TITLE: Her Days, Dipped as if in Karo Syrup AUTHOR: David Stoddard-Hunt CATEGORY: S, A, R KEYWORDS: M/S CONTENT: Disturbing imagery REFERENCES: Requiem through This Is Not Happening SUMMARY: Pre-partum depression. DISCLAIMER: CC left 'em lying around. I'll put them back where he'll be able to find them. CONTACT: dmstoddardhunt@yahoo.com WEBSITE: http://www.iwtbxf.com/paige ********************************************* Scully has had this waking dream for weeks. There's nothing she can do to prevent its onset, nor stop it from running its course. She's sitting at a computer in the bullpen staring at a blue screen, when there is a disturbance several rows over and down. Looking up slowly, she sees Mulder running, glancing over his shoulder. No, not running. Fleeing. She peers down the aisle behind him but sees no one in pursuit. He passes her without acknowledgment, terror stricken but determined to escape. Just then, she sees an agent rise from his computer, turn and draw a bead on Mulder. She can control the pace of this action, speed them both up, slow them down, but she cannot shout a warning in time. The gun discharges and she dives to catch the bullets in flight, any way she can, but misses, watching them fly by just out of reach before she lands painfully on the floor. When she recovers, Skinner is standing over her, annoyance plain on his face. In one hand, he is balancing a gun - the murder weapon - on a pencil slipped through its trigger guard. With the other, he is helping her to her feet. She tries to ask him about Mulder, and he stares at her, incredulous. Scully's gaze is drawn down thickly, swimming through corn syrup to the ruined carpet. "They'll never get that out. It's coming out of my pay, I know it." In the midst of all of it, Mulder, silent, alert and calmly accusatory as his life pools beneath and around him. There is no explanation demanded, no histrionics. Only: "You did this." She wants to demur, to scream a denial, but she cannot. There hasn't been time. There has never been time. The gelatinous air holds her in place an endless, excruciating moment. "You did this to me." And she knows it's true. ********************** Her days are no longer her own. They are given over to things that have recently accreted to her: guilt, concern, absence. None of which she has asked for, none of which she can shake. Skinner's guilt, her mother's concern. Mulder's absence, over all. Mulder, her constant no longer. Nausea is her constant, now. She wishes it was more of a passing acquaintance, limited to 'morning' sickness only. Instead, it skulks in all the corners of her day, waiting for her to rise from a chair too quickly, or to decide that she actually has the stomach for a piece of fruit. Every so often, she'll presuppose its arrival and force it out of her body. She admits this to no one, though, in fairness, it feels as if she has no one to tell. Scully dismisses as absurd the thought that she might be trying to purge something or someone else from her system. She's tried to claim the nausea as a 'friend,' a positive, a sign of the impending life inside. Impending life is better than the alternative, she tells herself, the only ameliorative to her loss. But it's all crap, pop-psychology and she knows it. Empty platitudes, serving only to reinforce a vision of the bleakness before her - she and the baby, alone, without. Scully catalogs the moments before Mulder's disappearance, tracking them through Skinner's eyes, the cadence of his voice providing the color, his tone the underlying emotion. It is her daily disaffirmation. She embraces it mainly because she cannot prevent it. There, up ahead, Mulder moving quickly, unconcerned with stealth. He must sense that they're close. But, to what? Skinner moves to catch up, and Scully is there with him, fighting the underbrush, losing sight of her partner for an instant, no more. Ahead now, a shimmering form - "Mulder?" - steps forward into a crack of light and vanishes. There is a slow, unwinding moment; stupefaction while ordered worlds, hers, Skinner's, come unstuck. Then, brilliance hot on the backs of his eyes blinding her even at second sight. The darkness that follows is indelible, and the silence profound. Disbelief dissolves in the following moments, realigning into the knowledge that they have failed him. It is the nearest thing to acceptance either one of them can manage. Mulder has been taken, stolen right out from underneath them. He is lost. At this point, regularly, Scully gives way to her new constant, hoping merely to reach the basin in time, to be spared the humiliation, to be spared something, anything at all. ********************** The laws of physics are warping around her. No energy is conserved, no matter. Only used and replaced, scattershot. Her personal gravity has been will be is being shifted, altered. Reformed. In her mind, the exchange of energy between the partners has always been uneven. His nervous, surging passion arcing around her, kinetic, never at rest, pulling her along and gathering her in. They have epitomized, so she believes, the Second Law of Thermodynamics - heat always flows from a higher temperature to a lower one; and the reverse is impossible. Now that he is gone, she may never be disabused of this notion. Mulder is the star around which she has become an enraptured comet, her orbit ever tightening. And now, star vanished, a gravity well threatens to drag her deep into the void, extinguishing her fire. Weighted against this, a single fertilized ovum, tiny in size and titanic in its import. Where none could had should be, this one is. A charmed particle presaging a new and ever expanding universe. She fears that one is nature's