TITLE: Elegy with the Sound of the Ocean Inside It AUTHOR: Bonetree (bonetree@gmail.com) RATING: Adults Only (Very Mild MT, Nudity, Mild Erotica) TIMELINE: The Biogenesis Trilogy (Season 6) SUMMARY: Before Mulder saw his visions of the future, he saw visions of the past and present, as well. ARCHIVE: Gossamer and Ephemeral only. All others, please ask permission. DISCLAIMER: The characters of Mulder, Scully, Skinner, CSM, Diana Fowley, Tina Mulder, Bill Scully, William, etc. are the property of 1013 Productions, Chris Carter and Fox. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made. AUTHOR'S NOTES: At the end, but you'll probably need to know that this is likely more poem than story. Some folks don't like that, so I thought I'd say it up front. Thanks for reading, should you choose to go on. :o) **** "By being both here and beyond I am becoming a horizon." -- Mark Strand **** THE BEACH The first thing he'd seen when he found his feet was the clot of black pilot whales that had washed up on the beach. The surf was moving them against the sand, their bodies wide and dark and gleaming in the soft light. They were singing to each other, and when Mulder walked the distance between him and them, cold in his jeans and his T-shirt and his bare feet, he swore he could understand what they were singing. Kneeling down, he caught sight of his reflection in the eye of the whale to his right. When his hand closed on its side, its skin felt like fire. The whales' bodies swayed with the thinning white fingers of the outgoing tide. They were singing about the end of the world. He could hear it in the rise and fall of the notes. "Hey." The voice came from behind him. Mulder turned and found himself face-to-face with a small boy holding two shovels and a plastic pail. He stood and the boy smiled. "Do you know where my mother is?" the boy asked, and Mulder looked up and down the shoreline. No one there. "I'm sorry," he replied. "I haven't seen anyone else." He put his hands in his pockets against the chill. "But then I just got here myself." The boy glanced back over his shoulder, and Mulder followed his gaze. "There was an Indian I passed back there awhile ago," and Mulder squinted his eyes to see evidence of what the boy said. "I don't see anything," he said, and shook his head. The shoreline extended into infinity like a road. "I just found these whales -" He pointed down, and found that the whales had somehow gone. He froze. "They were right here," he mumbled, and he felt the boy's small hand lace with his fingers, the touch soft as sand. "Don't worry," the boy said, gripping Mulder's fingers in his fist. "I guess they've gone away again." Mulder kept staring at the spot, then finally down into the boy's smiling face. "What's your name?" he asked. He loved the feel of the boy's hand, warm against his skin. "William," the boy replied, and he sounded proud as he said it. "It's my father's name." Mulder nodded, a smile tugging at his lips. The wind had picked up, the sky's dark brow a furrow over sea and the highway of sand. "And you said your mother was here? On the beach?" William nodded. "Yes. Somewhere up ahead. The Indian said he'd seen her pass and go on." He pointed down the beach. It had begun to rain. Mulder gripped the boy's hand. "Well, let's go on, up this way," he said, the wind moving like fingers through his dark hair. "Are you sure?" William asked. "I don't want to be any trouble for you." Mulder smiled. "I've got nowhere to go," he said lightly, but as he said them, the words sunk into him like a stone. He shook off the sudden grief and touched the boy's flax-colored hair. "Come on, William," he said softly, feeling suddenly alone and gripping the boy's small, strong hand. "Let's walk. I'll stay with you until we find her again." **** THE HOUSE Somewhere down the beach he drifted, the sound of singing in his head. There had been a racket of voices following him for some time, he recalled, like his thoughts had turned to crows. The place where the sand met the ocean stretched on to the horizon. He was tired... William gripped his hand. Tired... He closed his eyes, opened them again, and the house on Chilmark was there where, just a moment ago, it hadn't been. "Fox." His mother on the porch, wearing a shawl the color of creamy jade. She was much younger than the last time he'd seen her, but there was still something heavy in her expression. She was looking at the ocean over his head, her lips a pale slice in her face. William was gone now, though Mulder could still see his footprints beside his own trailing behind him on the sand. He was wearing a heavy coat now, boots. His hands were cold in his pockets, his hair longer and his bangs tickling his face. She didn't move as he came up the steps toward her, his weight, as