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Title: Places: Middlelands
This story is part of the Places series. This story can be read as standalone, but the stories are much easier to understand and have far more resonancy if the previous stories are read. The Places series, currently stands as: . Mulder keeps a complete copy of TS Eliot's poetry with him at all times, and by "with him" I mean "in his head," and by "in his head," I mean "the end of everything." Tthe soundless nighttime weeping, the flutter of his nervous foot tapping on linoleum, nerves skeetering five centimeters short of a crumbling edge. Some nights, some days, I find myself wanting to slap him out of his cocoon, and tell him to get the fuck on with his life. And then I hear the rustle and clacking of the medications in his travel bag, the one he grips at this moment with white knuckles and trembling hands. A small tumbler full each night, his finger picking each out of the pantheon of sepia jars, voice shaking a little as he counts off his dosage. The flight out of DC was tolerable. Mulder dozed off and on, waking only to demand my peanuts or to hand me his napkin to me to blot my lipstick. He had seen me smiling at one of the stewards. I made just one tense, hurried trip to the bathroom and popped into the stall as soon as the bedecked and beflowered matron stumbled out of the closet. When I came out, I half expected find Mulder curled underneath the seat in fetal position, screaming about the lights in the sky, but he was sitting calmly in his seat, reading the in-flight magazine. He even smiled at me, one of the old smiles, loose and languid and just a little bit mocking because that steward, that steward was coming down the aisle with a beverage cart. . We keep two rooms, but we sleep in one. If there are two beds, we each take one, and if these is only one bed, he gets one side and I get the other. He has volunteered to sleep on the floor, but I've told him that if he gets down on the floor, I'll get down on the floor with him. It isn't for sex--how could I even ask him now?--but rather, so that I can hear his screams before they escalate beyond the paper-thin walls. That's always dangerous, it could be deadly this time, with Robinson and Dickers and Maller and--I'm not even going to think about it. I don't trust him in a room alone with so many opportunities, mirrors there for easy smashing. He did break that mirror back in San Jose, you know. I went out to get that take-out dinner, and when I got back, he'd smashed it all to pieces with his bare knuckles. and then sat there in the middle of the shards, crying and rocking and holding himself with bloody hands that left red prints on his legs, on the wallpaper, on me. And so, I spent the next three hours picking glass shards out of his hands. I couldn't take him to the hospital, so I just laid him out on the bed, took them out with tweezers and isopropyl, then cleaned up the mess on the floor before Housekeeping could come in and see it. He seemed to wake up towards the end, started looking around normally-- And then I kissed him. I thought it would take away the nightmares: perhaps two bodies sharing a bed would calm him. Besides. I missed him. And he had the nightmares that night, a bad one, one of the worst. Middle of the night, body taut as a bow, screaming, screaming, trying to dig his own eyes, tossing from side to side, I had to use the full needle before he settled down. And then he slumped again me, eyes wide, pupils dilated, mouth slack, and he fell asleep against me, deep, still, and sudden, though every now and then he would make these slight mewling noises. Twist a little, moan, then drop down back into the tranquilizer. There are some light scars across his knuckles, now, but he doesn't remember any of it--not the mirror, not the sex, not the nightmares (but then he never remembers the nightmares). Just waking up in bed next with a screaming migraine from the medication. Looked down at his hands, looked at the missing mirror, then running a bandaged hand down my back, and laughing, "So, was it good for you too?" I've never told him, but I'm sure he suspects. We left San Jose the next day: a kidnapping in Boise. I never told him, but I'm sure he suspects, and his eyes, his eyes, they were haunted beyond the word. . Mulder's fine during the day, perfectly fine-- So perfectly fine isn't precisely the word, but he's together, he's focussed, he's got whatever demons are stalking up and down his soul penned up and behaving, so he looks normal. Better than normal, actually, because he charms the locals with one sanguine smile, one handsome flick of the eye, and he's more polite to the SACs and ASACs. There's talk of Spooky being rehabilitated, of Spooky being brung back into the fold, so-- So, Mulder's got control of himself when he's awake. And if you watch him carefully, there is this very tense edge to him, sometimes, but that's only if you watch him very, very carefully. And so there're good times, and there're bad times, and this is one of the better ones: Lunchtime. Downtown Atlanta. I'm not even sure what the name of the place. It's on a corner, and Mulder just swung into the place, picked us a booth looking out onto the street. Smiled, joked, flirted with the pretty waitress, and got us this lovely little booth on the corner, we made fun of the noontime passers by. He ate a quarter-pounder with lettuce, tomatoes, and extra mayo, his serving of fries, two glasses of coke, and most of my salad after drowning it in ranch and smothering it with bacon bits. He laughed, he jested, he bought one of the local newspapers and mocked the second-rate writers for misplaced modifiers: it was like old times again, and when we went back to the rooms, he gave me a little peck on the forehead and went into take an after-lunch nap. So, I wasn't expecting him to disappear. And he *is* gone for thirty-one hours. His room is neatly arranged, and his coat and shoes are missing, but I have no idea where he is. Nobody has seen anything. The ASAC is furious, the police chief is furious, I am. . . I am afraid. I think, maybe he has gone looking for the killer. Maybe the killer has come looking for him. I am going through his papers, I look through his notes in search of clues, and I find a pack of notes stuffed at the bottom of his suitcase. They are bundled together with rubber bands. A flyer from the carnival in Redding. A bus schedule from Tampa. Maybe a little scrap of a fast food menu, all with the same spiky handwriting and a time and, sometimes a little message. You can have me if you catch me. Indeed there will be a time. Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero, Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo And the longest: Who is that beside you? That one who went his own way: Pray for Floret, by the boarhound slain between the yew trees. And underneath each of them is this sharp, sure A I stare at the strange, spiky handwriting for hours, but I know it's Mulder's. And when Mulder comes back, there are new rope burns across his wrists, but they are covered by the cuffs on his immaculate suit. He is very smooth, very calm, very practiced in deflecting the questions of the press and the police. He tells them and me that he went on a sudden information gathering mission, and he gives them the location of a new body. Mulder is very calm, but his eyes are half-hooded, mostly calm, but around the edges, you can see the remembrance of time just past. Mulder's come back. He came back and wrote out the profile and handed it to the police. Their rage was mitigated by the fact that it matched one of their major subjects, but, now, it's two AM, and now, I can see that there are new rope burns on his wrists, bright and pink, still visible underneath the coating of blood, and he's sitting in a field of shattered glass, hands wrapped around his knees, broken wrists dribbling down his legs and half the mirror is broken away, smashed onto the floor, the other half is still in the frame and Mulder's written on it. Wrote on it, and then smashed the mirror, and it's Alex, Alex, Alex scrawled a hundred different ways, in a hundred different scripts, but all in that same shaking spiky hand and he's crying, crying, he's not even looking at me, just whimpering Alex's name, Alex, Alex, Alex in that broken splintered little voice, Alex, oh god, Alex, Alex. *
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