balance for the loss of the other. She is not ready, or willing to make that exchange. Her emotions oscillate wildly. The very blood in her veins surges and slows, surges and slows, surges and stops. Anger blooms outward from her in all directions, eventually collapsing in on itself. Back in upon her. Anger is sustaining, something which will not leave her, a steady pulse where, before, there was none. A kind, inquisitive stranger, his badge twisted around untidily. Asking whether anyone really ever knew Mulder. "Yes, damnit!" she thinks after the fact, "I did." But she isn't one hundred percent certain. Bitterly, she believes she should be. Her anger tilts inward, saved at the last by the image of a cupful of water, water he'd offered her, heading for his face in time lapse, frame by frame, until it connects with the bridge of his nose. Time snaps forward as it washes away his sneer. She sees herself turning on heel and is suffused with satisfaction. She does know Mulder. She, alone in this world, knows Mulder. She alone knows where he is, has the slightest idea of what he's going through. She alone understands. She alone can rescue him. She, alone. That's fine, she thinks grimly. They've always been alone against the universe. This isn't so different. Except that, this time, it isn't two alone, but one. And the universe has gotten aggressive. She's angry with all those who bump through the house of life with eyes closed, expecting its furniture to be orderly and in place. This life is fractured and disorderly, better to accept that sooner than later. Nothing human falls 200 feet off a cliff and scampers away unscathed. Therefore it couldn't have been Mulder; Mulder is nothing if not human. And yet, there they stand - Doggett's team, staring head-long, blinking at the truth, refusing to see. Scully recognizes in them an avatar of her former self, from a bygone life. The connection lashes her self-loathing, froths it into a towering rage. She holds it as a matter of personal pride that she has the ability to control, even to harness such a violent swirling in the service of something constructive. In this, she, too, blinks and refuses to see. The reality is that she suppresses emotion, squeezing it as a vein of coal is compressed by the ages, transmuted into something many faceted, impenetrable and quite nearly flawless. Alone in a desert, no vehicle, no aid of any kind. To anyone but Scully, this would be the stuff of nightmare. Indeed, the odds against her are dreadful. Mulder's captors can change form, can incapacitate, overpower at will. As she continues to search based on little more than gut instinct, she's oddly comforted by the fact that what she seeks is, by definition, beyond human perception. This eases her frustration and tames the edgy voice that mocks from her shoulder, "Mulder would know where to look. You're not Mulder." She has been where he is, confused, helpless, clutching at fading hope. This, of all things, is the thought that terrifies her, and drives her the hardest. Light pins her in place as an insect tacked to a board of sandstone dross. Scully feels no fear; only resignation and, strangely enough, relief. The light vectors toward her, with purpose but obscure intent. Slowly. She cannot look away. Slowly. Time enough to free associate - a star, from Jacob come forth, draws nigh to Bethlehem, slouches toward, blinding her, what rude beast? From there it is an incredibly short leap to crucifixion, terrible visions of torture, premonitions of Mulder. The beat of rotor blades from just behind the glare is a crushing disappointment. Absurdly, she feels betrayed by those she seeks, those who hold Mulder. Her rage erupts anew. Anger is become her new life-force. She can barely see beyond its frayed, red edges. ********************** Scully's esteem for her mother, never dull, has taken on new luster in recent days, something approaching marvel. Ahab had the five inch guns and thick armor plating of a Spruance class destroyer around him at sea, as well as the Sargasso calm that comes over any seaman when facing a threat head-on. Maggie had no such bulwark around her, nor the immediacy of combat to sharpen her focus or steel her nerve. And yet, like other Navy spouses, she found the emotional fortitude necessary to raise four children virtually on her own; created strength under the ever-present specter that, on any given mission, the source of her own strength might not return. In her career at the Bureau, Scully has given thanks on many occasions that this acquired characteristic has been passed from mother to daughter. She wonders about its flexibility, whether it can be adapted to her unique circumstance. Whether her emotional reserve is as great as her mother's, or whether her situation is simply so stressful as to have exhausted it? Scully knows that her mother's patience, though great, is not infinitely elastic. It can and will be overtaxed by concern for her child. This is a burden upon Scully for many reasons, the greatest of which she dares not even voice. She has shown precious little concern for her own child, yet to be born. She realizes that she needs her mother's support, her mother's comfort desperately. Rationally, she knows that Maggie will ultimately give her whatever space she needs. And, finally, she knows that she has no one else. Help is as close as a phone, and there are many at her disposal. Her cell phone she avoids, lest she accidentally hit number one on the speed dial. She will answer her cell when called, but has not dialed out in weeks. From where she sits, she can see all but one of the three phones in her apartment, and that one, on the night-stand by her bed, has remained