Work Text:
October 1979
Her right foot landed a little off, and the ankle began to twist.
In a mid-step weight shift she would never be able to duplicate,
she yanked herself to the left and kept moving. Now there was a
twinge in the joint but she ignored it; she could run it out.
Poison oak and raspberry thorns grasped at her from the sides of
the trail, but she ignored them too.
She'd taken this path many times, so even in the darkness she
could avoid the roots and stones. Her knowledge of it ended,
though, where the trees and brush opened into the wide fields
leading up to the fence around the base. Before her lay the
unknown, but rather the unknown than what lay behind her.
They wouldn't notice she was gone for a while.
There might be enough time.
***
The tutorial had not gone well. He dodged through the swarms of
students and bicycles on the way back to Magdalen. The backpack
slipped off his shoulder and he re-adjusted it without thought.
Maybe psychology was a poor choice.
Six weeks in England and what did he have to show for it? Two
guilt-inducing letters from his mother and a grope in a cinema
with a blonde from Essex.
He had crossed the ocean, stepped over the line demarking the
unknown, into the land where the dragons were, because he had
been so sure that nothing could be worse than home. He wasn't so
sure now.
***
She had chosen the time carefully -- too early and there would
still be traffic on the base, too late and she wouldn't be able
to get far enough away. That little shit Jeffrey had finally
gone to sleep about 9:30, and she had lain awake for the next few
hours, watching the intermittent moon shadows cross the floor.
Johnny Carson ended and the light in the living room went out.
She gave it another hour by the bedside clock before she crept
from the bed and pulled on her heaviest coat and the backpack.
She stuffed all her own money into her pockets, then pried open
the green turtle bank on the bottom bookshelf and extracted
fourteen dollars and some change. So it was his birthday money,
big deal. She needed it more.
The window opened and closed smoothly; she'd been practicing. It
wasn't too cold out, not like the bitter chill in her dreams, but
her breath puffed before her as she slipped through the yards.
She dreamed a lot, but rarely remembered anything. Sometimes
there were people, and waves. Sometimes she could almost
remember their faces when she woke up.
There was no point in thinking about that right now. First she
had to get away.
***
There was a message when he got back to college. "Call your
mother," said the note in his pigeonhole. It looked like that
prick Donaldson had taken the message, which meant that she had
heard all about the little incident in hall. He crumpled the
scrap of paper and climbed the stairs towards his room.
***
She had decided she was old enough now to be able to survive on
her own. For the past few years, she had been waiting for the
time when she was tall enough, fast enough, old enough to escape.
She knew all the horror stories about the life of a runaway. But
it would still be better than this mockery of a home life,
punctuated by half-remembered agony. And things had been getting
worse; if she waited until she was grown she was afraid she
wouldn't come back at all.
The tests came at irregular intervals, usually separated by a
period of 4-6 weeks. She thought she was returned on a Monday,
and two days later she felt well enough to start walking, then
running again. Two weeks later she made her move.
Tonight she felt as strong as she ever had. The big problem
would be getting over the fence without being spotted. There was
no barbed wire above the metal mesh, and she was half a mile from
the nearest gate. It would have to do.
The moon moved behind a bank of clouds; she raced out across the
field and towards the fence.
***
He couldn't face dining in hall today; instead he threw on a
jacket and went out of the college. After dodging around garbage
scattered in piles on the rain-wet streets, he found himself
below a poorly lit sign, with steps leading down to an open
doorway. He plodded down the worn stone stairs into the pub.
It still shocked him that he could buy beer so easily. Was he so
different a person than he had been in Massachusetts? He caught
a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind the bar and turned
away. No different: still a morose and awkward American.
He drank a pint before ordering the special: a starchy stew with
half a loaf of stale bread. It lodged in his stomach. If he
were home, in October on the Vineyard, it would be crisp and
cool, the leaves skittering across the yards, the maples curling
scarlet in the cold.
And his father would be there, slouched on the porch with a
scotch in his hand.
***
The fence was behind her now, and she was in the woods along the
road. It was four miles or more to Willow. Then another few
miles to the interstate, where she might be able to catch a ride
to San Francisco. She walked carefully; if her clothes were torn
or dirty she would draw attention.
Houses began to appear, the low-rent housing that surrounded all
military bases, where the enlisted men and their families lived.
