**********************************
Manifest Destiny Part 17
by Kelida Flynn & Slippin Mickeys
**********************************
"No."
"Hear me out--"
"No! It's suicide! You're not going to do anything like that. I'm not going to let you."
"You don't have veto power. And," she butt in quickly before he could say anything,
"there's no one else who can do this. Everyone else who might be able to, is injured.
Like you."
Frown lines crossed his forehead as he turned away from the rest of the group. "There's
got to be another plan, some other option . . ."
"Richter . . ."
A long, dead silence passed before Invictus mercifully broke in. "What we need is a
distraction big enough to get as many of those troops out of there at the same time, and
one big enough to give us the time we need to get in at least, and maybe get out, without
having them return. As for short-term solutions—which is the only option we really have
—this is probably the best bet." Nervous shuffling followed his explanation. Richter
walked away, and there was more shuffling.
Mulder and Scully did not even have to look at each other. The sense of awkwardness
was mutual, mirror reflections in their eyes. Scully touched his hand, and he took it in
his larger one, warm and once again familiar.
***
"This whole thing feels like a situation straight out of a sci-fi B- movie," he said, leaning
down and muttering with that dry, growling voice of his.
"Funny," she commented with equal indifference in her voice, "I thought the only movies
you watched were the X kind."
He shrugged, a smile tugging at his lips despite their current situation which was like an
omnious bolt of lightning in the sky. "You've got me there." He then leaned down and
pressed his face against her cheek. "You sassy minx."
Scully smiled despite herself, and reached an arm around his waist. "Hey."
"Hey yourself."
"Be careful, and I mean careful. Not Mulder-careful, that doesn't cut it, not this time.
You need to come out this in once piece, if not for your own sake, for mine." She grew
quiet, unaccustomed to her own frankness.
"The same for you," he said softly.
"Alright!" Invictus barked. "Time for the group huddle."
Mulder and Scully broke apart and moved to join the circle in which Invictus and Elspeth
stood in the middle. Scully reached for her gun, pulling it out of its holster. She unlocked
the safety, then looked up at Mulder who did the same, grim determination obvious on his
face.
"Ok, a quick rehash of the plans to make sure that we're all on the same page. Elspeth here,
will be off first while John, Cass, Mulder and I, will be over there," he said, quickly motioning
to a pile of rubble adjacent to a doorway, "waiting until all is clear. Scully, you, Richter, and Mr.
Frohike will be bunkered behind that fallen bit of ceiling over there to cover us when we go in."
A wry smile crossed his face. "Easy peasy, don't you think?"
"Very," Mulder remarked without a hint of sarcasm, though the look on his face said otherwise.
"Times a-wasting."
"That it is," Elspeth half-snarled, throwing a black hood over her dark hair. "Time to go and save the world, boys and girls." She quickly shot a look at Richter, who stared her dully. Disregarding his blindingly-obvious attempts at ignoring her, she would go over to him later after the group had broken up to try and mend things over, however fragile and tenuous this temporary peace of theirs might be.
As they stole a last few moments together, Scully and Mulder did the same, huddled together, nose to nose. No words were exchanged, but they knew each other well enough to know what the other was probably thinking. They broke apart, and moved to their respective positions where immediately, they became aware of the cloud of absence that stood between them, something that they both hoped to evaporate upon the other's return.
***
"I'm not liking this so much."
Scully waited for Invictus' signal and Elspeth's acknowledgment from her position on an upper tier before she responded. She shifted her position, her ankle aching. "I don't like this much either, Frohike, but what else can we do?" Her gun found a sweet spot behind the cracked concrete shield and she aimed it acordingly.
"I know," he grumbled. "I wish there was more I could do. Guns really aren't my style." He raised his awkwardly to illustrate.
Above them, Elspeth nodded slightly and motioned that she was ready. By force of effort,
she did not look back. She did not look down to see Richter, for this one time only, his heart
full in his blue eyes, dark and sad. However, she thought of him, and of basically everything
her life had consisted of these last few months. Heavy sighs were her only company now,
and she took another as she poised her gun and fired.
"Hey!" she screamed. "I got a question for ya about a helicopter!"
***
She had been planning this for a while, but she hadn't been certain whether or not she would
go through it until now. Nor had she known this would somehow involve her stealing a
helicopter, but that was how it was going to happen. But it was a strange world now, even
stranger than it had been before. This was probably was an event that would not even register
in those terms.
