A Winter's Tale, Part 19
Jan. 9th, 2008 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anjouficTitle: A Winter's Tale 19/23
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: Thanks so much for going on this ride with me. I'm still holding firm to finishing posting by Sunday, January 13th. And I will get to your feedback and answer you -- I promise!
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 took her a few seconds to register what she was seeing before Mulder wheeled on her, drawing his own gun. He was alone in their room, chest heaving and red-faced with fury. The splintered door of the closet swung drunkenly on its hinges; the bureau gaped like a jack o' lantern where drawers were missing. Empty, they lay smashed on the floor in front of her, looking as if they had been stomped on.
Mulder stared at her, and for the first time ever, she saw the madman in him that all of the naysayers at the FBI had warned her about. He was feral and furious, and not at all happy to see her. He tossed his gun on the bed they'd slept in the night before, and said, "Go away, Scully," before he turned and administered a savage kick to the closet door.
"No," she said, her voice still faint with shock. She stepped into the room and closed and locked the door, while he kicked and pulled at the closet door, trying his level best to break it.
"Go away," he ordered, not turning around.
"No," she said again, holstering her gun. "You come back to the clinic with me. Hannah is terrified that you've left her."
His head swiveled at her words and for an instant, she saw pure hatred.
"That," he said, in a rough voice he'd never before used on her, "was a really cheap shot."
"It's the truth," she countered. "I had to reassure her over and over again that you'd be coming back. She heard you yelling, you know. It frightened her." She continued on ruthlessly. "She has adored you from the minute you found her, Mulder. You are the first person that has ever loved her, the only father she's ever known."
Mulder closed his eyes in real pain at her words, "Scully."
"You are her father, Mulder," she said firmly, knowing that she was being brutal, but not caring to pull her punches. She barely stopped herself from adding, 'Act like it.'
He wheeled around from the closet door and faced her, towering in his rage. "You think I don't KNOW THAT!" he bellowed at her. "I loved her from the instant I saw her!" His eyes were wild with grief and loss. "I loved her because she was yours, and now …" he trailed off, and she felt her own tears welling up.
"I know how you feel, Mulder," she reminded him, taking a step toward him.
"Do you?" he challenged her. "Do you really, Scully?"
That did sting, and the tears that she'd been damming up for days began to fall in earnest now. "How could you say something like that," she spat out, choking on her tears, "to me. Of course, I know how you feel."
Mulder was shaking his head 'no' at her insistently, and although he looked stricken at her tears, he wasn't backing down. "No, you don't," he said.
"Mulder!" She was puzzled and angered by his recalcitrance. She took another step toward him, but he flinched away from her, striding across the room to the window, and turning his back to her.
"You don't, Scully!"
"Oh, really?" she said, "because your feelings are so precious somehow?" Her tone was blisteringly caustic. "Because I don't know what it's like to be raped? To have all my choices taken from me?"
She heard Mulder's painful exhalation from across the room an instant before he kicked the wall hard enough to make the windows rattle. When he spoke again, it was clear that he was fighting for control.
"You don't understand, Scully," he said, but his tone was flat with sorrow.
"Then tell me!" she shouted at him. "Tell me!"
Mulder was silent for a while, his whole body still. His arms were wrapped around himself protectively, hands over his elbows. He did not turn to face her. "They would have let the whole world die," he said quietly, "and given me a front row seat to watch it -- left me all alone to fight it, after they have done their level best to strip me of every weapon I've ever tried to raise against them."
She felt her blood freeze at the desolate, blank tone of his voice.
"You don't understand, Scully, that it's never enough with these people," he continued, "they ruin everything," he said with emphasis. "And I never understood why, but now I see it. They hate me for being the one thing that they can't be, so they have ruined everything in my life."
"Mulder," she said to him softly, walking around the bed to get closer to him, but he drew further away. "No, Mulder."
"They took Sam," he said, "they destroyed my family. Not that it was worth much, as it turns out, but they ruined it anyway." His voice was remote, as if he were circling the Earth from a great distance. "I was a suspect in Sam's disappearance, you know," he said conversationally. "And Martha's Vineyard is a small place. I was an outcast for the rest of the time that I spent there, pretty much. So, no home," he laughed, but it was more like a sob, short and bitter, "nothing to go back to, nothing to depend upon."
His voice was ragged with tears and getting softer. "Until … well. I had this idea," he was whispering now, "I had this dream. When I found out what they'd done to you, I knew it wouldn't come true, but I still … I dreamt about it anyway."
