The Cry of the Truth, 01/22
Prince and Prisoner
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.com
Rating: NC-17 (sexual activity, profanity, descriptions of rape)
Category: S,R (Mulder/Scully), A
Summary:  As their love affair unfolds, Scully reveals to Mulder a painful
secret relating to her abduction. Mulder's reaction tests their bond and
eventually leads Scully to discover a few truths about herself.

Spoilers: The Pilot, Squeeze, Fire, Colony/Endgame, The Host, Pusher, Terma,
and Tunguska, but nothing after Never Again

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.

Disclaimer: Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Alex Krychek, Ed Jerse, and many
of the details and situations mentioned in this story are the original
creations and property of others -- Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox.
The rest of this story is my creation.

Author's Note: This story is a sequel of sorts to "The Actor," although you
won't be lost if you haven't yet read that tale (the actor himself didn't make
it into this one -- he was too busy making movies). It contains descriptions
of rape, told in flashbacks, that may be disturbing to some readers.
However, I *really* don't want this to be classified as a "Scully rape
story." There's more to it than that. Be forewarned that Mulder and Scully
may not live up to your expectations in this story. They are portrayed as
having many all-too-human flaws. They are capable of hurting each other.
Both have made and will make serious mistakes. Finally, I apologize to
Krychek's loyal followers for making him the bad guy.

Thanks to Joe N. and Misti for their encouragement, to my husband for the
computers, to my best friend M.C. for pushing me, and my dog Bailey for
keeping me company at the keyboard.

XXXXXXX

   Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.
                   --Elizabeth Bowen

Mulder went to Russia to find a piece of the puzzle that had plagued him for
so long, and soon found himself huddled in a Siberian cell, barely eight feet
square, stinking of his own effluvium, thirsty and starving, anticipating his
own death with a numbness that surprised him. He considered offering up
a prayer, but did not. He felt it would be hypocritical to turn to the deity
only in a crisis. Ultimately he had to answer to his own conscience, after
all.

Mulder bowed his head over his knees and tried to summon up comforting
images. He had hoped that he would spend his last days thinking of his
family, his friends, his few happy memories. He never expected that his
last thoughts would be of the amazingly offensive smell of his own shit. At
least, he assumed it was his. Which was worse -- to die with a snootful of
his own nastiness, or someone else's?

He imagined himself rescued, sleeping peacefully in a clean, soft bed. He
saw the pale, impassive face of his beloved Dana Scully looking down at
him, as if he were a corpse on the autopsy table. In his fantasy, he opened
his eyes and smiled at her to let her know that he was still alive. Then she
smiled back, first with her lush rosebud mouth, then her sparkling blue-
green eyes, then her entire, symmetrical face, and in a warm rush Mulder
was reminded of how lovely she was. When she leaned over the bed to
kiss him, he sighed happily, and strained to hear what she was whispering
in his ear. He nodded as her words began to make sense. "Come back to
me, and I'll never let you go again. Never again..."

Mulder had made his feelings clear to Scully months ago, when he saw
that he was about to lose her to another man.  He very nearly did lose
her -- she left him, their work, her family and everything else she had in
Washington to pursue her relationship with Mulder's rival. And then
she came back because she loved Mulder more. It was as simple as
that.

In the months since then, they had shared only one passionate moment
in the shadows of their basement office. It had happened late one
evening when nearly everyone else had gone home and those who
remained were afraid to descend into their spooky domain. Mulder had
pressed her up against a file cabinet, burying his hands in her hair and
raining chaste kisses on her face for long minutes before first tasting the
recesses of her mouth. They had both been startled by the tottering of
the cabinet, and had jumped away from it, terrified that it would go
crashing over. Once it stopped moving, they had continued to stare at it
for an instant, and then burst out in nervous laughter. Soon they
wandered back to their desks, and the next day they were assigned a
case that took them across the country. Their jobs continued to
intervene, the weeks dragged into months, and although their feelings
for each other only intensified, the opportunity to act on them had not
presented itself again. Now Mulder faced the very real possibility that
he would never hold her in his arms again.

He heard a soft giggle coming from the other side of the cell, and lifted his
head only long enough to shoot an evil glance to his cellmate, Alex
Krychek. In return, Krychek gave him a suggestive arch of one eyebrow.

Mulder wanted to beat the flirtatious look off of Krychek's face, but he was
too weary to move from his huddled position. His throat was so dry that he
was hardly interested in speaking. He knew that Krychek had eaten and
drunk on his excursions from the cell. Their captors had found some use for
the young traitor, and over the past two days had fetched him at all hours of
the day and night, and then returned him just as unpredictably.

This is not how I wanted to die, Mulder told himself, resting his head
against the cool stones of the wall. I wanted to die at an old age, with my
sweetheart and our children and my sister there to send me off with kisses
and tears and remembrances of my love for them. I wanted to die in my
own bed, the bed where my wife and I had made love for years, surrounded
by familiar books and photographs. They would prop me up on my pillows
so I could look out at the sea and smell the surf on the breeze that
stirred the sheer white curtain.

Mulder's eyes squeezed shut as tears began to form from what little fluid
remained in his body. What wife? What children? What bed, even?

He remembered her promise. If he made it back, then maybe --

"You know, Mulder, I can make you feel better," Krychek said in a low,
seductive drawl.

Mulder scoffed and put a hand up to rub his eyes.

"Fuck off, you little shit," he said hoarsely.

Krychek tugged at the beard that was forming on his chin. He smiled
coldly and cleared his throat. He was going to enjoy this. He had saved it
up for years, unwilling to spend the secret until the time was right.

"You know, they let me comfort her when she was suffering. She was
contemplating death, like you are now. She was cold and afraid and all
alone." Those last words he pronounced in a sing-song voice, like a child
describing the emptiness of Goldilocks' bowl. "Did she tell you how good
I was to her? How I took her mind off the tests they were putting her
through? No? Maybe she hasn't remembered it all yet. Maybe she never
will. But I remember every minute of it, like it was yesterday. I can
remember how her skin felt under my hands, dry and soft like velvet. And
her smell. Like vanilla and something else -- cinnamon?"

Krychek chuckled at the memory. He reached up and rubbed the back of
his neck, bowing his head to stretch his spine. When he looked up again,
Mulder was glaring at him.

"Vanilla and cinnamon at her neck. Rosemary in her hair. There were rusty
smears of betadine, looked like blood, on her chest and belly...there she
smelled like the bandages they used on her. But the best place, the last best
place, between those pale, pale legs...it was like the smell of the surf. She
tasted like oysters -- those big oysters from the Gulf. What're they called?
Apa -- apala --"

"Shut up, you sick fuck," Mulder hissed, his pulse pounding in his
temples.

"Or what, Mulder? Or you'll stink me to death? Think about it. You
haven't had any food or water for two days. You really think you can beat
me into silence?"

Mulder allowed his head to roll down to rest on his knees again. Krychek
was right: he barely had the energy to curse at him.

"So tell me about it, Mulder." Krychek pressed on, his smile fading into a
set scowl as he spoke. "Does she call out my name when she comes? Does
she try to hide it from you? Or does she tell you that she remembers
nothing after Duane Barry took her?"

Mulder stiffened, but did not look up.

With a dismissive snort, Krychek nodded.

"I get it. You've never fucked her, have you? What's the matter? She get a
look at your dick?" He chuckled dryly. "Just kidding. I got a look at it
myself. Very impressive. Maybe it scared her."

"Nothing scares Scully," Mulder said, his voice muffled by his legs.

"Oh, you think so? She was scared enough back then. The smoking man -
- hey, I don't know his name either, and I don't want to -- he scared the shit
out of her. She would curl up into a little ball whenever he came to her
room. He'd hold her hand, or pat her on the head -- like she was a little
scared little girl -- and ask her questions about you, about your work and
your family. I never could figure out what he wanted with your parents,
but -- you think I'm a sick fuck? Oh, he's the king. I'm just a prince.
Prince of fucks."

Mulder wondered if he was approaching delirium when he actually laughed.

Krychek threw him a smile that might've been endearing under other
circumstances.

"Finally, he gave up. He'd already promised me a shot at her, but I figured
it'd come right at the end...but I got lucky. He gave me the job. I guess he
was impressed with the way I handled Duane Barry."

Mulder lifted his head and rested his cheek against his palm. He watched
and listened, on the off chance that anything the traitor said was true, and
the even slimmer chance that he would live to do anything about it.

Krychek felt a frisson of victory. He had Mulder's full attention now,
which was far more than he had given him when they were partners. And
this time, Krychek was following no one's agenda but his own.

"They kept the women in 12 rooms, not much bigger than this cell. Twelve
rooms for 12 women. They were pretty much like hospital rooms -- a bed,
a chair, a shelf or two. Food was brought to them. They were watched
continuously by a video surveillance system. The staff would get them for
the tests, take them to the clinical facility. That was at one end of the
place. At the other end, there were offices and conference rooms. I used to
take
Scully to this one conference room, because there was an old couch in
there, and a good lock on the door."

"Who were they?" Mulder whispered.

"Who were who?" Krychek asked, genuinely confused.

"The ones who took her, asshole," Mulder said.

"Who were they?" Krychek repeated the question as if it to be sure that he
had heard Mulder correctly. "Oh, but Mulder, you know who they were.
I'm surprised you'd ask me such a dumb question. What's the matter, you
got a fever? Come over here and let me feel your head."

Mulder's anger produced a dull, gripping pain in his chest. He struggled
for a breath, and wondered if he was having a heart attack. Then the pain
passed as quickly as it had come, leaving him winded and exhausted.

"You needn't fear that I was taking advantage of an unconscious woman."
Krychek affected a courtly tone. "Not even I would do that to Scully --
well, I probably would, but believe me, she was wide awake. Never took
those damn icy blue eyes off me."

The image of her glimmering, imploring eyes loomed before Mulder. For a
moment he was back in that hospital room with Modell, unable to escape
either the insistent push of Modell's insanity or the pleading, tearful
gaze of his partner.

He moaned softly at the memory. Krychek made a rude whimper of false
sympathy, which promptly broke into a self-satisfied grin. He mentally
checked off one of the goals on his list of ways to torment his cellmate, and
went on to tackle the rest of them.

"I figured out pretty quickly that she'd rather die than talk, so I bagged the
idea of fucking the information out of her and starting going to her
whenever I had the urge -- usually after I'd had a few drinks. She's kinda
intimidating in her own right, as I'm sure you know. I'd take her down the
hall to the room with the couch. Sometimes I had to drag her. I would've
done it in her room, on the bed, but those cameras -- I wasn't putting on a
show for the security guys."

Krychek paused to clear his throat. He thought he had seen Mulder
watching his mouth as he spoke, and the intensity of the gaze was exactly
the kind of attention he had longed to attract from Mulder in the old days.
Pursing his lips momentarily, Krychek resumed his tale.

"I tried telling her to pretend I was you, and she nearly bit my head off. The
first few times, I had to gag her with my tie. I didn't really mind, because I
knew by then that my tie-wearing days were nearly over. Luckily I didn't
have to cuff her. She was so weak from the tests, and from refusing to eat,
that she couldn't even knee me in the balls. Thank God for that, right?"

He laughed, grinning like a man who expected his fellow male to join in a
sympathetic session of woman-bashing.

Mulder merely glowered at him. He had willed himself into numbness.

"Sometimes I'd put her on the conference table, or sometimes I'd do it on
the sofa. Scully was always wearing those damn blue hospital gowns.
Easy access, but they don't do much for her. On you, Mulder, it'd
probably be great -- that slit over the ass -- perfect." He leaned forward
slightly, resting his elbow on his knee and gesturing conversationally.
"You know, I told her how much I'd wanted to fuck you. How you
couldn't be convinced, no matter what thrills I promised you. Guess they
didn't teach you buggery at Oxford, huh?"

"I skipped class that day," Mulder said.

"Yeah. Right," Krychek said. He muttered an epithet in Russian and
leaned back against the damp stone wall. "Where was I? Oh yeah. I
learned after the first couple of times to bring some lubricant with me. She
was dry, and incredibly tight, and held her legs so stiff that sometimes I
could hardly get in her. There were days when it was just easier to do what
I do best and turn her over and go into her ass. Talk about tight -- my God!
I'd have to become a pedophile to find a guy that tight in the ass.
Amazing."

Mulder shook his head and grunted at the turn the story had taken.

Krychek grinned at him, lightly tossing his head with a grace that was a
strange contrast to the brutality of the acts he was describing.

"Of course you want to know what she was like. What it was like to fuck
her." He peered up at the ceiling for a moment, searching for just the right
words to describe his experience of Scully's body. "Fucking her wasn't
really the good part. Spooking her was fun. Controlling her was the best,
though. It was like she was my personal territory, like a kid's tree house.
Her body is like that statue in the Louvre -- the one with the arms and head
cut off? Yeah. You know the one I mean. Nice full tits, a gorgeous round
ass, little tiny waist. What else? I already told you what her pussy tastes
like. Apalachicolas. Those are the oysters I was thinking of. A -- pa -- la -
- chi -- co -- la. Sounds like it tastes, sorta."

