TITLE: Astyanax on the Walls
AUTHOR: Vehemently (vehemently@yahoo.com)
SPOILERS: Few, only by allusion (yours).
TIMELINE: A vague time after Red & the Black but lacking
movie developments and The End.
DISCLAIMER: Events and characters mentioned herein belong to
Chris Carter / 1013 and no intent is intended from their use.
NOTES: A stylistic experiment, of sorts. And a chance for me to
hash out some of the real issues.
* * * * * * *
Astyanax on the Walls
By Vehemently
* * * * * * *
"'You hoped today at last to storm
the city of the Trojans. A rash hope.
Grief and wounds are still to be suffered for her.
For our dear parents, wives and sons, we'll hold
the city and defend it.'"
-Iliad, Book 21 (trans. Robert Fitzgerald)
* * * * * * *
The child gave a little apologetic cough but said nothing.
She sat in a hospital bed, the room full of that thin-cotton
false cheeriness of every children's ward. Dana Scully had
reason to know as much and she hung back in the doorway,
watching.
Mulder sat in a folding chair pulled too close to the bed
and leaned forward so it balanced precariously. He repeated his
question. "Janice, can you tell me anything at all about where
you've been these last two days?" He did not change the angle
of his head though the parents made noises from where they stood
at the end of the bed. There was no proof that they had been
approached but they closed their faces and crossed their arms
like twin statuary, flanking the bed's end corners.
Two days missing, and Janice Knochler, her hair stringy
and clothes rumpled, had wandered into the police station of
Cary Parish, Pennsylvania in the middle of a busy Tuesday
morning. Scully had looked up with a jerk when the deputy at
the desk had quavered "Agents?" as his eyes darted and his hands
strayed across his paperwork. The girl had been shivering - it
was January - and Mulder had leapt to his feet to catch her
before she collapsed. He had carried her in his arms to the
hospital the whole way, refusing without word any offer of help
from others. She had not said anything, not then and not since.
Her face was round, with a fat chin, and sallow like
crumbling aged paper. Her eyes, while listed as blue, had no
color at all, blending into the grayed sclera. She twisted her
fingers together in the bedspread and looked at Mulder with an
empty expression and he ducked his head before he began again.
"Janice, how would you like to do some coloring? Do you like to
color?"
Scully produced the crayons and paper they had prepared,
gathering handfuls of the stubbed, broken wax sticks from the
Pediatrics playroom without regard for color. She hesitated
before she strode full into the room, and she pulled the wheeled
table forward with a jerk. Mulder eyed her but said nothing and
she did not meet his gaze. The paper being set on the table,
Janice widened her mouth in what might have passed for a smile.
Looking at Mulder for approval, she reached out, withdrew, and
finally snatched a green crayon and cradled it to her chest.
Mulder opened his mouth, closed it, and then said: "Will you
draw a picture for me, Janice?"He made as if to touch her hand
but stopped before he came near her.
The little colorless eyes darted and swooped, father,
Mulder, mother, Mulder, and finally rested on Scully, who pushed
back her hair and wrinkled her eyebrows. Janice tucked her chin
into her chest and braced the paper with her free hand, and with
a furrowed look of deep concentration, dragged the crayon across
the page. Scully leaned close to see the shape forming itself on
the rough construction paper and speared a look at Mulder over
the child's head. He watched the crayon move, his face angling
so as to see the page as Janice might. His chin rested nearly
on her shoulder; when he let out a breath of a sudden she
flinched and drew away to look at him. They gazed at each other
for a long time, the tips of his fingers claiming the drawing
while she held the green crayon before her like a dagger.
Scully broke the moment by clearing her throat. Janice,
breaking away from her interrogator's eyes, wrinkled her chin
and began to cry, sobs breaking without voice through her body.
The parents grew animated after their prolonged stillness,
stepping forward with red faces. Nobody said anything and Mulder
looked at the floor. Hoarse breaths, unsupported by childish
wails, filled the room.
At last Mulder stood, scraping his flimsy chair backwards,
and with an eye in the parents' direction, he made a solemn
display of thanking Janice for her help. "I hope you feel better
in the next few days," he added, his face returning to neutral-
ity.
