A Winter's Tale, Part 13
Jan. 3rd, 2008 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anjouficTitle: A Winter's Tale 13/23
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
comice aka Anjou (Anjou@rocketmail.com)
Posting Date: December 2007/January 2008
Rating: R for language and sexuality; M for Mature readers
Classification: Mulder/Scully, UST/MSR, AU
Archive: No archival until the story is completed, please. I'll be submitting to Ephemeral and Gossamer myself.
Spoilers: Through Two Fathers/One Son (S6), then AU. In other words, no Arcadia and beyond. Mytharc-y.
Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox. All other elements are mine.
Author's Note: It looks like evenings will work best for me during the work week, at least for the moment.
Daily posts can be read on my fic journal:anjoufic, as well as Ephemeral and other XF fic sites. The whole tale will be archived at my website, No Other … , maintained by the generous dtg, when it is completed.
As always, thanks to my sister and editrix, Suzanne, for her support.
Summary: Cast your memory back to the dark days of Season 6, to the period immediately following the confrontation between Mulder and Scully in the Gunmen's Office. It is late winter, dark and cold, the landscape obscured and transformed by snow and ice. One must step carefully, for the very ground can be treacherous. This is a lesson Mulder and Scully have already learned when the pristine snow in Antartica yielded a long-buried secret. But the winter can hold many secrets, and could tell many tales, if it so chose.
This is but one.
~*~
It seemed like only minutes later that Mulder was urging her to wake up, the panic in his blank voice evident. When she started to sit up, he pulled on her hands to aid her; she saw that he was wild-eyed with fear. "Her temperature's 104.5," he said.
She bolted from her bed and crossed the small space between them to crawl onto Hannah's bed. Hannah's face was flushed with fever, her hair matted with sweat on her brow and at the base of her neck.
"Did you give her another dose?" She was searching for Hannah's pulse as she spoke.
"At midnight," he said. He'd crossed to the other side of the bed, and was kneeling by Hannah's side, still wearing his rumpled slacks and shirt. "You were sleeping, so I just went ahead." His voice was anguished.
"OK, OK," she said, trying to gather her racing thoughts as she counted heartbeats. "Let's get her in the tub."
Mulder shot to his feet, picking up Hannah as he went. Scully crawled all the way across the bed and opened the door to the bathroom, squinting in the too-bright light as she stoppered the tub and turned the water on. She held up one hand to halt Mulder's progress while she made sure the temperature was appropriately tepid. While the tub filled, Scully tried to get Hannah out of her nightgown. Mulder finally sat down on the closed toilet so that they could maneuver Hannah's limp limbs out of the tangled nightgown. Hannah's torso was flushed with fever, her skin dry and hot.
"You need to hold onto her, Mulder," Scully said, tugging on his arms to get him to stand.
"I won't let go," he promised. He lowered himself carefully to his knees, and Scully joined him, grabbing a washcloth from the rack above the toilet. He was holding Hannah above the water, and she checked the temperature one more time before she pressed down on her feet, urging Mulder to let them dip into the water. Hannah jerked in Mulder's hands at the contact and she held onto Hannah's legs while he wrapped his arms around her more securely.
"You just need to hold her head up, Mulder," she whispered, turning the warm water up a bit more.
Hannah was restless in the water, arms and legs moving. Scully smoothed the lapping water up and over Hannah's torso as she began to cry thinly, barely conscious. Her voice echoed up and around them, the fretful wailing bouncing off the tiled walls and mixing with Mulder's murmured words as he tried to soothe the child. The string of his murmuring was mostly nonsensical, alternating between hushing and soothing Hannah, his voice strained but quiet. As the bath went on and Hannah's tears continued, Scully realized that Mulder was crying as well, but his utterances had transformed into a mantra that he whispered to Hannah over and over. "You're OK, we're going to make it better. I promise."
She looked up at him in surprise, and his tear-filled gaze caught hers, hot and challenging, as if daring her to contradict him. His rolled-up shirt sleeves were soaked, and he was rocking Hannah in his left arm, dribbling water over her head like a baptism with his right hand.
