TITLE: Burning
AUTHOR:Dreamshaper
FEEDBACK:Is *begged* for, and those who write will recieve Mulder licks!( 
Kinda like salt licks but infinitely cooler) If you're not personally 
attracted to Mulder--well, secretary's day and mother's day are right around 
the corner, and I'm sure all Moms would love to recieve their very own Mulder 
lick! (thanks to Allison((Akinney))  for the Mulder lick idea!)
ARCHIVE:If you want to, go ahead! I love archives...just send me the addy if 
we haven't talked, so I have more places to visit ;)
RATING: R
CATEGORY:MSR, V...postep((yesyesyes, there are about 50 unread ones sitting 
in my mailbox on this one, but hey, I figured--why not a few more! 
bwahahaha!))
SPOILERS:Milagro, general up to season six
SUMMARY: Mulder pov, post-ep...sorry, I can't think of anything more! The 
more stories I get, the wrose I get at summaries and titles!
 DISCLAIMER:Not mine, never were, never will be...::sobs:: damnit all!
NOTES:Loved Milagro. Loved it. Wasn't too fond of the author's Scully 
characterization, but still, loved the ep. Had to write a story...am now 
incoherent and will go to bed. Read, I beg of you.


*******************

Oh Star!
Some mystery becomes the proud, 
but to be wholly taciturn in your reserve is not allowed!
Say something...
And it says, 
"I burn!"
Frost 

******************


     Nails dig into my back with as much force as the hands can muster, 
scratching and scraping, and I'd be bleeding were they any longer...hair 
tickles my nose and the wetness of tears and blood soak my neck, my shirt...

     It would seem that Scully's heart, so nearly torn free of it's moorings, 
is broken--only because I know her strength do I even have hope that she will 
be fine.

     It is only because I know her strength that I *know* it will be no time 
at all before she has gathered herself together--but right now, I also know 
that that is not what she needs. Right now, these tears...they are cumulative 
tears, I think. Scully is crying for more than her most recent brush with 
death.

     So I--although certainly trying to soothe her, to make it easier--am not 
going to stop the tears. All I can think to do is encourage them...

     "Yes," I whisper, helpless to stop the tears and not seeing a reason why 
they *should* stop. "Yes, cry...let it out."

     I don't think she hears me. Right now, I think she doesn't hear much 
more at all than her own internal turmoil...but the words help me. 

     I almost lost her again, and find myself nearly as shaken as she. 

     How is it that this happens to her? How is it that Scully can bring out 
the best and worst in these men that fall for her...including myself?

     I murmur in her ear, things I don't even understand, giving in to the 
moment, and the feel of her trembling in my arms...

     <How long has it been since you've cried, Scully? How long will it be 
till you allow yourself the release of it again? Cry...that's it, weep, and 
let this weeping free you of the past--more than just this, everything, let 
it free...

     Let me help you--give it to me to carry...>

     I think the words--do I say them? I couldn't tell, I don't know. I hope 
so, I hope not, I pray that I never need to, that she knows without words...

     The tears are slowing, finally, finally...her heart<fortunate heart, 
that it is still within her walls> easing in it's frantic thumps, rapid, 
panting breaths slowing, though still heating my ears--I regret the loss of 
her tears on my skin...how can she have cried so little? What has happened 
here--it must be more than this to her. I know her, I know her better than 
that writer ever will--he and his cheesy, grandiose descriptions of her, his 
deluded fantsy that she would love him...I know her better.

     And I do not know her at all...

     It is no time to ruminate on such things--her tears may not be flowing 
anymore, her pants may have smoothed into deep, gulping sighs...but her blood 
still stains her skin, my skin, the floor...

     Gently, gently...I disentangle myself from her weakening grip. I look 
down, into her eyes, adn find them almost unutterably weary--they close as if 
they could not stand the look of mine, as if they could not bear to stay open 
any longer, and I have to smile sadly down at her. 

     <Are you afraid of what I'd see, Scully? You've hidden yourself from me 
for such a long time...are you afraid that now I'll see? 

