Date sent: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 16:00:49 -0500 (EST) From: Valeanna1@aol.com Subject: NEW: Ache (1/1; J. C. Sun) Title: Ache Author: J. C. Sun Size: 7K Rating: PG-13 for profanity and sexual themes Category: VA, MSR Spoilers: Momento Memori Summary: Sitting in her apartment, discharged by the hospital to spend her last days at home, Dana Scully recalls her last meeting with Fox Mulder. Disclaimer: All the charecters within are not mine but the property of Chris Carter, 1013 & co.... _Ache_ J. C. Sun The sex, that was not the problem. He had been crouching by my bed, head on hidden in his knees, arms wrapped around his shins. His shoulders hunched over like a deformed gargoyle: a demented angel, of sorts, hovering near me and doing everything but watch me in my sleep. Chasing leads in Sasolito, California. Or the little green men that danced in the bottom of his Valium prescription, more likely. I'd like to have strangled the half-assed fuckhead of FBI company doctor, hang him by his sheepskin and then burn his prescription pad, and the rest of the establishment, taking care to pour kerosene down Patterson's greedy throat. Skinner, he had promised, promised me, but promises to that man are like sand through his fingers, like cigarette ashes, smoke in the wind. I slid my hands down Mulder's back, taking in the feel of his vertebrae beneath my hands. Such pointed, fragile things. I carressed them, as best I remembered how, and I watched his head jerk up, the ears darken red like a schoolboy's. I could feel his breathing quicken, grow shallow as I slipped my fingers around his sides, tracing the individual ribs; there is little fat, little meat on them now, and he was so thin, so tired, he drooped against my hands. Then, I unwrapped myself from the coccoon he had encased me in, and on my knees, I crawled across the bed to lean on his back. I pressed my ear to his shoulder; I could feel his pulse between my fingers, and his jugular throbbed thick and vital. The heat flowed into my cold fingers as I turned his shoulders around to face me. His face was surprised, a little frightened, but simply to tired to do otherwise than fall into his appointed role, to follow a script he had thought of for years. But I like to think that he did feel something inside that shell, something genuine perhaps across that empty ache, and that I did some good afterall. Truth be told, I barely remember his mouth against mine, and that kiss, the silk of his skin against mine, things that had haunted me for years. . .A nip, a brush of his mouth against me, and my arms falling around him like an automaton. I was numb, cold, from the tranquilzers rattling in my belly, even the thrusts came through in a fog, through a misty wall as I turned my face into the ceiling and shut my eyes. There was a vague irritation, I remember, and I bit down on my lip, trying to look like I was enjoying this. He tried, he tried, I know he did, he tried with a desperation that perhaps, perhaps, maybe he felt; he tried with the entirety of the scraps he had left. . . It was not too little--never too little, never, not from him--but simply too late. That was a week and a half ago. I left the hospital three days ago, and before I left did, they took me down to the hospital pharmecopia, and they loaded me with jars. Little white jars, big ones, square jars, clear sepia ones. They sat me down in a lovely conference office; I counted the number of jellybeans in the jar while their head oncologist stammered and muddled through an explanation of each bottle, each name. She must have done this a hundred times, a thousand, for all the incurable cases, and yet, she still stammers, fumbling for words that she hopes will ease an ache that has long since died. Fenster, her words, the frustration in her eyes: this is the reason I became a pathologist. I drove home in the rain. They let me go alone, since Mulder was unreachable in the wilds of Washington State, and I drove home in the soft grey rain. The highway was clogged with the government heading south for the night; I thought I recognized a face or two amidst the blur of water and cars. My mother calls everyday; she is in a hospital for a fractured hip, and at last, we have something to talk about. But I always leave first: I always say that I need to take my medication, that I got a nosebleed , this or that, desperate to drop the phone back into it's cradle. I loathe the sound of my mother's voice, the sound of other humans, but most of all I hate the emptiness in my own voice, reflecting back so tired, cracked and empty, so false and hopeless and hollow echoing my empty apartment. I think about him sometimes. I think about him in the primeval evergreen forests, searching for the crash site. I think about him standing before Patterson, head bowed and rocking back and forth, like a little boy.. I think about him in his office, files stacked high around him, the florescent lights drowning out two AM Washington, and the black and white 8 by 10's, with edges sharp enough to draw blood, the ghosts dancing in his eyes and the hands trembling, shaking. I think about desperate fingers scrabbling in the medicine closet, the gleam of a razor, his screaming when the blade clatters to the bathroom floor because he cannot, because he will not kill himself, and his shoulders heaving as he retches into the toilet, his head slamming against a tiled wall as he sobs softly, lightly, without tears. I think of the empty holster on the kitchen counter. I think of Bill Patterson's almost-paternal, almost-friendly almost-comfort. I think of resignation letters scribbled and crumpled, typed and crumpled, printed and crumpled, on thin yellow legal paper, on heavy official paper, speckled with blood, dropped with tears, absolutely dry. And the laughter that fills Mulder as he realizes, he thinks that he cannot live with the FBI, without VCU and the monsters, that he craves the darkness because it has become him, as it always has been, because he cannot fill the emptiness himself anymore, because he finally beleives in it. Because he cannot open his eyes and see the ladder and the round opening gleaming far above him, so he stands in the muck, melting. Sex, that was not a problem. /la fin You know you want to do it...Hit that reply button and flame me into oblivion.