He giggled and repeated the word softly to himself, as if savoring the
flavor.

Mulder told himself that he was hearing the rant of a delusional psychotic
with a serious dissociative disorder. He had to focus on Krychek --
thinking of Scully would surely kill him at this point.

Krychek was well aware of Mulder's capacity for denying the truth of his
story should he think him mad. If he was to achieve his ultimate goal, he
would have to give Mulder a marker by which to check the veracity of his
tale, should he ever return to the land of the living.

"So, Mulder, any questions? I can tell you this -- the red hair? It's
definitely natural. And she has a few distinguishing marks -- how's that for
a Bureau term? Distinguishing marks. Yeah. Put this in your photographic
memory, Mulder. She has a mole on the left cheek of her ass. And there's
a birthmark on her thigh, just about there." He stretched out a leg and
languidly traced his fingers up his thigh, nearly to his crotch. "On her right
leg. Just south of her cunt. Oh -- sorry, Mulder. You don't think of
Scully as a cunt? Maybe you should."

Mulder grimaced at him, his eyes flinty with rage that was suppressed only
by his physical weakness.

"And -- I almost forgot -- I bit her a few times. Hard enough to draw
blood. I don't know if there're any scars, but if there are, you won't see
them until you get really up close and personal." He grinned and nodded.
"If you know what I mean."

"What happened to you in your childhood, Krychek, that you grew up to be
such a freak?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Krychek replied, a taunting lilt in his husky
voice.

Mulder chuckled, again shaking his head and looking down at his boots.

Krychek shifted onto his knees and crawled across the uneven stone floor
until he was close enough to put a finger under Mulder's chin.

Mulder looked up at him.

Krychek smiled grimly, his dark eyes already responding to the rejection
that he knew was inevitable.

"What d'you say, Mulder?" he whispered, searching Mulder's eyes for any
hint of warmth. "Sure you don't want to experience the love of a good man
before they finish you off?"

Mulder snorted. He did not, however, scramble away from Krychek.

"You don't know shit about love, Krychek."

"Oh, and you do?"

Mulder stared him down, certain, for the first time, of the answer. He
knew his weaknesses, better than he would've liked. He knew his
strengths. And he knew that the best thing about him was that Scully loved
him, and that he loved her. That truth gave him the determination to fight
back.

"Yeah," he said to Krychek. "I do. Now shut up so I can think."

End The Cry of the Truth 01/22



I did not write this.  Please forward all feedback to the author at
<vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu>  Thanks, Monica
____________________________________________________
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&

The Cry of the Truth, 02/22
Something Erotic
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: NC-17 (sexual activity, profanity, descriptions of rape)
Category: S,R (Mulder/Scully), A
Summary:  Scully helps Mulder recover from his experience in Russia.

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.

See part 01 for the Disclaimer and Author's Notes.

A few weeks after his return from Tunguska, Scully came into the office
one morning to find Mulder asleep on the floor beside his desk.  He
was stretched out like a drunk in a western, fully clothed, arms and legs
splayed, mouth slightly ajar, snoring softly. She stood at his feet and
contemplated his face. Even as he slept, there were charcoal smudges
under his eyes and deep worry lines etched across his broad forehead.
Through the sprinkling of whiskers on his cheeks, a faint red rash
remained visible -- a touch of dermatitis he had picked up in the Russian
jail and continued to irritate by shaving. The laceration delivered to his
lush lower lip by one of the guards was healing well; a small vermilion
scab covered the original wound.

A sunbeam swirling dust motes shone on them through the tiny skylight
above Mulder's desk. The golden light made Scully's eyes prickle, or
so she told herself, unwilling to admit that she was moved to tears by
the sight of her battered partner. She knelt on the carpet at his elbow,
intending to wake him. She hesitated; he rarely slept. Still, she knew
that if she didn't convince him to move, his right hip -- the one he had
injured by jumping onto that train a few years ago -- would be
screaming with stiffness when he finally tried to rise.

Scully was about to place her hand on his shoulder when he moved.
His head lolled to one side, and he muttered something under his breath.
Just as she was straining to hear what he was saying, his eyes flickered
open and came to rest on her face. He smiled dreamily and put a hand
up to cup her cheek.

She could not help but smile back at him. Her only desire at that
moment was to wrap herself around him and join him in slumber.

"Were you dreaming?" she asked quietly.

"Yeah," he replied in a voice thick with weariness. "I dreamed about
the stars."

"The stars?"

"I couldn't see the sky from the cell in Russia. Even though it was only
for a few days, I got so hungry for the stars...Until then I didn't realize
how much I took the night sky for granted."

"The wishing place," she murmured.

Mulder twitched an eyebrow, somewhat surprised that she understood.
Then he remembered that she was Scully; of course she understood.
With wavering fingers, he touched her lips, testing their pliancy and
warmth, and wondered how he had survived for so long without
kissing them. She patiently allowed his exploration. She liked being
the focus of his intensity.

Scully touched his shoulder very lightly. Edgy with exhaustion, he
startled and sat upright so quickly that he cracked his temple on the arm
of his chair. The magic of the moment was abruptly gone.

"Oh, Mulder, that must hurt," she said, grasping his chin to make him
turn the site of the blow toward her.

"Damn right it hurts," he grumbled.

"Why were sleeping on the floor?" she asked, gently palpating his skull.

"I came in early, to finish up the notes from Terma." He cleared his
throat and began to shuffle his feet against the floor. "And I started to
feel really rotten, like the flu or something. Let me --"

Scully tilted her head so that she could press her lips to the soft skin of
his temple. She felt Mulder still and sigh beside her. Then his hands
tentatively patted her waist.

"Scully?"

"Sorry," she whispered, quickly standing and backing away from him.
Her face was flushed. Although she was a little surprised by what she
had done, she was not embarrassed.

Mulder stood with some difficulty; his hip was so stiff that it felt like a
gear grinding into his pelvis. He cursed under his breath.

"Jesus. I feel like shit."

"You look worse. Let me feel your head," she said, reaching up to
touch his forehead.

He flinched away from her touch; her words echoed the dubious offer
made to him by Krychek.

"We're calling it a day," she said, gathering the files from his desk and
shoving them into her briefcase.

Mulder blinked dumbly; the glare from the skylight was in his eyes. All
he could see of Scully was the aureolar glow of her copper hair.

"What're you talking about?" he asked, still somewhat groggy.

"I'm taking you home," she said, keys jangling in her hand.

He took a step toward her, out of the glare, and saw that her pale
forehead was furrowed with concern.

"Home? As in --?"

"As in my home, yes. Don't argue with me. You won't win."

She extended a hand toward him, and after a moment's hesitation,
Mulder took it.

XXXXXXXXXX

He was glad he didn't argue.

As he stood under the stream of Scully's shower, Mulder sighed out the
profound weariness that seemed to penetrate every atom of his being.
He had not felt well since his return from Russia. From time to time his
chest hurt like he was being hugged by a giant bear, and his sleep was
plagued with dreams of the experiment, the horsemen, and Krychek's
nasty giggle. The wild tale Krychek had told him seemed to play itself
out anew every time Mulder closed his eyes, like the goriest scenes from
a Peter Greenaway film. Certain that Krychek had planted the fictional,
albeit horrific, images of Scully's rape in his mind to torment him,
Mulder steadfastly refused to believe the story. The pain Mulder had
felt upon hearing the story was dimming with time.

When he emerged from the shower, he found two towels, still warm
from the dryer, stacked on the toilet. He wrapped one around his waist
and used the other to dry his hair.

"Don't shave."

He pulled the towel away from his head and saw Scully standing in the
bathroom doorway, holding a pair of cotton boxers and a big white tee
shirt. He smiled weakly.

"What?"

"Don't shave. Your face will never heal if you keep shaving." She
touched a finger to his chin and squinted at the constellation of red
bumps along his jaw. "By the time I'm finished with you, you should
have a pretty decent beard going."

"You like men with beards," he said with a smirk, referring to the actor
she had fallen in love with not so long ago.

"I also like men who follow my instructions," she said, handing him the
underwear.

Mulder looked at the striped boxers.

"Hey -- these are mine. How'd you --?"

"Put them on, then come out and let me listen to your chest. I have a
feeling you've got a nasty case of bronchitis."

She left him holding the boxers and gaping.

When he joined her in the bedroom, she was smoothing the sheets and
fluffing the pillows. The pure white bed -- Scully's pure white bed --
was the most beautiful sight he could imagine at that moment.

"Sit here, Mulder."

He obediently sat on the edge of the mattress.

She took her stethoscope from the bedside table and used it to listen to
his heart and lungs. As she touched his back, Mulder's eyes fluttered
shut. He felt her warmth spread throughout his body, and for the first
time since his return from Russia, he was not cold. He put his hands on
her waist to tell her not to stop.

"Just as I expected," she said, draping the stethoscope around her neck.
"You have a few crackles on the right side. Have you had any pain in
that area? Spasmodic coughing? Thought so. I'll go to the pharmacy
later and pick up some azithromycin for you. Now. Get in bed."

"Only if you come too," he said. He was so tired that he was slurring
his words.

Scully had no difficulty in pushing him into the pillows and tucking his
big feet under the comforter.

"Maybe later," she said softly, tugging the covers up close to his chin.

"Promise?" he mumbled.

"I promise," she replied, kissing his forehead.

She closed the blinds and pulled the sheer white cotton draperies. As
she passed the bed on her way to the door, she heard him murmuring
again. Again she leaned over him, and this time his words did not
puzzle her at all.

"I love you too," she murmured.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Mulder took the powerful antibiotics that Scully prescribed and
graciously allowed her to take care of him. For once, he did not feel
compelled to eschew her attempts to protect him. He wanted nothing
more than to rest in her bed, surrounded by the sights and smells of her
home, and follow her instructions. He ate the fruits and vegetables she
prepared for him, drank enough water to fill a lake, and even choked
down the foul-tasting herbal tea she swore would quiet his cough.
Mulder had not known this kind of unconditional love since his sister's
disappearance broke the childhood bond he had shared with his mother.

He felt that sheltering, custodial love from her, but also something
considerably less maternal. When she looked at him, he saw a softness
in her expression that he had only rarely observed when they were
working. Her voice was softer, more girlish, and she actually smiled --
quite often. The best part was the feel of her warm, small hands on his
skin. She often held his hands and caressed his face as they talked, he
propped up against a mound of pillows, she perched next to him on the
edge of the bed.

Dr. Scully only allowed him short periods of conversation, and then
enforced his silence by threatening to dose him with codeine cough
syrup. Mulder associated codeine with Elvis in his later years...so he
followed orders.

On the third day, she awakened him from a fitful late-afternoon nap by
grasping his shoulders in her cool hands and shaking him lightly as she
called his name. Eventually he opened his eyes and smiled up at her.

"You're my angel," he murmured, wrapping his arms around her.

"Oh, Mulder," she sighed, easing herself down against his chest so that
he could hold her close. "You were having a nightmare. The same one,
about the oysters."

"Oysters?" he rasped.

"Apalachicolas," she said. "You've been saying that in your sleep for
days. I don't get it."

"Apa -- oh yeah."

He glanced down at the crown of her head, grateful that she was not
watching his face at that moment. In his waking hours, he could
distract himself from thoughts of Krychek's story by devoting his
attention to the case at hand or, even better, by focusing on Scully's
face. But while he slept, the memory surged up unbidden, and the
rhythmic syllables of the word Krychek had used to describe the taste of
Scully's body reinforced the persistence of the memory.

"Uh...probably something I ate," he joked, rubbing his belly.

She lifted her head to gaze at him.

"You sure? You were pretty agitated, Mulder."

"You know what oysters can do to a person," he said with a shrug.

"Some people believe they have aphrodiasical qualities," she stated.

"Then that explains the other dreams," he said.

She arched an eyebrow by way of inquiry.

"The dreams about you, sweetheart," he said gently, rubbing her back
lightly.

"About me?"

He nodded slowly.

"I dreamed about you when I was in Russia," he said quietly. "I
dreamed that we were making love in a meadow, on a beautiful white
cloth spread on the grass -- a big tablecloth, with lace around the edges.
The sun was shining and there was a slow, winding river nearby. It
was beautiful, like the summertime in England. And just when it was
getting really -- you know -- um, good...these little rose petals started
falling from the sky, like confetti, swirling all around us, soft... At first
I couldn't tell what they were...but you put caught some on your
tongue, like a kid in a snowstorm, and ate them. We were laughing."

"I ate them?" she asked.

"Oh, just a few. You grinned at me, like it meant something...erotic."

"Probably does," she mused, her brow knit in puzzlement. "What do
you make of it?"

Mulder shrugged against the pillows.