It was hard to understand him through his tears, so she got as close to him as she possibly could without touching him.
"But they couldn't even leave me that," he said wonderingly. "Because they have to ruin everything. So they took it, and they perverted it," he said in a tone of disgust. "They corrupted it, and they ruined it."
She drew in a breath, realizing to what he was alluding. "No, Mulder," she said to him. She put her hand on his back, and when he tried to pull away from her, she blocked him into the corner, knowing that this time he wouldn't force his way by her.
He was shaking his head, "You're wrong, Scully. Because they can't even leave me my dreams – they found a way to ruin them."
"No, Mulder," she insisted, pulling at his elbow so that she could get in between him and the wall. If she could just get him to look at her … but his voice, affectless yet somehow full of pain, continued on in an insistent drone.
"That's why you should get away from me, Scully, because it'll just keep happening if you stay, they'll just keep ruining everything."
"No, Mulder," she said desperately. She wedged her shoulder in between him and the wall, but kept her other arm wrapped around him tightly so that he couldn't get away from her. "That's not true," she was crying now, openly. "They can't ruin this."
"They ruin everything, Scully," he insisted.
She grabbed hold of his head and turned his face toward her, seeing the exhaustion in his eyes. They were dark with sorrow and pain, the rage that had been driving him for hours extinguished like a candle that had been blown out.
"No," she repeated. "They can't ruin this." It was an impossible situation, in an impossible world, and she needed him to be there with her, fighting by her side. Hannah needed him. "They can't ruin us."
"Scully," he said, and a ghost of a smile touched his lips before it twisted down into a grimace. "They already have."
"No." She thought of the past month, of the silence and remove that had existed between them, of her own fears that what he said was coming true, and the determination grew in her. She rose on her toes and pressed her mouth to his, feeling him go stock-still in her grip. She used his surprise as leverage, and pushed more of herself between him and the wall, pressing against him as fully as possible. She tipped up again and ran her hands into his hair, pulling him down to her.
She kissed his full lips tenderly, tasting both of their tears. She breathed against his mouth, "They can't have this, Mulder." His eyes were closed, so she kissed their lids, willing him to hear her, to open his eyes and see the truth. Her fingers traced the ridges in his hard head, the cage of bone that encompassed the mind she loved so well, trying to impress her will upon him. "I won't let them take this."
She was halfway to his mouth again when she heard his gasp, and felt him push her back against the wall. She looped her arms around his neck and readied herself for a struggle. She was not letting go.
Mulder's eyes were open and he was staring at her as if he'd never before seen her.
"Are you listening to me now, Mulder?" she asked him quietly, not flinching from his penetrating gaze. She spoke clearly, her own tears in abeyance for the moment. "I won't let them take this, and I won't let you give it to them. They can't have it," she enunciated clearly. "They can't have us."
"Scully …" his name for her was exhaled in a tone that was half question, half wonder. He was searching her eyes.
There was something in his expression that reminded her of being in his hallway the summer before. Then, his yearning for her had been clear, but there had been something of defeat in his posture, in the very air about him, even as he moved in to kiss her. Or maybe she was the one who was different. Months ago, she'd barely been able to admit to herself that she wanted him to kiss her, much less believe that was what he wanted.
It was all different now. She returned his regard steadily, letting him see the truth in her eyes. She watched his surprise transform into hope and then darken into hunger the instant before he bent his head to catch her parted lips with his own. The arms that he'd used to hold her away from him wrapped around her as he pressed himself against her.
"Scully …" he whispered in a husky groan as she slid an arm down to his lower back, pulling his hips closer to hers.
His kisses were urgent now, grasping for more as they clung to each other.
She couldn't keep the smile from her lips at the feel of him, hard and ready for her, and their kiss broke as they both gasped for air. He took the opportunity to trail kisses over her jaw line and down her neck. She moaned and tilted her head, running her hands over his shoulders and up through the hair on the back of his head. After all this time, all the longing … he really did love her.
"Scully," he said to her again, sounding dazed.
She planted a hand behind her to push herself away from the wall and guide them toward the bed, when the pounding in her ears was echoed by a pounding on the front door.
Mulder and she both started at the sound. She pulled her gun, relieved to have it no longer digging in her back; Mulder bent over, reaching for his ankle holster.
"I have the key," a woman's voice said sternly. "If the door doesn't open in twenty seconds, I'm going to use it."
Mulder closed his eyes. "Manager," he said.
