that after they left the army they had both worked postal… she never knew why they left. Never bothered to ask.
And she never really cared before. But now it was making her nervous. Maybe even a little paranoid. What Madison would call a healthy amount of paranoia, but paranoia just the same.
--
Fox had awoken about fifteen minutes ago, staring through the darkness at the roof of Scully's living room. Somehow he found her couch oddly comforting. He smiled as he thought of his red-headed partner, absently reaching down the borrowed covers between his legs.
"Mulder?" A voice whispered from the corner of the darkened living room.
The boy snapped up and quickly wrapped the blanket around himself, flushing wildly. "Huh? What?"
"Where you asleep?"
"Scully?"
"Yeah, it's me. Did I wake you?"
Fox considered this for a moment. "Uh…yeah. Yeah. But it's okay."
"Good. Can I turn the light on?"
"Go 'head."
A blinding white light filled the room. Fox squinted and waited for his eyes to adjust. Then he glanced up at his hostess, and was struck silent, for once.
Then- "The fuck happened to you?"
The girl standing before him wasn't all that much shorter or thinner than the old Dana Scully. Her face was different though, more innocent, girlish. Her hair fell differently for some reason. Maybe it was because she carried her head differently.
"Well," She said. "Let's just say I believe you now."
To be continued.
*AUTHOR'S NOTE- So there it is. My attempt to add a little counter-culture to the X-Files. Granted, the Lone Gunman and Cancer Man are about as counter-culture as one can get (read- the Lone Gunman Comedy Hour in Vancouver, and Gastown, the prestigious acting school run by Cancer Man.) Some other notes- 'Slightly Bigger Cities' is a recurring reference to Bruce McCullogh for all you KITH fans, and there are some culture references American audiences might not get- ie, Joe Canadian, Twitch City, Trudeau, the Long Weekend War…although, IMHO, everybody should know who Trudeau is. Also, if you're confused about the plastic bag in the belt loop bit, rent 'subUrbia', a wicked movie and even wickeder play! That's all, folks, thanks! *
* LEGALITIES- Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, The X-Files etc all belong to Chris Carter/Fox/Ten Thirteen Productions. All original characters and this story belong to me, Taryn "Jnco" Wander'r. Copyright 2000 Taryn "Jnco" Wander'r. I don't know who Marry Poppins is owned by, but it's not me. Star Trek belongs to the late, great, Gene Rodenberry. Feel free to distribute this as you see fit as long as you notify me first, don't change anything, make no money, and don't claim it as your own. *
-Taryn "Jnco" Wander'r- tarynw42@hotmail.com Please send feedback!
Check out my webpage! http://www.angelfire.com/ok2/WayfarersPost