"Just lay her back, Mulder," she whispered. Hannah started to shift in Mulder's grasp as he did so, and she leaned over to catch Hannah's face so that she wouldn't turn it into the water. They were pressed against each other and the side of the tub, and she raised her eyes to find him still staring at her, tears streaming down his face. She had witnessed Mulder's tears more than once over the course of their years together, and had always been surprised by the artless and raw manner in which he cried, as if he were still a boy. Like most adults, she'd learned to feel shame at such a display; as a consequence, her own tears were repressed more often than not. When they did finally overflow, they did so against her will and every effort, in a silent stream that rebuked her lack of control. But tonight, Mulder's quiet tears mirrored her own unshed ones.
Unlike her, he made no effort to check them as their eyes caught and held. The intensity of his gaze threatened to melt the stone of ice cold fear behind which her tears were dammed, but for once she gave no thought to the display that might occur if that happened. Instead, she was overwhelmed with feeling. She loved him impossibly at that particular moment, could not think of any man other than Mulder who would stand by her so steadfastly through nightmare after nightmare, who would love her child, misbegotten as she had been, so easily and completely. She raised her left hand to wipe the tears that he was crying for all of them off his face, forgetting that it was already sodden and useless for such a purpose.
He lifted her hand from his face and placed a kiss on the wrinkled tips of her fingers silently, never breaking her gaze. The rings that she had somehow never taken off since he'd given them to her days ago glittered in the unforgiving light of the bathroom.
She closed her eyes as he leant forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead, sending a prayer heavenward as she did so. God help her, but she wanted to believe his promise.
~*~
Her first sight of the office park that was supposed to hold Hannah's salvation did not seem promising. She knew that any place would seem ominous to her in the winter dark, but the anonymous tree-lined roads that led them deeper and deeper into a maze of squat pseudo-industrial buildings looked nothing like a place where a desperately ill child could get competent medical assistance. In the driver's seat, Mulder fidgeted as he followed Frohike's directions. She could hear an occasional word from the phone as Mulder questioned whether or not this was the right place. It was far larger than she'd expected. They'd already passed a UPS facility, and several office supply businesses of one sort or another -- companies for machines, paper, even furniture. They'd passed a medical records company a while back, but Frohike had insisted that it wasn't the right place. She sighed and tried to relax, looking back at a dozing Hannah, and smoothing down her last passable skirt nervously.
She'd slept lightly for the scant time after Hannah's bath, and had risen from her uneasy rest when she felt Mulder get up from the bed and pad into the bathroom. Hannah'd slept between them for those few hours, the sounds of her breathing devolving into wheezing and weak coughs that threatened to become more overpowering the longer she went untreated.
By the time Mulder had exited the bathroom in a swirl of humid air, she'd salvaged an outfit from her one remaining skirt and the new sweater set she'd purchased days before. She'd showered and dressed swiftly, and they'd left the room just after six o'clock to set out for this bleak destination, only rousing Hannah enough to dress her warmly. Mulder had carried Hannah out to the car, and tucked her tenderly into her carseat while Scully stood on the threshold of their room and watched, filled with anxiety. The dark morning seemed foreboding to her, despite the bright light of the winter constellations against the clear, pre-dawn sky. She was a winter's child herself, but that fact gave her daughters no inoculation. Emily had died just as winter began. What chance did Hannah have when winter held the world in such a harsh and unforgiving grip?
The car fishtailed as Mulder turned yet another corner and he swore, letting go of the wheel so the car would straighten itself out. In the confusion, she almost missed the anonymous structure that had suddenly appeared on their right. She just made out the word Prometheus on a sign mostly buried in a snowbank and sucked in her breath.
"Mul—" He cut her off before she finished.