usual, creaking the second step. He bent down to kiss her cheek. "Hi," he said softly. "Come into the house," she said, though she still wouldn't look at him. It was just as he remembered. The living room smelled like old roses in a box, the kitchen leaking the smoky smell of coffee left too long on the burner. A radio was playing a mournful classical piece, a favorite of his mother's since his childhood, from a room up the old staircase. Teena Mulder smoked a cigarette as she sat down in a chair by the window. The breeze was too cold for the window to be open, but she drew the shawl around her more tightly, the cigarette scissored between two fingers. When she spoke, it was her voice that sliced. "Why did you come?" He sat poised on the edge of the couch, worrying his hands. He kept staring at her profile. She looked like a chisel had been taken to her face. "I..." But his voice drifted away. "My God, Fox." She shook her head. "You're like a criminal at the scene of the crime, aren't you? That's how you go through your days." She fell silent for a beat. Wind worried the curtains and a windchime hung with minor notes played. "You're such a weak man. I detest your weakness, Fox." "You don't know me, Mom," he said, looking out the window where the sun had turned the sky a sudden, brilliant white. "Why I trusted you to protect her...I'll never forgive myself for that." He expected her to cry, but her face only seemed more like marble, a face like a statue's. A statue on top of a grave. "You won't even look at me." His eyes bore into her face. "There's no need," she said softly. "I know exactly who and what I'll see." He swallowed, but something still burned. "I don't know how many times I have to say I'm sorry," he said. "Say it again." Her voice was ice. He felt his eyes welling. Outside the window, he saw William on the beach, a tiny shape on the edge of the shore. The boy called his name, the word threaded with the chiming. It sounded like a bell. Mulder kept his eyes on William, his reply, when he spoke, stretched on a rack in his throat. "No," he said. "I won't." "Don't you want my forgiveness?" Teena asked. She took a drag from her cigarette and her thin fingers shook. Mulder watched William wave to him from the sand. He looked small against the ocean, small as a bird or a paper boat. Mulder felt a sad smile pull at the corners of his mouth. He stood, shook his head. "I don't." He rose and moved through the parlor into the hall, and his mother didn't move or call after him to stop. He looked up the stairs where the music had changed to a song that was familiar, but whose name he couldn't place. He pulled open the door, facing the boy and the sea, stepped out, his hands in his pocket, felt something wet. When he pulled his hand out there in the sunlight, there was a slice in his finger, a line of blood coming out. A tag of blue cloth was tucked between two fingers. "Go on," he heard William say, and looked up to find the boy at the bottom step of the porch. "Write." Mulder looked at his finger and the cloth. He held the cloth in his other hand. Help me, he wrote, making each letter with painstaking care. The wind picked up, blustering, and he tossed the cloth up, he and William watching as it vanished into air. **** THE SHIP "Steady as she goes, Mr. Mulder." Mulder opened his eyes and the deck beneath him swayed. He was at the wheel of a tall ship, the ropes from the immense canvas sails creaking against their weight. In front of him, standing near the bow, a man in uniform with his back to the wheel. His hands were clasped behind his back, which was straight as a mast. Mulder wore a peacoat, the dark blue collar turned against the back of his neck. The ship drifted in a sort of mist, white as snow and thick as smoke, and over the sides, there was nothing but cold sea dotted with ice. "You with me, Mr. Mulder?" the man before him said, still not turning around. "Yes, sir," Mulder replied. He gripped the knobs of the wheel as the sea swelled beneath them. His head ached and his vision swam in and out. Where was he now? "Due north, Mr. Mulder," the Captain answered, and turned around to face him. "Off the edge of the earth." Mulder swallowed as he looked at the Captain's face. William Scully smiling back at him, his features drifting in the mist. He took off his flat-topped Captain's hat, fingering the polished brim. "William," he called above the creaking, his pale eyes not leaving Mulder's. "Bring me my glass." William came up from a hatchway set in the deck, bundled up in a small coat, a stocking cap covering his head to his brow. He smiled at Mulder as he passed, then his face fell, his mouth's corners turning down, then touched the Captain on his thick dark sleeve. "Sir, he doesn't look well." He handed Scully the long tube