"I needed to be comforted, and the dream comforted me. I felt --
loved." His sentence was formed in a whisper. He swallowed a lump
that had formed in his throat and continued. "So when I said I was
really glad to finally put my arms around you, I wasn't kidding."

"Did you see the look on Skinner's face?" she said, a smile tugging at
the corners of her mouth.

"I didn't see anything but you," he replied. She rolled her eyes, and he
laughed out loud. "Okay, for the first minute I didn't see anything but
you. Then I saw Skinner's face. I think he probably chalked it up to
post-traumatic stress."

"Probably," Dana said doubtfully. She shifted herself a little farther up
his chest and placed a hand on his forehead. "You still feel a little
warm. I'll get the thermometer."

He grabbed her arms to stop her from leaving.

"I'm warm, Scully, but it's not the bronchitis." He lowered his eyes
and smiled shyly through his lashes. "Trust me."

Her hand slid from his forehead into his hair; her fingers brushed it back
from his face, the silky spikes tickling her palm. She studiously
avoided meeting his eyes, preferring to concentrate on his hair. It was
safer, somehow.

"Scully..."

"Mmm."

"We -- hey, look at me, Scully."

"You've got nice hair, you know, Mulder," she said, her throat dry.

"Sculleee," he said insistently. He gently guided her face around until
he could see her eyes, green-gray without the mask of her blue contacts.
"What is it, sweetheart?"

She smiled in spite of her trepidation. He had called her sweetheart only
a few times since he first revealed his love for her.

"I love it when you call me that," she said in a husky tone.

Mulder made a noise in the back of his throat, something between a soft
growl and a contemplative moan. An eyebrow lurched into her forehead
when she heard it, and a flush spread all over her body. Mulder felt the
warmth of it through her clothes.

"We only had the one kiss, in the office that night, Scully," he said
softly.

She gave a half-nod, and caressed his cheek with the knuckles of her
right hand. Her left hand clutched at his shoulder. Slowly, as if afraid
of detection, she was pulling herself up closer to his mouth. Mulder
grasped her by the waist and helped her into place.

She smiled faintly as she took an inventory of his familiar face: facile
brows, wide nose, deep smile lines that ran from the corners of his
mouth to his chin, fleshy coral-pink lower lip twitching now as he tried
to be patient. What Mulder didn't realize was that she was carefully
selecting her target. She had spent many hours contemplating his face
during the past six years, and had her favorite parts.

She chose the nose.

Her pointed little tongue flicked out to touch the tip of his nose, and then
she pressed her lips to the bony bridge, the flared sides, the frenum
between his nostrils. Mulder was grinning with delight by the time she
reached his upper lip, which she nibbled softly and sucked between her
lips before sliding her tongue between his upper incisors and the slick
underside of his lip. Then she traced the full diameter of his lips with
her tongue and settled a damp, smacking kiss on his lower lip. At that
point, Mulder took over.

His hands clutched at the soft shirt that covered her back as he returned
her kisses. Her mouth seemed so small, so humid and sweet. She
tasted as he remembered, like cinnamon and oranges. His tongue slid
over hers, taking in the cobbles of her taste buds, then traced the rafter-
like ridges of her palate and columnar symmetry of her teeth. Within
this gateway to her body he did not find solace from the memories that
plagued him; rather, he found something to counteract them, a renewed
resolve to feel, to live, to hope for the best. He found his way to the
essence of everything Scully had always been to him, and took the next
turn in the road that would lead him toward becoming everything he had
always wanted to be for her.

He rolled her over easily; she was so small that he wondered at the
difference between her body mass and her powerful spirit. She was
soft beneath him, breasts and belly and thighs, jersey and denim and
velvet skin and plump lips and satin-smooth hair. He felt her humming,
almost purring, her contentment as he nuzzled her neck. She laughed
softly as nipped at the points of her collar bones and lapped at the pool
of her suprasternal notch.

He felt her hands tugging at the hem of his tee shirt, then sliding warm
and dry over the planes of his back. Her nails traced the curve of his
ribs around to his flanks, tickling him inadvertently as she scratched at
the soft spot between the protrusion of his pelvis and the strong pylon
of muscle up the center of his torso. He gasped with surprise, and the
sharp intake of breath brought on a wracking cough that knocked him
off his elbows.

She continued to hold him and pat his back for a moment, then urged
him into a sitting position. His body thrashed with the involuntary
effort of expelling the irritants from his lungs. The sound that came out
of him was like a crackling fire. His face reddened and tears flowed
from his eyes. Mulder shook his head helplessly and tried to cover his
mouth, as if there was any need at this point to shield her from
contagion.

"Poor Mulder," she murmured. "That sounds rotten. Time for the
codeine."

He was laughing through his pain as she climbed off the bed and paced
off to the kitchen to retrieve the dreaded brown bottle and a spoon. As
she returned, hips swaying, shirttails floating, Mulder laughed again at
the absurdity of his predicament. Here was every boy's nurse -- or in
this case, doctor -- fantasy, and he was entirely too sick to live it out.
Cruel, cruel reality.

He swallowed a large spoonful to the grainy yellow syrup and almost
immediately felt his throat calm and his lungs grow quiet. Dropping
down heavily to the pillows, he wiped the mirthful tears from under his
eyes and watched, exhausted and grateful, as Scully smoothed out the
sheets under and around him.

As he slipped away into sleep again, he wondered if their kisses had
been a dream. He managed to open his eyes once more and smile at her
to let her know that he loved her. But when she smiled back, he could
see that she already knew.

"You'll be better soon, Mulder. I promise," she whispered, stroking
his forehead. When she leaned over the bed to kiss him, Mulder sighed
happily. He strained to hear what she was whispering in his ear; then
he nodded as her words began to make sense. "You've come back to
me this time, and I won't let you go again. Never again."

End The Cry of the Truth 02/22




I did not write this.  Please forward all feedback to the author at
<vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu>  Thanks, Monica
_____________________________________________________
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&

The Cry of the Truth, 03/22
Mulder's Fancy
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: NC-17 (sexual activity, profanity, descriptions of rape)
Category: S,R (Mulder/Scully), A
Summary: Spring has an interesting effect on Mulder.

   In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to
    thoughts of love.
                      --Alfred, Lord Tennyson

   You said you'd stand by me in the middle of chapter three...
                       --Elvis Costello


A few weeks later, Mulder was received a call from the State Park Police
regarding reports of a ghost in Arlington National Cemetery. He drove out
to Quantico to pick up Scully, who was spending a couple of days
presenting case studies to a conference of state Medical Examiners from
around the country.

He wandered through the complex to the office Scully used when working
at the Academy.  Here she had a window, two computers, and a secretary.
She had turned down three different offers to work here permanently so that
she could remain with Mulder in the damp basement of the Hoover
building.

He stood behind the broad new desk and fingered her notepad. It was
covered with statistical computations in her precise handwriting.

"May I help you?" said a peevish voice.

Mulder looked up to see Scully's secretary, Kevin, slouching in the
doorway.

"I'm looking for Dr. Scully," Mulder said in his best professional tone.

"Do you have an appointment?" Kevin asked, looking him over like the
maitre d' at a restaurant where Mulder could only afford the chicken.

Mulder had the distinct impression that Kevin did not approve of his tie. He
smoothed it against his chest and swallowed self-consciously.

"No, I don't. And I don't need one. I'm her partner. Now where is she?"

Kevin tossed his head and sniffed.

"In the pathology conference room, reviewing the slides for her lecture.
Her time is valuable, Agent Mulder. I suggest that you schedule an
appointment next time you need to consult with Dr. Scully."

In his best imitation of Scully, Mulder cocked an eyebrow so effectively that
Kevin had stepped out of his way long before he reached the door.

He found her in the conference room at the end of the hall. She was
conducting her own personal slide show in the dark. He moved in quietly
behind her, and slipped a stealthy hand around her hip before she could stop
him.

"I thought I warned you about that, Walter," she said, clicking the
projector's controller.

Mulder pressed himself against her back and nuzzled her neck. "I thought
I'd pull rank on you and demand a few sexual favors in return for letting
Mulder keep his job."

"Whatever it takes," she said, and with a flick of her thumb turned the
screen black. In the darkness, she turned into his embrace. "I'd do
anything for my Mulder. Anything."

Her Mulder snorted.

"That sounds ridiculous, Scully -- 'my Mulder'. Try 'my Fox.' Maybe I'll
buy that."

"It'll never work," she murmured, her lips finding the mole on his cheek in
the dark. "There isn't a pet name that will ever suit you. I've thought of
them all, and 'Spooky' is the only one that sticks."

"Come to Spooky," he growled.

She twined her arms around his neck as he pressed his lips against her
cheek. He kissed his way to the corner of her mouth, and felt a smile
forming there.

"Have any good dreams last night?" he whispered. His hands were lifting
the hem of her jacket and playing along the seam in the back of her skirt.

For a moment she seemed to stiffen in his arms. He wondered if he was
going to far by reaching under her clothes. Then she relaxed a bit, and
Mulder continued his exploration.

"Mmm. A few," she replied. She nibbled at the cleft in his small chin, her
lips tingling against the whiskers there.

Mulder hooked his thumbs under the waistband of her skirt and spread his
fingers across her hips, pressing her toward him. He could tell by the
texture of the skirt's fabric that she was wearing the cranberry suit --
one of
his favorites.

"My dreams are becoming a fire hazard," he said. "And my bronchitis is all
better. Don't you think we've waited long enough?"

"The path conference room isn't the best spot, Mulder," she said.

"Is that the voice of experience, Scully?" he said, grinding his hips
against her.

"Wild horses couldn't drag that from me," she said, trying not to laugh.

"Wanna bet?" he countered, covering her mouth with his own and dipping
his tongue between her lips to taste her. Today he detected hints of
cinnamon tea and peaches.

"Mmm--rrrr--" She tried to say his name, but her mouth was not her own.

"You're killing me, Scully," he mumbled, his hands skittering up her back,
fingers clutching at the cross-strap of her bra.

She chortled at that. Pressing her hands against his chest, she disengaged
herself and turned back toward the projector.

"You've survived far worse," she said.

She turned the projector back on, and flashed up a slide of a severed hand,
adorned with multiple heavy gold rings, in a pool of blood. Mulder made a
chuffing sound.

"Great. You really know how to put the rot in erotic, don't you?"

She grimaced into the light, and forwarded to the next slide, a table
depicting the findings of her analysis of the blood.

"These are my slides for the lecture tomorrow," she said, glancing down at
a dog-eared document on the table next to the projector. "Role of co-A
polymerase antagonists in classifying forensic evidence. Think they'll like
it?"

"A roomful of pathologists? Sure. They'll love it. They'll especially love
it if you wear that red suit with the lacy white thing that just peeks out
of the
jacket. It lends a certain air of disrespectability to your otherwise pristine
CV."

"Shut up, Spooky," she said tersely, stepping around him to turn on the
overhead lights.

"Aw, show's over? Just when it was getting good," he whined.

Scully busied herself with verifying the order of the slides within the
carousel. When she was satisfied, she put the carousel in its box and began
to loop up the projector's cord.

Mulder watched her, trying to read her mood. She had returned his kisses
eagerly. Now she was wearing the impassive expression that he knew so
well. It was nearly inscrutable.

He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall as she packed
her briefcase with the carousel and her notes.

"Are you worried?"

"About my talk? A bit," she replied, snapping shut the clasps of the case.

He took a step closer to her and leaned in to whisper in her ear, his
shoulders a safe six inches from hers.

"I wasn't talking about the conference," he said.

She fished in the exterior pocket of her case for a pen, then made a couple
of notes in the margins of her transcript. Mulder watched carefully; she was
clearly stalling.

"Yeah. I'm a little...nervous," she said without looking up from her
papers. "What brings you out here, anyway? Something break on the
Evans case?"

"Nope. Got a call from the Park police at Arlington Cemetery. Seems
they've got a ghost at the Lee house. Wanna come check it out with me?"

"Normally I'd love to," she said. "But showtime's in twenty minutes."

"I thought it was tomorrow!"

"It was originally, but the schedule's been rearranged to accommodate the
Director."

Mulder nodded his understanding.

"Oh. Okay." He watched thoughtfully the progress of his index finger as it
traced the flap of her well-used cognac leather brief case. "This's been a
long time coming, Scully. It's only natural that we would both be pretty
eager -- and a little nervous." He shrugged, feigning nonchalance.
"Performance anxiety. Call it what you want."

"I know what you mean," she said, clicking her pen.

They exchanged a glance that told of only the slightest surprise at this
indirect confession.

"So, Mulder." She slid the transcript into her case and snapped it shut.
"Got a hot date tonight?"

"The hottest, Scully," he said, his voice cracking slightly over her name.
His eyes were drowsy with untold fantasies. "She's so hot even her
hair is red."

She pursed her lips and blew a silent whistle of wonder.