"Got it, Frohike," he said. He braked sharply to turn into the mostly deserted parking lot. A few white panel vans sat in neatly plowed spaces, their roofs capped with snow. On the other side of the lot, near the blank eye of the front door, the lumps of what looked to be sedan cars were visible under the snow. A Bobcat stood next to the cars silently, snow still in the bucket to be moved elsewhere.
"Think we're expected, Scully?" Mulder asked. He dropped the now silent phone into an empty cupholder, and pulled out his gun as he maneuvered their rental into a parking space not directly in line of the front door. She had taken hers out as soon as he'd turned the corner into the parking lot. "What's the plan, Mulder?" she asked.
He put the car in park, but didn't cut the engine. "Get behind the wheel, Scully, would you?"
He lifted up and stepped over while she slid underneath him, as he moved to the passenger side. She rammed the seat closer to the wheel, using her left hand.
"I'm going to ring the bell," he said grimly, trying desperately to keep his knees from being wedged against the dashboard as he waited for her to hastily adjust the mirrors. "Shoot anyone who approaches the car." He turned around and looked at Hannah, dozing in her carseat, and then turned back to her with a smile. "Try not to shoot me, though, OK?"
"Mulder," she said, protesting faintly.
"I really didn't enjoy it the last time," he continued. The long fingers of his left hand circled her wrist loosely for a second, and then he opened the car door and stepped out into the cold air. She took the safety off her gun and watched him go, scanning the parking lot and building roofline for signs of life. There were no windows cut into the blank façade of Prometheus Strategies Inc, just a small one in the door that Mulder was walking toward. The left front of the building was dominated by a loading dock, the three large doors pulled closed against the weather. It looked like they'd been unused in a while, as the snow had drifted across the empty expanse of the dock ledge and piled against the grated doors.
Hannah coughed in the back seat, and Scully startled at the sound, turning her head to ensure that Hannah was OK and that there was no one behind them.
When she turned back, Mulder was at the door, leaning on the bell without letting up. She put the car into drive, but kept her foot planted on the brake, leaving her left hand on the wheel. Mulder had his ear pressed to the door, listening, and she tensed as she saw him move away from it and flatten himself against the building. As the door opened, he ducked and came up low. She forced herself to look around her and Hannah, although she wanted to back the car up and over to see what was going on. She could see Mulder's mouth moving, but the tension in his stance did not ease as he waited for a response. As the seconds ticked by, she scanned the mirrors and all visible sightlines, feeling exposed and vulnerable and utterly incapable of keeping all three of them safe.
When Mulder shifted his posture, she swung her gun up and out toward him. He took a step backward into the parking lot and the door swung open all the way to reveal a slender young man with auburn hair. He was wearing a lab coat and looked curiously over to where she sat in the car. This had to be Kurt Crawford; however she had pictured him in her head, she had somehow never imagined him as being young. As she looked on in surprise, the young man stepped out onto the snow-covered asphalt and walked directly over to her car, Mulder trailing behind with his gun. He stopped and bent over to peer in the passenger window at her, his expression not changing at the sight of her own drawn gun. Instead, he looked right past the weapon to her face, and she realized with a start that she, and not Hannah, was the object of his curiousity.
"Agent Scully," Kurt Crawford said in a mild voice, "welcome to Prometheus. Please come inside."
She sucked in a gasp of surprise, hating the tremble of the weapon in her grasp. She swung it at the sound of someone trying to open the locked back door, but saw Mulder, gun nowhere in evidence, trying to get to Hannah. "Scully," he said to her through the window, "open up."
She stared at him for a long moment through the glass that separated them and wondered how many unimagined questions would be answered on this journey. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to know the answers.
"Scully," Mulder pled, watching her through the glass. "Get the files."
"Agent Scully," Crawford said a beat later, repeating himself, "please come inside."
~*~
Part 14
Author:
comice aka Anjou (Anjou@rocketmail.com)Posting Date: December 2007/January 2008
Rating: R for language and sexuality; M for Mature readers
Classification: Mulder/Scully, UST/MSR, AU
Archive: No archival until the story is completed, please. I'll be submitting to Ephemeral and Gossamer myself.