unplugged since her release from the hospital. There is a new phone on her desk, bought along with the laptop to replace the computer that Mulder... the one that was stolen. The third phone hangs forlornly in the kitchen. To its right is a patch of wall more brightly hued than anywhere else in the room, only recently exposed. The cork message board that had occupied the space is now stowed out of sight, in a high cabinet above the refrigerator. She can't bear the feelings that arise when she sees it; worse, she can't bear the thought of throwing it out. It has become more memorial than memo, with each neatly inked number marking the passage of lives: "Mom and Dad," "Missy," and, near the bottom, written the night, a lifetime ago, that she'd first returned from Bellefleur, "Fox Mulder." It could almost be another person, this "Fox." So different from the "Mulder" she's come to know, the "Mulder" whom, when she turns, Scully fully expects to bump into, so completely has he filled her space. That she hesitates, has to think to dial her mother's number, brings a punishing wave of guilt over top of her. She nearly disconnects. But at the last, she grips the side of the cradle, leaving the connection open. She stares at her hand, revolted, as if it bears a will other than her own. With each ring, she searches for the right thing to say, the single sentence that will explain it all, that which, as yet, she barely comprehends. Her mother's voice spans the ether. It's a kind voice, soft and familiar. And it is something more - it is the pick that cracks the dam. "Mom?" Scully begins to sob, her fear welling up with every hopeless notion she's tried to suppress. It is more than enough to make a mother's heart catch in her throat. Maggie arrives at Scully's apartment within the hour, prepared to stay as long or as short as her daughter might need. ********************** In her lowest moments, she doubts her connection with Mulder. The only thing it has ever been consistently is chaotic. Their most intimate moments have been borne out of anguish - abduction, infertility, madness, near-death experiences. The norm for them has always been far from normal. She craves normal. What would have happened to their relationship if ever she'd gotten what she craves? In the rare moments of calm they've shared, it's been companionable, only slightly forced. Recently, they've approached something more. In Los Angeles, they'd even had what might conceivably be called a date. In her lowest moments, and they are not few, she doubts whether it might conceivably be called anything more than that. Even from the depths, one observation is inescapable. He is the center of her life. She is his. Was. His. Whether this is a product of circumstance or kismet, Scully has always been reluctant to find out. He doesn't finish the ends of her sentences, though he often anticipates what she's likely thinking. It's annoying, not romantic. When they first met, there were no trumpet fanfares or cherub choruses signaling The One True Thing. She recalls feeling something closer to "this might not be as bad as I thought." In sum, it hasn't been bad. Far from it. It just hasn't had the ribbons and bows, the cards and flowers, all the Hallmark hallmarks. And she's always believed that, when love happened for her, it most assuredly would. She admires Mulder's brilliance, basks in his appreciation for her own keen mind. He infuriates her, as she does him. He's no more attractive than some she's known, yet she's constantly aware of him, even when he's not in her presence but merely nearby. As difficult as he can be, self-centered and illogical, she simply cannot be without him. In his absence, her life no longer functions quite right. It's a phenomenon worthy of study, if she ever finds the time to spare on such frivolous things. She often catches him staring at her and covering up quickly when caught. She wonders whether this is proof that the same condition besets him. She believes so, but may never be sure. And it has been a long time since belief alone has carried her. With Mulder, nothing is ever quite normal, mundane, usual. Theirs is certainly not the stuff of classic romance. It all comes down to this. Simply put, he has become part of the air she breathes. How she has managed to survive all of these weeks without air is beyond comprehension. She should be gasping, choking for the lack of him. And yet, she goes on, driven by the cruelly tantalizing hope that she'll find him; she will find him. Scully can't put a feeling to all of this. She supposes it's love. Or, rather, it was. From the sofa where Scully sits, her focus telescopes outward, taking in the parenting magazine on her coffee table, the desk beyond, the blinking light denoting another phone message from her mother that she hasn't the stomach to return. Up, through the bay window and out into a golden, sun-stippled day. A late-summer's day. Without. The escape route from her apartment is right behind her, mere feet away; the latch to open the window closer still. And yet, she stays rooted to the couch. Scully watches through the glass, as if it were television. People walking, playing, living lives unaware and unaffected. It's the theater of the absurd. From where Scully sits, Summer's rapture feels impossibly distant. ********************** Doggett and batmen and slugs, oh my. Doggett and batmen and slugs, oh my! She realizes that her mother is only trying to help, though help with what isn't exactly clear. Her life is sufficiently surreal that Scully believes she should be exempt from events such as this. Mom means well. Repeating that has not stopped her from gritting her teeth. A friend from high school, two