Sue (susieqla@yahoo.com)
Title : I Knew Who She Was (1 of 1)
Rating: PG
Category: TLG(FY)/Vignette
Spoiler : The Pilot/Essence/Existence
Disclaimer: C. Carter, 1013 Productions, Fox
hold all rights to their creations.




I Knew Who She Was



"What's this all about, Frohike? Why are you
being so clandestine for pity's sake?" Yves
takes another slow sip of gin. You watch her,
careful not to let your thoughts gel into the
lascivious. She doesn't know who you really
are yet, but after tonight, for her sake, and
for yours, she will.

She sponges away the libation's excess with the
tip of her tongue on her lower lip the color
of a blazing fire, and you wrestle with those
thoughts you vowed you aren't allowed to have.

"Once I finish my drink, I'm out of here unless
you tell me what it is you wanted to tell me,"
she says, and this time you know she means what
she says.

This dusky drinking establishment was made for
her. It brings out the deep darkness of her
sultry eyes. Eyes that have the uncomfortable
habit of seeing right through a person.

She has her mother's eyes. Once she looked
at you the way Yves is looking at you now. They
are filled with a sorrow you could never hope to
allay; not in your wildest dreams. It's funny,
you think, how dreams, wild or otherwise, have a
way of asserting themselves into real life.

'Watch over my dear girl, Melv. I'm counting
on you. You and she are all I've got. I'm just
so tired.' Those words, uttered over twenty-five
years ago in that antiseptic hospital room in
London, have never left you. The words didn't,
but you made a promise incapable of being
fulfilled. Ultimately, *he'd* seen to that.

Yves drains her glass, and dabs at her mouth
daintily with the flimsy cocktail napkin. "I'm
late for my appointment. I've got to run--"

"Sit down," you say sternly. She gapes at you,
unaccustomed to your using that tone with her.

From not too far away, a giddy woman is laughing
with abandon. The laughter is reminiscent of
another's. Your eyes divert in its direction
for just a second and then quickly re-focus on
Yves.

"You can't leave until I tell you what I came
here to tell you. Dammit, Yves..."

Sighing exacerbatedly, she replies, "My, aren't
we testy tonight. You know, right about now
would be the perfect time for you to get on
with it. All this dragging of whatever it is
out is bordering on the absurd."

"I know who you are. I really do."

"So you've said," Yves imposes with a brief,
but dramatic roll of her eyes, like you're so
full of yourself.

You regard her with not a muscle in your face
moving. You wonder what her dearly-departed
mother, your beloved sister, who had chosen
to remain in England, dead these many years,
would think of the kind of woman her daughter
has become. Not too far from following in
the footsteps of her estranged father...

Talking from somewhere deep inside yourself,
because you don't want her to see the full scope
of your remorse, you say, "This won't be easy
for you to hear,..." You want to. You've been
wanting to since the incredible happened and
she so unforeseenly burst upon the scene of
your life.

You had meant to keep that promise to her
mother, but your own life intruded. It needed
salvaging, as it was turning out. How it has
turned out. 'Nam did a number on the world,
you lament, never taking your eyes off your
sister's child's face. Her face nearly the
spitting image of her mother's, instilled
with her father's coloring.

You had, at one time, thought, she had come to
tell you who she was. Her real name is on the
tip of your tongue.

"Hannah..."

Yves' eyes widen like saucers, and she looks
as though you've just smacked her across the
face. "H-How," she chokes out when she sees
this was something you've kept from her over
time.

"I knew your mother."

"How could you have known my mother?" she
says in the same manner as an accusal.

"Known you since you were born." Faintly,
in the cockles of your mind you think you
hear a drumroll. "Your mother was my sister."
You have never heard the beauty gasp that
loudly before.

Before your eyes she's become that sprite of
a girl your sister used to like to dress in
frilly blues and violets; matching ribbons
in her hair, when she was three.

"That isn't possible," Yves denies with a smirk
that rivals one of Langly's. "Ludicrous."

"Oh, it's possible all right. We were there."

"The next thing you'll be telling me is that
you knew my father, which I know would be a
lie. My father's in a convalescent home in
Englewood, New Jersey."

"Your father was evil incarnate."

"How dare you!" Her outburst gains unwanted
attention.

"That man in Jersey isn't your real father.
Greg Haynes is the man who tried to restore
some happiness to your mom, at least for a
short time, anyway." Yves' eyes cast soften.
"I'm your uncle, Yves. Not a very good one,
but guilty as charged." Your eyes cross. "I
mean, _Hannah_." In a lowered voice you say,
"And I didn't look that up in some mysterious
file. I played along with the anagrams until
the right moment, and got up my nerve."

"I, Fro--"

"I tried keeping tabs on you, on your
whereabouts over the years. Hell, it wasn't
easy. It wasn't until learning about that
little situation you pulled south of the
border which drew too much attention in the
circles we run in that I got a fix, and kept
it, playing it tight. And then you started
zigzagging across our paths. Coincidence is
a bitch, ain't it?"