Spoilers: Through Two Fathers/One Son (S6), then AU. In other words, no Arcadia and beyond. Mytharc-y.
Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox. All other elements are mine.
Author's Note: It looks like evenings will work best for me during the work week, at least for the moment.
Daily posts can be read on my fic journal:
anjoufic, as well as Ephemeral and other XF fic sites. The whole tale will be archived at my website, No Other … , maintained by the generous dtg, when it is completed.As always, thanks to my sister and editrix, Suzanne, for her support.
Summary: Cast your memory back to the dark days of Season 6, to the period immediately following the confrontation between Mulder and Scully in the Gunmen's Office. It is late winter, dark and cold, the landscape obscured and transformed by snow and ice. One must step carefully, for the very ground can be treacherous. This is a lesson Mulder and Scully have already learned when the pristine snow in Antartica yielded a long-buried secret. But the winter can hold many secrets, and could tell many tales, if it so chose.
This is but one.
~*~
It seemed like only minutes later that Mulder was urging her to wake up, the panic in his blank voice evident. When she started to sit up, he pulled on her hands to aid her; she saw that he was wild-eyed with fear. "Her temperature's 104.5," he said.
She bolted from her bed and crossed the small space between them to crawl onto Hannah's bed. Hannah's face was flushed with fever, her hair matted with sweat on her brow and at the base of her neck.
"Did you give her another dose?" She was searching for Hannah's pulse as she spoke.
"At midnight," he said. He'd crossed to the other side of the bed, and was kneeling by Hannah's side, still wearing his rumpled slacks and shirt. "You were sleeping, so I just went ahead." His voice was anguished.
"OK, OK," she said, trying to gather her racing thoughts as she counted heartbeats. "Let's get her in the tub."
Mulder shot to his feet, picking up Hannah as he went. Scully crawled all the way across the bed and opened the door to the bathroom, squinting in the too-bright light as she stoppered the tub and turned the water on. She held up one hand to halt Mulder's progress while she made sure the temperature was appropriately tepid. While the tub filled, Scully tried to get Hannah out of her nightgown. Mulder finally sat down on the closed toilet so that they could maneuver Hannah's limp limbs out of the tangled nightgown. Hannah's torso was flushed with fever, her skin dry and hot.
"You need to hold onto her, Mulder," Scully said, tugging on his arms to get him to stand.
"I won't let go," he promised. He lowered himself carefully to his knees, and Scully joined him, grabbing a washcloth from the rack above the toilet. He was holding Hannah above the water, and she checked the temperature one more time before she pressed down on her feet, urging Mulder to let them dip into the water. Hannah jerked in Mulder's hands at the contact and she held onto Hannah's legs while he wrapped his arms around her more securely.
"You just need to hold her head up, Mulder," she whispered, turning the warm water up a bit more.
Hannah was restless in the water, arms and legs moving. Scully smoothed the lapping water up and over Hannah's torso as she began to cry thinly, barely conscious. Her voice echoed up and around them, the fretful wailing bouncing off the tiled walls and mixing with Mulder's murmured words as he tried to soothe the child. The string of his murmuring was mostly nonsensical, alternating between hushing and soothing Hannah, his voice strained but quiet. As the bath went on and Hannah's tears continued, Scully realized that Mulder was crying as well, but his utterances had transformed into a mantra that he whispered to Hannah over and over. "You're OK, we're going to make it better. I promise."
She looked up at him in surprise, and his tear-filled gaze caught hers, hot and challenging, as if daring her to contradict him. His rolled-up shirt sleeves were soaked, and he was rocking Hannah in his left arm, dribbling water over her head like a baptism with his right hand.