     Too late to be afraid now--I see, I know. I've heard it all but the 
words. You can't hide now...I won't let you, not for long.

     But for now--it's all right. Close your eyes, close yourself...I know 
the way back in...>

     I leave her there, on the floor, for just the minute it takes to grab my 
phone and call for an ambulance--there's a lot of blood, too much, and she is 
paler by the minute, though the bleeding undoubtedly stopped in the second 
Padgett sacrificed his novel for the love he wanted to feel...

     Then I am back by her side, and she is easily lifted off the floor, into 
my arms--into my lap as I sit on my couch.

     She is still, and did I not know I would not dare to imagine that she 
was still hurting...but I do, I can feel the pain emanating from her stained 
form, and I rock her silently as we wait.

     It does not take long--by now, the EMTs have my address memorized, and 
know exactly how to get here in the least possible time...

     I know the pair that slam in--they are worthy, they can be trusted to 
take care of her almost as well as I would.

     "Scully," I whisper, and she lifts her head from it's place on my 
shoulder, blinking sleepily, pain still burning below the shock and 
exhaustian, "Paramedics are here."

     She turns her head to look, shakes it slowly in negation. "I'm fine," 
she tells them, ignoring their looks of shock as she slowly rises and runs 
blood coated hands down her jacket with an air of calm. 

      I could laugh. <Of course you're fine, when are you not fine? If it 
wouldn't kill me to do it, I'd throttle you...>

     "Scully--just let them check you out, take you in. Look at yourself. 
You're coated in blood, you might need a transfusion...please."

     Her eyes meet mine after my quiet plea, and I am surprised to see the 
note of shock slowly fading, replaced by customary Scully denial. I didn't 
think she'd be able to pull it together enough to reject the Truth just yet, 
thought she'd probably have to do a little more thinking to come up with 
something scientific--though I can't imagine how she'd be able to fix herself 
out of this one. I had thought it would take more time--I guess I 
underestimated her.

Fortunately for me, underestimating her is not something I do often. Were I 
of the habit, she would have killed me long ago...so I can, I imagine, be 
forgiven for this. 

     In any case, she seems to have rebuilt the walls enough--she has 
gathered her strength, and I leave her with the paramedics, allow them to 
take over the difficult task of dealing with a Scully who has determined she 
is fine though it is obvious she is not.

     While the paramedics check her out, I head back down to the incinerator.

     Padgett's heart is still beating when I get there.

     But it slows and stops even as I watch, with a detached kind of horror 
and the knowledge that this could be Scully I am looking at, dead and still 
on the ground.

     The flames of the incinerator are still sucking at his novel, and I 
watch the pages burn.

      They held no truth--I wonder if Padgett knew that in the end, when he 
tore his heart from it's cage. They held no true secrets, they held no 
Love--all they held were fantasies made frighteningly real, and dreams a 
hairsbreadth from reality.

     <What is it with Scully's beaus and fire? What is it about her that 
binds these little trials of her heart--this time in the most literal 
sense--to the flame?>

