Staring Eyes
by
Disclaimer: Not mine. UPN, WB, Jason Katims, all have some claim. I don't.
Author's Note: This is the third such fanfic in this vein, fifth if you include poetry. I'm still trying to deal with Alex's death and Tess's betrayal, because I was a loyal Stargazer and Rebel. (Those damn producers really messed me up!)
Summary: Summer post- S2. Isabel deals... but doesn't, really.
Rating: R
Chapter One- Silence
Isabel
We're on our way to the hospital right now. Not that it's a hospital, heaven forbid I call it that. It's a 'mental clinic'. They wanted to put me in a mental hospital, but Max swayed our parents. Good thing, too.
Usually, I'm the driving force behind paranoid secrecy. At least, about everyone except our parents. But now... I just don't care enough. Max was really worried when I refused to comment even against going to a hospital, I could see it in his eyes.
I didn't have to see it in Michael's eyes. I could hear it straight from his mouth.
Liz and Maria came over to talk to me, but ended up talking at me. I don't know why I don't talk, other than I just don't want to. It takes too much energy, and besides, talking is about communicating. I don't have any need or desire to communicate right now. What I need to do is think.
I spoke to Kyle. He was so sad, so scared that I would turn out like Alex, crying on my shoulder, that I couldn't remain impassionate. I held him and rocked him, all the while wondering if it was a mistake, but he proved my trust. He told Max I hadn't spoken.
I haven't spoken to him again, but oddly, he's the only one who's stopped badgering me. He still comes over and carries on one-sided conversations with the side of my head, but every other sentence isn't "Come on, Isabel! Say something!", like everyone else's is.
They tell me that I'm a dysfunctional member of society, that I won't be able to take charge of my own life until I speak again. I smiled when they said that, though nobody but Max understood.
My life isn't my own. It never will be. Who gives a fuck if I'm a functional member of society, I'm not even a member of the human race. I come from a planet called Antar, which could be three-quarters of the universe away from here and completely the opposite of this place, for all I know.
I go to individual therapy sessions three times a week, and family therapy sessions twice a week. Every day except the weekend, which I'm free to spend any way I want, except watching television, mindlessly surfing the 'Net, sitting in my room staring at the wall, basically anything that bothers my parents.
Anything that makes them lose hope. Anything that makes them think that their baby girl finally lost it.
Funny, isn't it? I've always been the pampered, younger one, though by our legal ages, I'm older than Max.
I don't even know how old I am. Then again, there would be the controversy over whether I'm only as old as my human form, that I don't know the age of, or whether the 'essence' of Vilandra plays a part in my age. Whether there would be any knowledge of how old I am, since I wasn't born, there isn't a birthdate.
And the doctors wonder why my head's screwed up.
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My doctor's name is Susan Ross, and she's a nice, thirty-something woman with a dark blondish cap of very short hair. The first thing that she commented on during one of our family sessions was that she wished her hair was more the color mine is. My mother smiled, and a tear came to her eye, and she told the doctor about how she'd never thought it would stay the wonderfully golden color it was when she and my father had adopted me. It almost made me want to look at her, talk to her.
Max sat next to me today. He holds my hand, and I let him, because I don't care. He shifts in his chair throughout the hour, but I don't change position more than once. My mother holds my other hand, I have allowed my muscles to go limp and simply hang in her grip, though I know it bothers her.
Susan is saying something to my father, telling him and my mother and Max how to draw me out of my shell, to make me interested in something. I apologize if I don't find it fascinating.
Now she tries to talk to me. I hear her, but I'm just not interested. I don't care about much of anything now. The only guy I ever loved was killed by one of only three people on this planet I trusted completely. There were four, but she killed him, didn't she?
Then I was told that my brother's child wouldn't survive if I couldn't find the will to leave the only home and the only parents I'd ever known within twenty-four hours. I didn't want to go, but I wasn't brave enough to act on my will. Michael did. Michael figured out what he wanted, and he took it. I'm proud of him, and I envy him. He's stronger than I am, maybe stronger than Max, too.
And then suddenly, my life was back to normal, and everyone expected me to just accept that and go on with my life. I couldn't do it. I couldn't pretend to mourn Tess, and I couldn't put on an act while desperately attempting to figure out my own head. Plus the shock of it all, and the reality of Alex's death.
One moment, I was completely overwhelmed and crying and frantic and not sure what to do, and the next I just didn't care. Nothing mattered, and it felt like a cloud that I was floating on. Nothing makes any difference.
I still care for my friends and family, but they know that, and I have no need to tell them again. Right now, I'm going to enjoy this blessed silence in my head, and the much-needed break from the chaos of being half-alien on a human world not even aware of our existence.
"Isabel?" Susan asks.
I look right through her, and imagine that I can see the wall on the other side of her body.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's night now, and I'm stretched out on my bed, staring at the ceiling. The house is dark, everyone else has gone to bed. I can hear my brother's uneasy sleep on the other side of the wall, and my father's soft snores, but neither bother me, because though I hear them, I don't really register them.
My mother cried through our session today. Susan said she'd never seen me more unresponsive, and suggested them mental hospital again. Max pushed them out of it, but they said if I get any worse, that's where I'm going. I should care, but I don't.
When the tears rolled down my mother's face, I felt a flash of something. But it felt more like a memory than an emotion. It was the memory of the way it hurt me to cause pain for those I loved. But that was all it was. A memory. And though I felt like I should do something, I didn't.
I didn't feel anything at all when my mother sobbed over me.
Max came in tonight to try and reason with me. He told me that if I didn't display some kind of improvement, then Mom and Dad would put me in a mental hospital, and that posed too high a risk to take. He even reached over and shook me, hard, but I didn't really feel it, either.
There's something in my head, something behind this gray cloud that surrounds my thoughts, that's telling me I should care, I should worry about being exposed, but I can't pull it away. I don't really want to, either. This peace and quiet of mind is what I've craved since the moment I realized Max and I were different.
I haven't spoken again since I comforted Kyle about a week ago. Even now, thinking back on the memories, I'm not really sure why I did so. I see the scene in my head, but I don't remember what my thoughts were. Only that he was crying, and for some reason, I came out of my shell to assure him I was alright.
Maria and Liz have stopped coming so often. I heard Max talking to them, begging them to keep coming, but they told him it was obvious they weren't helping. They still show up here about every other day.
Michael only comes every once in a while, and his methods of trying to get me to 'snap out of it' vary greatly depending on his current mood. Sometimes, he almost cries while he begs me, telling me how hard this is on my friends and family, and other times he tells me I'm a selfish bitch and I should know better.
Neither approach evokes any emotion in my head.
The days speed by, covered by a sort of foggy haze. I register that my existence in this state is kind of meaningless, but the voices of paranoia and anger and hate and love and jealousy and all those warring emotions are silent, and the peace is so great that I don't care about anything else.
[Introduction] [Silence] [Clouds]
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