Scully nodded, wiping around her mouth to get at whatever lipstick remained. "I imagine she has her shotgun," she said.
"Yeah," he said, starting to move toward the door.
"Mulder," she said, stepping in front of him. She glanced pointedly downward, then pushed him to sit on the bed, handing him her gun. "I'll go."
She straightened her clothes and hair hastily as she moved, grabbing Mulder's gun from the other bed and tossing it to him before she stopped behind the door, gathering herself. She glanced over at Mulder. He'd put the guns on the far side of him so they'd be out of sight, and sat with his elbows braced on his knees. He nodded at her, his face flushed from passion, his eyes still sparkling.
"I'm coming in!" the voice announced from the other side of the door.
Scully opened it and came face to face with the irate owner of the motel. The woman's shotgun was out and pointed toward the open door, but she lowered it when she saw Scully, using it to lever the door open further so that she could peer into the room. She made a noise of disgust when she saw the closet and the bureau, her mouth a thin line of anger. Her frank gaze turned to Scully; it was clear that she disapproved of what she saw. "I thought better of you," she said to Scully. "You looked like an intelligent woman from what little I saw of you. If you need help getting away from him, it's here now."
Scully shook her head, dismayed to realize what the motel owner thought. "It's really not that kind of situation," she said. "I'm very sorry about the damage, but we'll pay for it."
"Oh, he'll pay for it all right," the woman said, "but what in the hell are you doing? You've got a little girl to protect, and instead you're putting her in danger by being with him."
Scully felt the sting of tears, but she spoke firmly and reflexively. "He would never hurt our daughter."
Behind her, she heard Mulder choke back something that sounded suspiciously like a sob.
The woman peered into the room, stepping further into the doorway so that she could see Mulder, who now sat with his head in his hands.
"Where is your little girl?" she said suspiciously.
Scully stepped in between her and Mulder again, wanting to shield him from scrutiny. "Our daughter's in the clinic," she said quietly, and then hastened to continue when the woman's gun began to rise. "We came here because she's been so sick," she said, "and today they told us …" she drifted off, her thoughts scattering. She'd never been a very nimble liar and she couldn't think of what to tell the woman that was believable. Behind her, the sound of Mulder crying became audible, and she stumbled, repeating her last words and then covering her mouth in distress at his pain. Her own tears began falling thick and fast.
The motel owner stared at her, and then at Mulder. Her stony expression changed as she regarded him, and she turned to look at Scully with true sympathy. "I'm very sorry," she said.
Scully nodded, barely able to speak, realizing what the woman had inferred and just how close it had come to being true with Hannah, as it had been with her sisters. "My husband is just very upset right now," she choked out. "We'll pay for the damage. I'm sorry."
The woman returned the shotgun to rest across her body, cradling it in the crook of an elbow. She pointed at Scully's cross, and then said, "If you believe, then don't give up. I will pray for your little girl." She paused. "And I trust that I won't have to be coming back here."
Scully nodded and closed the door, resting her head against the cool metal for a moment. She wondered exactly what it was that she believed in anymore, here in the incomprehensible world in which she now lived. Mulder's sobs brought her back to herself and she stepped over to the bed and around him, picking up their guns and putting them on the nightstand. She turned back, intending to sit down next to him, when he surprised her by reaching out and drawing her into the space between his legs, laying his head against her abdomen and encircling her with his arms. He had quieted for the moment, but she could sense that his tears hadn't been as cathartic as she'd hoped. It was just a momentary calm. Her hands sifted through his hair while she waited, feeling Mulder breathe against her.
After a while, he let out a long breath, then looked up at her. "Samantha's dead, isn't she, Scully?"
She could not possibly have kept the shock from her expression, and knew that he could see the truth in her eyes. His own closed in pain and he turned his face back into her stomach. She bent to gather him more securely in her arms, but he was wrapped tightly around her, and the pose was awkward.
"I'm sorry," she said over and over, "Kurt just told me. I don't know how, Mulder. I swear I didn't know until today."
Her only answer was his weeping, and it was the raw sound of his heartbreak that finally got to her. She wrapped her arms around his head and let go of all the tears she had held in forever.
*~*
Part 20
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: Thanks so much for going on this ride with me. I'm still holding firm to finishing posting by Sunday, January 13th. And I will get to your feedback and answer you -- I promise!
