DISCLAIMER:  The characters of this piece belong to Chris Carter,
1013 Productions and the Fox network  I mean no infringement.

This is a Scully 1st Person vignette, post-"Emily" and contains
spoilers.  You've been warned.

Category:  V, A
Rating:  PG for disturbing subject matter
Spoilers:  US Season 5
All other information withheld at the request of the author.

SHOOTING STAR:  "Shatter"
by Anne Haynes
 


I had a dream last Christmas Eve. 

I dreamed I was sitting in front of the fire at our old house in
San Diego the Christmas before I entered the FBI Academy, and my
sister came and listened to my fears about the future.

It didn't really happen that way--not exactly.  It was May, not
December, when I stood on the brink of a new life, hovering
apprehensively between what had seemed right before and what
seemed right now.  And it had been in the middle of the day, on a
sunny Memorial Day in Maryland, not Christmas in California.
Melissa had been wearing denim cut-offs, not a Laura Ashley
print, and I was wearing an old Navy sweatshirt covered with
grass stains from a game of football with my dad and my brothers
earlier that morning.

But as in my dream, Melissa had told me to follow my heart, and
I'd told her she sounded like a greeting card--only not as nicely
as I remembered in the dream.  I remember her words again, here
in the early morning silence of the FBI Academy, wondering if
there's enough left of my heart to follow.  

Down the corridor, through a set of steel double doors, a small
body is being opened and studied, and if I think about it I'll go
mad, but I can't NOT think about it, because I am an authority on
death and its aftermath, and the images in my mind are visceral
and inescapable, and bile rises in my throat, and I fight and
fight and fight for control, precious control, as if it can save
me.  

"Life is a path."  Melissa's words echo in my mind, spool out in
endless repetition, like a mantra.  I smother myself in the
words.

The door to the office opens, and my whole body jerks at the
sound.  

"I'm sorry."  Mulder stops in the open doorway.  He bears two
Styrofoam cups;  I smell the hot, strong coffee, and I shake my
head involuntarily as I feel my stomach rebel. 

He shuts the door and leaves the cups on a nearby desk.  He
crosses to my side.  I look up at him, noting the red rim of his
eyes.  Today, his eyes are a strange shade of mossy silver, like
mountain pools reflecting a gunmetal sky.  I find myself wanting
to drown in them, to sink to the dark, cool, silty bottom where
pain can't find me anymore.

His hands flex at his sides; I know he wants to touch me, but
he's afraid.  I'm afraid, too--I'm afraid that I'll disintegrate
at his touch.  But I need him to touch me, as well.  He
understands me like no other, not even my mother.  He has seen
what I have seen.  He knows what I know.  Finally, I need him to 
touch me to remind me that I am not alone in this endless abyss 
of pain.

His hand lifts to my face, and I close my eyes, curling my cheek
into his palm.  His hand is warm and trembling; I hear a soft,
shuddery intake of breath, and I am not sure if it has come from
him or from me.  I'm not sure it matters. 

I want to thank him for being my strength for the past few months,
but I think gratitude would wound him in some way.  Guilt is his
glue; it holds him together in his grief, and though I want so
desperately for him to let go of his need to take on the weight
of the world, I know he doesn't yet have anything to replace it. 
He doesn't know how to let go and embrace the pain, to let it
cleanse him with its purifying fire.  I don't know how to do this
either--but I'm learning.  And when I'm stronger, I will teach
him as well.

His fingers curl in my hair, threading and twining.  I lift my
eyes and meet his dark gaze.  I am surprised but not shocked to
see a flicker of hunger there.  He wants me.  He wants to take me
inside him and hold me there, cocooned against the cruelty of
life.  He wants to lock me in the cage of his heart where no harm
can come.   And yet, he also wants to bury himself inside me and
hide from the pain and the cruelty of a world where lives are
created and destroyed by men who have no concept of what a
sacrilege they commit.  My body surges with a hard, fierce rush
of answering heat.  In the ancient rhythm of life, we respond to
death with an animal need to create new life. 

But there is no new life to be created.  And we are not animals. 

Not all of us.

Mulder crouches next to me, his eyes locked with mine, telling me
a million jumbled, wordless things about pain and love and rage
and sorrow.  My hands are tightly clasped in my lap, frozen in
claws, but I force them apart to lift and cup his jaws.  He
hasn't shaven in a while; his beard stubble scrapes my palms,
reminding me that I have not petrified in my grief.  I am still
alive.

And Emily is still gone.  And the little girl in the morgue, another
little girl with a cyst-like growth that invaded and destroyed her 
body--she is gone as well.

"Pennington said it will be a while.  As we expected, there are
some anomalies, and she wants to be thorough."  He sounds as if
he is forcing the words around a giant stone in his throat.  "You
haven't slept in a couple of days, Scully.  Let me take you
home."

I shake my head angrily.  "No, I can't leave her."

God, his face!  It crumbles and he rises swiftly to his feet,
turning his back to spare me from his grief.  He seems to cave
in, bending at the waist as if pain has kicked him in the gut. 
He takes a moment, gasping softly, then he straightens and
composes himself in a display of sheer will.  I forget sometimes,
in the selfishness of my grief, that he hurts, too.  

He turns back to me, his jaw tight and his eyes blazing with
self-imposed strength.  He stretches his hand out to me.  I reach
up and take it.

He draws me to my feet and moves toward the door.  I resist,
realizing his intent.  "No, Mulder--"

"We're not leaving the building. I just know a place where you
can lie down and rest for a while."  He leads me out the door of
the pathology office and down the corridor.

