Unwritten (1/1)
She has driven beyond reaching.
First Posted: March 2000
Category: V, A, M/S UST
Disclaimers: Not mine - not the XF characters nor the traditional folk tales - and not for money.
Thank You: To anyone who's already seen this. Your kindness has been most
appreciated.
Feedback: As delicious as homemade soup. Please and thank you. eviljesemie@yahoo.com

For Mary Beth.

- - -
She is waking slowly tonight, car holding her in its hum, infant moon an eyelash dropped at the bowl curve of the horizon. The radio weatherman predicts rain, smile hinted in his voice. She should be asleep, arm tucked under one pillow and her breathing becoming even and still.

A story suspended.

No. Too many slim roads unwound, too many black tar dreams. She twists in the driver's seat and takes off her gloves. The heater is on low, warming her right ankle. The afternoon hunt was a mistake; now Scully is chilled in places she cannot wrap tightly enough in her wool coat, yet her hands feel wind-burnt and stiff and against the dark gray steering wheel they are strange and incandescent.

There is a truck stop whose blinking sign spatters jittery orange lights across a pock-marked parking lot. She detours here, parks the car away from the diner windows, away from the unhitched jackknifed trailers in the semi space adjacent gas tanks and air pumps. As she closes the car door, the sterile emptiness of the backseat shocks her. She has brought nothing with her but a purse, a coat, a folded piece of paper.

The small restaurant smells of travel, coffee, axle grease, syrup and sleep, scents that stay close to the skin. A man in a plaid shirt sits at the counter, marking a well-folded map with a pencil. Two waitresses stand by the women's bathroom, smoking cigarettes. Two older women sit opposite each other in a booth and lean forward over their plates of sliced roast beef and mashed potatoes.

Scully takes a seat at the far end of the counter. She does not remove her coat, and her feet clunk against a metal foot rail beneath her stool. One of the waitresses walks over and takes Scully's order: small vegetable soup, Saltines, diet Coke, no straw.

A man walks in, his hand gentle around the hand of a little boy with dark brown hair. One of the women in the booth yells happily - "Mark, hello, hello, how you doin', sweetie?" - and the man at the counter swivels to watch the exchange, smiles, and turns back to his map. Scully feels the sleepy sweetness of the night, and swings her purse onto the counter, looking for something to keep her awake.

Paper in the side pocket. She fingers it at the edge and urges herself away from it, keeping it tucked there. When she turns the purse on its side to search for a starlight mint, her keys jostle heavy and dull. She has too many keys now, too many locks.

The waitress plunks a cup of soup in front of her, hot orange-red liquid sloshing into the saucer against which the cup clinks. Packages of crackers scatter across the counter. A bumpy plastic glass froths with too much cola and not enough ice.

Scully drops her purse and balances it on the tops of her feet, toes against the counter wall. She eats the thin broth in precise spoonfuls, pushing aside the lopsided lima beans, the smashed tomato pulp and gray potato pieces. She unwraps a package of crackers and taps one flat wafer against the cup. She hisses unspeaking, salt stinging an almost-invisible scratch on her right ring finger. Paper cut.

Behind her, the little boy is saying, to one of the women in the booth, "Thank you for your time." His five-year-old manners are inflected with distraction, as though he is watching something curious and does not know yet whether it is time to gasp.

Scully turns slightly, catching the boy's eye peripherally. He tugs on his jacket sleeve and blinks, and his gaze falls to Scully's feet. She looks down.

Her purse has spilled, the strap caught around one heel. She wobbles off the stool, untangling her foot. A few quarters and a dime, a tissue, a pen have tumbled out. The paper has been dislodged. A draft has blown it open, the irregular columns and notes and useless numbers all clearly visible while she bends to pick up her things.

She grabs the paper, crumples it in her hand, shoves it into its pocket. The diner door opens and closes. The older women wave through the window at the departing man and boy.

"You all right, hon?" the waitress asks.

Scully yanks a ten dollar bill out of her wallet and throws it on the counter.

"Everything's fine," she says as she steps toward the door, purse under her arm and the waitress wanting to know if she wants change. A thin streak of something cuts down her face, prickles when the cold winter air clatters against her.

