SPOILERS: To Serve And Protect. Answers the FAQ "Why didn't Mr. or Mrs.
Evans notice that their daughter was screaming a lot the past couple of
days?"
SUMMARY: Diane-centric fic.
RATING: Not too bad, I'd say PG.
DISCLAIMER: Metz, Katims, WB. Metz, Katims, WB. All together now.
Philip was out of town again when it happened.
Diane Evans was jerked from sleep, her heart racing and her blood freezing in her veins as she heard that sound again, that sound that she thought was behind her.
She heard her daughter scream.
For one fleeting, half-awake moment, she thought she was twelve years younger, the memory was so strong, but as she let the broken pieces of her consciousness come together again she realized that the voice was not the same. It wasn't the high, piercing shriek of a little girl; it was the pained and agonized cry of a woman.
Diane held her breath.
There was terror and heartbreak and confusion and pain in those screams, wordless at first, then morphing to become her son's name.
Max. Max, help me.
Diane began to shake uncontrollably. Emotions warring under her ribs, she fought to stay where she was. Clutching at her covers with white-knuckled hands, the tears sprang from her eyes without her knowledge. Don't go, Diane, stay where you are. Isabel's screams tuned into nonsense nightmarish phrases.
Stop. No. You don't have to do this. Please.
Please.
A helpless cry escaped Diane's lips, and she half lost her internal struggle. Unable to bear hearing her daughter so scared, so panicked, in so much pain, she staggered clumsily from her bed, only to physically restrain herself from walking out of that door, into the hallway, and into Isabel's room.
Help me. Please.
She sagged against the cold, hard wood of the door, letting it support her suddenly boneless frame. She seemed trapped in this hellish limbo that looked so much like her bedroom as the wounded noises coming from her eighteen-year-old were replaced by the memory of the high-pitched wail of a little lost six-year-old. She'd been through this scenario before, and she didn't want to go to her daughter now. She didn't think she could stay standing if she walked in there and saw her children looking at her with solemn and guarded eyes the way they had so long ago. Diane had taken Isabel to see a psychologist who had informed the worried Evanses that night terrors were not uncommon among children that age, that if asked, Isabel would not remember having a bad dream. In other words, she was just screaming to the night.
Isabel, wake up. It's only a dream, Isabel. Wake up.
Philip used to have to rock Diane to sleep as she wept after those episodes. They would awaken, the unnamed fear clawing at their hearts, and race into her room only to find the same thing every time. Max, already there, comforting his sister. They would always turn their perfect little faces calmly towards their frantic parents, looking at them like they had just been speaking about them, a little guiltily. It was always Isabel that had made her cry… she would go to the little girl, and Isabel would just stare at her, not saying a word, the tears already drying on her cheeks, seeming to marvel at her mother's presence there. Diane would dream about it, but in the dreams Isabel would always tell her the same thing: "You can't help me, mommy."
The screaming from down the hall had stopped. She couldn't make out the phrases, but she heard Max's deep voice, already the voice of a man, speaking lowly to Isabel, calming her as she sobbed softly, the final clutches of the dream leaving her in spasms.
She had always known, really. In the beginning, she tried to make them her own. She bought Max action figures and model cars, and he always said thank you, retiring to his room to play with them in private. Her sweet, haunted, secretive son. She had left this little fact stay buried: when she and Philip went back to the adoption agency to claim the children they had found that night in the desert, she hadn't wanted to take Max home. He just didn't feel like hers, she said, and Philip got angry with her. She had never seen him so upset with her, telling her all the things that she already knew. It would be wrong to separate them, we found them and they are our responsibility, we'll have a son as well as a daughter. And of course, she had nodded and said yes, yes, I want the boy, too. But when she had reached for him, to enfold him in her embrace, he had pulled back, breaking her heart for the first of many times. Max would break her heart, and Isabel would heal it. That little golden girl approached her shyly, hiding her smile behind one hand and taking Diane's hand in her other one. Diane had never known what it was to cry for joy until that day. Isabel's hand was soft and warm and so tiny, and it felt like love.
But when they had settled the children in at home, the screaming started.
And she knew, the first time she had torn down the hallway and into her room, the first time their two pairs of eyes regarded her with secrets dancing behind them, she knew.
These children do not belong to me. These children were never mine.
Diane sat on the carpeted floor of her bedroom, her palm pressed up against the closed door. She heard them getting dressed, heard them sneak out of Isabel's bedroom window. She didn't stop them.
She cherished the in-between times. She bought books on hairstyling and taught herself how to transform Isabel's hair into decorative patterns, and when Isabel was old enough she taught her how to do it herself. She taught Max how to make a thanksgiving dinner when she realized that Isabel had no patience for cooking. She nursed scraped knees and elbows. She took them to the park and watched them run and play in the sunshine.
She tried to forget all the strange things that happened hand in hand with those happy times. She would put Isabel's hair in a french braid, and Isabel would come downstairs not five minutes later with her hair in two french braids. She would rush into the kitchen when she smelled smoke, certain that Max had burned the turkey to a crisp and found nothing but the most perfectly made dinner she could have imagined. The scraped appendages she nursed in the mornings were completely healed by dinnertime. Instead of swinging on the swings, her children healed crippled pigeons.
So she kept the door closed, even when it killed her inside. When she wanted to lock her strange children in the house and scream and rage at them to just please let her in, just tell her what was going on. When she wanted nothing more than to hold her daughter close, her daughter who smiled less and less every day, until everything was all better. When she wanted to shake her son, to tell him that his being miserable was making her miserable and to let her help him fix it. When those things happened, she just shut the door, and when her children snuck out their windows, she prayed to God that he would keep them safe.
Please, God, don't let them be hurt.
Please, God, protect them from whatever it is that they're so afraid of.
Please, God, help me understand them.
Please, God, help me to not be afraid of them.
Because I don't know them, God, not really. I don't know where they go or what they do or what they're thinking or feeling. I don't know how to talk to them. I thank you, God, for them every day, and I mean it. My life would mean nothing without them. But I can't help them, and I'm hoping that you can.
And I don't know how much longer I can go on screaming to the night.