The Ties That Bind

The Ties That Bind
4/9

Scully sat in the Sears, Kentucky airport, staring out the windows and past the runways, at the rolling hills beyond. A plane blocked her view for a few seconds, taxiing to a stop at the gate. The hills were bright green, shimmering in the heat lines coming off of the blacktop. She wondered how anything could remain so pristine in this temperature. The cracked vinyl seats were hot to the touch.

Beside her, Sam didn’t even seem to notice.

They’d arrived awhile ago, actually ahead of schedule. Normally a cause for celebration, it had meant that they’d been parboiling in here while they waited for Paige’s plane to come in. *It* was running right on time, and the already long wait between their arrivals had been stretched out in a rather major way. Scully looked for the time on her watch, but stopped, remembering that she’d taken it off sometime around hour two, since jewellery retained so much heat. She considered pulling it out of the bag at her feet, but couldn’t find the energy.

Sam suddenly jumped up and began to wave his hands. His face was lit with a grin which stretched from ear to ear. “Over here!” he yelled through cupped hands, then practically ran over to a group of people coming through the gate. It was a good thing that there weren’t many people in the airport. He probably would’ve knocked over anyone in his way. He scooped a frail looking blonde girl carefully up into his arms.

She giggled, screeched “Put me down, right now,” unconvincingly. Two others separated from those disembarking the flight, a slightly older boy with his face wrapped in bandages, and an Asian teenager. The girl joined in the group hug.

Feeling like an outsider, Scully stopped half way to the group. She turned and was about to head over to the rental kiosk to get the car keys when a hand dropped onto her shoulder. The back of her head buzzed a little, and a tickle struck the back of her neck as she turned towards the owner of the restraining hand. It was the older boy. He too hung back from the group reunion. What little she could see of his face spoke of someone in the middle of a conversation, and she thought that she could hear a mumble. “What was that?” she asked.

He frowned at her and she could hear, almost an echo, //You with Guthrie?// She was sure that he hadn’t moved his mouth, even as the words rang hollowly. She reached up to scratch the base of her neck, then started slightly as an idea occurred to her. “You’re a telepath?” she blurted.

Raising an eyebrow at her, //Give the gel a prize.//

She blushed furiously. She started to ask why he was speaking telepathically, but stopped herself as her gaze drew back to the leather wrapped around his face, even in this heat. He didn’t even appear to be sweating.

//Why don’t you give me a hand with the bags? We should get a move on.//

“Of course Mr....”

//Starsmore.//

The Asian girl popped up beside them, popping Starsmore on the arm. “Don’t be a jerk. He’s just Jonothon, or, if you have to, Jon. I’m Jubilee.”

Smiling at the young girl, she held out her hand. Jubilee smacked it. “You must be Dana Scully,” she said.

A little taken back, Scully frowned at the other girl.

“You shoulda seen your face when I didn’t shake your hand. You look like you’re in college, but you act like somebody’s mom.”

“Really?”

“Well, the hair was a bit of a give away, but I honestly would’ve known anyway.”

While they were talking Sam and Paige had joined them. Sam had a protective arm around his sister, who rolled her eyes at the gesture but didn’t shake it off. “Ah guess introductions aren’t really in order, then.”

Paige held out her hand. “Pleased ta meet you, Miss Scully. Ah’ve heard so much about you.”

Scully reached to shake the blonde’s hand, and forgot about the late summer heat the second their skin made contact.

Cold overwhelmed her. It was as if her insides had suddenly become a vacuum, absolute zero, except for the blue lines of pain radiating from somewhere inside her lower abdomen *My pancreas,* she thought blurily, through the dark. Her vision dimmed and she felt the world start to spin around her.

They stared in shock as Scully started to crumple. Jubilee reached over to steady the woman. Scully sagged against her, clutching her stomach. “You ok?” she asked. Scully didn’t react as if she heard her. Jubilee guided her over to the cracked red vinyl seats. “Jon, you wanna go get her some juice or something? Her sugar could be off or something.” Jon nodded and headed over to the nearest concession. They could see Scully seem to start to come out of it even as she sat there.

