TITLE: SCARS AUTHOR: ALANNA BAKER E-MAIL: emmalanna@aol.com DISCLAIMER: The characters herein are the property of Fox Broadcasting and 1013 Productions. The situation into which I have placed them is of my own creation. CATEGORIES: V, A, MSR RATING: NC-17 ARCHIVAL: Please archive at Gossamer. Anyone else, please ask first. SPOILER: The End. SUMMARY: Fires cannot destroy the scars of experience. This story is part of my Laughing-Burn-Positive universe, though no knowledge of those stories is needed to read this one. All you need to know is that Scully and Mulder are already romantically involved ;). Special thanks to Juliettt for "nitpicking" and general beta-reading expertise. +++++++++++++++ For the first time since It happened, she lets me pull her close as we sleep. One of my arms curls around her warm, naked stomach and the other pillows her head, stroking her hair in a gentle rhythm until her breathing settles into sleep. I have no sleep in me. I want desperately to lose myself in slumber, to forget about it all for just a few hours and give my soul a rest, but it can't happen. My body -- 180 lbs of muscle and blood and pain -- refuses to lose itself to suspended animation. I want to rage against the world, I want to carry on and defy Their attempts to silence us, I want to curl up in a corner and weep. On that first day, I vowed not to brood, not to let Their cruelties destroy me, not to give them what they want. Easier said than done when your cement and marble world becomes limestone eroding under a fierce, bitter wind. And Scully needs me, more than she will ever admit or perhaps even knows herself. After a few hours of lying still, so still, so as not to disturb her much-needed sleep, while my mind consciously replays every moment of the past few years, trying to find where I -- we -- went wrong and how we can begin to repair the rubble, she changes. Her body shivers violently in my arms and her breathing quickens and rumbles through her throat. I pull my body up on one elbow and lean over to see her face. To my horror, it is contorted in fear, as if a demon she couldn't ward off is attacking her. This is too much. Oh GOD this is too much. I pull her close, so close one jerk of my arms might crumple her like tissue paper. My voice, hoarse from rest, speaks directly into her ear, calling her name and summoning her awake. After a minute or so, she jolts upright, the quickness of the motion surprising me and dislodging her from my arms. Her face is a portrait of shock and her body is erect and very stiff, as if the slightest motion would call back the devils. In the time we've been lovers, I have learned that Scully's Honest Hour is just after she awakens. Training my voice in calm and soothing, I quietly say, "What was it, Scully?" After a few moments of my watching her back rise and fall with each breath, she slowly shifts in the bed until she is facing me. "I...." I raise my eyebrows expectantly, quietly encouraging her to continue. "It was all gone. One of those... men," her ragged voice spits out the word, "stood at a doorway and wouldn't let me escape. He laughed at me and said, 'It's all gone, Agent Scully. Everything is. You'll never know.'" She stops, her incredible mind processing the memory. Amazing how Scully's most terrifying dreams are the same as my waking nightmares. I sit up behind her and place one hand on her shoulder, waiting for her to go on, knowing that she has to do this on her own terms, or the terrors will stay locked within, continuing to decay inside of her. "Mulder," her gaze lifts to meet mine full-on, "My file....was it in there?" Oh, my God. In all my fears over how to reconstruct our lives, I hadn't thought about the file itself. Foolishly, it had slipped my mind. Of course we had copies of the truly *important* files, including hers and Samantha's, the entire thing saved on microfiche and stored deep within her mother's basement and the Gunmen's safe. But a microfiche copy is not the same as having the papers in your hand, knowing that your fngers are moving over the actual hard evidence of your life's work. I don't know what to say, so I remain still, my breathing speaking for me. And then, like a sunrise, the memory hits me. Good Lord, how could a man with such a perfect memory be so forgetful when it *really* counts? Without a word, I slip out of the bed and settle myself on the floor, lying on my back against the cool wood which freezes my ass, my back, and my legs. The fortunate thing about insisting on a mattress and box spring on an old, slatted bed is that it provides opportunities unimagined by manufacturers -- or devious searchers and ransackers. Peeling back the fiberglass gauze covering the box spring, I feel around through the coils until my fingers graze across cold steel. Nearly ripping off a nail in the process, I slide the box out of its hiding place and pull it out from under the bed. It is heavy and firm in my hands, something concrete in the midst of