Seeking Grace by CazQ CATEGORY: MSR, SA SPOILERS: Assumes knowledge of the series up to mid-season five:after 'Emily' but probably pre-'Patient X' SUMMARY: Scully thinks too much in an angsty way and, natch, goes to Mulder hoping he can help her find some answers. You wanna know the rest then read it! DISCLAIMER: OK, repeat after me...they're not mine, never were or will be. Mulder, Scully, Melissa Scully, Emily and everyone/thing else connected with the X Files belongs to 10-13, 20th Century Fox, and of course The Boss, Chris Carter and all his partners in crime. Hey, I'd let them have a lot more fun. No copyright infringement or insult intended. No money will be made out of this and I have none so suing me would do no one but the lawyers any good. The words of the prayer in this piece are taken from the translation given in the booklet accompanying the Elektra Nonesuch recording of Henryk Gorecki's stunning Third Symphony. If you aren't familiar with it it's an incredible, moving piece of music and I recommend getting your hands on a copy. Now, on with the show... ----------------------- The shrill of my phone brings me back to myself, snapping me back to awareness of my surroundings. For a moment I am thrown, disoriented. The voice filling my apartment makes no sense...my voice, that's right, my voice on the machine. The high tone, then a dull click as whoever it was hangs up, and the busy whirr as the tape rewinds. I haven't moved an inch. My gaze remains locked on my reflection in the bathroom mirror. How long have I been standing here? From a great distance, I notice that my bare feet are cold on the tiles. I have been staring at my own face now for so long that it has become the face of a stranger. It is a curious sensation: I suddenly feel that I am wearing my body like an ill-fitting suit of clothes. Yet I continue to consider this stranger's appearance, cataloguing her features with scientific detachment. Her mouth: not bad, full, a furled rosebud, slight fine lines just beginning to make a phantom appearance at the corners. Her skin: a pale, classic Irish complexion, spattered here and there with faint freckles, clean of makeup. It is clear, translucent, marred only by the tiny beauty spot on the upper lip and the persistent dark shadows curving lovingly round the eyes. Yes, the eyes: large, the whites slightly pink, cobwebbed with blood vessels, the effects of too little sleep, too much fear. The irises piercingly blue, troubled oceans. The dark well of the pupils, a mirror within a mirror where I dare not look. I have to close my eyes and shake my head to break the spell, to remember that that face belongs to me. I snap the bathroom light off and pad into the living room, moving around restlessly, unable to settle. I left a CD playing...I forget which. Oh yes: Gorecki's Third. I've become fond of this one lately, sometimes opening the windows, turning up the volume and letting the plangent strings and searing voice of the soprano pour out into the quiet streets. I love the First Movement the most, the arc of the notes moving up from dark, quiet depths, ascending slowly and inevitably until the impassioned prayer, the Holy Cross Lament, rings out from the bell-tower of sound: "My son, my chosen and beloved, share your wounds with your mother and because, dear son, I have always carried you in my heart, and always served you faithfully, speak to your mother, to make her happy, although you are already leaving me, my cherished hope." Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for me now, and at the hour of my death... I move to the window and look out through the blinds at the soft night, holding onto the window frame for support as my legs momentarily refuse to support me. Unbidden, my mind returns to the thoughts it has been circling round all evening. Who are you, Dana Katherine Scully? Who are you? Such simple things trigger off self-torture. Clearing out a drawer...a picture of my sister... ...smiling, a wide, genuine grin for whoever is behind the camera, wearing a simple print dress, leaning against a railing, looking completely at ease. I always envied her that, the natural way she inhabited her body, living calmly, self-assuredly, wearing her life like a pair of old, worn in jeans, moving through it with a kind of easy grace. From there, such a short step to wondering why I have not been able to live that way, to all the answers I cannot keep pressed down in my dark little box of secrets. I have lost myself, and I am ashamed. I never thought I would become this person, splintered, fragmented. I suppose to the world at large I don't appear that way, which is something at least, but what sense is there in denying it to myself? Oh yes, all the dark little truths are crawling out of the woodwork tonight. I look at my life with as much cold, professional detachment as I can muster, and what I see is everything I never dreamt I would become. I see a lonely, empty woman, one who spends her days denying what might make her whole. A tired, tired woman who has been to hell and back in a hand-basket one too many times, who has sacrificed and sacrificed and will keep on offering up what remains until there is nothing left. A woman whose very body is controlled by other hands, played like a puppet from the shadows. A woman who does not know herself. I could never have imagined that the crisis would happen this way. Surely these struggles with one's monsters should be waged under more dramatic circumstances, not in the warmth and security of one's own home? Maybe for normal people. The truth is, I have gone so many rounds with my monsters already that I can face up to them pretty much anywhere I like, just open up the door and invite them out to play. Tonight, please resist the cataloguing of your agonies, Scully (and when the hell did I stop being Dana and start being Scully in my own head?)