     I turn from the body, and go back to Scully.


````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

     She wasn't happy, but I managed to persuade her to go in to the 
emergency room.

     She insisted that the paramedics had given her the all clear, but I had 
my doubts--they and I did not get a chance to talk, I sent them downstairs to 
find Padgett. And something in the grim, blank stares on their faces made me 
think Scully had not been as acquiescent to their exams as I had assumed she 
would be. So we argued, and I won.

      Actually, I more like emotionally blackmailed her into it. 

     I told her that I couldn't have stood it if I lost her to something like 
blood loss, not after she's survived bouts with aliens, killer bees, crazed 
kidnappers and a voracious disease.

     She glared the whole way in, wanting to look for Padgett, wanting to 
find out what had happened to the novel, wanting to deny that anything had 
happened to her.

     She definitely wanted to deny that she'd been so affected. 

     We hadn't made eye contact in hours. 

     She didn't need a transfusion, thankfully, and the doctor's released her 
within a few hours--though only if she consented to staying with me, or 
having me stay with her. 

     She did not accept those conditions with any grace at all, prefering to 
mutter instead about her credentials, and the lack of respect pathologists 
get in the general medical community. But she hates being admitted too 
hospitals perhaps more than I do, and finally agreed.

     I think my puppy eyes were what convinced her. I know how she is--she 
can't resist strays...

     <Is that where these guys come from?>

      I called all the proper authorities involved in the case--Skinner 
predictably growled a request to have a report on his desk ASAP--"A report 
Agent Mulder, not a fairy tale"--and asked worriedly after the state of 
Scully's health.

     The man may not work directly *with* us to find the truth anymore--for 
whatever insane reasons he finally fell prey to--but he definitely still 
has...protective instincts.

     At least for Scully, in any case.

     I told them where I found Padgett's body--by the incinerator, heart in 
hand and manuscript on fire.
When I told Scully, her eyes seemed far away, lost for a moment..."Charity in 
flames." she murmured and closed her eyes, leaving me mildly confused and 
oddly jealous...sitting there at her bedside for the thousandth time, jealous 
of a dead man.

     I have no idea how this case will be explained--by Scully, by the 
logical people of this world, and I don't really care. I know what happened 
and, somewhere inside her, Scully knows as well. 

     How could she forget or deny the feel of a hand on her heart, tearing it 
free of it's moorings? I don't see how...but then again, she has managed to 
deny a thousand things before.

    Hands steepled under my chin, I watched her for a long time, there in the 
emergency ward after local cops talked to her and got a lucid, if brief, 
account of an attacker who slammed her to the floor...

     "I was, I think, delusional to an extent." She told the fatherly cop who 
stood by her head while I watched on, careful to keep my distance. "I 
certainly imagined very vividly that he had my heart in his hands--but I 
haven't got a mark. My blood loss wasn't insignifigant, but it wasn't too 
terrible either. It could, I suppose, have been something of a psychosomatic 
thing--there are accounts of religious people developping stigmata simply 
because they believed it possible...this could be and likely is something 
along those lines."

     The cops accepted her statement with calm belief. She was very 
convincing...seemingly calm, stable, professional--she appeared to kow very 
well what she was talking about...

      But I remembered her, hours before sobbing wildly and digging into my 
flesh with her blunt nails.

     For a moment, sitting here watching her avoid my eyes, I wondered if 
she'd be like that were we to make love...

      But she was hurting, so it wasn't a train of thought I pursued right 
then, though I vowed not to let it wait long.

     <She can't hide from me anymore--and by necessity, I can't hide from 
her. She'll know the truth soon enough...

      <And Padgett said she was in love.>

      With the remembrance of that encounter comes the remembrance of a 
thousand sensations--the tingle of hope, burning desire...harsh anticipation 
and desperate fear.

      I placed one hand gently on her chin, willed her to look at me, to see 
into me...but her eyes wouldn't meet mine despite my gentle urging, and I was 
forced to drop my hand.

      "Come on," I sighed. "I'll take you home."

      I think that gave her hope that I would take her home and leave her 
there alone. God knows she was quick enough to shoo me away so she could 
dress, quick enough to hustle me into the car, impatient and silent the whole 