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 took her a few seconds to register what she was seeing before Mulder wheeled on her, drawing his own gun. He was alone in their room, chest heaving and red-faced with fury. The splintered door of the closet swung drunkenly on its hinges; the bureau gaped like a jack o' lantern where drawers were missing. Empty, they lay smashed on the floor in front of her, looking as if they had been stomped on.
Mulder stared at her, and for the first time ever, she saw the madman in him that all of the naysayers at the FBI had warned her about. He was feral and furious, and not at all happy to see her. He tossed his gun on the bed they'd slept in the night before, and said, "Go away, Scully," before he turned and administered a savage kick to the closet door.
"No," she said, her voice still faint with shock. She stepped into the room and closed and locked the door, while he kicked and pulled at the closet door, trying his level best to break it.
"Go away," he ordered, not turning around.
"No," she said again, holstering her gun. "You come back to the clinic with me. Hannah is terrified that you've left her."
His head swiveled at her words and for an instant, she saw pure hatred.
"That," he said, in a rough voice he'd never before used on her, "was a really cheap shot."
"It's the truth," she countered. "I had to reassure her over and over again that you'd be coming back. She heard you yelling, you know. It frightened her." She continued on ruthlessly. "She has adored you from the minute you found her, Mulder. You are the first person that has ever loved her, the only father she's ever known."
Mulder closed his eyes in real pain at her words, "Scully."
"You are her father, Mulder," she said firmly, knowing that she was being brutal, but not caring to pull her punches. She barely stopped herself from adding, 'Act like it.'
He wheeled around from the closet door and faced her, towering in his rage. "You think I don't KNOW THAT!" he bellowed at her. "I loved her from the instant I saw her!" His eyes were wild with grief and loss. "I loved her because she was yours, and now …" he trailed off, and she felt her own tears welling up.
"I know how you feel, Mulder," she reminded him, taking a step toward him.
"Do you?" he challenged her. "Do you really, Scully?"
That did sting, and the tears that she'd been damming up for days began to fall in earnest now. "How could you say something like that," she spat out, choking on her tears, "to me. Of course, I know how you feel."
Mulder was shaking his head 'no' at her insistently, and although he looked stricken at her tears, he wasn't backing down. "No, you don't," he said.
"Mulder!" She was puzzled and angered by his recalcitrance. She took another step toward him, but he flinched away from her, striding across the room to the window, and turning his back to her.
"You don't, Scully!"
"Oh, really?" she said, "because your feelings are so precious somehow?" Her tone was blisteringly caustic. "Because I don't know what it's like to be raped? To have all my choices taken from me?"
She heard Mulder's painful exhalation from across the room an instant before he kicked the wall hard enough to make the windows rattle. When he spoke again, it was clear that he was fighting for control.
"You don't understand, Scully," he said, but his tone was flat with sorrow.
"Then tell me!" she shouted at him. "Tell me!"
Mulder was silent for a while, his whole body still. His arms were wrapped around himself protectively, hands over his elbows. He did not turn to face her. "They would have let the whole world die," he said quietly, "and given me a front row seat to watch it -- left me all alone to fight it, after they have done their level best to strip me of every weapon I've ever tried to raise against them."
She felt her blood freeze at the desolate, blank tone of his voice.
"You don't understand, Scully, that it's never enough with these people," he continued, "they ruin everything," he said with emphasis. "And I never understood why, but now I see it. They hate me for being the one thing that they can't be, so they have ruined everything in my life."
"Mulder," she said to him softly, walking around the bed to get closer to him, but he drew further away. "No, Mulder."
"They took Sam," he said, "they destroyed my family. Not that it was worth much, as it turns out, but they ruined it anyway." His voice was remote, as if he were circling the Earth from a great distance. "I was a suspect in Sam's disappearance, you know," he said conversationally. "And Martha's Vineyard is a small place. I was an outcast for the rest of the time that I spent there, pretty much. So, no home," he laughed, but it was more like a sob, short and bitter, "nothing to go back to, nothing to depend upon."
His voice was ragged with tears and getting softer. "Until … well. I had this idea," he was whispering now, "I had this dream. When I found out what they'd done to you, I knew it wouldn't come true, but I still … I dreamt about it anyway."
It was hard to understand him through his tears, so she got as close to him as she possibly could without touching him.
"But they couldn't even leave me that," he said wonderingly. "Because they have to ruin everything. So they took it, and they perverted it," he said in a tone of disgust. "They corrupted it, and they ruined it."
She drew in a breath, realizing to what he was alluding. "No, Mulder," she said to him. She put her hand on his back, and when he tried to pull away from her, she blocked him into the corner, knowing that this time he wouldn't force his way by her.