It was late and the houses were dark, only a few dogs noticed her
passing. Once a door opened and someone yelled; she jumped
before she realized he was calling for "Zeke."
The temperature had dropped. She stuffed her hands deep into her
pockets, hunching her shoulders up around her ears. It slowed
her down, but she was getting so cold.
***
"Hey, aren't you at Magdalen?"
Mulder raised his head from the table, his brain twitching from
the statistics. Oak Bluff High's mathematics department had been
weak, and he felt way over his head with this.
Two vaguely familiar young men, wearing the students' uniform of
jeans and T-shirts, blocked the dim light from the bar.
"Yeah," he said, dropping his head back to the text. They didn't
move. "You're in my light."
"You're a Yank."
He'd already learned enough to identify the nasal whine that came
with privilege. "Yeah."
"Chatty, too, I see." The first of them, somewhat darker than
the other, dropped into the battered chair on the other side of
the table. "I'm Tom, and this is Peter."
Mulder shrugged. "Mulder." Tom waved at the bartender for more
beer. Warm British beer, not the cold horse-piss he'd spewed
over the edge of the Costleys' dock last July. Peter sat down
between Tom and Mulder, pushed the statistics text to the side.
"I'll get out of your way." Mulder pulled the book closer and
began to gather his papers.
"Oh, give it a rest! It's Thursday!" Peter's beer arrived and he
lifted it with a lopsided grin. "Besides, you have statistics
with Jameson, don't you?"
Already bundling up his coat and backpack, Mulder paused, his
attention caught. He looked closer. He had seen Peter before,
he realized: the other student lived on the same staircase as he
did. "Yeah, that's right."
"Well Jameson's aunt died and she won't be back til Monday. So
sit your arse down and have a pint." Peter took a long draw from
his beer and thunked it back down with a happy sigh.
Tom and Peter were about Mulder's age and much like him, but
without the air of uncertainty and disorientation he had been
wrapped in for the past six weeks. They looked relaxed, slumped
in their chairs with no decisions before them more difficult than
how many pints to drink tonight.
Tom, his black T-shirt proclaiming his allegiance to Johnny
Rotten, ran a finger around the foamy rim of his glass and
shrugged. "Your choice, mate. Do you really think studying
tonight will make that much difference?"
October on the Vineyard was cold, he remembered. It was warm in
here, if dim, and the beer was good. And he had the weekend off,
to think about whether psychology was really what he wanted to
do.
Mulder closed the book and sat back down at the table. "I'll
have one of those."
***
Willow was behind her. She was walking east, and the rice and
alfalfa fields were beginning to open up around her as the light
spread. She hadn't moved as fast as she planned; it was almost
dawn and she hadn't reached the highway yet.
There was no cover. She was on the side of a two-lane road,
hemmed in by farm fences and open fields. Soon the traffic would
start passing, people driving to Sacramento offices, trucks full
of migrant workers traveling to the fields. People would notice
her. She had to move faster.
Her legs were so tired now, but she managed to summon up the
energy for a slow jog. The backpack bounced against her back and
threw off her stride. She tightened the straps, snugging it
closer to her body. It was going to be a long two miles, but she
thought she might make it before the sun rose.
By dawn she was about a quarter mile from the highway overpass
and the truck stop. The yellow poplars planted around the
parking lot wavered in the heat rising off the idling tractor-
trailer engines. One of the truckers would give her a ride. She
would do whatever she had to. Anything at all. Somehow she
would get to the city, and then no one would be able to find her.
The eastern horizon was ruler-flat, broken only by occasional
windbreaks and transmission lines. As the sun crept upward and
lanced into her eyes, she heard an engine behind her.
Shit fuck damn.
She had ducked and rolled behind a withering raspberry bush
before she even looked at the car. Keeping her body low, she
waited a long minute before raising her head out of the ditch.
The morning sun dazzled her eyes but she could still see the
silhouette of the Yolo County police cruiser moving away, three
hundred yards down the road.
Samantha struggled out of the ditch and slapped at the mud
crusting bits of yellow leaves to her jeans. That was too close;
if the cops picked her up this close to the base they'd take her
right back. She had to be more careful.
She was thirteen years and eleven months old, and she was never
going back.