"I don't believe you, Frohike," Yves flings,
visibly rocked. Her breathing quickens.
"You're lying."

"Why would I do that?" you ask levelly,
reaching out with your fingers to touch the
knobby portion of feminine wrist. "She
sure as hell didn't deserve me as a brother.
I let her down enough. Still doin' that in
spades." Your sigh leaves your body, draining
you. "Your mother was such a loving, giving
person." 

"Everything I'm _not_," Yves snaps.

"Everything you try hard not to be, but
haven't exactly got it down pat. There's a
lot of your mother in you, Hannah. She cared
until it hurt, literally." Your voice turns
bitter. "Before she got mixed up with the
devil."

Yves casts her eyes to the thinly-shellacked
table as though looking into a reedy pond,
you assess. Her hand recoils from your touch.
"M-My mum was a very sad woman. She lived the
way she always was. That is how I remembered
her before she died, and I went to live with--"

"Clara. I know. Another sister, living in
Vancouver. Until you went off to England, to
school."

"Y-Yes..." Yves stares at you, looking a mix
of profoundly dazed, then puzzled, but you know
she has chosen to wholly believe you when she
asks, "Frohike...my real father." Her pause
fills with speculative expectation. "What was
he like?" Regretfulness stains her voice.

The miserable son-of-a-bitch, you mentally
decry, but don't put it to her that way. The
kid's taken it on the chin, as tough as ever,
so you say, "He was a mistake, and I told Grace
so, but she had fallen madly in love with him.
Nothing I said, as the older brother, could
have ended them." Yves lifts up her head,
wanting to see the fire in your eyes she knows
you have when you get worked up. "The bastard's
never told the truth a day in his life, and
dedicated the balance of his life, distorting
it, camouflaging it, burying it. He ran out on
her, all those years ago, with Gracie never
getting over him doing that shit to her. Never
got over him."

"How do you know, if he left mum when I was
still a babe-in-arms, as she had often told
me?"

Well, that much never changed, you think, seeing
as how she is still quite the babe.

Then, you sneer, and your smile, one that speaks
of malevolent, raw hatred, asserts itself first.
"By bizarre twists and turns of sick fate. I
know him, have known, going on a long time now.
He seeped back, so to speak, several years
ago." Through your fateful association with
Mulder, you inwardly rue.

So caught up in a maze of distracted thought
are you, her question almost goes unheard.
"W-Where is he now, Frohike? Do you know?" She
jiggles your hand, the one that tried to touch
her before. "_Fro_hike, my father. Who is he?
I want to know."

You shake your head, and rejoin her in the
present. Her resiliency, just one of her
damn father's many traits, you have abhorred
and cursed over the years, proves to be your
re-activator.

"He's dead, Hannah."

"Dead?" she says as though you've given and
taken away in the same breath. "How?"

You drain the second shot glass which held
the J&B, and you reach for the third. "Months
ago. One of his own operatives, a man who
went by the name of Krycek, and his whore
pushed him down a flight of stairs in his
wheelchair."

"Good, God."

"He gave chain smoking a whole new definition.
Given long enough, he would have succumbed
to lung cancer." You pause a bit as your vivid
imagination plays out the vindictive murder.
"I could say, 'sorry,' but I'd be lying."

You down the third shot in one gulp, and wipe
your mouth off on your leather sleeve.

"What was his name?" She asked that with a
strong sense of oral mystique.

You hesitate, having more than an inkling of
suspicion that when you tell, she'll brand you
a liar for sure.

"I want--I've got to know." Then she hesitates,
but after a beat says straightforwardly,
"Melvin, please. You must tell me." You can't
deny those eyes. "If you're really my uncle as
you claim, then you will. I've no feelings to
spare. Remember?"

You want to kick yourself where the sun don't
shine for having said that to her a week or
so ago. "I never meant to say anything so
crappy," you say as though it's penance, your
stab of conscience making you smart.

"What's said, is said. Now, tell me what I
need to know...Uncle."

Wishing you had a fourth shot to down before
dropping the name like the bomb it is, you
look at her long and not as hard as you first
felt.

"His name was...C.G.B. Spender."

"The devil's own," Yves-now-Hannah susurrates,
and clutches your hand convulsively. "And
what does that make me?" she asks in a small,
defeated voice, so uncharacteristic of her.

Now you wish it had been you instead of Krycek
who'd done the deed. "My sister's beautiful,
brilliant daughter," you reassure her. Your
hand covers over hers and you further, "The
child I'll love and protect as best I can, for
as long as I live."

Her eyes glisten with tears in just that special
way her mother's always did. Your hands clasp,
with her grip matching your own, and you know
you did the right thing by them both.

A thoughtful look overshadows her bemused
statement. "Shall we tell Byers and Langly,
then? Unless you already have..."

You shake your head, and avow, "I had to tell
you first, my dear. You squeeze her hands.
"I'll let you make that call," you easily say,
confident that she'll make the right one.


~o~o~
End