My feet rebel as we near the shiny double doors of the autopsy
lab.  Mulder halts and turns, and I am enveloped by him.  I bury
my face against the open collar of his shirt.  He smells warm and
familiar, and for a moment, I think how easy it would be to deny
anything that has happened to me over the past few months.  
Pretend that I never went to San Diego, never found my daughter, 
never held her in my arms as her life drifted away.  I want that
denial with a fierce, yearning hunger.

And just as quickly, I am rocked by a violent swell of guilt and
rage, my weakness is swallowed by fury, and before I even realize
it is happening, I am slamming my fists against Mulder's body,
hard and fast.  I scream at him to let me go, to let me go in
there to my baby, my little baby who never asked to be an
experiment created by a cadre of monsters playing God. 
And then, suddenly, I remember that my daughter is not in 
that room, that she died months ago, not days ago, and that 
I never got to bury her because someone stole that last rite
of passage from me.   I howl Mulder's name,  curse him and 
rail against him when he crushes me even more tightly against 
his chest.

"Scully," he murmurs, and I hate his voice and I hate the arms
around me and I hate him, God I hate him, I hate him, I hate us
all.

I hate myself.

I hate God.

I hate.

Mulder is rocking me like a child, back and forth, back and forth.  I
am surprise to feel moisture on my cheeks; I am not crying.  I
haven't cried in weeks.  I don't have anything but rage left
inside me.  I am feeling his tears spilling down my cheeks.  I
can't cry, so he is crying for me.

I slump against him, my fury spent.  He holds me up, holds me
tight.  After a moment, he gently lets me go and leads me to the
wall by the morgue door, knowing that I need the support at my
back to keep standing.  He goes through the doors, into the
morgue, and I close my eyes.  I hear the soft murmur of voices--
he's telling Agent Pennington where to find us, I realize.

Then he's back, his arm curling around my shoulders.  "I'm going
to share a secret with you, Scully.  It's a little story about
revenge, of a sorts.  And about making the most of whatever crap
life throws your way."

We are descending, down into the basement.  Down to where the
Investigative Support Unit has their offices.  It's not a place
where most agents go, not even those who work here at the academy
like I did.  This is the place where Fox Mulder first earned his
"Spooky" nickname--and where he tangled with one of the many
disappointing father-figures in his life.  

We stop at a small door halfway down the main corridor.  There is
no lock on the door, and when we get inside, I understand why. 
We are standing inside what must have been, at one time, a small
storage room.  It was now a shabby break room, decorated in a
pastiche of vintage tacky.  The centerpiece of the room is an
oversized orange vinyl couch, shiny with wear. 

"Welcome to the Jungle Room," Mulder says softly.

I glance up at him.  His eyes are still red and damp, but he
wears a sly half-grin that almost makes me feel normal again.  I
see a flicker of satisfaction cross his features when I manage
the slightest curve of an answering smile.  And I love him now as
fiercely and deeply as I hated him just a few, mad moments ago.

He lets me go for a moment and crosses to the couch.  "My first
year working here with Patterson, I was teamed with a guy named
Cooper.  Great agent--a little weird, but that can be said of so
many of us.  We were both blueflamers from hell at the time,
bucking for notice, and we thought we were big timers when
Patterson himself called us into his office to give us an
'important assignment.'"  Mulder shrugs off his suit jacket and
uses it to dust off the hideous couch, then turns to look at me. 
"Our assignment was to fix up the break room.  Patterson gave us
a $300 budget and a shit-eating grin I could have shot him for. 
Coop and I hit every thrift store between here and Gaithersburg,
Maryland."

"You spent $300 on this?"  I arch one eyebrow.  The look of
sheer pleasure that washes over Mulder's face reminds me of how
lost I have been over the past few days of this investigation.  Lost 
to him.  Lost to myself.

"Yeah, we did."  He motions me to join him by the sofa.  I cross
to him, my legs tired and trembling.  I wobble a bit, and he
reaches out and gently steadies me.  Then he sits, pulling me
down with him.  "I think maybe this was the beginning of the end
for Patterson and me.  I don't think he ever forgave me."

I run my hand over the time-worn vinyl.  "I can see why."

"But it felt good, you know?"  He tightens his arm around me. 
"We were up against some of the scariest shit I've ever seen, and
it was like we were losing more and more control against them. 
Coop and I pulled this stunt on a lark, but you notice that
nobody's ever redecorated, don't you?"

I begin to understand what he's really telling me.  "They
understood."

He nods.  "It gave us back a sense of control.  We were in
charge.  Patterson wanted to strip the place down and redecorate
it with my hide, but the other agents wouldn't hear of it. 
It...spoke to them."

It speaks to me.  I picture Mulder as he must have been then, all
those years ago, young and brash and terrified by the monsters
whose worlds he invaded daily to bring them to justice.  I see
his fighting spirit in the garish posters on the wall and the
scuffed formica topped coffee table and this wretched, wretched
couch. 

I see hope, somehow.

He pulls me toward him, curling his arms around me as if I'm a
child.  I am reminded of a dark, dark night in a forest with
Mulder wounded and shivering in my lap.  Unbidden, the words
spill from my lips.  "I don't wanna wrestle."

He makes a soft sound that might be a chuckle.  I relax and he
draws me onto his lap, cradling me like a baby.  I nestle my
forehead against his throat and hold on for dear life.

"Want me to sing?" he murmurs.

I shake my head.  I feel a little smile shatter the stony facade
of my face.  And suddenly, surprisingly, I am crying for the
first time in weeks.  He rocks me, murmuring wordless comfort.  

On a river of love and tears, I drift to sleep.


- End -