from college with whom she'd long ago lost touch. Scattered into the mix are several of her mother's friends whom Scully knows by name and by reputation. He wrote a monograph on serial killers, which helped catch Monte Propps in Nineteen eighty-eight. We had a nickname for him at the Academy. "Spooky" Mulder. Scully stares at the smiling amalgam in horror. She has the energy neither to put them in the know, nor to strangle them in their ignorance. She just wishes they would stop their damned grinning. "Just come, darling," her mother had said. "It will be good for you. To get out of your apartment, I mean," she'd added hastily. "It's all very casual. Not a party or a shower or anything like that, Dana. More of a get-together." More of an inquisition. Give her Jana Cassidy, even D.D. Kersh, for Pete's sake, and she would acquit herself ably. But, this? "So, Dana. Is there a guy in your life?" "Anyone special?" Scully has been in agony throughout. "Oh, come on! There's something going on, I can tell. What aren't you telling us?" Quite a bit, she thinks sourly. Doggett and batmen and slugs, oh my! Doggett and batmen and slugs, oh my. Several times, her mother has seemed to wince at the merciless probing, giving rise to hope that things might draw to a quick end. When Maggie waves her into the kitchen, Scully follows gladly. "Dana, you could at least try to look like you're enjoying yourself. These are your friends, after all. They do mean well. They only want to help, you know." On some level, Scully knows this is so. It is with good reason she refuses the offer. Scully fears there just may be no help for her. Doggett and batmen and slugs, oh my. Doggett and batmen and slugs. ********************** She's spending more and more time in the field, at ever increasing personal risk. If she cannot find Mulder, then perhaps she can become him. Skinner makes allowances and Doggett marshals his suspicions, but neither approaches the truth. The explanation is more intricately woven than can be untangled simply, embedded more deeply than can be incised with even the surest scalpel. It hides in the shadows of what she does not say, and disappears on the winds of what she refuses to do. The polished steel and glass of the morgue has become a battlefield of memory, in which she has contested and risked, contested and lost. Glass shards rain down around her even now, testament to the true extent of her power, and she cringes, convulsing in tears. The reaction persists, a muscular reflex, involuntary and haphazard of stimulus. Amidst magazines and the smiles of other expectant mothers in the cheery waiting area, the shivering comes over her, even though her rational mind whispers then shouts that, surely, Doctor Parenti will do her no harm. And yet, it will not stop. ********************** From the depths of night, fears surface with astonishing speed. Waking in a cold sweat, she seeks out an unlikely shoulder. Skinner. Together they stare up into the heavens, searching for Mulder as children seek Orion's belt. The stars seem to move farther and farther away every moment she looks. She hopes, she wishes, she prays for his return. Later, she will recall the cautionary tale her father would recite on occasion, but only when she was safe in her bed and he by her side. A frightening story of pain and grief, and the promise of a talisman, a gruesome monkey's paw, with the power to raise the mourned dead. Now, however, its moral is lost amid the white noise and the chaos, under the staggering reality of her hopes and her future lying dead at her feet. Now, the stars are falling down around her. One, in particular, hovers over the compound like a fox choosing its moment to steal away with its prize, her talisman, one with the power to raise the returned dead. ********************** Memories as she runs. Of the evening her father died, and the days to follow: She is swimming over her kitchen table, swimming through the deep, green air. Her father sits in the arm chair where she last saw him, no that isn't right, said goodbye at the door, but there he is in the chair, in the thick green murk, his mouth opening, closing, opening like a guppy. She knows that the case happened in Raleigh, three hundred miles away, yet she watches it all from her table at the bottom of the sea. The bullet meant for Mulder, surely in these depths it will be slowed enough for him to dive away in time. Skinner is with her, this go 'round. He was not their supervisor then; maybe now he will be of help. She reaches back, why is she reaching back? She wants to talk to him, to Boggs, no, to Jeremiah Smith before his execution. He can find Mulder, he can lead her to him. If she could only go backward in time. The stages of grief. Five are the stages. "Dabda," she remembers. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression. Acceptance. Never. Never accept, she will never accept it. He cannot be lost to her. Mulder cannot be gone. There must be another explanation. This is not happening. She sinks, sinks to her knees and beyond. Sinks through the murky depths, the glutinous green, swimming down, chasing the bullet on its slow, inexorable path to Mulder. He is far below and ahead of her, looking over his shoulder, terrified, sensing the threat, desperately fleeing and losing, losing, losing ground. He cannot see her, but he must know she is there, that she is trying. She will dive until her lungs are bursting, follow the trail of bubbles through the thick, green depths, because any other action is unthinkable. She is his only hope. She must stop this bullet, catch it before it reaches him. And so she plummets down. After the bubbles, into the depths. She plummets. -end-