the ashes of our lives, our quests. Slowly, I stand and climb back up onto the bed. Scully is looking at me with open curiosity, the shadow-light of the room bathing her beautiful face in pale silvery hues which give her an air of innocence in the midst of the horrors we have faced. My fingers fiddle around with the dials on the lock until they hit upon the correct combination -- Scully's birthdate. The latch pops open with an audible click and a whoosh, and the lid is lifted. Inside rests the original file I have kept these many years on Samantha, and an even more treasured file, labelled, "Scully, Dana Katherine." My two women. My two beloveds, in such different ways. These files are originals; the ones resting in the soot of our former office a painfully reconstructed carbon copy. Bless the Gunmen and their powers of deception. I set Samantha's aside and pull out Scully's, then hand it over to her. She thumbs through it in shock, cautious relief spreading over her face and her entire body. "It's not gone...." Her voice trails off at the end. "No, Scully. Everything we need to know is there. Waterproof, fireproof, bombproof. It will always be here, for when we need it." I set the box back on the floor, then take the file from her after having given her the time she needs to see for herself. "And what isn't there is preserved in our memories." She looks up at me. "And on our bodies." I take her left hand in mine and shift in the bed until I'm able to extend her arm in front of her. My fingertips play over the soft skin of her inner elbow and wrist, tracing the slight pockmarks of a hundred IVs and injections. "Here is the evidence of all your hospitalizations because of what they have done to you." Glancing up at her eyes, I see tears forming in their corners, and her lips part, giving entrance to breath. Next, I bring my hand to the side of her stomach, tracing a rippled, puckered circle of skin. "Here is the evidence of your being burned by those fires on that bridge," my shoulders shuddering at the memory of finding her, passed out from shock, on that hillside. I place two fingertips on the upper bridge of her nose, as if in silent benediction. "Under your skin and bone is the evidence of what those bastards tried to do to you to make me believe." Raising up on my knees, I brace my hands on her shoulders and bend around to place a soft kiss on the nape of her neck. "And here is the evidence of how they try to keep tabs on us, to control us." I pause for a moment, unsure of whether to continue, but my need to help her outweighs my reserve. "But you know what, Scully?" "What?" Her voice has to strain to reach a whisper. "We won't let them." A faint smile of triumph and communion paints her face. My hands slowly move down her body, catching every inch of her skin on my fingertips. I catch her right hand in mine, and bring it to my lips. The tip of her finger receives a soft kiss, then remains against my lips. "This finger has held the trigger of a gun against them so many times. We fought back." "Yes...." The word is a sigh, a whisper of desire and renewal. I ease her back on the bed, a pillow under her head and her beautiful, haunted eyes focused on mine. Covering her body with my own, I shift my weight to my knees and crouch over her, as if I could protect her from everything in our world. As if our being here, together, would keep us from the pain of our world being taken away from us. I catch her gaze in mine and hold it as I slip one finger inside of her. She gasps and her hips rise up to meet me. Though my voice is silent, we both know of this evidence -- of the future they have stolen from her, from us. Scully is breathing heavily now, tears slipping down her face. I bend down to kiss them away and capture one of her breasts in my hand. Kneading it gently, I lean down to kiss her and circle my finger around her core. She returns the kiss, the tears on her cheeks spreading over my own. My finger leaves her entrance and is replaced by my cock, filling her, joining us. Somehow my voice stays steady even as my pulse doubles and my heart swells with love. Beginning our rhythm, I whisper to her in a tear-soaked voice, "They can burn our office and they can give us scars, but they can't take this from us, Scully." Her name is a triumph on my lips. "Thank you," she whispers, and I see tonight and all our tomorrows on her face. Our lovemaking is over fast, so fast, and -- like the miracle we are -- we climax in each other's arms. But the physical release is secondary to the relief and the triumph we feel. We have not won -- yet. We are not healed -- yet. We have not rebuilt -- yet. But, lying in each other's arms, I know that we have a future. And sometimes, this is all we need. +++++++++++++++ END (1/1) ~~~~~ Alanna Baker, alanna@ibm.net ~~~~~ "Not mad, I pray not mad. But the sheer joy of contemplating it is hard to contain." --Peter Carey, _Oscar and Lucinda_ stories -- members.aol.com/emmalanna/fanfic.html