of the spyglass. Mulder closed his eyes. There was screaming behind the lids. He heard a man's voice, felt a man in his grip. He was vaguely aware of the tense mask of Walter Skinner's face. Then, a woman's voice above the din, above the pain. "No," Scully said sharply, spinning his body around. "Don't listen." Mulder took his hands off the wheel. The voice was sweet and somehow comforting. "It's not her, Mulder," Scully said urgently, holding William firm against his leg. "Not yet. Don't listen!" The boy looked very afraid. He clenched his hand on his temples, the voice lilting like a song in his head. It was so familiar. Velvet. Soft as a snake. Diana. He could hear the Captain coming closer, but it was too late. A few steps and he staggered toward the railing on the ship's starboard side. An instant later, William Scully calling his name, Mulder was flailing in cold air toward the water, right before his world turned to ice. **** THE ISLAND He washed up on the shore, soaked to the skin, the waves jostling him as he pulled in shaky breaths. He was afraid to open his eyes. The sun was too bright overhead. He was too cold. Then... "Agent Mulder." He squinted up as a shadow passed over him, blocking out the harshness of the light. Albert Hosteen stood over him, his eyes staring down from the sharp relief of his face. "You got away," the old man said. He looked pleased, as though Mulder had accomplished some great feat. "Away?" Mulder coughed, rubbing back his wet dark hair from his face. He was back in his T-shirt and jeans, his feet bare again. "Hmm." Hosteen offered him a hand and helped him to his feet. "Come and walk with me." * They walked for a long time, and it took awhile for Mulder to realize that they were on an island, that the beach kept curving around to their right, that as they walked along the shore, Hosteen picking up shells and tossing them into the waves, they kept passing the same spots. "Mr. Hosteen," Mulder said as the sun climbed. He was dry, his hair pushed back from his face by the wind coming in off the sea. "You want to know what is happening to you," Hosteen said. "Yes." Hosteen nodded toward a log that Mulder had sworn hadn't been there the last time they'd passed the spot and they trudged up to the drier sand where the dune grass began. "Sit," Hosteen said softly. Mulder perched on the log, toeing the sand. "You were here before," Mulder said softly. "At the other beach. The boy said he saw you. That you told him Scully was there." Hosteen smiled, drawing shapes in the sand with the edge of a stick. "What boy?" Mulder looked down. "He said his name was William, but it might have all been a dream..." He hoped not, but he didn't say it aloud. "What do you think of him?" Hosteen said, still tracing in the sand, his eyes down. "Of William?" Mulder said, and Hosteen nodded. Mulder shrugged. "He seems nice enough, I guess." "Hmm." Hosteen quirked a smile again, and Mulder looked into his face. "Is it?" he asked. "Is all this a dream?" "Close your eyes," Hosteen said, closing his own. Mulder thought to question him, but then leaned back and did as he said instead. Hosteen's voice drifted to him over the sound of the waves. "What do you feel?" Mulder licked his lips. "The breeze. The sand at my feet." "Beneath that." Mulder concentrated. The noise was still in his head. He heard the blip of machinery. He felt a needle's stick. His body was a dead weight on a surface that gave beneath it, but he couldn't lift a finger. He couldn't turn his head toward the sound of someone speaking. Skinner again. Talking to someone else. "I'm dying," he said. "Hmm," Hosteen said. "And I am already dead." Mulder's eyes opened in surprise, but Hosteen was only smiling sadly at him. "Where's Scully?" Mulder asked. "Tell me. Please." Hosteen pointed down at the drawing he'd made in the sand and Mulder studied it. A central circle surrounded by a square, as though someone had placed a plate on a wider dish. "I don't understand," Mulder said, shaking his head. Then someone called his name. William was on the beach again, his two shovels and his pail. Hosteen stood, waving to him. He nearly sang Mulder's name. "William knows that it is," he said, brushing sand off the seat of his pants. "Why don't you go down and let him show you while you both wait for Agent Scully. She is on her way to you both." "She knows how to find us here?" Mulder said, standing, looking at the flat palm of the island, confused. "For now," Hosteen said, smiling. The wind whipped his hair like a gray mane. "And later, when she does not, I will show her the way." Mulder looked at William, who was running toward and then away from the waves. His laughter was like music, and Mulder found himself smiling as the boy kicked up sand. "Mulder," William called to