"Hachi-machi," she uttered.

He cocked an eyebrow at that. Hachi-machi?

Scully hoisted her briefcase off the table and headed toward the door. Just
as Mulder was about to panic, she turned and called out two words over her
shoulder.

"Eight o'clock."

Eight o'clock, he mouthed back at her, his eyes wide with amazement.
Long after she was gone, he was still seeing red.

XXXXXXXXXX

"I'm here to see -- ah --" Mulder consulted the notes he had made in his
pocket-size leather portfolio. "Adelia Forrest. Miss Adelia Forrest."

Mulder smiled a little awkwardly at the young man who had met him at
the entrance to the dig site. He wore a pair of ragged, clay-encrusted
khaki shorts, mud-caked workboots, and a sweaty bandanna tied
around his head, but no shirt. His navel was pierced with a gold ring
that shone cleanly in contrast to all the dirt and dust on his body.

"Delia? Why?" he asked, scowling at Mulder from behind his streaked
oval spectacles.

Mulder pulled out his badge.

"Special Agent Fox Mulder, FBI. I'm here to talk to her about the
apparition at the dig site. You got a problem with that?"

He showed Mulder his palms in a gesture of submission.

"No problem. I just make it a habit not to trust anyone from the
government. Stay here. I'll get Delia for you."

Mulder watched the man -- presumably an archaeology graduate student
-- lope away through the maze of staked-off areas of excavation. A
dozen similarly filthy researchers knelt in the mud, sifting through the
earth, brushing off what small stones and sticks they found, and tossing
the useless bits over their shoulders into a heap of refuse.

He turned to take in the view across the Potomac. Directly opposite the
river he saw the glinting gold dome of the old Riggs bank building at the
intersection of Wisconsin and M, and further north, the verdigris
rooftops and mellow brick chimneys of the Dunbarton Oaks museum set
deep in the expensive gardens of residential Georgetown. Farther east
was the enormous edifice of the Capitol, its dome topped by a well-
weathered statue of Columbia.

A breeze that carried the promise of spring lifted his tie and ruffled his
hair. He caught the sweet scent of roses that grew in the memorial
gardens all around the house behind him, and then the acrid tang of jet
fuel as a plane loomed overhead, banking for its landing at Washington
National airport, not five miles southeast of where he stood.

Mulder considered yanking off his tie and running barefoot through the
long grass. This year spring was having a powerful hormonal influence
on him. The urge to mate with Scully was nearly overwhelming these
days. Between forays into the field, Mulder found himself sitting
behind his desk in their basement office, vainly trying to succumb
neither to the blood-boiling fantasies he had of making love to Scully or
the sweet dreams he was hatching about marrying her and fathering her
children.

Kissing her in the darkness of the conference room just an hour ago had
done nothing to quiet these urges. He could still taste her on his lips.
On the hilltop above the river, with the soft spring air caressing his face,
Mulder closed his eyes and pictured her sweet rosebud mouth, intense
blue eyes, and shiny copper hair.

He shook his head as if trying to throw off the distracting thoughts, and
took a half-turn to the right and scanned the landscape. The rolling
meadow before him was replete with neatly trimmed emerald grass, but
it was hardly the place for vernal frolicking. Row after row of uniform
white headstones marked hundreds of graves. In the distance, a low
flame flickered in memory of a young president who had been gunned
down when Mulder was just learning to tie his own shoes.

Arlington National Cemetery was probably Mulder's least favorite of all
the historical sites in his home city. To many tourists, it seemed to be
just another museum of names and dates, a place to buy mementos of
their trip to the nation's capital and take pictures of their kids in front of
the eternal flame. For Mulder, who felt the presence of the dead around
him like a palpable fog, it was a living reminder of the horrors of war.

Arlington House was particularly hard for him to stomach. He had
avoided looking at it in the ten minutes he had stood waiting for Miss
Forrest, and even as his patience waned, he was reluctant to turn in the
direction of the house and set off in search of her. She was leading an
archaeological inspection of the gravesites closest to the Lee house, and
Mulder had no desire to peer into the opened graves that were within
spitting distance of the house itself. Perhaps it was due to his own
metaphysical link with a fallen Confederate soldier, or perhaps to his
generally sensitive nature, but Mulder found the house and its garden of
graves almost unbearably poignant.

He heard footsteps crunching in the gravel behind him, and turned to
see a woman approaching. She was wearing a pair of work shorts
nearly identical those of the man who had greeted him, but her legs were
quite clean, pale, and pleasantly muscular. Mulder eyed them
appreciatively; they were like Scully's legs, but longer. As Miss Forrest
came closer, he also appreciated the impressive breasts that bounced
ever so slightly beneath the UVA tee-shirt. She smiled at him from
behind a pair of tortoise-rimmed sunglasses and waved congenially.
Her bangs fluttered in the wind; a loose dark auburn braid snaked
around her shoulder and rested on the swell of her left breast.

"Adelia Forrest," he muttered to himself as she paused in front of him.

"Call me Delia. Adelia was my grandmother. It's best not to mix up
your generations around here, believe me."

He shook the hand she offered him, noting the long, graceful fingers
and absence of any rings. She was wearing a steel watch, but no other
jewelry, not even earrings, although he could see that her lobes were
pierced. Her smile was infectious; it seemed to stretch across her face,
revealing even white teeth and deep, girlish dimples in her cheeks.

"You wanted to ask me about the apparition?" she prompted when he
lulled a little too long.

"Yes," Mulder said, trying to mute his grin. He glanced down at his
notepad again and pulled a pen out of the breast pocket of his jacket. In
Scully's absence he felt the need to take notes, in spite of his good
memory.  "You are the supervising archaeologist for this project?"

"Yep. I'm the one." Her accent was decidedly Southern, but mellowed
by a lush layer of higher education and careful breeding that Mulder
associated with Shelby Foote, the novelist who had narrated a good
portion of the popular documentary about the Civil War. "What does
the FBI care about a ghost?"

"A ghost? You think it was a ghost?"

"Well, what else? We're digging up these poor fellows' graves,
disturbing Mrs. Lee's garden -- there are any number of souls who
would want us to get the hell out of here. I can hardly blame 'em. Can
you?"

"You believe in ghosts?" Mulder asked with a cock of his eyebrow that
would've done his partner proud.

"Of course," Miss Forrest replied, crossing her arms under her well-
supported breasts. "I'm a gravedigger of sorts -- as opposed to a gold
digger, that is. I've seen a number of ghosts, specters, bogey men, et
cetera. They don't scare me. I believe they know I'm sorry for
bothering them, and that they respect my pursuit of the truth."

"The truth?" he echoed.

"The truth about their lives. Sometimes digging up their homes and
graves is the only way for us to really understand what happened to
them. It wouldn't be my first choice, as a historian. I'd prefer to read
what they wrote, study the homes that they built and the shit they threw
down the well." Miss Forrest looked over her shoulder at the columned
mansion, and shook her head sadly. "But that's not always enough,
especially when you're talking about someone like General Lee.
There's an unquenchable thirst for information about him and his cause,
although why I do not know."

"But you're from the South, aren't you?" Mulder said, running a finger
under his collar. He wasn't sure if it was the afternoon sun or Miss
Forrest's rich, throaty voice that was making him sweat.

"Oh, can you tell?" she asked coyly. Then she laughed delightedly, and
Mulder could not help but join in. "Well of course I am, Mr. Mulder,
but time marches on, now doesn't it? There's a lot more to the history
of our country than just the Civil War. But this is where the interest is
lately, and the funding is just pouring in. That's why we're here,
beating a dead horse, so to speak."

"Traveler?" Mulder queried, naming General Lee's horse.

She laughed again, lurching toward him slightly and then taking a step
back, as if to show him that his charm had an unsettling effect on her
balance. Mulder was charmed himself. He rarely smiled when
interviewing a witness; he had been smiling since her first word.

"So, Delia -- the ghost?"

"Oh, the ghost. It happened over there, by the kitchen." She pointed
toward the corner of the house, where a tent had been erected to protect
a particularly delicate area of the project. "Come on, I'll show you."

Mulder followed a few paces behind her, shamelessly hoping to get a
view of her backside as she walked.  Her strong strides resulted in a
ladylike sway of her hips, and Mulder felt a potent urge to put his palm
out and cup the rounded crest of her ass. She tossed him a glance over
her shoulder, and he felt a frisson of arousal pass through his body.

Get a grip, he said to himself as they rounded the corner of the old
house.

She stopped under the tent to examine a vented tray of clay-encrusted
finds -- bits of pottery, glass, miniballs, and buttons. In the cool, dim
shelter of the tent, the sweat on Mulder's body evaporated quickly, in
spite of the tropical-weight wool suit he wore. He shivered slightly.

Delia Forrest pulled off her sunglasses and fixed her hazel eyes on him.
"Spooked?"

Mulder smiled nervously, wishing she had never taken off the glasses.
Her dark green eyes, flecked with gold and orange, were wide and
luminous like a spaniel's. He felt himself inexorably drawn into them.

"Mr. Mulder? You all right?"

He gulped before he spoke. "Oh, yeah. Fine. The -- er -- kitchen?"

She pocketed a shard of what appeared to be blue willow china and led
him through the other side of the tent and into the shady rear yard of the
house. Here, as with the other aspects of the house, graves had been
placed within a few feet of the foundation by Union soldiers intending
to leave a permanent reminder of the Lees' treachery. Mulder had long
since given up trying to avoid stepping on the graves. In this place it
was simply impossible.

Miss Forrest stopped at the crumbling ruins of a brick structure, four
low walls and two chimneys around a patch of damp clover and violets.
A lilac bush bowed in the breeze near what had once been the door to
the old kitchen. The waning afternoon was filled with the sweetness of
the lilac blooms. The smell reminded him of Scully.

Mulder sighed raggedly and followed the archaeologist over the low
remains of one wall. They stood amidst the violets. His black wingtips
slowly sank into the damp earth as he stared down at the shapely curve
of her calves where they emerged from cotton ragg socks peeking out of
her Timberland boots.

"There was a bright light -- y'know, just incredibly intense -- right
here," she said, indicating the clover between their feet. "I was here late
last night to pick up my laptop -- stupid of me, really. I left it under the
tent. I was rushing off to catch a concert at Wolftrap, and left it here
like a fool. So around eleven, I came back and got it. I was just about
to leave by the front way -- the way you arrived -- when I heard what
sounded like two people arguing. It was coming from back here. So I
tiptoed around the side of the house to see what was up, and that's
when I saw the light."

"Tiptoed?" Mulder teased her, enjoying the image of her skimming
along on her toes in the mud.

"I don't always wear these damn boots," she said, blushing slightly
under the sprinkling of freckles that adorned her well-sculpted cheeks.

"What was the concert?" he asked, apropos of nothing.

"Gypsy Kings. You know them?"

"Mmm," he replied, wondering what she would wear to such a concert.
"So how high and how wide was this light?"

"Oh, about six feet tall, two feet wide. It undulated, kind of."

Undulated, he mused. I'd like to see Miss Delia Forrest undulating.

She reached up and tugged at the neckline of her tee shirt, scratching a
mosquito bite at the nape of her pale neck. Before taking her hand
away, she slipped a finger under the shirt and pulled out a fine gold
chain from which hung an intricately engraved Maltese cross.

Mulder's brows shot up in surprise. Miss Forrest caught his reaction,
and wrinkled her forehead in consternation.

"Got some kind of aversion to archaic talismanic symbols?" she
demanded.

He chuckled and shook his head.

"Not at all. It just reminds me of someone I know, who wears a
cross..."

"Someone you know, huh?" She smiled and peeked at him through her
long, dark lashes. "Isn't that male code for your girlfriend?"

Mulder felt himself flushing in spite of the cool shade of the lilac bush.

"She has a dangerous job and she wears the cross as a talisman, as you
put it."

"Does it work?" Miss Forrest asked.

Mulder frowned at the memory of the three months in which he had
worn Scully's cross.

"Not always," he replied grimly. "What about yours?"

"So far, so good. The spooks haven't gotten me yet." She shifted her
weight from one foot to the other and rested her hands on her waist.
"Mr. Mulder, are you interested, or are you just passing time?"

Mulder licked his lips and searched for a reply. Perhaps the attraction
was mutual. If it was, then what could he do about it? And what about
Scully? They had no formal commitment other than the six intense
years they had shared. And the fact that he had told her that he loved
her. And that she had broken her engagement to a man who adored her
so that she could continue as Mulder's partner and, hopefully, as his
lover.

On second thought, there was no need for a formal commitment. What
they had ran deeper than words, anyway. It always had.

He took a deep breath and tried to focus on the case.

"I'm interested in your story, yes," he said evenly, gathering his
professionalism around him like a shield. "How long did the light
linger here?"

"From when I first saw it? About two minutes. The voices faded pretty
soon after I got here, though. Almost as if they shut up once they knew
they had my attention."