"Just lay her back, Mulder," she whispered. Hannah started to shift in Mulder's grasp as he did so, and she leaned over to catch Hannah's face so that she wouldn't turn it into the water. They were pressed against each other and the side of the tub, and she raised her eyes to find him still staring at her, tears streaming down his face. She had witnessed Mulder's tears more than once over the course of their years together, and had always been surprised by the artless and raw manner in which he cried, as if he were still a boy. Like most adults, she'd learned to feel shame at such a display; as a consequence, her own tears were repressed more often than not. When they did finally overflow, they did so against her will and every effort, in a silent stream that rebuked her lack of control. But tonight, Mulder's quiet tears mirrored her own unshed ones.
Unlike her, he made no effort to check them as their eyes caught and held. The intensity of his gaze threatened to melt the stone of ice cold fear behind which her tears were dammed, but for once she gave no thought to the display that might occur if that happened. Instead, she was overwhelmed with feeling. She loved him impossibly at that particular moment, could not think of any man other than Mulder who would stand by her so steadfastly through nightmare after nightmare, who would love her child, misbegotten as she had been, so easily and completely. She raised her left hand to wipe the tears that he was crying for all of them off his face, forgetting that it was already sodden and useless for such a purpose.
He lifted her hand from his face and placed a kiss on the wrinkled tips of her fingers silently, never breaking her gaze. The rings that she had somehow never taken off since he'd given them to her days ago glittered in the unforgiving light of the bathroom.
She closed her eyes as he leant forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead, sending a prayer heavenward as she did so. God help her, but she wanted to believe his promise.
~*~
Her first sight of the office park that was supposed to hold Hannah's salvation did not seem promising. She knew that any place would seem ominous to her in the winter dark, but the anonymous tree-lined roads that led them deeper and deeper into a maze of squat pseudo-industrial buildings looked nothing like a place where a desperately ill child could get competent medical assistance. In the driver's seat, Mulder fidgeted as he followed Frohike's directions. She could hear an occasional word from the phone as Mulder questioned whether or not this was the right place. It was far larger than she'd expected. They'd already passed a UPS facility, and several office supply businesses of one sort or another -- companies for machines, paper, even furniture. They'd passed a medical records company a while back, but Frohike had insisted that it wasn't the right place. She sighed and tried to relax, looking back at a dozing Hannah, and smoothing down her last passable skirt nervously.
She'd slept lightly for the scant time after Hannah's bath, and had risen from her uneasy rest when she felt Mulder get up from the bed and pad into the bathroom. Hannah'd slept between them for those few hours, the sounds of her breathing devolving into wheezing and weak coughs that threatened to become more overpowering the longer she went untreated.
By the time Mulder had exited the bathroom in a swirl of humid air, she'd salvaged an outfit from her one remaining skirt and the new sweater set she'd purchased days before. She'd showered and dressed swiftly, and they'd left the room just after six o'clock to set out for this bleak destination, only rousing Hannah enough to dress her warmly. Mulder had carried Hannah out to the car, and tucked her tenderly into her carseat while Scully stood on the threshold of their room and watched, filled with anxiety. The dark morning seemed foreboding to her, despite the bright light of the winter constellations against the clear, pre-dawn sky. She was a winter's child herself, but that fact gave her daughters no inoculation. Emily had died just as winter began. What chance did Hannah have when winter held the world in such a harsh and unforgiving grip?
The car fishtailed as Mulder turned yet another corner and he swore, letting go of the wheel so the car would straighten itself out. In the confusion, she almost missed the anonymous structure that had suddenly appeared on their right. She just made out the word Prometheus on a sign mostly buried in a snowbank and sucked in her breath.
"Mul—" He cut her off before she finished.
"Got it, Frohike," he said. He braked sharply to turn into the mostly deserted parking lot. A few white panel vans sat in neatly plowed spaces, their roofs capped with snow. On the other side of the lot, near the blank eye of the front door, the lumps of what looked to be sedan cars were visible under the snow. A Bobcat stood next to the cars silently, snow still in the bucket to be moved elsewhere.
"Think we're expected, Scully?" Mulder asked. He dropped the now silent phone into an empty cupholder, and pulled out his gun as he maneuvered their rental into a parking space not directly in line of the front door. She had taken hers out as soon as he'd turned the corner into the parking lot. "What's the plan, Mulder?" she asked.