drive to her apartment...

      And when I followed her up, she was quick enough to stop me at the 
door, one hand on the knob, the other on my chest to keep me back.

     "Good night, Mulder." Her murmur was whisper soft and slightly husky 
from screaming, and I frowned involuntarily. "I'll be fine, you can go home."

      "You heard the doctors, Scully." I said as I pushed past her, listening 
to her indignant hiss behind me and grinning at it's emphatic tone. "They 
didn't want you alone--I certainly don't want you alone...so alone you shall 
not be." Smiling, I dropped my coat on the couch, sank into it's plush 
softness, and watched her cross her arms and frown, standing at the door.

      Serious now, I held out a hand to her, praying she'd accept it.

      And, miracle indeed, she did. 

      Slowly, warily, she crossed the floor to me, eyes on my outstretched 
hand. Her cool palm connected with mine for a brief moment as she sat next to 
me, tailor style and sideways to watch my face, but it slid free in 
seconds...maybe she sensed my desire to take that simple contact further.

     I didn't press the issue, content for the moment that she was beside me, 
alive...for a few seconds earlier today, I had doubted that she would be 
again beside me, I had thought her lost to me...

     I touched my hand again to her chin, raising those bright eyes to mine, 
and for a seamless moment in time, I searched them for the truth I sensed so 
near the surface--a truth I was destined, perhaps, to find in her...but for 
the time being, it was deeply hidden again, no matter how intensely I probed.

     So I did the next best thing to holding the truth in my hands...I held 
*her*.

      It wasn't easy. Her body was stiff in my arms, held apart from mine and 
tense. But there is just so much need inside us both sometimes, need we are 
both afraid to express...for human contact, for the touch of flesh on flesh, 
for the reassurance of another voice in our loneliness...

     <Oh, Scully...why are we lonely? Why, when I know you're there if I only 
ask...when you must know that I will be there for you no matter what 
happens--why?> 

     She wouldn't have been able to answer me with any more sureness than I 
could conjure in my thoughts, so I let the question lay silent on my tomgue. 
But my body cradled hers as well as it could under her enforced seperation, 
and I was as soothed by the warmth of her skin as  could hope she would be 
because of mine.

     Gradually, very slowly, she relaxed into my loose embrace. Unexpectedly, 
she sighed like a child and allowed herself to rest nearly limp against my 
shoulder. Her head, all that bright copper hair tangled and twined, rested 
against my neck, and a rush of nearly paternal love crashed through me with 
the force of a tidal wave.

     This was not something I had even hoped for, this show of weary trust. 
Not now, not from her.
But I wasn't arguing.

     We stayed like that for a long time...till she fell asleep--breath even, 
still and limp against me as her heart beat against mine in tandem, in 
reassurance, in affermation of life.

     I counted her heart beats till I too was asleep.

     And I awoke to a dream.

      Scully's arms were warmly tucked around my ribcage, her head propped on 
my chest as I half reclined, half sat on her comfortable sofa. That was fine, 
that was...perhaps not normal, but certainly understandable.

     What I couldn't comprehend was why her lips were tracing gently across 
my chest, lingering on and tightening my nipples.

     I put a hand automatically on her head, to keep her there, to prevent 
her stopping...but there wa no force beind it, could never be, so she raised 
her head to look at me without difficulty. I shuddered with the loss of her 
touch, and she smiled, slow and somehow sultry.

     "Scully?" I whispered, afraid somehow to break the trance. 

     But she smiled, and she nestled her head back against my heart.

     Tentatively, I rested my hand back on her hair, gently stroking through, 
conciously tender and subconciously loving. "Scully," I repeated, 
"Scully...what is this?"

     <not a mercy fuck, please don't let her be seeking comfort, please let 
this be love please let this be love...I burn as well as you, and I burn 
*for* you...please>

     "Mulder," she returned to me my own name and I listened to it as if it 
were a symphony, an opera designed solely for my ears. "Mulder--Padgett was 
right about some of the things he said, he thought...I am lonely, Mulder."

      I shook my head gently, denying her her claim though it was an echo of 
my own thoughts an hour ago, a minute, a lifetime and a half...

     "I am, Mulder. It's a choice--I told Padgett that I chose to be lonely, 
to be alone...and so I am, and so I've done. But I don't have to be--I 
learned that today, when I read that book of his...I knew it wasn't my only 
choice."

     Silence reigned, still and deep, as I fought to stop my breath in 