"They? Who do you think the voices belonged to?"

Miss Forrest shrugged impatiently, her breasts rippling slightly with the
motion.

"How the hell should I know? I never understood anything they said.
They just sounded like people arguing. You know. Like a couple you
hear fussing through the heating vents in a crowded old apartment
building."

Mulder looked back toward the tent. Scruffy graduate students and
techs came and went, squinting into the watery March sun each time
they emerged from the darkness.

"Have you made any significant discoveries at this site?"

"No, not really. There's nothing left to find. As I said, this place has
been picked clean in the past hundred and thirty years. What you saw
under the tent was just your basic historical garbage."

"What about the shard you took from that tray?" he asked.

She fetched the bit of china from her pocket and turned it over in her
fingers.

"That's kinda hard to explain...I have these feelings, sometimes, about
stuff. As I said, I'm interested in the domestic side of history." She
rubbed the dull edge of the shard along her jawline as she spoke.
"Every now and then something we dig up will just strike my fancy. I
might get a feeling about the person who used it. This piece -- I dunno.
It's not so much that I got a vibe from it -- I really like blue and white
china.

Mulder grunted equivocally and put away his notepad. He fished one of
his business cards out of his badge case.

"Sounds like a garden-variety spectral apparition. Give me a call if it
happens again."

She took the card and read it. "Fox? Your name is Fox?"

He was already walking out of the confines of the ruins, his big feet
squelching in the soggy earth.

"Mr. Mulder."

He turned reluctantly and saw her pulling the elastic band from the end
of her braid. As she walked toward him, her fingers worked the lush
dark auburn hair out of its twist and fluffed it over her shoulders.
Mulder felt an unmistakable desire to bury his face in her hair and nibble
on her ear.

She smiled brilliantly at him. "Maybe we could -- what's the expression
-- stage a stake out one night? Just you and me and the ghost."

Mulder's upper lip twitched up into a pained smile.

"Uh -- maybe so. In the meantime, Miss Forrest, good luck on your
dig."

He walked away as fast as he could without running.

End The Cry of the Truth 03/22



I did not write this.  Please forward all feedback to the author at
<vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu>  Thanks, Monica
_____________________________________________________
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&

The Cry of the Truth, 04/22
Sex and Violence
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: NC-17 (sexual activity, profanity, descriptions of rape)
Category: S,R (Mulder/Scully), A
Summary: Mulder and Scully's work interferes with their investigation
of each other.

A Little Reminder:  Rape is an act of _violence_. The sex that Mulder and
Scully are approaching in this chapter will be an act of love (hokey, yes,
but there you have it). I feel somewhat uncomfortable with the
juxtoposition of these two topics in the story, and I expect that some
readers will too. From what I've seen, however, real life is a messy jumble
of the sublime and the profane and a lot of mediocre stuff in between.


Just after ten o'clock that evening, Mulder found himself slouched
deeply among the velvet cushions of Scully's sofa, watching _NYPD
Blue_ with bleary eyes and wishing that he and Scully could curl up in
bed together -- just to sleep. His belly was happily full of homemade
chicken pot pie from Scully's freezer and the spinach and radicchio
salad that she had willed him to eat. In their time together away from
the office, Scully always made him feel well-cared-for. It was no
wonder he had fantasies about settling down with her. Forty was
looming large on his horizon, and she was a terrific cook in addition to
being the object of his respect, affection, and lust. What more could a
man want, he asked himself.

Wild, ceaseless sex with Dana Scully. That's what.

And it was as that thought flitted across his mind that Scully slid into his
arms and placed a soft kiss on his cheek.

"You asleep?" she whispered.

"No. Just dreaming." He opened his eyes and saw that she had
changed from her cranberry suit into a pair of midnight navy silk
pajamas. "I think I'm still dreaming. Are you --"

She shifted upward and turned slightly so that she was half atop him,
half on the sofa. Mulder eagerly accepted her kiss. Like a teenager he
pretended to casually rub her back, when what he was really doing was
titillating himself with the fact that she had shed her bra with her street
clothes. He let his hand stray to her hip, and discovered no panty lines
beneath the smooth flow of the silk.

Oh, this is too good, he told himself.

His hand slid back up her hip to her waist, found the hem of her top,
and was easing under it when his cell phone rang.

"Shit!" he muttered without removing his tongue from her mouth.

Somehow he managed to sit up and grab his phone from the coffee table
without breaking the kiss. The phone continued to chirp as Scully
rearranged her limbs so that she was straddling him. As he brought the
phone up to his left ear, the tip of her tongue danced inside his right ear.

"Mulder," he croaked into the phone.

He continued to stroke her back as he listened to the caller. His palm
cupped her bottom, encouraging her to rock her pelvis against his
crotch. Part of Mulder's brain struggled to comprehend the words he
was hearing as another part screamed "she'll feel it, it's the size of the
Florida panhandle and she's gonna know it -- she definitely knows it
now -- ooooh, Scully, good girl --"

The talking on the other end stopped, and he let the phone slip from his
hand so that he could wrap both arms around her slender waist. He
held her as he thrust up against her. His eyes bored into hers when their
bodies met; even through the layers of their clothing, the heat was
considerable.

"Mmm. I'm impressed," she cooed, a smug smile on her pretty face.

"I'm so glad," he replied, his breath coming in short, humid gasps as he
brought his hands around to lightly trace the curves of her breasts.

Scully smiled down at the sight of his long, dexterous fingers glossing
over the dark silk of her top.

"Who was on the phone?" she asked, thrusting against him once again.

"Ahhh...Do that again," he moaned.

With a wicked grin, she did.

His head lolled against the back of the sofa. She cupped his cheeks in
her hands and redirected his face toward hers.

"Mulder, who called?" she asked again.

"St. Vincent's," he mumbled.

"The hospital? What about?"

She had stopped her provocative lap dance. Mulder sighed heavily.
His disappointment was epic.

"We should go over there," he said grudgingly.

"What happened?"

"The archaeologist I met today, at Arlington...she was brought in by the
EMTs. She was raped tonight."

XXXXXXXXX

Scully drove them to the hospital. Nestled comfortably in the buttery
leather seat of her Volvo, she once again blessed the heating coils
hidden beneath the upholstery. It was a cold night, nearly freezing, and
she was as warm as she could hope to be outside the shelter of Mulder's
arms.

She hummed very quietly to himself as she pictured him sitting next to
her. Without taking her eyes from the road, she could clearly see in her
mind's eye the oddly handsome profile that she had grown to love. Had
she turned to look at him at that moment, she would have seen that his
hair was falling over his forehead. She would have felt compelled to
reach over and gently brush his hair back into place, and then allow her
hand to wander down over his bristly cheek, to the back of his neck
where the starched white collar of his shirt creased into the warm, salty,
lightly tanned skin. So Scully did not look. She simply drove.

Scully loved driving at night; it was like sailing on a calm black sea. The
heavy, broad carriage of the Volvo equalized every variation in the road.
No outside sounds permeated the cockpit of the car. The lights of the
dashboard glowed a cool green; reflections of the city lights washed
over the spotless windshield as she cruised down K Street, heading for
the Fourteenth Street bridge.

She shifted into neutral and coasted up to a red light. Now it was safe
to take a look at Mulder.

He was slumped drowsily in his seat, arms crossed over his chest.
Scully wanted nothing more than to turn around, drive home, and curl
up in bed with him. She suspected he would no longer be sleepy once
they were naked, spooned together in her bed. Tonight she had begun
to feel that the time for their union had come. Up until now something
had been missing, some nameless little gesture between them that would
reassure her that she was right to pursue this affair with Mulder. The
restraint he had shown, in spite of his more than obvious arousal, had
pleased her. She had heretofore doubted whether, when the time came,
Mulder could see through the pink haze of lust and think of anything
other than his own need. Tonight she had seen that he was more than
capable of prioritizing his responsibilities.

"Scully?" He was grinning at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners, his
dark brows peaking into his forehead with amusement. The light had
turned green during her contemplation of him. "Are you with me?"

"All the way," she said, her voice catching slightly on the words.

Mulder sat up and turned toward her, still grinning happily.

"This archaeologist, Miss Forrest -- she hasn't quite finished her
doctorate -- reported seeing a specter at the sight of her dig adjacent to
the Lee house," he said. "I listened to her story, took a look around,
and told her to call me if anything else happened."

"Not spooky enough?" Scully said.

He shot her an evil glance.

"You'd better watch that," he murmured.

"Or what?" she challenged.

Mulder fished a sunflower seed out of his pocket and popped it in his
mouth. He tried not to smile. He failed.

They grinned at each other like idiots.

"Or I'll take a big bite out of you," he said, licking the salt from his lips.

They merged onto the Fourteenth Street bridge. To the west, Thomas
Jefferson gazed serenely from beneath his perfect dome. A March wind
was buffeting the river, turning up whitecaps visible from the bridge.
Scully did not see them, however. She had developed a moderate
phobia of bridges after the night that Mulder had exchanged her life for
that of a woman who claimed to be his long-lost sister. Now she was
able to tolerate heights above water only if she did not look beyond the
railing.

"So she called you," Scully prompted.


"What?" Mulder's brain scampered back from its temporary romp.
"Actually, she didn't. A nurse at St. Vincent's found my card in her
pocket and made the call."

"Let me guess," Scully said. "Spectral rape? Come on, Mulder.
We've been down this road before..."

"I know, Scully. Impossible to substantiate. But I'd like to hear her
story, nonetheless, if only to add it to the files."

"And you want me to come along to ease the way, because I'm a
woman," she added, working to ignore the tremors that were passing
through her belly.

He shrugged.

"I hadn't really thought of it that way." He ran a hand through his hair,
confounding the part. "I want you with me because you're my partner,
and because -- well, because the only way I was going to be able to
leave that couch was if you came too."

Scully caught a glimpse of the strong, even line of his jaw, his fleshy
earlobe, and the strip of skin between his ear and sideburn that seemed
perpetually to require licking. Her anxiety about the case at hand faded
as recalled very vividly all the hopes she had for him. All of him.

"Mmm. I *do* like being your partner, Agent Mulder."

XXXXXXXXX

They found Delia Forrest's room on the trauma ward of St. Vincent's
Hospital in Alexandria. Scully paused to open Miss Forrest's chart
before they went into her room. Mulder tried to read the admission note
over her shoulder, but could not decipher the doctor's squinty
handwriting.

Scully scanned the note and then flipped to the back of the folder. She
pulled a thatch of photographs out of a manila envelope labeled
"Forensic Documentation." After sifting through the grim color
photographs of Miss Forrest's body, she summarized what she had read
in a low voice.

"She has physical evidence of sexual assault -- contusions and
lacerations to the soft tissues of the vagina and perineum, contusions to
the thighs and buttocks...and semen was collected from the vaginal
vault." She shook her head. "I don't think a ghost leaves behind his
semen, Mulder. Or his handprints."

She handed him the photographs. Mulder had no difficulty picking out
the hand-shaped bruises on Miss Forrest's thighs and buttocks.

Returning the photos to the chart, Mulder frowned at his partner. He
was ashamed of the giddy delight he had been feeling before they left
her apartment, and his guilt over the lust he had felt for Miss Forrest that
afternoon was mutating into nausea.

Scully was obviously wearing her mask of professional detachment, but
she was aware if his regret, if not the specific causes of it.

"I know how you feel, Mulder. But you have to remember --
impartiality is part of our job, at least in an ideal world."

He nodded once, and then pushed open the door.

And was shocked by the woman he saw. The beautiful Adelia Forrest,
she of the voluptuous curves and dark auburn curls, was curled into a
little ball in the middle of her hospital bed. She stared at the blinking
lights of her IV pump with glassy eyes. When Mulder walked into her
line of vision, she blinked, but did not look at him.

"Miss Forrest?" he whispered, sitting on the edge of a hard plastic chair
beside the bed. "I'm Agent Mulder, from the FBI. We met this
afternoon..."

She nodded.

"I told you I thought the souls wished me no harm," she said hoarsely.
"I guess I was wrong."

Miss Forrest uncoiled her body, grimacing as she moved. Mulder could
only guess at the varieties of pain she was enduring.

"Miss Forrest, this is my partner, Special Agent Dana Scully."

Delia came close to smiling at Scully, who shook her hand gently from
the other side of the bed.

"You're the one with the cross," Delia said, her eyes indicating Dana's
necklace.

Scully glanced at Mulder, who gave her the most infinitesimal of smiles.

Miss Forrest reached for a small plastic medicine cup on the bedside
table. She upended it over her palm, and with a soft rattle, her own
gold talisman snaked out into her hand.

"He -- it -- whatever it was -- ripped it off me. Just like that. See the
mark?" She lifted her long hair to give them a view of the red stripe
along one side of her pale neck. "The cops found it in the grass. I
begged them to let me have it. They said it was evidence, but I got them
to settle for a photograph."