... No use, we're in for the full sound and light show tonight, ladies and gentlemen. So, for a curtain raiser, how about the one that's been on my mind a lot lately, like every time I see a woman with her kid in the supermarket, or a pregnant lady carrying her precious burden down the street, hands cradled protectively over her belly. The fact that my only daughter, mine and yet not mine, came into my life and was snatched away almost as quickly. The fact that she will never have little brothers and sisters, that my unborn children, my futures, have been stolen from me. Then of course there's the fact that I'm less scared by what I remember of my life than by what I don't, that my control over my memory was taken from me at the same time as my children, my dignity and my certainties, at the same time as I was given a certain dark, malignant little present. Of course, if I turn away from opening that particular Pandora's box right now, I can always skip to the suspicion that my sister, my Missy, who died in my stead, seems to have been dialing me up from beyond the grave -- and I am too afraid to look any closer at that experience. But why don't we go for broke tonight folks, for the empty space in my life, in my bed, for the candidate I've had in mind for so long to fill that space, and for his damned crusade, for the rock wall I've built up so well between myself and him? Oh yeah, look but don't touch, that's a good one. Why, I do believe we've hit the jackpot right there, people! I sink to the floor and quietly begin to cry, not sobbing, more a slow, hopeless, weary shaking. What have I become? ------------------------------- I am in my car, parked across the street from Mulder's building. I have been here for half an hour now, and I have still not been able to get out of the car. How ridiculous. How me, these days at least. He is home, I can see that from where I sit, peering out through the rain that began to drum without warning on the windshield a few minutes ago, falling steadily out of the blackness. This seemed such a reasonable idea when I first conceived it in the cocoon of my own apartment. The drive over, however, gave me time to think and to re-think, and now I simply sit here, balanced between the devil and the deep blue sea, between going in there to lay my heart open to him and turning the key in the ignition and heading home. There are so many good reasons to up and leave, reasons I've gone over thousands of times: in the emptiness of my bed, on the nights when my body cries out for him; in the passenger seat of a rental car, watching his mouth move as he speaks; in the cool and calm of the basement, suddenly transfixed, rendered helpless by the way the light strikes his skin, falling into the delicious madness of my desire. They are all very good reasons; but goddammit, I am so sick and tired of them all of a sudden. Christ, why can't I for once go with what my instincts are telling me? Why do I have to make everything so complex? Surely at bottom it always comes down to a simple choice, to yes or no, to truth of lie, to joy or sorrow, to stay or go? ------------------------- I knock several times before he opens the door. He peers out at me, blinking sleep from his eyes. His hair is sticking out every which way in a bad case of bed-head (or couch head in this case, some small, still-sane part of me amends), and he is wearing only a faded, torn grey T-shirt and boxers. Christ but he is beautiful. There is a long moment of silence before the lights go on in his head and he registers that it is indeed me at his door at 2am, that I am soaking and shivering and that yes, I have been crying. "Jesus, Scully, what is it? You're soaked through. Is there..." I can hear the currents of fear and concern running in his sleep-roughened voice, can see the worry in his eyes. I know what he is thinking: only bad news arrives at this time of night, way past the witching hour. "Nothing's wrong, Mulder. Can I please come inside?" He draws me into the apartment and hurries off to get me a towel as I discard my sodden coat, hanging it neatly on that ridiculous coatstand of his. He returns with not one but a whole armful of towels, but then stops dead, staring at me as I stand on his doormat, dripping and shivering. "Jesus, Scully..." he says again, more quietly, tailing off. He is silhouetted aginst the dim light from the lamp in his living-room, and I cannot see his face, but I can *feel* his eyes on me. "I...Mulder, I..." Words refuse to come. My brain appears to have gone into shut-down mode. The next second the towels hit the floor and I am being gathered into his arms, wrapped around with warmth and strength, my head tucked under his chin in a perfect fit, my hands automatically making their way to the long muscled planes of his back, and I am crying, crying up a storm this time. These, though are cleansing tears, purification. Somewhere very far away I can hear him repeating two words again and again, a strange litany, his voice catching slightly: "Scully, oh Scully".I cling to Mulder, a drowning woman holding onto her lifeline, and at length, as such things must, the storm passes and we stand, quiet, together, bodies at rest. From here I can hear his