Elspeth Parr suddenly felt very young. Growing up, she had always felt older than her
age. Stranger, in many ways, though she hadn't know for a long time. Her father had been
almost suffocating in his protectiveness towards her, but he was gone now. Soon, she
though wryly, she would be joining him. They were badly in need of a conversation.
But she kept on going, because at the moment this was the most important thing for her,
in her life. Not the most brilliant or practical idea, but the fastest one they could think of,
and Elspeth had quickly agreed, so here she was, arms pumping, legs racing in a blur of
black against the snow that twinkled gently underneath floodlights. It occurred to her then
that she had no blinked once yet since she started her sprint, and she didn't until she found
herself taking down the single guard that stood over the Hawkeye.
The helicopter rose with a jerk, lifting into a half-spiral as its black blades whirled in
mechanical delight. The roar was loud, a groan in her ears as she maneuvered it around
the white, marble dome. She stared. Peaceful. That was the first word that came to her
mind in that moment. The world suddenly looked so peaceful. Quiet buildings stood
drenched in snowflakes in front of her, and beyond them were the lakes, sleeping and
oblivious to the chaos that surrounded them. She shivered, which broke her from her daze
in time to avoid clipping the golden statue of Forward that stood silently on top of the dome.
"Right." She gritted her teeth. It was time. There was no longer any point in waiting.
Turning the helicopter away from the capitol, Elspeth turned it towards those sleepy
buildings, saying a silent apology to them in her head as she accelerated.
***
The explosion sent them reeling, not to mention head-first into the concrete before them.
Scully's first reaction was to turn and reach out to Richter whose eyes were wide in unabashed
horror. She held onto his wrist long enough to see his pupils dilate, but not long enough to
tell him "no," to tell him not to go.
He was up and gone without another second's hesitation. The rubble seemed to hardly deter him
as he hurdled and dodged his way out of the building.
Scully winced as she aggravated her ankle injury. She slumped against the wall and looked
at Frohike who could only shake his head. "Fuck," she cursed, drawing the word out long
and hard. "Fuck."
***
"Fuck."
She her a gasp, but her vision was blurred still., and there was a tightness in her chest. Pressure
that seemed to burn all over the place. She hoped it was because she was in hell, because she was
supposed to be dead. She had to be.
"Elspeth!" It was Richter.
Blindly, she groped for him, for his arms which quickly accepted her into their fold. She held
back the groan of pain that hung on the tip of her tongue. "This ended wrong," she explained
lamely. A pause, then she turned her sightless eyes to where she could feel his warm breath.
"But you know that, don't you?"
"Shh," he soothed, moving them closer to a spot near the building where snow
and shadows hid them from eyes out in the dark. "I knew. I've had
suspicions for a while, but it doesn't matter. It stopped mattering a while
ago, Elspeth."
She was quiet, then struggled to cover coughs that racked through her
injured body. She rested her head on her arm.
Richter turned and touched her hand, giving it a squeeze. Words hung at his
lips but nothing was said. Then he touched her face, stroked her cold
cheek. She blinked, her eyelids suddenly growing tired and heavy.
"I . . ." she swallowed hard. "I fell out. How stupid is that? I fell out of the goddamned
helicopter. So much for going down in a blaze of glory. Or going down at all,
for that matter."
He turned his head away from her and surveyed the area around them. The he
looked up, his eyes drawn up to the sky as he saw the serachlights blink
out, and the night fill with darkness. "Come on, now. You're safe. You're alive,
that's what's important," he said stubbornly.
Her smile was thin. "Hardly. This is the worst case scenario. A perfectly good helicopter
destroyed in the name of what?" A deep, wrenching cough rocked through her, and she
fell sideways, out of his arms and into the snow. "I was supposed to die in that crash.
You know that. Two birds with one stone." Her voice softened and faltered at what she
said next. "Although I suppose that's just a technicality."
He tried to ignore that.
"Promise me something?" She leaned up, her hand on his chest.
"Yes?"
She was struck by clarity, as clear as the night sky. "When I die, you have to
burn my body as soon as possible." A finger touched his lips, however awkwardly.