Scully resisted the urge to touch her own cross.

"Miss Forrest, you told the police that you believe your attacker was --"
she began.

"A ghost?" Delia said. She nodded wearily. "Yeah. I do. And I'm
usually not considered crazy. Did you think I was crazy when you met
me this afternoon, Mr. Mulder?"

"...No," he replied softly.

"Me neither," she said. "Now -- I'm not so sure. The thing is, I've
really tried to think clearly about this. I've tried to remove myself a
little, to look at it objectively...Oh, I can tell what you're thinking,
Agent Scully. Can't be done. Well, I'm a scientist first, a historian
second. Archaeology is as much about chemistry and molecular biology
as medicine is. Did you realize that?"

Scully shook her head slowly, fascinated by this woman's easy, sincere
way of speaking in spite of her pain.

"But Miss Forrest," she said, "There are some things that simply cannot
be subdued by the intellect."

Mulder could not control the expression of shock that crossed his face.
He had never heard Scully utter such words.

"Yeah, but you can try, can't you? Anyway," Miss Forrest continued,
"I remember seeing plenty of real things around me while it was
happening, but not a real face or body. Oh, what I felt was real, all
right. I've got the injuries to prove it. But...I saw the brick ruins of the
kitchen. I saw the tent poles and stakes. I saw the back of the Lee
house, even. I saw the lilac bush above me and the lights of a jet
heading over to National. I even saw the stars -- it was a clear night.
But no face. No man. No nothing."

She did not cry. Scully knew that the hurt was too deep for tears. Miss
Forrest seemed disappointed in the figment -- the whatever -- that had
raped her, as if she had trusted it and it had betrayed her.

"Maybe the memory is just too repellent," Scully said.

Delia shrugged, then winced at the strain on her already injured neck.
Scully stepped closer to the bed, and rearranged Delia's pillows so that
they supported her head more thoroughly.

"Maybe," Delia conceded. "But I've been through other painful
experiences, and never felt the need to attribute them to a goddamn
ghost."

Scully nodded thoughtfully.

"Rape -- rape is different," Scully said.

Delia's luminous hazel eyes flashed with comprehension. She abruptly
grabbed Scully's hand and held on tightly.

Mulder's gaze shifted from Delia to Scully and then back again.

"You were at the dig site alone tonight?" Mulder prompted, feeling
suddenly out of place in the presence of the two women.

Delia took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, as if trying to pace her
response. Her hand was nonetheless clammy with anxiety. Scully tried
to loosen her grasp a little.

"Yeah. I was just packing up my bag, taking home some stuff to work
on, you know...I walked across the back yard, like I showed you
earlier, Agent Mulder. I heard those voices again. And when I got to
the kitchen...I sorta hoped I'd see it again, so I'd have another 'garden-
variety' apparition for you." She managed a small smile in his
direction. "I was just thinking about you when this -- this thing
whopped me upside the head. Knocked me right over. But I didn't
black out. The doctors say there's no sign of that."

Scully nodded; she had glimpsed the electroencephalogram in Delia's
chart.

"Did it say anything, Delia?" Mulder asked.

She shook her head.

"No. No words. There was just this...grunting. Like..." She looked
up at Scully's wide eyes, and found in them the empathy she was
seeking. "Like your grossest idea of what sex with a cruel, perverse
man would be like.  I don't know how else to describe it."

Scully turned her head away with a deep, silent sigh of pain.

Mulder sensed that, for whatever reason, this was cutting too close to
home for Scully, and took over.

"Did you call the police?" he asked.

Delia nodded.

"Yeah. I had a cell phone in my bag." Delia pulled the blankets over
her shoulders and began to draw her legs back up to her chest. "I don't
expect you to do anything about this, Agent Mulder. I probably
wouldn't have called you myself..."

"Is there anything else you remember?" Scully asked, her face
shadowed with a sympathetic intensity that Mulder rarely saw.

Delia shook her head and absently stroked the ends of her hair. Her
face tightened under the strain of containing her tears.

"It's just that -- I kept thinking...I feel like this thing knows my body
now, knows my freckles, the way I smell, the color of my underwear,
the scar on my shoulder." A sob caught in her throat. "Those are the
private things you keep to yourself, to share only with -- with -- and
now no one's ever going to want to share them with me again..."

Scully squeezed Delia's hand. Delia looked up at her, and for a
moment, a flicker of recognition passed between the two women.
Mulder saw it, and his gut shuddered.

He rose from his chair and went to Scully's side.

"If you think of anything else..." he said, awkwardly patting Delia's
arm, "Give us a call."

Delia nodded and rolled herself back into a ball, her long eyelashes
brushing her cheeks as she closed her eyes.

Mulder guided Scully out of the room and shut the door quietly.  When
he turned to her, he was surprised to see that the color had returned to
her face and she seemed ready to resume their usual banter.

"Well?"

"She's making it up," Scully whispered to him. "To take the edge off
the pain. I can't say that I blame her."

"How can you be so sure?" he asked as they began walking toward the
bank of elevators.

"The semen, for one. The bruising pattern, for another..."

As Scully continued to explain her theory, Mulder's mind hurtled back
to the tale Krychek had spun in the Tunguskan jail. In learning to live
with the memory of his imprisonment, Mulder had focused on
convincing himself that Krychek was incapable of telling the truth, and
that nothing he had said during their time together could be taken at face
value. Mulder had not, however, considered the possibility that the
traitor was perfectly capable of telling the truth when it was the most
efficient weapon at his disposal. Now Mulder's instincts were telling
him that the interaction between Scully and Delia indicated that Scully
knew something of what Delia had experienced. But -- he tried to find
comfort in the qualifier -- *but* if Scully remembered anything of what
had transpired during her abduction, she would've told him years ago.
Wouldn't she?

"... I'll be interested to see what the DNA analysis of the semen
shows," Scully was saying. "If she decides to pursue the case, the
Arlington police at least have some solid comparative material, assuming
they come up with a suspect. I'll bet you five bucks it was someone
close to her."

Mulder made a hurried decision to suppress his suspicions until he had
more time to think through them.

"Five bucks?" he shot back with a smirk. "Is that all?"

She glared at him, trying to disguise her smile, as they boarded the
elevator. They descended to the parking garage in silence.

As they walked to the car, their footsteps echoing, Scully glanced at her
watch. Just past midnight.

"It's late, Mulder. Okay if I drop you on my way home?"

Mulder took her keys and unlocked the passenger door, but did not
open it.

"That depends on what kind of goodnight kiss I get," he said, taking a
step closer to her.

"Mulder, we're working..." she said, glancing over her shoulder at the
nearly empty parking garage. The yellow stripes on the concrete
scintillated under the fluorescent lights, and the tang of diesel fuel hung
in the air.

Mulder shook his head and stepped slightly to her side. She turned to
face him, her eyebrow twitching curiously.

"Scully, it's the middle of the night. We've completed our inquiry.
This isn't even a Bureau car. Don't you think we could call this
personal time?"

Summoning up his best hang-dog look, he slid his fingers under the
collar flaps of her trenchcoat, then reached with his right hand to smooth
her hair back from her face. At his touch, her eyes fluttered shut for a
moment and she tucked her head against his palm.

"Another persuasive argument," she said with a weary smile. "I
concede your point -- this time."

"That's what I like to hear," he whispered, slowly sliding his hands down
her arms until they found her hands. Their fingers intertwined instinctively
as he inclined his mouth over hers.

Mulder pressed her body up against the car, and used his hands to support
her head as he kissed her. Although they had had few opportunities to
practice, neither was tongue-tied when Scully's lips parted to give him a
taste of the essence of tea and cilantro she carried in the smooth recesses of
her mouth. He moaned into her, the vibration striking a chord in her belly
that provoked her to thrust her pelvis against his thighs as she mimicked the
motion of his tongue. Mulder smiled against her lips, and sucked greedily
on the warm bit of flesh she offered him. He found his way to the slick
underside of her tongue, and gently pressed against the frenulum until he
was rewarded with another, harder thrust and a moan that matched his own.

Dana was breathless and flushed when they finally separated. She grasped
blindly at the rear-view mirror in an attempt to steady herself, and then put
up a shaky hand to clear the wayward hair from her face. After a moment
she was able to look at Mulder. He was nodding his satisfaction even as his
knees trembled.

"Do it again," she said.

She reached for him and he met her, repeating the kiss with intensity and
tenderness in equal parts. His hands clutched her bottom through the layers
of trenchcoat, skirt, and pantyhose. He felt one thigh lift slightly, and her
knee brush against his leg. He was wishing she hadn't tied the belt of her
coat so tightly when he felt her warm, small hand reach between them and
grasp him through the fine wool of his trousers.

It was a touch he had been anticipating for weeks. He broke the kiss to
gulp in a surprised breath, and then another, as she continued to stroke him
in a way made him want to scream in victory. Soon she was pressing her
belly against his erection, thrusting against him and panting humidly into his
chest.

"Scully," he breathed, catching the scent of her shampoo as his nose came
to rest in the forest of her hair. "I can't -- stop it. Stop it or we'll
both be
embarrassed."

She reluctantly withdrew her hands, and Mulder backed away slightly.
They stood in silence, trying to steady themselves. Scully untied her belt
and unbuttoned her coat in attempt to release some of the heat that had built
up inside. She massaged her neck and combed back her hair with her
fingers, all in an attempt to regain her composure. It worked, if only
slightly.

Mulder watched her carefully, gauging her state of mind as he tried to
regulate his breathing.  She was beautifully flushed, and a smile played at
the corners of her glistening mouth. He felt certain then that he had been
mistaken in his fear that Krychek's story could be true. Surely the
emotional scars from such an experience would prohibit a thoroughly
healthy sexual response like the one he had just received.

Scully was still shaking, shocked by the sudden intensity of her hunger for
Mulder. She was beginning to wonder if she had reached the sexual peak
of her early thirties, an excess of androgen that brought on a release of
neural -- oh, who am I kidding, she said to herself. It's love -- and lust.
Just look at him. That mouth, those eyes, the little cleft in his chin...

"Mulder," she said, in the admonitory tone that he had heard a hundred
times before.

"What do you want to do, Scully?" he asked in a husky voice.

She took a deep breath as she searched for the words to describe what she
was feeling.

"What I *want* to do is throw you against this car and take a big bite out of
you."

He grinned wildly.

"What I'm *going* to do, however," she continued, opening the car door,
"Is go home, take a shower, and go to bed."

"Oh, promise me," he cooed, sliding into the passenger seat.

"That's after I take you home, Mulder," she said. "No sleepovers on a
school night."

"But Mom --"

End The Cry of the Truth 04/22


I did not write this.  Please forward all feedback to the author at
<vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu>  Thanks, Monica
_____________________________________________________
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&

The Cry of the Truth, 05/22
Paradise Delayed
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: R (profanity, descriptions of sexual activity)
Category: S,R (Mulder/Scully), A
Summary: As Scully prepares to leave town for a few weeks, Mulder
tries to make plans for consummating their partnership.

PLEASE POST TO ATXC AND GOSSAMER. Anywhere else, please ask me first.
Thanks.

See Part 01 for the Disclaimer.

FEEDBACK PLEASE! I'm still trying to finish this thing!


As scientific lectures go, Scully's presentation to the Bureau's
conference of state medical examiners was enormously popular. Several
of the pathologists made comments to the Director about her acumen.
When she arrived in the basement office on the morning after the
lecture, she found a memo from Skinner congratulating her on her
success and informing her of a three-week assignment to teach methods
and theory at an international seminar on forensics in Boston.

While Mulder was pleased that she was receiving the recognition she
deserved, it pained him to think of delaying their rendezvous for another
three weeks. They had nearly six years of frustrated lust to assuage,
and he was ready and willing to apply himself to the task.

"But why do you have to go now?" Mulder whined. He trotted after her
as she whizzed through her apartment gathering items she would need
for her trip to Boston. "And can I come too?"

Scully shook her head as she removed a stack of carefully folded bras
from the top drawer of her dresser.

"I have to go now because the conference takes place now," she replied
in the indulgent tone of a mother. "And you can't come because you're
not a forensic scientist."

"I could be," he insisted, dropping heavily on the bed next to her open
suitcase.

Scully squinted a warning glance at him and arranged her underwear
among the neat stacks of outerwear that already filled her bag.

"Scully, you cured me. You kissed me. You made me eat my
vegetables. You gave me erections -- on several occasions, I might add
-- that could rival the Washington Monument. And now you're going to
just leave me *hanging*?"

She snorted and returned to the dresser for hosiery.

"You're a big boy, Mulder," she said, filling her arms with little balls of
sheer nylon and opaque lycra. "You can find some amusement for
yourself while I'm away. Surely."

"Hmm. I can," he said, unfurling a lacy black bra from the nest of her
clothes and dangling it in front of his face. "And don't call me Shirley."