//Wot happened?// She hear Jon ask as he tossed a bill at the vender.

“Ah don’t know,” Paige answered. “She was fine, then she started ta shake my hand, and she just fell over.”

The heat slammed back down on Scully, welcome against the stark cold of moments ago. A hand was rubbing her back as she bent down, head on her knees. She wanted to stay safe inside the cocoon of hair for a little longer, but forced herself to straighten, uncurling from around her stomach. She was surrounded by concerned faces, but one drew her attention.

Blue eyes set in a face much too young to be showing the beginning of those lines from continual pain. A face in which the whites of the eyes were back lit, as if there were a fire burning behind them. *The eyes are the window to the soul,* she thought. *What if they got it wrong? What if the eyes were the window to the body, but you had to know how to read them?*

Then Jon offered her a bottle of iced tea, and her train of though dissipated. She took it gratefully, suddenly thirsty. “Are you going tah be all right, Miss Scully?” Paige asked her.

“I just had a bit of a dizzy spell. I’m fine now.” Scully caught Jubilee and Jon looking at each other knowingly. She willed them not to say anything. “We should probably get going. Mrs. Guthrie was expecting us a while ago already,” she continued, then paused. “We wouldn’t want to worry her, would we?”

*

Dust blew in the open windows of the car as a truck pulled out the drive way. Jubilee sneezed loudly in the back seat, where she sandwiched Paige between herself and Jon. Sam parked the car in front of the split level ranch house. The group climbed out of the beaten up car, stretching after the forced enclosement.

Smallish hills rolled gently around them, as miraculously green as those at the airport, despite the late month. A few horses roamed an pasture just behind the slightly tilted red barn which sat to the left of the white and yellow house. Wooden fences formed various pastures around them, and a few older buildings peeked out from behind the house and barn. Scully and Jon started to unload the trunk, and Jubilee just sat on the hood of the car gingerly, careful of her bare legs on the hot metal. Sam and Paige went to their mother, who had just walked out of the enclosed porch, patting her blonde pony tail. Sam kissed his mother on the cheek, then the older woman caught her daughter in a tight hug. “Samuel,” Mrs. Guthrie chastised. “Are you just going to stand there and let our guests do all of the work? Go and give them a hand.”

Sam helped them toss the last of the bags out of the trunk, then they loaded up and started towards the house, Jubilee bearing her own bags, which she’d darted in to snatch, muttering something about her Gameboy.

“Just hold onto those bags ah yours when we get inside. I’ll show you right up to your rooms,” Mrs. Guthrie said. “I really am sorry about not being able to meet you at the airport, but like I said, Mrs. Burstein down the road went into labour, and Mark needed me to watch their young’uns.”

“It’s all right, Ma. You couldn’t exactly say no.”

“My, where are my manners?” She asked, stopping suddenly, just outside the porch and turning to the five following her. “I’m Lucinda Guthrie.”

“Jubilation Lee,” Jubilee said, slinging one bag over her shoulder, freeing her hand to take Lucinda’s extended one. “Mopey over there’s Jonathan Starsmore. And the one with the wicked hair’s Doctor Dana Scully. You know the one turning red under all of those bags. He’s your son.”

Mrs. Guthrie took a look at her son. He had loaded up, taking the majority of the suitcases and sacs under his mother’s watchful eye, and was, indeed, turning bright red under the load. “Dear,” she said mildly. “Well, we’d better get inside before the nice doctor has to treat you for a hernia.”

*

Dumping her possessions on the pale blue comforter which covered the bed, Scully reached her arms up above her head and stretched. The room was as cheerful as the house itself, this room with white walls and pale green accents, melting into the pale wood floors that stretched throughout the house.

It was neat and clean and pretty and well loved and homey and ever so country and it wasn’t a place that a young girl should die.

She’d felt Paige’s death.

There was no way that she was actually going to let it happen.

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