He put the car in park, but didn't cut the engine. "Get behind the wheel, Scully, would you?"
He lifted up and stepped over while she slid underneath him, as he moved to the passenger side. She rammed the seat closer to the wheel, using her left hand.
"I'm going to ring the bell," he said grimly, trying desperately to keep his knees from being wedged against the dashboard as he waited for her to hastily adjust the mirrors. "Shoot anyone who approaches the car." He turned around and looked at Hannah, dozing in her carseat, and then turned back to her with a smile. "Try not to shoot me, though, OK?"
"Mulder," she said, protesting faintly.
"I really didn't enjoy it the last time," he continued. The long fingers of his left hand circled her wrist loosely for a second, and then he opened the car door and stepped out into the cold air. She took the safety off her gun and watched him go, scanning the parking lot and building roofline for signs of life. There were no windows cut into the blank façade of Prometheus Strategies Inc, just a small one in the door that Mulder was walking toward. The left front of the building was dominated by a loading dock, the three large doors pulled closed against the weather. It looked like they'd been unused in a while, as the snow had drifted across the empty expanse of the dock ledge and piled against the grated doors.
Hannah coughed in the back seat, and Scully startled at the sound, turning her head to ensure that Hannah was OK and that there was no one behind them.
When she turned back, Mulder was at the door, leaning on the bell without letting up. She put the car into drive, but kept her foot planted on the brake, leaving her left hand on the wheel. Mulder had his ear pressed to the door, listening, and she tensed as she saw him move away from it and flatten himself against the building. As the door opened, he ducked and came up low. She forced herself to look around her and Hannah, although she wanted to back the car up and over to see what was going on. She could see Mulder's mouth moving, but the tension in his stance did not ease as he waited for a response. As the seconds ticked by, she scanned the mirrors and all visible sightlines, feeling exposed and vulnerable and utterly incapable of keeping all three of them safe.
When Mulder shifted his posture, she swung her gun up and out toward him. He took a step backward into the parking lot and the door swung open all the way to reveal a slender young man with auburn hair. He was wearing a lab coat and looked curiously over to where she sat in the car. This had to be Kurt Crawford; however she had pictured him in her head, she had somehow never imagined him as being young. As she looked on in surprise, the young man stepped out onto the snow-covered asphalt and walked directly over to her car, Mulder trailing behind with his gun. He stopped and bent over to peer in the passenger window at her, his expression not changing at the sight of her own drawn gun. Instead, he looked right past the weapon to her face, and she realized with a start that she, and not Hannah, was the object of his curiousity.
"Agent Scully," Kurt Crawford said in a mild voice, "welcome to Prometheus. Please come inside."
She sucked in a gasp of surprise, hating the tremble of the weapon in her grasp. She swung it at the sound of someone trying to open the locked back door, but saw Mulder, gun nowhere in evidence, trying to get to Hannah. "Scully," he said to her through the window, "open up."
She stared at him for a long moment through the glass that separated them and wondered how many unimagined questions would be answered on this journey. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to know the answers.
"Scully," Mulder pled, watching her through the glass. "Get the files."
"Agent Scully," Crawford said a beat later, repeating himself, "please come inside."
~*~
Part 14
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 08:58 pm (UTC)And yes, the use of Prometheus was quite pointed, as you surmise.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 12:34 am (UTC)Yowza on the bath tub scene, so sad- what to be next?
gr have to wait, another day ><
no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 08:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 09:08 pm (UTC)Um ... no? Just trying to move the emotional arc forward, that's all.
:: blows you kisses ::
no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 08:09 pm (UTC)I haven't read a word of this yet - I'm just waaaaaaaaiting for it to be all done so I can read it at once. I've got it all tucked away in a word processing document. I'm happy to see you posting daily. Rah! Go you!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 09:08 pm (UTC)Fralinda