XXXXX
It is his first day on earth. His
first taste of humanity, his first golden hazy
morning. His first word spoken through dry papery
lips. Her name. The digit of his thumb upon her
wrist, her pulse, where their blood runs together
through veins which have become blue. Brittle and
hard; easily shattered veins. The first time she
kisses his delicate skin, instead of the air where he
should be. The very first time she has ever watched
anyone for hours and hours just to see them breath.
The slight rise and fall of his chest, mesmerising.
She is a child catching a snowflake for the first
time and feeling it melt deliciously on her tongue as
the heavens fall. White, blinding, all consuming.
She whispers her palm against his forehead for the
first time, as time spins and honey yellow dawn
tangles with his hair. She will not close her eyes
in fear it is a dream, that he will slip, slip, slip,
from beneath her pull, leaving her here in the hard
glinting winter sun. "You're here." She says, after
a long time, while he blinks with black slate eyes.
It bothers her, that his eyes have changed or she has
forgotten something integral about him. It frightens
her, the gleam of bone beneath transluscent flesh.
It terrifies her, the way his voice is swallowed in
the silence.
"I am."
Like a question, or a flicker of hope,
or a flicker of something else. Her palm presses to
his forehead, feeling his life, reassuring herself.
She is fighting tears furiously, searching this quiet
man and looking for him, with his little boy smile,
and his fierce certainty in all things. She does not
find him, but his arm raises to entertwine their
hands. Blood and flesh atop blood and flesh atop
blood and flesh. A fragile contact and she can
almost see him, a phantom passing through his chest
and through her own. Angel dust in her throat.
Slowly, she slides against him. Like before,
wrapping arms to warm his ice and feeling him shiver
with her and say her name Scully please be real.
She thinks here you are Mulder, as the
tears tremble and blur. "I am" she murmers and
drinks his wet eyelashes dry.
It is his first day on earth and it is
hers as well.
XXXXX
It had been August and the children had
played like flames on sun scortched streets. She
dreams of that time again tonight. The blood slick
between her legs, hot, and she had been driving and
her vision had slivered sanguine, her arms numb, her
hands slipping from the steering wheel. She
remembers calling his name, as if he were right
there, in that small place that only he can enter.
She remembers that she wondered blankly what she
would live for now. His body sleepy small beside her
is the answer. Warmed cotton sheets and salt and
soap. He is so beautiful she can not touch him. He
is back now. Safe and so close the matress vibrates
nearly imperceptibly with his heartbeat. She has
become attuned to him.
Sometimes, she hates this. The
connection, so deep it can never be severed. She
hates the pain that screams inside of her when he is
gone. She hates that he can become a part of her.She
didn't ask for this. She never wanted to hurt this
way. Never wanted to become dependent on someone
like this, so that to take a breath without them
would sear and burn. She hates this and she loves
this. She loves the way his lips curve in the
morning, slow and for her. Mussy hair, bare feet,
swinging over the edge of the bed like a schoolboy.
She loves this. She is this.
XXXXX
He dreams of fire in his marrow.
Soundless voices and claws at his ankles. He
is trying to run, but he can't move. He can't
scream. He tries to say her name. He tries and his
voice is just lost. He thinks he remembers seeing
the earth from a great distance. He thinks he
remembers that she is the only thing that kept him
sane, her name dancing on his lips, always. He
remembers seeeing her once while he was there. He
dreamed of a car and the scenery swirling past the
window. Pine trees and a purple D.C. horizon. She
was there. Pale. Broken jagged pieces of her. She
said his name. She said his name and then she
prayed. He remembers he tried to touch her and his
fingers slid through her, as if she was airy gold.
Her blood roared in his ears, making him cry.
For a moment, it was if he was her.
XXXXX
On Wednesday, there is an ice storm.
She finds him at the frosted window in the living
room, as the night spirals. Crystallized trees, long
stretching arms, tap tapping against the glass. She
is careful, for he is like a cat now, nocturnal and
easily startled. She says his name and he turns.