attempt to hear every nuance of her tone, every dull thud of her heart echoed 
by the shaking force of mine.

     There wasn't enough light in the room, not really enough for me to see 
what I thought I saw when her eyes lifted to mine again, for what felt like 
the first time. 

     Love.

     <What do you see in my eyes? Do you see a love returned? Do you see 
truth, do you see fire? What do you see?>

     "I love you, Mulder."

     My heart broke, fell to flame and was reborn, a phoenix from the ashes 
of it's own destruction, and I will swear till my death that I felt my soul 
reborn...in the space of a second.

     I couldn't even return the words, not then. All I could give her of my 
heart came through a kiss.

     A story was told in that kiss, a thousand words spoken and a thousand 
tears dried, and the kisses that followed were bound to that precedent, 
though some were more passionate, adn some were more celebratory. 

     We fell to the floor, in a pose reminisent of that we maintained on the 
floor of my apartment, but without tears...though I did feel the bite of her 
nails again, scoring across my shoulder. It was not a pose we were destined 
to hold--her hands were too exploratory to remain calmy tangled in a kiss, my 
mouth was too intrigued by the taste of her skin to stick to one small 
patch... 

     We joined together a thousand years ago, it sometimes feels...linked in 
ways undefinable, indescribable, and unbelivable--but our final, physical 
melding of selves was utterly new.

     I was not the only phoenix reborn.

     When it was over, when we had explored every surface with hands and 
nails, lips and tongues and teeth...when our bodies had come together and we 
were left weary and warm in the aftermath...then I found the words again 
within me to tell her.

     "I love you, Scully. Green facial scrub, odd ability to attract really 
scary guys and compulsive neatness aside."

      I don't think that was what she was expecting. She froze in my arms, 
and for a moment I was afraid she was not secure enough in me to take that 
for what it was--a declaration from a man with no poetry, with only a talent 
for half-assed sarcasm.

     But then she snorted a brief laugh, hit me gently on the shoulder and 
rose.

     In the dim, almost blackly lit room, her body was that of a godess, 
scarred and strong, adn I fell hopelessly under the spell of her skin.

     "Come on, Mulder." She whispered to me in the dark. 

     "Come to my bed before I introduce you to any of the really 
interesting...and less than perfectly straight...guys I've met in prisons 
over the years."

     Her tone might have been amused but I had a sudden image of a box from 
under a prisoner's bed...a long sheet of unlubricated condoms...and I rose 
with haste.

      "You're a cruel woman, Agent Scully." I tucked her small body against 
mine for a moment, relishing the feel of her smooth chest against mine, no 
holes, no scars and a heart that beat steadily, and I couldn't resist a kiss.

      She led me to her bed, and I relished the slide into cool sheets--cool 
Scully sheets--with a sigh. When she slid in beside me, I tucked her loosely 
against myself and savored her release of instinctive tension.

     She slept again in my arms, and I lay staring at the ceiling...

      This was undoubtable the stuff of nightmares and cheesy fiction...but 
it brought about the moment I had been waiting for for five years...

       <We can deal with the nightmares later.> I kissed the smooth skin over 
her heart and closed my eyes again to dream. <They can, for once, wait. And 
so can the dissection of every thought, every truth, every question...it can 
all wait. We have the time...

     I hope.>

     And I slept. 


                       THE END
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I know this isn't my best portrayal of our beloved agents.The way I figure 
it--CC  and company want to mess with characterization, fine. (grin) I'll 
mess with it too. 

This is completely undignified begging--feedback? Please? ::puppy eyes:: 

Don't be afraid--yes my computer has eaten almost all mail sent to me in the 
last three weeks, but I swear I fixed it!!!(no thanks to the boobs at AOL 
however!)

I do, however, have some apologies to make--to everyone who wrote and hasn't 
recieved a reply, especially to the folks who were more than kind enough to 
beta read a few stories for me (Carla, Tim Scott and Micheal, to be 
precise--please don't think I didn't appreciate it, I just lost your email 
addresses and can't find them for the life of me! Write  now for a more 
detailed apology and some groveling)

And to all the writers out ther who have already done a milagro post-ep--You 
guys work fast! I haven't had time yet to read and respond, but I can't wait 
to get going! 

Thanks all, and please be patient as I try to find my old mail (sigh)
Dreamshaper (Dreamshpr@aol.com)