He was shaking his head, "You're wrong, Scully. Because they can't even leave me my dreams – they found a way to ruin them."
"No, Mulder," she insisted, pulling at his elbow so that she could get in between him and the wall. If she could just get him to look at her … but his voice, affectless yet somehow full of pain, continued on in an insistent drone.
"That's why you should get away from me, Scully, because it'll just keep happening if you stay, they'll just keep ruining everything."
"No, Mulder," she said desperately. She wedged her shoulder in between him and the wall, but kept her other arm wrapped around him tightly so that he couldn't get away from her. "That's not true," she was crying now, openly. "They can't ruin this."
"They ruin everything, Scully," he insisted.
She grabbed hold of his head and turned his face toward her, seeing the exhaustion in his eyes. They were dark with sorrow and pain, the rage that had been driving him for hours extinguished like a candle that had been blown out.
"No," she repeated. "They can't ruin this." It was an impossible situation, in an impossible world, and she needed him to be there with her, fighting by her side. Hannah needed him. "They can't ruin us."
"Scully," he said, and a ghost of a smile touched his lips before it twisted down into a grimace. "They already have."
"No." She thought of the past month, of the silence and remove that had existed between them, of her own fears that what he said was coming true, and the determination grew in her. She rose on her toes and pressed her mouth to his, feeling him go stock-still in her grip. She used his surprise as leverage, and pushed more of herself between him and the wall, pressing against him as fully as possible. She tipped up again and ran her hands into his hair, pulling him down to her.
She kissed his full lips tenderly, tasting both of their tears. She breathed against his mouth, "They can't have this, Mulder." His eyes were closed, so she kissed their lids, willing him to hear her, to open his eyes and see the truth. Her fingers traced the ridges in his hard head, the cage of bone that encompassed the mind she loved so well, trying to impress her will upon him. "I won't let them take this."
She was halfway to his mouth again when she heard his gasp, and felt him push her back against the wall. She looped her arms around his neck and readied herself for a struggle. She was not letting go.
Mulder's eyes were open and he was staring at her as if he'd never before seen her.
"Are you listening to me now, Mulder?" she asked him quietly, not flinching from his penetrating gaze. She spoke clearly, her own tears in abeyance for the moment. "I won't let them take this, and I won't let you give it to them. They can't have it," she enunciated clearly. "They can't have us."
"Scully …" his name for her was exhaled in a tone that was half question, half wonder. He was searching her eyes.
There was something in his expression that reminded her of being in his hallway the summer before. Then, his yearning for her had been clear, but there had been something of defeat in his posture, in the very air about him, even as he moved in to kiss her. Or maybe she was the one who was different. Months ago, she'd barely been able to admit to herself that she wanted him to kiss her, much less believe that was what he wanted.
It was all different now. She returned his regard steadily, letting him see the truth in her eyes. She watched his surprise transform into hope and then darken into hunger the instant before he bent his head to catch her parted lips with his own. The arms that he'd used to hold her away from him wrapped around her as he pressed himself against her.
"Scully …" he whispered in a husky groan as she slid an arm down to his lower back, pulling his hips closer to hers.
His kisses were urgent now, grasping for more as they clung to each other.
She couldn't keep the smile from her lips at the feel of him, hard and ready for her, and their kiss broke as they both gasped for air. He took the opportunity to trail kisses over her jaw line and down her neck. She moaned and tilted her head, running her hands over his shoulders and up through the hair on the back of his head. After all this time, all the longing … he really did love her.
"Scully," he said to her again, sounding dazed.
She planted a hand behind her to push herself away from the wall and guide them toward the bed, when the pounding in her ears was echoed by a pounding on the front door.
Mulder and she both started at the sound. She pulled her gun, relieved to have it no longer digging in her back; Mulder bent over, reaching for his ankle holster.
"I have the key," a woman's voice said sternly. "If the door doesn't open in twenty seconds, I'm going to use it."
Mulder closed his eyes. "Manager," he said.
Scully nodded, wiping around her mouth to get at whatever lipstick remained. "I imagine she has her shotgun," she said.
"Yeah," he said, starting to move toward the door.
"Mulder," she said, stepping in front of him. She glanced pointedly downward, then pushed him to sit on the bed, handing him her gun. "I'll go."