Glittering in the streetlight. He tries to smile,
and it hurts them both.
"Hey" he rasps.
"Hey." Softly, because a cat is a
delicate boned creature. Awakening completley with
his wide shining eyes, red rimmed and raw. She
swallows something attempting to strangle her.
"Couldn't sleep?"
He looks through her, past her, behind
her, galaxies away. "I have my father's hands" he
tells her, in all of darkness, as if this is the
destruction of the world. She does not understand
completley, but she understands the importance of
such a statement.
"No Mulder, you have your own hands."
"I don't. I don't. I've become him,
Scully. He fought and he fought for what he believed
in until it didn't matter anymore. Until he lost
sight. Until he ruined everyone he used to love. He
turned into a hollow man, Scully. He became that
with which he raged against."
"Mulder."
"Rage, rage against the dying of the
light." A line of Dylan Thomas, a shiver. It is
enough for her to reach for him, to press his chest
with her knuckles. His breathing is ragged, and
he jerks. "I won't rage. Not anymore. It's too
much. Please, it's too much."
"Mulder, you don't need to.."
"I do" he pauses, arms around his bare
chest, his pronounced ribs. "Do you know that can
remember reading that poem at Oxford? It all went by
so quickly Scully and I want it back. I want to take
it all back. I don't want to be born in a home where
The Devil visits for a smoke and a scotch, and I
don't want a father who sells his daughter like
merchandise. I don't want you to get cancer and I
don't want to be missing a year of my life and I
don't want his goddamn hands!"
The wind sings. She watches him
pacing, flickering, like a butterfly, frantically
seeking escape from his confines. A dinner glass on
her coffee table, thrown at the wall, and diamonds
sounding like bells on the floor. Scattering. He
stops then. They both stop. He is tear soaked. She
takes the blanket from her sofa and pulls it around
his shoulders then, her footsteps loud in the
stillness. Finds his fist and uncurls it until they
are palm against palm. She is hot and he is cold.
She must keep her voice from wavering.
"I love your hands."
His face crumples. "I broke your
glass."
"I've always loved your hands Mulder."
They sway together with grief, in the slow way you
dance to a very sad song.
Abruptly, he buries himself in the
hollow of her throat., holding the tears in and
holding them in and holding them in as she tries to
smooth the taut muscles of his back. There is the
snow turning to rain behind him. There is the
moonlight slivered milky white. And there is him.
Always, there is him. She feels him growing tired
with the emotion now. Feels him slipping. She
guides him back to bed, where he lies with gossamer
veins, as brittle as fine china. She smiles at him
wanly.
"I'll always love your hands" she tells
him.
XXXXX
He wants to go outside on the seventh
day of his return. They drive to Foggy Bottom
because he has always liked it there. A small
restaurant. He shreds his napkin into tiny wafting
pieces. She takes his knee and stills it as she
drinks her coffee. He asks her then. About The X-
Files. About his apartment. She squeezes his knee
and tells him that his life's work is finished, tells
him she kept paying his rent for as long as she could
and Skinner helped, but it was too much, and Mulder,
I'm so sorry.
"Oh" he says. Nothing else. He does
not look at her, but she is sure something dies in
him. The waitress returns, a warm slice of apple
pie. Bounces away. Scully wonders if she has ever
been so young and unaware. She wants it back as
well. She wants to wake up in the morning and thirst
for the day ahead of her. She does not want to know
that either of them could be snatched away by the
stars at any moment. "Is there anything else?" He
startles her with the question. The napkin is
unrecognizable by now. He splays his fingers flat
against the formica table. Beautiful hands. She
freezes for a split second and he catches it. A thin
face raises. He says her name, the same way he had
on his first night on earth. She is incapable of
lying to him now.
She tells him about the baby.
XXXXX
End Part 1/?