The Ties That Bind

The Ties That Bind
7/9

Paige squealed as a grey blur hurtled through the front door, sweeping her out of her chair. Dana was on her feet in an instant. But the blur resolved itself into a boy with strange grey skin who, by the way that he was hugging the girl, obviously knew her. She saw Sam and Jon clomp in through the door. “That’s the other student?” she asked Sam. “Let me guess. Skin?”

He nodded. “Dana, meet Angelo Espinosa. Angelo, put mah sister down and meet the nice doctor FBI Agent.”

Angelo quickly set Paige down and turned to face Dana. “I knew I should’ve left the image inducer on,” he muttered under his breath, low enough that normal ears wouldn’t catch it even if the person was standing right beside him. He grinned nervously. Dana looked him over appraisingly. She could see why they called him Skin. He seemed to have no end of it. “It would have to be a doctor,” he said at the same level.

Playing a hunch, she darkened her face slightly. “Angelo Espinosa, you say?” She could feel the tension start to radiate off of him in waves, and Paige, whom the boy had pushed behind himself, held her hand over her mouth as if to ward off a bout of giggles.

“Yes, Senorita. I’m from Mevernton, a small town in upper South Carolina. Lived there all my life.”

It was funny, Dana mused. She could *feel* that he was lying. The body produced different pheromones when a lie was told. Maybe she was developing a sensitivity to them. He misread her silence, fiddling in where he stood. “I have a few questions that I’d like to ask you,” she said. His eyes didn’t dart around the room, but focused on her face. He moved one foot to the side, shifting his weight.

His eyes didn’t dart around the room looking for escape routes. He’d catalogued the room when he’d come through the door, even as excited as he was to see Paige.

What kind of upbringing taught you to be that paranoid? What did you have to go through to be that alert, to be that afraid of an casually dressed, seemingly young, woman who sat with the family of your friend, just because you found out that she was an FBI agent?

“First off,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me about the image inducer?” His movements stilled and he no longer looked ready to flee. Instead, he stared at her in shock, looking at the large gap between them.

“You heard that?”

She leaned in closer and tapped her ears. “Augmented sense of hearing.”

“So you’re...”

“Yep. And just for reference, next time, you might want to come up for a better name for a town than Mevernton.”

He turned to Sam and Jon, glaring at them. “How long were you planning on letting me go on thinking that she was going to arrest me before you stepped in?”

//As long as it took to scare you straight, Angelo.//

“You’re supposed to be my hombre.”

//Just looking out for your best interests. Besides, if you have a heart attack, I get to use your Playstation till you get out of the hospital.//

Angelo muttered something under his breath which only Dana caught. She struggled to keep her face professional.

Spanish may not have been her strongest class when she was in high school, but she’d learned the words that really mattered.

*

Angelo stood in the fading light, throwing pebbles from the neat gravel path as far as he could. He knew that he could get them farther if he used the fold of skin between his thumb and forefinger as a slingshot, but this was more of a release. It wasn’t as satisfying as getting into a bar fight, but there were no bars to be found. He picked up a particularly large one, naming it Jonothon. He let it fly. The stone sailed farther than any of the others had, disappearing into the blood red sun.

“You can’t really be that mad at him for not telling you who I was the other day, can you?” A voice came from behind him. He started, automatically reaching for the knife that he didn’t carry anymore.

He turned to face the doctor. “I’m not, senorita.”

She didn’t raise an eyebrow at that, even though it was evident that no further explanation was forthcoming. She simply walked back to the veranda and sat down on the bottom step. Dana watched as he hurled stone after stone, until his arm hurt from it. She watched as he walked towards the house and up the stairs, pausing at the top before finally settling down beside her. And she sat silent, waiting for him to speak.

*

“So Frost walks up to the guy and does something to his head. He hops up on the stage in the bar and does this chicken dance. Then it turns into a really bad Irish jig and the stuff just goes down hill from there. He gets hot wings thrown at him, and he gets booed, but he still stays up there. We caught hell from Frost and Cassidy for using the fake IDs, of course, but it was worth it just to see that slime make an ass of himself. I mean, Paige obviously doesn’t look anywhere near his age. And I heard Miss Frost telling Bansh’ that he’d have nightmares for weeks.”

Dana laughed again. They’d been talking for so long that the sun had gone down and the only light was that spilling through the housewindows behind them. She’d learned a lot about how things ran around Xavier’s, the things about people’s powers and pasts that she should have made an effort to find out before, even the very basic facts that everyone seemed to take for granted.

Turned out that Sinister wasn’t the neighbour’s dog after all.

“This is one of the longest Indian summers on record,” she said when the conversation hit a lull. “It’s getting close to mid-November but it feels like July. It’s almost like the earth itself is holding its breath, waiting to see how this all draws out.”

