Wow! Thanks for all the support. This is like taking up all my time now. I haven't even started a third chapter for my LotR story (which my friend could potentially kill me for). But this is my true calling. So here's chapter 4!
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"Let the rain come down, and wake my dreams. Let it wash away my sanity. Cuz I wanna feel the thunder, I wanna scream. Let the rain fall down, I'm coming clean. I'm coming clean."
~Hillary Duff, Come Clean
Chapter 4: Chasing or Being Chased?
Phoebe reared on Tempest, tightening her calves on the saddle to hold on. The horse could smell it, the darkening cloud moving towards she and Doggett at amazing speed. The Agent turned. Phoebe jumped off Tempest and landed to the ground, fighting with something only she could see.
"Get out of here now Agent Doggett!" She cried. Doggett couldn't believe this. Go? Or stay? He wasn't sure anymore. Maybe he would take out his gun and use the hallucination for target practise. Phoebe was thrown off and with a hideous crack hit the ground behind her. She looked up with a horrified expression.
"AGENT DOGGETT GET DOWN!"
It was too late. Whatever she had just been fighting knocked Doggett off the horse with a crack and a bruise started to develop immediately. For a moment everything was bright, and then it was covered in a layer of darkness, blocking out everything.
Phoebe rubbed her head where the bleeding mark was sending warm blood dripping down her pale skin. This is perfect, she thought. Your parents are really gonna buy this. Say bye, bye! Phoebe. You're going back to the institution until you die.
"Agent Doggett?" She asked, wincing as a wave of dizziness came over her and she felt like she was going to puke. The Agent was standing, brushing himself off. "You okay?" She asked.
"I can't see." He admitted. Phoebe groaned.
"Perfect." She said under her breath. "Let's go." Phoebe added bluntly and grabbed Doggett's wrist in her hand, marching quickly. He didn't see her down another four Tylenol.
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"Well, far as we can tell Phoebe's had it from birth. The tumour in her head proved it. The specific pressure on her brain in that area caused her eyesight to be affected by both this plain and what is known as the Astral Plain." Joe said flatly. Reyes looked at him seriously, and he gave a small smile. "There's four plains, that we know of. There's this one, the Real World Plain. Just beneath this one is the Astral Plain, spirits I supposed. Then there's the After Life, which is just a level beneath the Astral, and the fourth is Demon."
"Are these four various realities?" Monica asked. Joe nodded.
"I guess that's one way to put it. Phoebe calls it perception but it's not really like we can travel to their world. We can see them moving in our world. So it makes us think that their world might be the exact same as ours." Joe said. Brian nodded, holding a cup of coffee as he looked at the floor. Reyes sighed. This wasn't making any sense at all. A serial killer with some connection to these three who could apparently see the dead.
"It's not so bad. We've known people who get lost in the other worlds every time they see something. Phoebe's done it once." Brian lit a cigarette and sucked it slowly, sedating himself with the powerful rolls of smoke going down his throat.
"You can actually become spirits?" Reyes asked. "How's that possible?"
"Everyone thinks that it's some religious thing." Brian replied sadistically. "But there's no God or Satan involved. It's basically a state of mind. If you get really involved with a vision or are too exhausted to resist it, you could become a member of the spirit world temporarily."
"Do you die?" Reyes was scared to ask.
"If you're weak." Brian replied, smoking his cigarette. Reyes nodded, looking out the window. She gave a searching look as Doggett was practically dragged by Phoebe to the kitchen. She swung open the door.
"Watch your step." She said quietly and made sure he lifted his foot a little more then was necessary. He stumbled inside, looking around falsely to reassure Monica.
"What's wrong with him?" Brian asked, discretely putting out the cigarette in the sink and dropping the smouldered butt into his pocket after the danger had passed. Phoebe sniffed the air.
"He's doing better then you're gonna be after we get home." She said sternly, getting a laugh from Brian and Joe. Sighing, she turned to the incapacitated Agent. "He's blind."
"What?" Reyes asked in surprise. Phoebe sighed again and nodded. "John is that true?"
"Afraid so." He put it flatly. "Not so bad actually. Except when you decide to drag me over a log without telling me."
"I apologized for that." Phoebe snapped back. Reyes tried not to laugh with Doggett hearing, finding it nothing short of adorable Agent John Doggett, an ex-marine and cop with credentials as long as his arm was being dragged by a 15 year old girl. She left out a small giggle.
"I see nothing funny about this situation." He replied to the sound of her giggling. She subdued the sounds of laughing and came back to reality, in which her friend and partner was blinded by something.
"How did it happen?" She asked. Phoebe jumped onto her table and shrugged.
"Something dark." Was all she had to saw, looking at the Agent's blank eyes and seeing the abyss of a black stare.
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"I can't find anything wrong with them." Agent Scully said as she put away the penlight. "They're still working, far as I can tell."
"That's a matter of opinion Agent Scully." Doggett said, standing up. Dana Scully had seen some things that baffled her. But nothing as much as her being able to shoot Agent Doggett right now without him seeing with his apparently working eyes. The light caused his pupils to contract. Everything was going as they should with eyes. But for some reason, the Agent was oblivious to everything.
