* * *
The Sky is Falling
Tara Avery
[email protected]
* * *
"He allowed himself to be lost. Sometimes, he later discovered,
he would be only a few feet from his destination, but not knowing
when to turn, would then go off in the wrong direction, thereby
taking himself farther and farther from where he thought he was
going."
-- Paul Auster, "The Invention of Solitude"
* * *
I wake with a headache.
At first I think it's only the aftereffect of the one beer too
many I indulged in the night before, but ... there is something
familiar about this ache. Familiar and unsettling. The
reason I
was drinking in the first place.
I open my eyes and find myself sprawled in the space between the
couch and the coffee table, head throbbing. Sure enough, when
I
put my hand up to feel for the source of the pain, an obnoxiously
large goose-egg meets my searching fingers. I'm disoriented.
I
remember falling asleep on my own bed, snug and secure. This
has
been happening too frequently -- headaches and disorientation and
the familiar haze of unfamiliar voices in my brain.
I roll onto my side and pinch the bridge of my nose, but the ache
is unaffected. It stings behind my eyes and fills my head with
muzzy voices.
Something is wrong.
'There has to be an end. This is yours. If you tell her,
we
will take her, too.'
I find myself sitting upright, breathing heavily. All traces of
sleep vanish in the surge of adrenaline, and the words are
drowned out only by the pounding of my heart. I can hear echoes
reverberating in my head -- echoes of voices not my own -- and
I'm terrified. This, too, has been happening often. Ever
since
I first heard those words, the first time, the day after I faced
the djinni and made my third wish.
I remember breaking into a cold sweat, shivering so badly I had
to pull the car to the side of the road and just breathe for half
an hour. Scully looked at me strangely when I tried to explain
I
was late because of traffic.
Leaning back against the couch, I take a deep breath and try to
convince myself that the voice was only part of my unconscious --
a waking dream -- a trick played by lack of sleep and too much
liquor the night before. My attempts at justification fail
miserably. I know what's going on. I've heard these voices
before.
I nearly jump when the phone rings.
I stare at the phone as though it is a little monster that has
appeared out of thin air. I don't grab the receiver until the
fourth ring, just before the answering machine picks up.
"Mulder," I snap, sounding angry, still breathless.
"It's me," Scully says. She sounds concerned. "Are you okay?"
"Just got back. Went for a run," I lie. "Still catching
my
breath."
I know she doesn't believe me, although I'm not sure exactly
*how* I know, and I'm afraid the murmuring fog in my brain might
have something to do with it.
"All right," she agrees, dismissing my lie only because I'm
silently begging her not to press the point. Scully has an
uncanny ability for knowing when to let me remain silent.
"Skinner just called. We're under scrutiny."
"When aren't we?" I quip. I can hear her answering smile.
She
has been smiling more often now and it suits her. She looks five
years younger when she's smiling. I like to think I've got
something to do with these new smiles. It eases the guilt of
knowing I've got everything to do with her earlier unhappiness.
"We're in the big leagues now, though, Mulder. The X-Files
division is facing internal audit. Apparently your shoddy
paperwork skills have finally been brought to the attention of
those in charge."
"I don't know, Scully, technically the number of receipts I've
lost ought to more than make up for whatever anomalies they're
seeing in our records."
The smile fades on the other end of the line ... I can feel it.
"I don't think it's about money, Mulder. It's about us.
It's
about work. It's about results. I think it's about
investigating invisible corpses and monsters in Los Angeles
instead of focusing on aliens and global conspiracies. Or
whatever it is they want us to be focusing on. Or not focusing
on."
At the mention of the word "aliens" the pain in my skull
magnifies, and my stomach rebels. I swallow reflexively before
replying, "I'll be there as soon as possible, Scully. See if
you
can't hold the wolves at bay until I arrive."
"I'll do my best."
The line falls silent.
My head hurts, and whispers worm through my brain.
Something is definitely wrong.
* * *
Everything seems magnified. Colors are brighter -- edges
sharper -- sounds louder. The sun burns my eyes. Only a
hangover, I tell myself, knowing it isn't true. I lie even to
myself.