"Look, if it'll make you feel any better," she said, snatching the bra out
of his hand, "You can come over here and water my plants while I'm
gone. That is, if you think you can take better care of them than your
poor fish."

"What fish?" he quipped.

"There's beer in the fridge, wine in the pantry, and tons of my own
nutritionally correct cooking in the freezer." She tucked the bundles of
hosiery into her suitcase and closed the flap over her clothes. "You can
even watch my collection of surgery videos."

"Oooh, Scully. I always suspected that you of a certain perversity,
but...surgery?"

She zipped the bag shut and carried it out to the foyer. When she
returned to the bedroom, Mulder had pulled back the bedcovers and
loosened his tie.

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

"Just preparing to tuck you in, sweetheart," he said innocently. "You
need a good night's sleep before your trip. Go ahead. Do your getting-
ready-for-bed thing, and I'll watch."

"Since when do you care if I sleep or not?" she muttered, unbuttoning
her jacket.

"I've always cared." He stretched out on the bed and crossed his arms
behind his head as if preparing to watch a long-anticipated game on TV.
"I just couldn't show it until -- oh, when was it? Two-twenty PM on
November ninth --"

"Don't be pathetic," she said from the cavern of her closet.

"I seem to remember your saying something just like that to me that day.
I said, 'Scully, I had hoped that when you got around to falling in love
with someone, you'd fall in love with me.' And you said, 'Don't be
pathetic, Mulder. What would I want with you when I could have
Stuart Novak?' Rings a bell, doesn't it?"

"Half a bell," she replied, emerging from the closet.

She paced into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. When she
emerged a few minutes later, devoid of makeup, her hairline damp and
her teeth brushed and flossed, Mulder had shifted to the other side of the
bed and propped himself on his side in a seductive pose he assuredly
had not learned from reading _The New Yorker_. He patted the empty
spot next to him.

"Mulder, get out of my bed," she said, checking to be sure that the tiny
pearl buttons on her pajama top were securely fastened.

"Aw, come on, Scully. I'm just passing through -- at least for tonight.
Come on in."

She studied the sweet smile on his face and the light in his eyes. He
seemed much more at peace than he had since the first year she had
known him, and this made her happier than she had thought she could
be for another person's well-being. When she relaxed her workaday
guard against his charm and allowed herself to feel all the stored-up
affection she had for him, she felt younger, lighter, more like her true
self and less like a cog in the shadowy machine. With a brilliant smile,
Scully launched herself onto the bed, landing with a bounce in his arms.

"That's the kind of enthusiasm I like," he said, chuckling. He wrapped
his arms and legs around her and pulled her small body into the
protective curve of his torso. "That's my girl. You feel so good,
Scully. I could hold you like this forever."

And I could let you, she thought, tucking her head into his crisp cotton
shirtfront. It felt good to be small and light in his arms. She did not
think of it as a matter of being weaker than Mulder. She saw herself as
a complement to him, in this embrace as in all things. They fit well
together, filling in each other's gaps.

She sighed and wished the light would turn itself off so that neither of
them would have to move.

But Mulder wanted to talk.

"So, Scully, when you get back from Boston..."

"Mmm," she mumbled sleepily.

Mulder took a deep breath and released it slowly, hoping to stop the
tremor that was threatening to seize his gut. He had never actually
asked a woman such a thing, and certainly not so far in advance.

Scully untucked her head to look up at him; his uncharacteristic
hesitation had piqued her curiosity.

"Mulder?"

He cleared his throat. Now that she was looking at him, he was even
more nervous. But then, as if she knew he needed a little help, she
reached up and caressed his bristly cheek with the palm of her hand.
She was smiling, watching the path of her hand, as if the contact
between her hand and his face was the most beautiful sight in the world.

Mulder took heart.

"When you get back, you think we could consummate this relationship
of ours?"

There. It was out. He felt like he had just expelled an enormous bubble
of emotional gas.

Scully's right brow twitched; at first he feared that it was with
disapproval. Then a corner of her mouth tugged toward her cheekbone,
and he knew she was amused.

"Consummate." She mulled over the word. "That's sounds
so...ecclesiastical."

"I was trying to be polite. I've got a few other euphemisms -- wanna
hear 'em?"

"Maybe later," she replied, propping herself up on one elbow in order to
get a better view of him.

"Oooh, Scully, you want me to talk dirty to you?" he offered, unable to
resist the opening.

"You already do, Mulder," she shot back, affectionately brushing the tip
of his nose with a finger. "I've had six years of the ultimate Mulder-
seduction. All those sultry looks you've given me over the putrid
remains of sewer monsters --"

"The sight of you in scrubs and a mask, with that little saw in your
hand, really turns me on," he said, placing a hand on her waist. His
touch was tentative, in spite of his bold words.

"See what I mean?" She rolled her eyes in disgust. "Other women are
told how beautiful they are, but not --"

"Is that what Stuart told you?" Mulder asked, no longer joking. He had
long wanted to know how she perceived the inevitable differences
between the two men. The investigator in him knew that this was a
mystery best solved by direct interrogation.

For a moment she looked away, considering whether to be angry that he
had invoked the name of the actor or to answer him truthfully. Her
mouth moved a fraction, then closed. She shrugged.

"Yes," she replied simply.

He touched the strong line of her jaw and traced the curve of the bone to
the tip of her chin, then dragged the backside of his furled fingers across
her cheek before unfolding his hand and raking his fingertips through
her hair.

"Of course I think you're beautiful, Scully. I just figured you'd never
go for that kind of talk. Not from me, not after all these years. I could
write a book about your face, your hair, your eyes...don't even get me
started on your knees or your hands or your tiny little waist." His hand
tightened its grip on her midsection, illustrating its size in relation to the
span of his fingers. He smiled a little sheepishly at the sight of his hand
on her body and then returned his gaze to her eyes. "But I want you to
take me seriously. I *am* serious about this. Making this -- this thing -
- work between us is more important to me now than anything else."

Scully twisted out of his grasp and sat up. She felt him rise beside her,
but did not turn to him. Now she was grateful for the light in the room;
it allowed her to focus on the shapes and colors of her furnishings,
which in turn allowed her to distract herself from the urge to cry.

"Scully?" he whispered, his chin hovering just above her shoulder.

"I don't want to believe that it's more important than your -- our --
work," she said in a clear, low voice that did not reflect her state of
mind.

"Why not?"

"Because I doubt you could sustain that level of commitment," she said.
"Just let it be equally important, Mulder. More than that would be too
much...okay?"

Hooking a finger around the curtain of hair that obscured her face,
Mulder tucked the hair behind her ear and laid clear a spot on her cheek
for kissing. He wrapped one long leg around her hips and both arms
around her torso, and was relieved when she took this as an invitation to
relax against his chest.

"You..." he began.

He was temporarily distracted by the view of her pale cleavage afforded
by the deep vee of her simple pajama. The adolescent in him tightened
his embrace, thereby increasing the loft of her breasts and the depth of
the cleavage. He resisted the urge to growl his delight, and returned to
his original purpose.

"You can have great expectations, you know, Dana," he said.

"I don't want to be disappointed," she said, gripping his forearm where
it crossed her chest.

He grunted.

"Honest as always," he said. He sighed, his breath warm against her
chest. "I guess I haven't exactly given you a lot of reasons to expect
more of me."

"I expect a great deal from you, Mulder," she said. "Why do you think
I work so hard to challenge your theories?"

"For fun?" he ventured.

"Because I know you can come up with tangible evidence to support
them, if you try hard enough. If someone gives you a reason to try.
But I'm not sure I can be that someone around the clock..." She shifted
in his arms so that she could see him. He was listening raptly, and the
intensity of his dark eyes made her lungs skip a breath. "I can't come
home from a hard day of second guessing your investigative methods
and start all over again, regulating your methods of social interaction..."

"Oh, Scully," he whimpered. "I know how to be one half of a whole.
Is that -- you think I'm a rude, egocentric bastard, don't you? Don't
you..."

"Most of the time, yes," she replied, blinking at him.

He laughed.

"Scully, did you really think I was just interested in you for the sex?
Are you nuts?" He laughed more, a dark, raucous sound that tumbled
over his vocal chords like a waterfall. "Scully, how can I convince
you? I'm in *love* with you. I haven't been in love since -- well, to be
honest, I'm not sure I ever have been before now. If it was just sex I
wanted, I could find it in a simpler package. But you...you're
everything. You're -- oh, I have such things planned for you. For
years I've been dreaming of the things I can do to make you happy..."

Her curiosity overtook her. "Like what?"

Mulder wiped away a tear that his laughter had brought to the corner of
his eye.

"Like taking out your trash. Washing your car. Doing the dishes." His
eyes strayed to her copper hair; he reached out to smooth it over her
crown. "I'd brush your hair. I'd shave your legs. I'd --"

"Cut to the dirty bits, Mulder," she said with a smirk.

He chuckled and went on.

"Okay. First I would kiss you, for a long, long time, like the other day
when I was still sick...I want to get lost in your mouth. Learn my way
around like a spelunker."

"A spelunker?" she queried.

 "Yep. And then I'd take off your clothes, bit by bit, because I'm dying
to see your underwear." His brows peaked in accordance with his grin,
giving him an impish look. "Lingerie turns me on, Scully. In case you
didn't already know it."

She knew, very well. But hearing him say it was doing wonders to
distract her from her worries.

"And then I would wrap my arms around you so I could feel your skin
against me -- what I wanted to do on our first case, all those years ago.
I'd hold you for a long time, soaking up what it feels like to be naked
with you." He squeezed her tightly and kissed her forehead. "I'd hold
you tight, to let you know how much I love you, and how badly I need
you..."

His whisper was fading under the strain of containing his emotions.
She touched his lips with her fingertips, silently telling him that his need
for her would be met.

"I want to taste you," he continued. "Every inch of you. I want to go
down on you and make you squirm like a devil. I want to learn how to
make you come, saying my name, thinking of me, loving me. Am I an
egocentric bastard for wanting that?"

"...N-No..."

"I want to swallow every drop that you give me, and pray that I can
taste you on my lips for days afterwards. And then I'd --"

"Mulder. Stop." She pushed him away and slid off the bed, a bit
unsteady on her feet as she paced about the room. "You have to go. I
don't want this to happen tonight. I have to leave early in the morning
and I need some sleep and...and...you just have to...go."

Mulder slid to the edge of the mattress and slung his legs over the side.
He tugged his socks taut and slipped on his wingtips, shaking his head
and chuckling as he tied them on.

"Okay, Scully. I'm going, just to prove to you that I do care whether
you sleep."

He stood and tugged at the waist of his trousers, willing the pleats to
drape elegantly over his reluctantly dwindling erection. When he looked
up, he saw that she had been watching him, a faintly lewd, secret smile
on her face.

"Sheesh," he muttered. "What'd you expect?"

She shrugged and followed him to the door.

"Ah, Scully," he sighed as he turned to face her. "Tonight you've given me
material for six months of happy dreams."

"More like one long night of dyspepsia," she said, holding his coat as he
slid his arms into the sleeves.

"Isn't it rheumatic?" he countered, wearing a goofy grin to go with the pun.

"Go home, Mulder," she said good-naturedly.

He stood patiently while she straightened his tie and smoothed the lapels of
his coat, obviously trying to buy herself a little more time with him. As she
fussed over him, he studied her pale scalp and the countless hairs emerging
from it to form cascades down to her shoulders. He tucked his head and
kissed the spot where her the part in her hair ended.

"I'm going," he whispered.

"Okay." She looked up at his sleepy face. His eyes were drooping -- more
than usual -- and a pronounced shadow had grown over his jaw. She found
herself focusing on the oddly appealing asymmetry of his mouth.
Stretching up on her toes, she kissed him. "It never occurred to me that
your mouth could be so much more than just a source of irritation to me."

"You say the sweetest things." He returned the kiss and added a crushing
hug. "Call me from Boston, will you?"

"I will, I promise." She watched him lope down the hall. "Sweet dreams."

He smiled over his shoulder, his eyes assuring her of his commitment to
pursue her sweetness even in sleep.

End The Cry of the Truth 05/22


The Cry of the Truth, 06/22
Paradise Played
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: NC-17 (language, graphic descriptions of sexual activity)
Category: S,A,R (Mulder/Scully romance)
Summary: Mulder misses Scully as she contemplates the secret
she must share with him.

See Part 01 for the Disclaimer.  Feedback would be most welcome!

Please post to ATXC and Gossamer.  Thanks.

Watering Scully's plants quickly became a little lie Mulder told himself
to justify his need to be in her apartment. The plants did not need his
attention; Scully purposely bought varieties that could survive weeks of
neglect. Mulder, however, could barely survive a few days without
delving into his rich library of Scully fantasies. One of his favorites
involved visiting her apartment when she was away...looking in her
underwear drawer...and now he had his chance to enact it. During her
three-week absence, he slept at her place every second night, theorizing
that daily indulgence would undermine the forbidden nature of the
experience. It was with undiluted anticipation, then, that Mulder packed
a small overnight bag and drove across the river and uptown to Scully's
apartment on the night before she was to return from Boston.