She straightened her clothes and hair hastily as she moved, grabbing Mulder's gun from the other bed and tossing it to him before she stopped behind the door, gathering herself. She glanced over at Mulder. He'd put the guns on the far side of him so they'd be out of sight, and sat with his elbows braced on his knees. He nodded at her, his face flushed from passion, his eyes still sparkling.
"I'm coming in!" the voice announced from the other side of the door.
Scully opened it and came face to face with the irate owner of the motel. The woman's shotgun was out and pointed toward the open door, but she lowered it when she saw Scully, using it to lever the door open further so that she could peer into the room. She made a noise of disgust when she saw the closet and the bureau, her mouth a thin line of anger. Her frank gaze turned to Scully; it was clear that she disapproved of what she saw. "I thought better of you," she said to Scully. "You looked like an intelligent woman from what little I saw of you. If you need help getting away from him, it's here now."
Scully shook her head, dismayed to realize what the motel owner thought. "It's really not that kind of situation," she said. "I'm very sorry about the damage, but we'll pay for it."
"Oh, he'll pay for it all right," the woman said, "but what in the hell are you doing? You've got a little girl to protect, and instead you're putting her in danger by being with him."
Scully felt the sting of tears, but she spoke firmly and reflexively. "He would never hurt our daughter."
Behind her, she heard Mulder choke back something that sounded suspiciously like a sob.
The woman peered into the room, stepping further into the doorway so that she could see Mulder, who now sat with his head in his hands.
"Where is your little girl?" she said suspiciously.
Scully stepped in between her and Mulder again, wanting to shield him from scrutiny. "Our daughter's in the clinic," she said quietly, and then hastened to continue when the woman's gun began to rise. "We came here because she's been so sick," she said, "and today they told us …" she drifted off, her thoughts scattering. She'd never been a very nimble liar and she couldn't think of what to tell the woman that was believable. Behind her, the sound of Mulder crying became audible, and she stumbled, repeating her last words and then covering her mouth in distress at his pain. Her own tears began falling thick and fast.
The motel owner stared at her, and then at Mulder. Her stony expression changed as she regarded him, and she turned to look at Scully with true sympathy. "I'm very sorry," she said.
Scully nodded, barely able to speak, realizing what the woman had inferred and just how close it had come to being true with Hannah, as it had been with her sisters. "My husband is just very upset right now," she choked out. "We'll pay for the damage. I'm sorry."
The woman returned the shotgun to rest across her body, cradling it in the crook of an elbow. She pointed at Scully's cross, and then said, "If you believe, then don't give up. I will pray for your little girl." She paused. "And I trust that I won't have to be coming back here."
Scully nodded and closed the door, resting her head against the cool metal for a moment. She wondered exactly what it was that she believed in anymore, here in the incomprehensible world in which she now lived. Mulder's sobs brought her back to herself and she stepped over to the bed and around him, picking up their guns and putting them on the nightstand. She turned back, intending to sit down next to him, when he surprised her by reaching out and drawing her into the space between his legs, laying his head against her abdomen and encircling her with his arms. He had quieted for the moment, but she could sense that his tears hadn't been as cathartic as she'd hoped. It was just a momentary calm. Her hands sifted through his hair while she waited, feeling Mulder breathe against her.
After a while, he let out a long breath, then looked up at her. "Samantha's dead, isn't she, Scully?"
She could not possibly have kept the shock from her expression, and knew that he could see the truth in her eyes. His own closed in pain and he turned his face back into her stomach. She bent to gather him more securely in her arms, but he was wrapped tightly around her, and the pose was awkward.
"I'm sorry," she said over and over, "Kurt just told me. I don't know how, Mulder. I swear I didn't know until today."
Her only answer was his weeping, and it was the raw sound of his heartbreak that finally got to her. She wrapped her arms around his head and let go of all the tears she had held in forever.
*~*
Part 20
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Date: 2008-01-10 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-12 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-12 04:02 pm (UTC)LOL!
Thanks very much,
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Date: 2008-01-10 02:45 am (UTC)This part was excellent. Keep 'em coming!
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Date: 2008-01-12 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 03:25 am (UTC)What have you done Anjou? You've broken it!
Beautiful chapter, beautiful writing, marvellously in character.
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Date: 2008-01-12 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 08:14 am (UTC)Motel Owner rocks!
And I think you did a good job balancing out the angst with
hawthope, for them personally, so it was a great read. As usual. ;)no subject
Date: 2008-01-12 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 09:00 pm (UTC)This was so great!!!
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Date: 2008-01-12 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-11 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-12 04:06 pm (UTC)Thanks for commenting.