Scully keeps walking, and the keys in her purse jounce in time with her stride. She takes them out, opens the car door, gets inside, drives away, drives away. Her hands reflect the dashboard limelight. The night is quiet and coal and the car encases her like a catacomb.

She glances over at the passenger seat, at her tossed purse once again spilt. She turns on the radio, and the mild happy weatherman repeats the forecast. Afterwards, the station goes soft with white noise. She has driven beyond reaching.

He is trying to keep her awake; he doesn't want to miss the exits and the directions are written in her phone code, hastily jotted, coherent to her tidy mind but not his messy, charismatic one. He is radiant with enthusiasm, dark eyes gleaming. The case, the chase is on and this is when he is sharpest and most extraordinary, and he has grabbed her hand and is wrestling her out of her slump against the door, out of her exaggerated sighs.

"Hey, welcome back. When are we supposed to take 174E? At Lapier or Leperel?"

"Lapier." She wiggles her fingers while he tries to lace his through them. She closes her hand over his thumb and forefinger, feeling the knuckle crack in her grip. She yawns.

She yawns and her vision blears. The roads are narrower here and seem to absorb both light and shadow, leveling the world black. She jerks the car to the shoulder, slams on the brakes, and revels in the brutal growl of gravel spraying beneath the tires. Engine off, lights off, no sound, empty. She breathes.

She is smiling at him, really smiling, like she always wishes she were brave enough to do during the day. He is amusing her, his hands temporarily off the wheel as he gestures a character's surprise. They laugh, the two of them, over a line he recites so perfectly she cannot remember it now.

He looks at her, his own grin fading to something startlingly tender, and he runs his fingertip down the curve of her ear until she cocks her head away.

"Okay, okay. You can go to sleep if you want."

"Yeah?" she asks softly, watching his expression go purposefully neutral.

He nods.

"One more story?"

"You want me to keep talking?" His voice matches hers in gentleness, but she knows he is secretly pleased.

"Mmm." She scrunches into a sleep-ready position, her body turned to his in the bucket seat, her hands warming between her knees.

Her gloves are stuffed in her coat pockets. Her hands are cold and foreign in the dark, and they bother her. She keeps them on the steering wheel, unsure of their capabilities. They tremble and that cannot be right because the rest of her is utterly calm and still and deadened.

"A peasant plowing an acre for his master came upon a box. He removed the box from a patch of thistle and kept plowing. He unearthed a large key, the key to the box. He stopped plowing and opened the box. Inside, there was a calf's tail. And if the tail had been longer, my tale would be longer."

"Oh," she says, with fond recollection, "I've heard that one, only the version I know has mouse tails. And it's a kid who discovers the chest." She opens an eye to find him holding back a smile.

"Ah. Heard this one? There was once a shepherd who had a great flock to take to market. Over the hill he marched his sheep, a large fluffy white mass of hundreds of animals."

"Are they each going to jump a fence so I can count them?" she wonders aloud
dryly, eyes closed.

"Shhh."

"Sorry."

"At the bottom of the hill was a creek, flooded from heavy spring rain. The sheep could not cross the creek: the rapids were too quick and strong. There was a bridge."

She plays along, faint in her approaching slumber. "However will they make it across safely?"

He chuckles. "The shepherd decided he could take the sheep across the bridge one at a time, and began to do so." He stops.

She waits, and drifts. Then she notices that he does not appear to be paused merely for dramatic effect. She blinks up at him. "That's it?" she asks, her voice drowsy.

He jumps. "I thought you were asleep. No, that's not it."

"Well?"

"We have to wait."

"For what?"

"For all the sheep to cross the creek."

"How long will that take?" She is almost asleep.

"Could be a while. That shepherd had a lot of sheep." He is whispering, his hand smoothing her hair with the lightest touch.

"'kay. But you have to finish the story soon."

"I will."

"G'night," she whispers back.

Her hands are tight on the steering wheel and her whole body trembles, cold and wounded and unslept. The car is silent and empty with her and she is waking, undreaming in this slow black sleepless night, and he has not completed her story.

Tell the rest of it, Mulder. Tell me how it ends.

- - -
An end.