"Promise me. You know why this has to be done. They can't get their hands on my DNA..."
she grimaced in anguish and self-hate as the words rolled from her tongue.
"Don't let them get a chance to win, Richter. Promise me you'll burn my body
when I die."
"If you die."
"When," she snapped, then reneged. "Sorry."
"If, then yes. If you wanted me to--"
A sigh. "Don't say anything more," she whispered, reaching out to touch his face.
"I like this."
Richter smiled to himself as he forgot where he was for a moment, but he bit
his lip in consternation a second later, remembering their situation.
Recalling that Elspeth lay inches away from him, her life bleeing away, red
stains on a white, crystal carpet.
He let a note of child-like hope crawl into his voice, a feeling that he had buried
deep away for what seemed like an age ago. "Do you think this vaccine
really works, though? This miracle cure for mankind?"
Elspeth made no response.
"Elspeth, do you think the vaccine is for real?" he repeated, fear shaking his voice.
But he only heard silence.
Minutes he sat, still as death. Fear crept into his heart until it almost
burst and he could bear it no longer. Finally, Richter turned to her.
Her chest was still and no breath escaped from her rosebud lips, no puff of
cold, white air indicating that life still lived in her body. Her dark
brown eyes were wide open, directed heaven-ward, and her expression calm.
The hard lines of bitterness and despair suddenly erased as she looked up
towards the stars in child-like wonder, unaware of the horrors that had
rained from the skies and dismantled their lives. Elspeth Parr now only saw
the beauty of the stars as they glittered faintly in the winter sky above
her.
Richter moved slowly to her side, his whole body weighted down by grief.
He shrugged off his sling and as he gathered her body in his arms, cradling her gently
as though she would break, he let the first tears touch his eyes since he was a child.
Tears that had elluded him when his wife and child had been murdered; tears
that had finally been moved beyond the brink and now came crashing down past
all the barriers he had worked all his life to build up. He pressed her
body closer to his, stroking her face; brushing away the hair on her
forehead.
His heart breaking on each word, he whispered to her in death what he had
never told her in life. "I love you," he choked, his face buried in her hair.
"Did I ever tell you that? Because I should have." Then he held her until the
warmth had left her body, and then--for a little while longer.
Manifest Destiny Part 17
by Kelida Flynn & Slippin Mickeys
**********************************
"No."
"Hear me out--"
"No! It's suicide! You're not going to do anything like that. I'm not going to let you."
"You don't have veto power. And," she butt in quickly before he could say anything,
"there's no one else who can do this. Everyone else who might be able to, is injured.
Like you."
Frown lines crossed his forehead as he turned away from the rest of the group. "There's
got to be another plan, some other option . . ."
"Richter . . ."
A long, dead silence passed before Invictus mercifully broke in. "What we need is a
distraction big enough to get as many of those troops out of there at the same time, and
one big enough to give us the time we need to get in at least, and maybe get out, without
having them return. As for short-term solutions—which is the only option we really have
—this is probably the best bet." Nervous shuffling followed his explanation. Richter
walked away, and there was more shuffling.
Mulder and Scully did not even have to look at each other. The sense of awkwardness
was mutual, mirror reflections in their eyes. Scully touched his hand, and he took it in
his larger one, warm and once again familiar.
***
"This whole thing feels like a situation straight out of a sci-fi B- movie," he said, leaning
down and muttering with that dry, growling voice of his.
"Funny," she commented with equal indifference in her voice, "I thought the only movies
you watched were the X kind."
He shrugged, a smile tugging at his lips despite their current situation which was like an
omnious bolt of lightning in the sky. "You've got me there." He then leaned down and
pressed his face against her cheek. "You sassy minx."
Scully smiled despite herself, and reached an arm around his waist. "Hey."
"Hey yourself."
"Be careful, and I mean careful. Not Mulder-careful, that doesn't cut it, not this time.
You need to come out this in once piece, if not for your own sake, for mine." She grew
quiet, unaccustomed to her own frankness.
"The same for you," he said softly.
"Alright!" Invictus barked. "Time for the group huddle."
Mulder and Scully broke apart and moved to join the circle in which Invictus and Elspeth
stood in the middle. Scully reached for her gun, pulling it out of its holster. She unlocked
the safety, then looked up at Mulder who did the same, grim determination obvious on his
face.