heart beating, the steady sigh of his breath: I could swear I can hear the rush and whisper of his blood in his veins. It is warm, comfortable, easy, *right* here. I pray that he will not speak yet, and for now he seems content to stand silently, breathing, just breathing. Eventually his hand, which, I am suddenly aware, has been stroking my hair, comes to tilt my face up towards him. "Scully," he murmurs. I cannot meet his eyes. My name spoken like a caress. I cannot -- "Scully". Slightly more insistent. I look up slowly and I am undone by love. His eyes hold me, tying me to earth, searching me. They are moss and forests and whispered secrets. My mouth is dry and my blood is thrumming, my body suddenly taut as a bow string. In another second one of us will surely break the connection and this will be dead, this moment of wonder. It will be now or it will never be. I ask him to tell me who I am in the only way I can. For a moment he is completely still against me, his mouth unmoving under mine, and then the world is reduced to his kiss, to the devastation of his mouth, to his hand cradling my face, to the warmth of his tongue gently asking entrance, urging my surrender, caressing. We are enclosed by eternity. He has reduced me to chaos and it is bliss. A lifetime later I surface, returning to awareness of myself. I have kissed Fox Mulder, and the world has continued to turn. I have not stopped breathing. I am having trouble processing that fact. Somehow I find it within me to look at him again. His expression is a sweet knife to my heart, engraved instantly on my memory, a divine blend of awe, happiness, disbelief, tenderness and yes, a good helping of desire. And then he says the words. The words I half-believed I would never hear from him. "I love you, Scully". Spoken with a quiet certainty that unravels my heart. Anyone else might be insulted to have a man address them by their surname when declaring their love, but not me, not from this man: from him, Scully is a term of endearment, Dana the name he uses when something is wrong, and this is right and natural and good. This is Mulder. "I guess maybe you know that already. I...God, Scully, I don't know where that came from but...", he leans forward and kisses away the tears trickling hot down my face, "I'm sure glad it did. I love you so much". He says the words this time as if he is tasting them, luxuriating in the feel of them on his tongue, with the slightest edge of shyness creeping in. I slide my hands through the dark silk of his hair, over his shoulders, down his chest. I feel as if my heart is trying to burst out of my body, fluttering madly inside the prison of my ribcage like a bird taking flight, overflowing with some nameless rush of emotion. I am alive, springs of living water flowing through, over and around me. He has given me my answer. "I love you too." Would it always have been that easy to say? I marvel at the way the sounds form in my mouth, understanding what he felt a moment ago fully. Would it always have felt that good to say? "I guess that scares me a little...no, a lot, Mulder." "That's alright, Scully. That's alright." I sigh and he sees the exhaustion evident in my face. "Scully, " he says gently, "stay the night. I want you to stay the night with me." I stiffen immediately against him. It's not that I don't want to -- God help me, I want to so very much -- but I'm not ready to take that leap, not tonight. I feel as if I could sleep forever, despite the life he has transfused me with through his kiss, the energy that still courses through me. All I want at this moment is to stay here for years, anchored, secure in the circle of his arms. Sanctuary, Mulder, I think silently. I claim sanctuary. He must feel this change , for he immediately kisses the top of my head and whispers "No, Scully, not that, not now. I won't lie to you, I've wanted you so much, for so long now, but I'm not going anywhere, and I was hoping you wouldn't be either. I just want to sleep with you, Scully, just to hold you and sleep with you." I relax instantly as this filters through, and then I feel his mouth against my ear, the heat of his breath as he lowers his voice and says "I'm not making any promises about tomorrow, mind you". I shiver a little at the delicious edge of wickedness in his voice and the intimacy of this. Without warning, he scoops me up and carries me into his bedroom, ignoring my squeak of surprise. I am delighted to see that not only does Mulder have a bedroom, there is a real bed in here too. He sets me down and I slide under the covers, only pausing long enough to kick off my shoes, my limbs already too heavy to contemplate undressing. He slips in beside me and moulds his body to mine. It feels as natural as breathing. God, he is so warm and he smells so good, so Mulder: like soap and old leather and something indescribably male. Mulder pushes back my hair and kisses my temple, murmuring in the soft nonsense voice a parent uses to lull a child to sleep, "That's OK now, Scully, that's OK. Why don't we just rest a little now, huh? Sleep now, we'll talk more tomorrow." Unable to keep the childlike joy from creeping into his tone, he adds softly, "We'll have all the time we need to talk." This makes sense. This feels right. Finally, I have had the sense to recognise that I don't know how to let him go. Finally, I have come home. He has given me my answer, and I find that I knew it all along. I fall asleep to the music of his breathing and the constant cadence of his heartbeat, and my sleep is deep and dreamless. END