She searched for a way to put what she had to say delicately. Finding none, she let the silence speak for a time. “I know,” she said finally.

“Know what?” Angelo asked her, smiling lazily. He may not really think of himself as attractive, but this light was good for him. His black hair shone, and his skin gave him an exotic look.

“That you weren’t really that mad at Jon for not telling you who I was.”

“Si?”

“You’re mad at him because of Paige.”

The crickets were active that night, she decided, as they tried their hardest to fill in the silence.

Then he recovered and grinned at her. The expression was practiced and probably fooled most people who were on the receiving end of it. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why would I be mad at him because of Paige?”

Scully raised an eyebrow at him. Her eyes, old beyond her years, bored into him. She wasn’t buying it. The crickets were going to drive him crazy. He finally broke her gaze. “Is it really that obvious?” he asked.

“No.”

“How long exactly have I known you? And you figured it out.”

“Yeah, but I was an FBI agent for a long time. It’s one of those things that you start to pick up on after awhile, seeing as it can be the motivation for a lot of crimes.” *Plus,* she added to herself, *You radiated it.* She had the feeling that she’d been picking up on pheromones and hormones for awhile, but hadn’t been paying attention to what they said. “Does she know?”

“No, senorita.” Angelo seemed to have lost his animation. His movements were as subdued as his voice.

“Well I hate to be the party pooper here, but this might be something that you would want to tell her soon,” she said, knowing that he knew. He looked up at Dana. His eyes weren’t sparkling anymore.

“I can’t.”

“Because of Jonothan Starsmore? The boy doesn’t own her. They’re not even together.”

“I can’t.”

“Tell me why, exactly. Believe me, you’re going to feel a lot worse if you don’t say anything and Paige...”

He caught her eyes again, a fire starting to show in the restrained motions of his fingers. “Because Jon is my best friend. Not only that, he’s my team mate. Jon and Paige, they’re constant, they always have been. If I make a move on her, then not only do I betray my best friend, I disrupt the team. We have to be able to trust each other. The world we live in, the team is more important than the parts. If we can’t depend on the others to be there when we need them, then we can’t function as a whole. We don’t function as a team, then we’re easy prey, and none of us are going to survive very long.” He paused. Scully was reminded of Bobby’s words to her, a month, a year, a decade ago. They were echoes of each other, and they slammed back and forth inside her head.

“The ties that bind us,” she muttered under her breath.

“Add in a healthy dose of fear of rejection,” he finally continued, back to the practiced grin which he so often showed the world. “And you’ve got a killer combination.”

“What ever feelings Paige had for Jon have long since faded,” Dana told him. She could tell him that she *knew* from any number of things, but if he couldn’t take it at that, then she wasn’t going to push and push and push. “And it seems to me that maybe duty works both ways. He should have the decency to give Paige the choice, without backlash affecting your team. It goes both ways. That’s something that the *both* of you would do well to remember,” she said, brushing herself off as she rose. Angelo was looking at the porch with an expression on his face that was equal parts embarrassment, shame, and anger.

Dana walked towards the door, stopping by Jon where he stood leaning against the house.

Where he’d been standing for sometime.

//Mrs. Guthrie said to tell you that the short cake is ready,// he said evenly.

“Think about it,” she whispered, words meant only for his ears. She pushed past him and into the porch, dropping her shoes on the rack before heading towards the scent of fresh pastries.

Jon followed a few minutes later, looking even more withdrawn than usual, leaving Angelo sitting all by himself on the porch.

And Jon thought.

*

Dana sat on the foot of Paige’s bed. The girl looked up from her book and smiled. Angelo had come bearing homework, saying that he wasn’t going to let Paige’s grades slip in their Senior year, not after she’d worked so hard.

The look on the doctor’s face sobered her. Paige closed the text and set it aside. “Yes, Miss Scully?”

Dana took a deep breath, looking at the fire that still back lit the girl’s eyes. “I’ve thought long and hard about this. I think that I might have found a way to cure you.”

“Really?” Paige asked, loosing her breath some time between the beginning and end of the word.

Dana held her hand out. “Wait until you hear all of it. I don’t want to get your hopes up, because I’m not sure that it can work. And if anything goes wrong, chances are that we won’t get another attempt.”

“But if yah don’t*try*...”

She looked deeply into the girl. Her cancer was progressing, despite the energy Scully passed onto her. Pretty soon it would be too late for anything to do any good at all. All she’d done so far was slow the progression of the cancer until it was a bulldozer creeping slowly instead of a speeding city bus heading straight for her. “I’m asking you about this first, before I do the others. It’s your choice, but I want to make sure that you understand all of the risks involved.”

And as Dana outlined her plan, she watched the burning inside of Paige’s eyes, and knew what the girl’s answer would be.

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