I hear whispered conversations on the edge of my periphery, and
the sky is so blue it looks as though it will shatter into a
million fragments. Everyone looks driven, moving quickly while
I
stand alone, immovable, staring at a falling sky. If I shouted
right now -- if I told them the sky was falling -- would anyone
listen?
But people don't listen, and I hear too much.
People rush, screaming from place to place, working around the
clock, working themselves to death. All the while, the sky is
falling, the sky is filling with aliens, and the world is drawing
to a close. It's just that simple. And no one sees it
happening. Except me. Sometimes.
I feel a little dazed when I leave the warmth and the sunshine to
enter the office. Shadows seem exaggerated. The fluorescent
lights are watery and dim in contrast to the sun outside.
Scully stands with her back to the door, possessed of a
remarkable stillness compared to the world above. I think she
might not *believe* me if I told her the sky was falling, but at
least she'd help me find some scientific explanation for the
phenomenon. Her head turns when she senses my presence in the
room and she smiles another of her more-frequent smiles.
"Just in time," she says. "They want to talk to you in half an
hour. We're doing separate interviews -- I guess they want to
make sure we're getting the stories straight."
"You won't tell them I bought that new Porsche with Bureau funds,
will you, Scully?"
"Not if you don't tell them about the shopping spree on Rodeo
Drive."
"I knew there was a reason you no longer objected so vocally to
our frequent trips to the state of California."
I expect her to smile, but she doesn't. She only moves a little
closer and peers into my face. "Are you feeling all right,
Mulder? You're looking a little rough -- a little pale."
She
reaches up to touch my forehead, but I pull back a little. Her
hand halts mid-reach.
"I'm good, Scully. I'm fine." The memory of the voice in
my
head this morning makes me flinch. There is no real doubt in
my
mind who the voice was warning me not to talk to. "Slept a
little restlessly last night."
Again, she doesn't believe me. Her brow furrows and she drops
her hand. She makes some motion to speak, but I quickly talk
over her. "I'd better get moving. I should have a least
one cup
of coffee before I go to fight the bureaucracy."
"All right," she says slowly before turning away.
I dig my nails into my palms to keep from reaching out to her.
* * *
The human mind is not very well organized. There is no clever
filing system of thoughts, which is part of the reason hearing
voices drove me mad last year. Last year I had no defense
against the endless barrage of grocery lists, daydreams,
fantasies and streams of consciousness run amok. I've learned
how to block out the white noise of the common man's mind.
The hardest thing to ignore, however, is the lying. You can't
realize how much people lie to one another until you can hear the
thoughts of others. That Jim Carrey movie wasn't all giggles
and
amusement. Your average honest American lies every 2.3
seconds -- to himself, to others -- it's enough to break your
heart. Or your mind.
I'm not saying I'm any different. Scully and I lie to each other
extravagantly. We cover all the bases: half-truths, lies of
omission, even your outright, straight, bald-faced untruths,
though not often. We're nothing special. We're nothing
anomalous. We lie to protect each other -- at least that's how
we justify these lies.
Maybe our lies are ultimately altruistic, but I don't always
think so.
Sometimes I just want to do everything on my own.
The lies people tell one another, and the things people THINK
about one another -- it's amazing the world hasn't gone up in
flames. Maybe alien colonization isn't such a bad idea after
all.
When I walk in the room, the auditor is indulging himself in a
tawdry fantasy involving Scully and a filing cabinet. I let that
one go, because I've been known to indulge in it myself a few
times. But over and above that, he's an asshole. He refuses
to
understand our work. His mind is a veritable swamp, filled with
dark thoughts.
The son of a bitch pisses me off. And I hit him because I know
I've got nothing to lose.
I hit him because I can hear his voice clear as a bell in my
skull, even though he is silent.
I hit him because I can see my end just around the corner, and
I'm coming to realize that there's nothing I can do to stop it.
But I can protect Scully from sharing that end. Even if it means
lying to her face.
* * *
Scully is not perfect, but her mind retains a purity common with
children. It is far from simple, far from clear. It is
not a
willingness to believe, although she has more of that than she'd
probably imagine -- it's something else. Scully is a kind person
at heart. She does not let herself be overcome by the darkness
she sees every day.
It takes more strength than I have, that's for certain.
Perhaps it is only because I love her -- and because she loves
me -- that I see this purity in her. Perhaps what I perceive
as
pure is her steadfastness, her loyalty to me ... and to the
truth, whatever form that may take.