As the two agents strode to the doorway Mulder waved the
drawing between them like a censer. Neither of them spoke again
until they had cleared the room and earshot of the parents. At
the nurses' station, he lay the paper flat and ran his finger-
tips over it as if reading a holy inscription in braille. Scully
stood by, her eyes downturned, and opened her mouth three or
four times before she said,
"Let's not bother her again." Her hands remained at her
thighs although they twitched when Mulder rounded on her.
"Tell me the face is not familiar," he returned, little
pinched lines emerging around his mouth. He snatched up the
drawing and waved it at her. In his hand the white page flew
like a flag, a head-shaped oval with two almond eyes in green.
"Tell me we haven't run across this face before."
She sighed and it bowed her shoulders. "Mulder," reproach
thick in her voice, "you told me yourself your theories had
evolved beyond the simple -"
"She remembers something," he interrupted, and Scully
interrupted him right back.
"She could be remembering Close Encounters of the Third
Kind." A sharp gesture with the flat of her hand. "This could
be a drawing of a golf hazard. It's meaningless and it is by no
stretch of the imagination evidence. There's nothing we can do
with it but speculate."
Mulder stood with his mouth open, the paper still wrinkled
in his hand between them. His jaw took on a hard shape, and his
eyes narrowed. "Something happened to this girl, and I can't
believe you're just going to let it -"
He stopped of his own volition when he looked at his part-
ner. She was pale and her features seemed to line up into the
plane of an arrowhead pointing up at him. Scully stood very
straight and lowered her voice in both pitch and volume.
"I am well aware that a crime has been committed, Mulder."
His slumping shoulders mirrored the wilting of his face. "I am
also aware that speculation of interplanetary invaders will
not unmake her victimhood. She's seven years old and she's
frightened." Scully's face softened, lowered its focus. "I'm
afraid we're just not going to get very much out of her."
She turned away to brace herself against the countertop
while Mulder clenched his fists. "There are intensive therapies
we could try. We could have her hypnotized -"
"She's a little girl," Scully said, and there were tears
now in her voice. "Just let her not remember."
Mulder passed the crumpled drawing from hand to hand,
smoothing it. He hunched his shoulders and waited for his part-
ner to turn back to him before he displayed any expression on
his face. When she turned her skin was crimson, from her hair-
line down to the neckline of her sensible suit, and she shook.
Scully tamped her lips together and clutched her hands to her
belly, but still they trembled. She no longer looked in need of
tears. "She was taken - and we both know that real people have
been involved in situations like this. The men, the doctors,
that Japanese, Ishimaru -"
She petered out, breathing hard. Mulder blinked, again,
staring at a point above her head. He opened his mouth and then
closed it, his face pensive and pale as it caught the artificial
light. Scully frowned around her, settling finally on her part-
ner before her, her hands on her hips. The line between her
brows and the measured way that she delivered her words, biting
them off like recalcitrant nougat, betrayed her professional
demeanor.
"These people, whoever they are. They act like they have
the right - like they stand apart and above us. Like the victors
in a battle we don't even know we've lost, taking the spoils
and ignoring our wishes." And swooping away like a thwarted
falcon, Scully strode down the hall. A similar bird, Mulder
sped to follow, his expression blank.
He caught up with her near the entrance and he walked by
her side without saying anything. They divided around the body
of the car and he looked at her over its hood, eyes wary. She
looked back at him, her squint possibly caused by the failing
sunlight.
"We don't need invaders from afar, Mulder. We have enemies
right here among us." She pulled open her door and climbed in,
jerking at her seatbelt. Mulder settled himself slowly next to
her as he looked out through the windshield at the rural hos-
pital, its early-sixties design making it shabby rather than
quaint.
As he started the car he looked over at her and said: "I
don't remember letting in any Trojan Horse." They traded eye-
brow arcs as he began to back out of the parking space.
Scully crossed her arms under her breasts and set her jaw.
"We have paperwork to finish on Janice back at the station."
Mulder nodded, his eyes on the road, but Scully did not see it.
He turned onto the rural road which would take them back to
Cary Parish.
* * * * * * *
".....now there is
No woman living whose life holds such bitterness.
I saw my husband Hector killed by Achilles' sword;
And on the day the Greeks took Troy I saw my son
Astyanax thrown to death from the high battlements."
-Andromache, by Euripides (trans. Philip Velacott)
* * * * * * *
END