"Do you have any idea how this happened? I mean, a head wound, a….an alien?" Doggett looked sternly at her for that one. Scully gave a gentle grin.
"I was pushed off a horse, but I don't think I was hurt by the wall…too much." He lied. His chest was throbbing from where a black and blue bruise was beginning to grow on his ribs. Scully sensed this and walked over to him, placing a gloved hand on his chest. He backed into the examination table. "Just a scratch." He assured her.
"I hardly think you're in the position to tell me what it is." She said, with an air to her as a mother would speak to a child. She unbuttoned his shirt and looked at the area of skin where the wound was already growing. "That's not a scratch, Agent Doggett, that a massacre." He groaned, pushing by her as he fumbled with his half open shirt.
"Put some ice on it at least, Agent Doggett." John groaned again, blinking his eyes as they started to burn.
"John?" Scully asked. He shook his head and walked out without another word.
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Reyes was waiting outside the door for John to get out. He fumbled at the handle, waiting for her to take his hand or something. Monica carefully slid her slender hand in his and gave his palm a reassuring squeeze.
"What did the Doctor say?" Monica could tell John was angry.
"Nothing important." He said. "My eyes should be working but they aren't."
"Well, I got something else that may surprise you." Reyes said, cockily, leading her partner down the hall. She felt like a normal wife bringing her injured husband home in the middle of the day. It never would have occurred to her that nothing was looking out from the blues masses of his eyes. "The body of Harvey Lloyd recently disappeared from the morgue."
"You've got to be kidding me."
"Not at all. The Doctors are all pouring through security tapes. Ne'er as they can tell, the body walked out." Nothing happened. Usually when something weird happened, Doggett would at least look at her. She realized given the circumstances this was possibly, even if he looked in her general direction. "What is it?" She asked finally, not liking the silence.
"Somehow, right now, that's not surprising." Monica gave a weak grin and the two walked into the parking lot to the car.
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It was raining as Phoebe sat out on the fire escape back at her apartment. She had convinced her parents to let her go 'shopping with friends from school'. Roughly translated, she was going home for some pizza with Brian and Joe. They were out renting movies, while their youngest counterpart was on the metal stairs looking through the rain at the city.
Sighing deeply she got back up and walked through the window back inside her apartment. A stirring of breath caught her eye, and a frigid wind seemed to move through the kitchen. Phoebe looked around, walking to the table in the centre.
A glass fell off the top shelf of their door-less cabinet. Phoebe watched it, the pieces moving on the floor in the shape of the symbol, "never ending."
She turned fearlessly around. The demonic form was there, and he was staring back at her.
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Doggett felt his eyes burn again. Monica looked over from the driver's seat as he rubbed them with a small moan. He moved his fingers away, as his cheeks were fluttered with small droplets of blood.
"John." Monica said and pulled over, unbuckling her seatbelt and getting a better look. John moved his hands back innocently, unable to tell what was happening. Monica took out a Kleenex and carefully wiped his eyes, looking at the traces of red liquid she found there.
"What?" He asked. Monica couldn't speak.
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Phoebe stared back, showing nothing as the black form watched her with what resembled a smile. The brown haired youth didn't move, transfixed with the sight before her eyes.
The demon held out an arm, the end sharpened to a glossy point. She didn't react or move at all, even when it was driven into her heart.
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Doggett coughed at the pain in his chest. Monica was getting worried now. She looked at him as he groaned.
"John, what's wrong?" He breathed slowly, trying to ease the growing pressure in his heart.
"John?" Monica asked frantically. Her partner gasps and reclaimed his breath, but not without a price.
"You have to go. Phoebe's in trouble." Monica didn't ask. She put her foot on the pedal and drove.
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Phoebe held back, still breathing as the point moved inside her. It didn't hurt, it didn't even bleed. But an increasing amount of pressure was on her heart. A cold wind was forcing itself around the kitchen, moving over her wet limbs and causing her fingers to numb. Still she stared back at the figure before her, unafraid of everything that could happen to her.
The wind grew fiercer around her, causing her head to swim inside it. Come on Phoebe, focus. She willed herself closer, the pressure growing with every centimetre she moved. Their heads were so close together now, and Phoebe growled as she punched her own fist inside the inky substance.
A high pitched scream grew louder and louder in the small home. Phoebe drove her hand further with all her strength, grasping the tightened ball of hard, cold metal within him.
"You can't kill me, human." The demon impaled her on his sharpened arm, as Phoebe yanked the cold metal centre from him and dropped it to the ground.
"And you can't kill me." She said, holding her breath as the form pulled the spike from her chest and dropped her to the floor.
Phoebe coughed, looking around as the rain moved over her face. She went into the kitchen and looked around again.
The Mayoke Bracelet lay on the kitchen floor.
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John breathed easily. Monica looked from the driver's seat. She too had been hyperventilating.
"John?" She asked cautiously, watching him closely. He sighed and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes slightly. Monica pulled over to the side of the road and again and leaned to him. "Are you alright?"
He nodded, looking at her blankly. She hugged him softly, burying her head into his shoulder as they sat together. John couldn't see her, but he could move his fingers over her back carefully. Monica sighed and smiled, placing a small kiss on his cheek.
"Let's get out of here Monica." She grinned and smiled, and kissed him on the lips this time.
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