Perhaps I am influenced by how she looks right now, curled up
like a child in my arms, in my bed. The perfection of her
profile, the gentle curve of her cheek under my fingertips, cause
such joy and such sorrow that my soul aches. She embodies every
good thing in my life and reminds me of every time I have failed.
Caught up inside her, just under the frailty of her skin, is a
constant reminder of every time I have come too late, or
hesitated, or said the wrong thing. To paraphrase Shakespeare,
she reminds me of every time I have shot my arrow over the house
and hurt my brother. Only it has not been a brother I've hurt,
but a partner ... a friend ... a lover. Having anything to do
with hurting her, whether intentional or not, wounds me to the
core.
I know that happily ever after doesn't exist, but if it did, no
one deserves it more than Scully. What hurts me most is that
she, somewhere deep inside, wants that happily ever after, too.
She wants it to come from me. It may not take the traditional
form of husband and wife, 2.5 children, house with a white picket
fence, but that longing for a happy ending is there.
I don't have the heart to tell her that I can't give her that.
It's not going to happen -- at least, not the way she expects or
wants it to.
The sky is falling, Scully. This is my end. It doesn't have
to
be yours, too. Not while I can protect you from this.
* * *
We are standing in the hall. It is like something out of a
dream, and we both know it. You are staring at me with death
in
your eyes, and you know that I am lying to you. You don't *know*
that you know, but you do, you do. The love in you, the purity
in you -- they know that when I walk away from you here, I'm not
coming back.
Your face is ashen. You look sick. You look like you want
to
explode. You look like you want to punch the wall, but it's just
not your style.
"Mulder, if any of this is true..."
You're reaching, grasping for straws, trying to stop the sky from
falling by holding it up with your shoulders, Atlas in pumps and
a business suit.
"If it is or if it isn't, I want you to forget about it, Scully."
Eyes narrow slightly, and your breath catches. Maybe it is
actually my breath catching. Maybe we're sharing these last
breaths because we both know, somehow, that our world together is
coming to an end.
"Forget about it?" You're offended, but not as offended as you
should be. Not as offended as you would have been a year ago
--
six months ago.
"You're not going back out there. I'm not going to let you go
back out there. "
A spark in your eyes. A glimmer of the impending realization.
I
can hear the shadows murmuring in your brain, putting all the
pieces together. Your hand twitches, wanting to reach out to
me,
to hold on to me. "What are you talking about?"
'There has to be an end. This is yours.'
I take a deep breath, hating myself. "It has to end sometime.
That time is now."
"Mulder..."
And I lie. A lie of omission, a half-truth, a little bald-faced
lie. Covering all the bases. You will hate me for this
later.
I hate myself for it now. "No -- you have to understand.
They're taking abductees. You're an abductee."
And then the truth.
'If you tell her, we will take her, too.'
"I'm not going to risk ... losing you."
The sky crumbles. Your eyes break. My heart follows.
You know
now, you know that I am hiding something from you. You don't
look at me -- you can't. I can hear the slurry of thoughts
battling for attention in your skull. Time slows to a halt and
we stand there, trapped in an instant neither of us will ever
forget, because it is an end. It is our end.
When you finally move, you move stiffly, as though you have not
moved for a lifetime. Your arms curl around my neck, but you
do
not hold on. This is a goodbye. My eyes sting, because
I don't
want to leave. I don't want this to be the ending.
This ending is so far away from the happily ever after I wanted
for both of us.
"I won't let you go alone," you breathe. You take your cross
from around your neck and clasp it around my neck, fingers cold
and trembling against my warm skin.
I know what this means. Your necklace is more than a symbol of
your religion -- it is something I returned to you both times you
were taken from me. You want me to know that this is not an end.
You will fight it. Part of me wants to stop you, push your hands
away and protect you from burying yourself any deeper in this
pursuit that used to be mine alone. I don't want you to hurt
as
I did in the years after my sister was taken, but this is not my
decision to make.
Your words are a promise.
I hold you a little tighter, pretending not to feel the dampness
of your tears on my shirt.
"I will come back to you," I whisper into your hair.
These words are a promise, too.
* * *
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dance
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