"Ok, a quick rehash of the plans to make sure that we're all on the same page. Elspeth here,
will be off first while John, Cass, Mulder and I, will be over there," he said, quickly motioning
to a pile of rubble adjacent to a doorway, "waiting until all is clear. Scully, you, Richter, and Mr.
Frohike will be bunkered behind that fallen bit of ceiling over there to cover us when we go in."
A wry smile crossed his face. "Easy peasy, don't you think?"
"Very," Mulder remarked without a hint of sarcasm, though the look on his face said otherwise.
"Times a-wasting."
"That it is," Elspeth half-snarled, throwing a black hood over her dark hair. "Time to go and save the world, boys and girls." She quickly shot a look at Richter, who stared her dully. Disregarding his blindingly-obvious attempts at ignoring her, she would go over to him later after the group had broken up to try and mend things over, however fragile and tenuous this temporary peace of theirs might be.
As they stole a last few moments together, Scully and Mulder did the same, huddled together, nose to nose. No words were exchanged, but they knew each other well enough to know what the other was probably thinking. They broke apart, and moved to their respective positions where immediately, they became aware of the cloud of absence that stood between them, something that they both hoped to evaporate upon the other's return.
***
"I'm not liking this so much."
Scully waited for Invictus' signal and Elspeth's acknowledgment from her position on an upper tier before she responded. She shifted her position, her ankle aching. "I don't like this much either, Frohike, but what else can we do?" Her gun found a sweet spot behind the cracked concrete shield and she aimed it acordingly.
"I know," he grumbled. "I wish there was more I could do. Guns really aren't my style." He raised his awkwardly to illustrate.
Above them, Elspeth nodded slightly and motioned that she was ready. By force of effort,
she did not look back. She did not look down to see Richter, for this one time only, his heart
full in his blue eyes, dark and sad. However, she thought of him, and of basically everything
her life had consisted of these last few months. Heavy sighs were her only company now,
and she took another as she poised her gun and fired.
"Hey!" she screamed. "I got a question for ya about a helicopter!"
***
She had been planning this for a while, but she hadn't been certain whether or not she would
go through it until now. Nor had she known this would somehow involve her stealing a
helicopter, but that was how it was going to happen. But it was a strange world now, even
stranger than it had been before. This was probably was an event that would not even register
in those terms.
Elspeth Parr suddenly felt very young. Growing up, she had always felt older than her
age. Stranger, in many ways, though she hadn't know for a long time. Her father had been
almost suffocating in his protectiveness towards her, but he was gone now. Soon, she
though wryly, she would be joining him. They were badly in need of a conversation.
But she kept on going, because at the moment this was the most important thing for her,
in her life. Not the most brilliant or practical idea, but the fastest one they could think of,
and Elspeth had quickly agreed, so here she was, arms pumping, legs racing in a blur of
black against the snow that twinkled gently underneath floodlights. It occurred to her then
that she had no blinked once yet since she started her sprint, and she didn't until she found
herself taking down the single guard that stood over the Hawkeye.
The helicopter rose with a jerk, lifting into a half-spiral as its black blades whirled in
mechanical delight. The roar was loud, a groan in her ears as she maneuvered it around
the white, marble dome. She stared. Peaceful. That was the first word that came to her
mind in that moment. The world suddenly looked so peaceful. Quiet buildings stood
drenched in snowflakes in front of her, and beyond them were the lakes, sleeping and
oblivious to the chaos that surrounded them. She shivered, which broke her from her daze
in time to avoid clipping the golden statue of Forward that stood silently on top of the dome.
"Right." She gritted her teeth. It was time. There was no longer any point in waiting.
Turning the helicopter away from the capitol, Elspeth turned it towards those sleepy
buildings, saying a silent apology to them in her head as she accelerated.
***
The explosion sent them reeling, not to mention head-first into the concrete before them.
Scully's first reaction was to turn and reach out to Richter whose eyes were wide in unabashed
horror. She held onto his wrist long enough to see his pupils dilate, but not long enough to
tell him "no," to tell him not to go.
He was up and gone without another second's hesitation. The rubble seemed to hardly deter him
as he hurdled and dodged his way out of the building.
Scully winced as she aggravated her ankle injury. She slumped against the wall and looked
at Frohike who could only shake his head. "Fuck," she cursed, drawing the word out long
and hard. "Fuck."