him. "Go," Hosteen said, his smile warm as bread. Mulder started down the beach at a walk, then a trot. Then, as William laughed and took off down the beach, Mulder broke into a run after him down the white, warm sand. **** ("Someone is coming for him," Diana said from close to his face.) ("He's not stable," a stranger's voice replied, terse, stretched tight. "I can't authorize you removing him without more tests.") ("You'll release him, Doctor," Diana said quietly, "or we'll replace you with someone who will.") Mulder drifted through the voices, his heartbeat keeping time. ("The pain's necessary, Fox," Diana whispered into the whorl of his ear. "You'll have to trust me...") Agony burned through his forehead, pain spreading black wings behind his eyes and taking flight. "Scully..." "Shh..." Diana's breath was too warm as the pain crested, and he tried to cry out. Too warm, just like her unwelcome, open-mouthed kiss. **** THE PRISON "Agent Mulder." There was cold stone beneath his back, the cold that a surface gets when the sun doesn't strike it, when it pulls what it wants from the ground. Mulder kept his eyes closed tight. "Agent Mulder. Open your eyes." He knew that voice. He did as he was told, squinting, though the room was dim, a single weak bulb illuminating the cramped space. A jail cell. Black bars and no windows. Water dripping from someplace. Mulder focused on the face above him. "Mr. Bruckman?" Bruckman smiled sadly. "In the flesh. So to speak." "Wha...?" Mulder's head felt heavy. Like his skull had grown soft and settled into place. There were footsteps coming nearer. Mulder heard their measured pace, flat wooden heels on concrete. The high echo of a ring holding hundreds of keys echoing through a huge, hollow space. "I don't have time to explain this to you, Agent Mulder," Bruckman said quickly, just above a whisper. "Except to say that you're not supposed to be here. Not yet, at least." The keys were moving closer. The footfalls got faster, hearing Bruckman's voice. "You've got to get out of here," Bruckman said. He looked afraid. "If they see you, you're done for. Do you understand?" Mulder tried to nod, but couldn't manage it. "Where...?" The room was walled with brick and bars, with a floor of solid, cold concrete. "Go to her," Bruckman said, his palm going to Mulder's forehead then moving down. His fingers touched Mulder's eyelids, gently urging them closed again. "Go into her...through her..." he heard Bruckman say, his voice growing further away as Mulder exhaled. "It's the only way out of all this." **** THE BODY He'd never made love to her, but he knew exactly what to do just the same. Scully was on her back on her bed. The room was warm, music playing through the crack in the bedroom door, and the whole house smelling like just-baked bread. He was craned over her bare shoulder, his lips brushing her forehead, breathing her in. Her ribcage seemed too small for the palm of his hand as he curved around her side. His thumb traced the swell of her breast, the nipple soft beneath its tip. "I want..." He couldn't finish what he meant to say. Her eyes were on his, half-lidded. She leaned up and brushed his cheek with her bottom lip. She turned toward him, pressing herself more firmly against his hand. Her fingers were on his chest, his belly, smoothing down across his skin. He kissed her as she touched him. His hand trailed from her breast down to her belly, palming the slight rise below her navel, the warmth of her drawing him in. He could hear the voices - Diana and his mother... "Shh..." she breathed, and he moved, settling his hips between her legs. Without meaning to do it, tears welled in his eyes, his lids clenching shut. "Don't listen to them," she murmured as he entered her, his chest to her chest. "Listen to us instead." Hosteen. Her father and Bruckman. William, who had shown him how to build the ship on the beach. Mulder could still recall how he'd looked, the boy standing before him with his hands out, sand running out from between his fingers as he laughed. His son. The one he and Scully, through this, would have one day. * "I need you to hold on..." He'd managed to turn his face toward her as she'd entered, her voice crowding out everything he'd been sentenced to hear. He held onto her words. "Please..." she whispered. "Hold on..." Diana was coming, the Smoking Man not far behind, their footsteps drawing nearer. But he would find a way to do what she asked of him. He would tell her that if he could find a way to answer her plea. Mulder closed his eyes, tasting her tears as she held his hand and breathed the words to him. They tasted like the sea. END AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks to Shari, Dani and Revely for the betas, as always. And thanks to you for reading. Bone April 2005