***
"Fuck."
She her a gasp, but her vision was blurred still., and there was a tightness in her chest. Pressure
that seemed to burn all over the place. She hoped it was because she was in hell, because she was
supposed to be dead. She had to be.
"Elspeth!" It was Richter.
Blindly, she groped for him, for his arms which quickly accepted her into their fold. She held
back the groan of pain that hung on the tip of her tongue. "This ended wrong," she explained
lamely. A pause, then she turned her sightless eyes to where she could feel his warm breath.
"But you know that, don't you?"
"Shh," he soothed, moving them closer to a spot near the building where snow
and shadows hid them from eyes out in the dark. "I knew. I've had
suspicions for a while, but it doesn't matter. It stopped mattering a while
ago, Elspeth."
She was quiet, then struggled to cover coughs that racked through her
injured body. She rested her head on her arm.
Richter turned and touched her hand, giving it a squeeze. Words hung at his
lips but nothing was said. Then he touched her face, stroked her cold
cheek. She blinked, her eyelids suddenly growing tired and heavy.
"I . . ." she swallowed hard. "I fell out. How stupid is that? I fell out of the goddamned
helicopter. So much for going down in a blaze of glory. Or going down at all,
for that matter."
He turned his head away from her and surveyed the area around them. The he
looked up, his eyes drawn up to the sky as he saw the serachlights blink
out, and the night fill with darkness. "Come on, now. You're safe. You're alive,
that's what's important," he said stubbornly.
Her smile was thin. "Hardly. This is the worst case scenario. A perfectly good helicopter
destroyed in the name of what?" A deep, wrenching cough rocked through her, and she
fell sideways, out of his arms and into the snow. "I was supposed to die in that crash.
You know that. Two birds with one stone." Her voice softened and faltered at what she
said next. "Although I suppose that's just a technicality."
He tried to ignore that.
"Promise me something?" She leaned up, her hand on his chest.
"Yes?"
She was struck by clarity, as clear as the night sky. "When I die, you have to
burn my body as soon as possible." A finger touched his lips, however awkwardly.
"Promise me. You know why this has to be done. They can't get their hands on my DNA..."
she grimaced in anguish and self-hate as the words rolled from her tongue.
"Don't let them get a chance to win, Richter. Promise me you'll burn my body
when I die."
"If you die."
"When," she snapped, then reneged. "Sorry."
"If, then yes. If you wanted me to--"
A sigh. "Don't say anything more," she whispered, reaching out to touch his face.
"I like this."
Richter smiled to himself as he forgot where he was for a moment, but he bit
his lip in consternation a second later, remembering their situation.
Recalling that Elspeth lay inches away from him, her life bleeing away, red
stains on a white, crystal carpet.
He let a note of child-like hope crawl into his voice, a feeling that he had buried
deep away for what seemed like an age ago. "Do you think this vaccine
really works, though? This miracle cure for mankind?"
Elspeth made no response.
"Elspeth, do you think the vaccine is for real?" he repeated, fear shaking his voice.
But he only heard silence.
Minutes he sat, still as death. Fear crept into his heart until it almost
burst and he could bear it no longer. Finally, Richter turned to her.
Her chest was still and no breath escaped from her rosebud lips, no puff of
cold, white air indicating that life still lived in her body. Her dark
brown eyes were wide open, directed heaven-ward, and her expression calm.
The hard lines of bitterness and despair suddenly erased as she looked up
towards the stars in child-like wonder, unaware of the horrors that had
rained from the skies and dismantled their lives. Elspeth Parr now only saw
the beauty of the stars as they glittered faintly in the winter sky above
her.
Richter moved slowly to her side, his whole body weighted down by grief.
He shrugged off his sling and as he gathered her body in his arms, cradling her gently
as though she would break, he let the first tears touch his eyes since he was a child.
Tears that had elluded him when his wife and child had been murdered; tears
that had finally been moved beyond the brink and now came crashing down past
all the barriers he had worked all his life to build up. He pressed her
body closer to his, stroking her face; brushing away the hair on her
forehead.
His heart breaking on each word, he whispered to her in death what he had
never told her in life. "I love you," he choked, his face buried in her hair.
"Did I ever tell you that? Because I should have." Then he held her until the
warmth had left her body, and then--for a little while longer.