He locked the door carefully and then strode back to the bedroom to
hang up the suit he had brought to wear to work tomorrow. He flipped
on the bedside lamp and looked over the room. It was cool there, as if
the windows had been open to catch the breeze all day. He went to the
French doors at the end of the room to check the locks; there were tight.

All was exactly as she had left it, except for the indentation of his long
body on the down comforter. He had been careful to sleep atop the bed,
rather than in it. Mulder felt the emptiness of the room pressing against
him so palpably that he expected it could be measured on a barometer.
The hours he had spent there while recovering from his illness had been
some of the happiest of his life, but without Scully's vivid presence, it
was for the most part just a room. In the old days, he would call her in
the middle of the night when he was plagued by a nightmare or a theory
that demanded to be sounded out. Back then he would picture her on
the other end of the phone, curled up in bed, phone cradled between her
shoulder and jaw, as they talked. He always hoped she was naked
beneath the sheets.

But there was evidence to the contrary. When he opened the closet to
hang up his suit, he was not surprised to see her suits and dresses
arranged with almost military precision. The blouses had their section
of the rack, and her few party dresses their zone. Sweaters and
sweatshirts were carefully folded and stacked on a tall narrow shelf that
ran from floor to ceiling. Her shoes were arranged by color and style
across two parallel racks on the floor. And there, in the corner, hung
her robes and sleepwear. He smiled with satisfaction as he pushed the
other clothes back to take a look. There were the plain pajamas he had
seen her in on the rare occasions that he had disturbed her in the middle
of the night. And then there were the other, more revealing
nightdresses. Peach gauze with a wide lace collar. White jersey with
skinny lace straps. Dark green satin, severe and abbreviated. Cream
silk jacquard, cut like a man's shirt with French-cuffed sleeves.
Absolutely sheer pale pink silk, like a big tee shirt...Jesus Christ.

In the bathroom, he peeled off his still-sweaty running clothes and
dropped them unceremoniously on the white tile floor.  Scratching his
belly where the lycra shorts had rubbed a red spot, he leaned across the
white porcelain sink -- it reminded him of a baptismal font -- and
squinted at himself in the mirror. Scully had been right about the
shaving; the dermatitis from Russia was all clear now, and his skin was
back to its usual sallow tone.

Taking a step back, Mulder took a good look at himself. Thanks to his
daily runs, the steady diet of PopTarts, pizza, and beer had made no
difference to his waistline -- it remained the same 34 inches it had been
in college. He had developed his pecs nicely since joining the Bureau.
Scully liked that, he suspected. Her hands seemed to gravitate to his
chest whenever they had any prolonged physical contact. She also
seemed particularly interested in his hands. Mulder spread them across
his belly and tried to imagine what she saw when she looked at them.
Long, tapered fingers, a few small calluses from handling his weapon,
deep nail beds, smooth cuticles. His mother had taught him that a
man's hands can make or break his appearance; apparently Scully
agreed.

Mulder stroked his fingers up and down his torso, ruffling the hair over
his sternum as he followed it down to the thick patch of wiry black curls
that formed a dark backdrop to his penis. Rather than looking down, he
studied it in the mirror, wondering if she would like it.

Like it? It's what you do with it, you idiot, he told himself. You have
to win the talent competition, my man -- beauty is not a concept that
applies to this particular organ. Nonetheless, he was glad, for starters,
that he had been circumcised. Nice and clean, pink and taupe but...hey,
Mulder, you're tall, you've got long feet and a big damn nose, but you
still have an average dick, he reminded himself. All that's just a myth,
and Scully knows it's a myth -- she's seen enough naked dead guys to
know, and probably quite a few naked live ones, too (don't go there,
Mulder). But now, as he watched through the mirror, his average dick
was metamorphosing into a erection that any man -- or woman, he
hoped -- would be proud to claim.

He stepped into the shower and proceeded to wash himself, hoping to
quell the raw lust he had conjured up in the mirror. The scent of her
soap as he smoothed it over his body transported him, and there was no
coming back until he played the little videotape in his brain. Lather
accumulated in his fist; he put the soap on the little tray in the corner of
the shower and, supporting his body with one arm against the wall,
sheathed himself in his soapy fist and went on his inward journey.

He sat by her side in Skinner's office, listening patiently to the Assistant
Director's customary diatribe about procedure and funds and lost
property...when for no apparent reason Scully stood and began to take
off her clothes. She shed her jacket first, then her skirt...one by one the
buttons of her white silk blouse gave way to reveal a lacy black bra and
matching garters...and no panties. Her mound was auburn and curly,
glistening with moisture as she grinned at him and mouthed "watch
this"...she climbed on Skinner's desk and knelt there, facing the A.D.,
her back toward Mulder, her full, firm ass framed by the garter straps,
her thighs milky and soft above the black stockings...

Skinner was stammering at this point, his own cock straining against the
pleats in his trousers as he reached out for Scully's cleavage...His hand
was promptly slapped away. He unzipped his fly and yanked out his
cock, as if to plead medical necessity. Scully simply looked over her
shoulder at Mulder and tossed her head, issuing an invitation to him.
Mulder's clothes magically disappeared and he found himself kneeling
behind Scully on the boss's desk, poised to plunder her body as the
A.D. pumped away at his own little problem....

Mulder turned his face into the warm spray of Scully's shower and
shook his head. Not that one. That was an old one, and it wasn't nice.
Things were different now; she loved him, he loved her, and he wanted
his fantasies to reflect the happy news...and then the screen in his brain
began to show him a beautiful picture of Scully walking the beach at
Gay Head, where he and Samantha had played as children. The wind
tousled her auburn hair and plastered her tee shirt against her front...it
was Mulder's tee shirt, heather gray and entirely too big for her...the
wind molded it to her breasts, chilled her nipples into sharp relief, and
made the hem of the shirt dance over her bare bottom. Mulder knelt in
the sand at her feet and wrapped his arms around her legs. Then,
suddenly, she was beneath him, the ocean lapping at their feet as he
stroked into her all-redeeming depth. She smiled up at him and her lips,
so familiar and so sweet, formed the words he longed to hear.

He fucked her for an interminable time there on the beach, but it only
took a few minutes in the shower for him to come with a small yelp.
Resting against the cool tile wall, Mulder struggled to catch his breath,
still murmuring her name. When he felt steady again, he washed his
hair and rinsed himself with cold water.

When he emerged from the shower, he encountered Scully's white terry
robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and the arousal he had
just coaxed down the drain nipped at his heels. He pressed his nose
into the collar, and was transported by a mental picture of the robe
hanging loosely over her bare body, covering her nipples but revealing
the generous curves of her breasts, her smooth belly, and the ruddy
patch of hair between her pale legs.  He had never seen her nude, but
he knew he was going to like it when he did.

He dried himself, carefully avoiding his flushed cock, and then went to
sit on the edge of her bed. He dialed her hotel and waited, trying not to
pant into the phone.

"Scully," she said in her tight, professional voice.

"It's me," he choked, swiping his wet bangs back from his forehead.

"Hmm," she sighed. He could hear sheets rustling as she made herself
more comfortable in her bed.

"Mulder, I'm coming home tomorrow," she chided gently.

"Can't wait," he said, stretching out on the comforter.

"Where are you?"

"I'm laying naked on your bed, Scully."

She made a strangled sound that bloomed into a throaty laugh.

"Lost you taste for video, Mulder?"

"Completely." He swallowed noisily. "So...what are you wearing?"

Another laugh. Another rustle of the sheets, as if she were lifting up the
blankets to give him a look.

"Navy silk pajamas," she replied clearly, as if he had just asked her the
time.

"Why pajamas, Scully?"

"As opposed to...?"

"You wear pajamas a lot. They're nice, I guess, but a
little...constricting. Not exactly easy access."

"You think? Gee, I haven't heard that complaint before," she said.

Mulder's cock twitched against his thigh. Jealousy was a powerful
aphrodisiac for him, and he suspected that she knew it.

"When you were sleeping with Stuart, I bet you never wore anything to
bed," he said, well aware of the risk he was taking in mentioning Stuart
Novak.

"I didn't get a lot of sleep when I was with Stuart," she said, her voice
void of irony.

"I don't sleep much, you know," he said, lightly stroking his fingertips
over his ribs.

"I know, Mulder," she said. "I've been sleeping in the room next to
yours for years now, remember?"

Oh, did he. Night after night of wondering what would happen if he
went to her and offered himself to her, or asked her to comfort him.
Years of being too afraid to take the risk. And now, for better or worse,
he knew what the answer would've been.

"I thought about it," she said, reading his mind as she often could. "I
remember, especially, on the nights when my body was aching...I
wanted you to touch me, to soothe the pain. Emotional pain didn't seem
legitimate enough to ask for that."

"You were always tending to my bruises," he said, frowning up at the
ceiling. "But who took care of yours?"

"Physician heal thyself," she said, her voice a little dimmer now. She
was remembering.

"I'll heal you, baby," he said, rolling over and clutching a pillow to his
abdomen.

"Mulder..."

"Hmm." He closed his eyes and allowed the sound of her voice to fill
him. His sexual preoccupation had been displaced by something far
more tender.  "Oh, Sculleee..."

"Me too," she murmured.

"Tomorrow?"

"Meet you at my place."

XXXXXXXXX

That night, Mulder crawled under the sheets, pulled the comforter over
his nakedness, and switched out the light. Curled like a child around a
pillow that bore her vanilla-and-grass scent, he slept for hours. His
dreams tormented him, as always, but they did not wake him. It was as
if his subconscious knew that there was no need to rouse him when he
was in Scully's bed. There he was safe.

XXXXXXXXX

Scully rose from her bed and crossed her darkened hotel room to the
window that afforded a view of the Charles River and the lights of
Cambridge. She tugged the draperies open and stood staring out at the
night, the chill of the New England spring touching her through the glass.
Wrapping her arms around her torso, she hugged herself and thought of
Mulder. It was a warm, comforting thought, just the encouragement she
needed to finish the task she had set for herself.

She sat at the square table by the window and opened her laptop. Her
glasses rested on a neat stack of journal articles that she had been reviewing
earlier in the evening; she put them on and peered into the document that she
had left open on the computer's desktop. She had been working on it
steadily, both mentally and electronically, ever since her arrival in Boston
three weeks ago. The conference could not have come at a more propitious
time. She needed the distance from Mulder to formulate a plan for revealing
to him the single, albeit potent, secret she held.

When she had climbed into bed that night, Dana thought she was finished
with the letter. Then, when she heard once again the love and longing in
Mulder's gravelly voice, she knew she had to try a little harder to make it
right.

She began to reread what she had typed, but her attention quickly wandered
from the words to the memories they summarized. For the past four years
she had worked hard to avoid remembering, and had very nearly succeeded
in suppressing the memory once and for all -- until she met Stuart Novak.
Stuart's tenderness had unfolded many mysteries within her, most of a
sexual nature. But there had been one night, as she slept next to him, that
her nightmares had awakened them both. Stuart had wrapped his arms
around her and stroked her hair as she told him of the real events that
haunted her sleep. She had never imagined that any man would continue to
want her after hearing what she had to say, but Stuart had only loved her
more. He had held her while she cried and then made love to her, slowly,
gently, as if to heal her soul while driving out the demons.

For a moment she wished she could reach out to some cosmic switch and
turn out the city lights so that she could see the stars. She settled for
admiring the blinking red bulbs atop the city's tallest towers. For the first
time in years she did not feel the icy underlayer of loneliness in her heart.
Tomorrow she would go home to claim that last missing piece of her own
internal puzzle.

She typed one last paragraph, read it, and saved the document. After
shutting down the computer, she returned her glasses to their place atop her
journals and crawled back into bed. As she closed her eyes, Dana prayed
that Mulder could forgive her.

End The Cry of the Truth 06/22



The Cry of the Truth, 07/22
Dear Mulder
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
*Rating: NC-17 (sexual situations, language, descriptions of rape)
Category: S,R (Mulder/Scully), A
Summary: Scully has to give Mulder some painful news.

See part 01 for the Disclaimer.  Feedback would be great.

Please post to ATXC and Gossamer. Thanks.

*Author's Note: As I said in the beginning, I really and truly don't want
this to be classified as a Scully rape story. However, Scully's rape during
her abduction is integral to the story. So be forewarned: this is the chapter
where she describes to Mulder what happened to her. And again, I
apologize to Krychek fans; I'm sure he's really a lovely boy once you get
to know him.


   This is how truth is groved,
   With wayside nights where sleeping
   We wake to tell what once seemed cruel
   As dream-dim -- in the dream
   As plain and sure as then,
   In telling no less dark than doubtful.
        Laura Riding, "The Forgiven Past"

Scully emerged from the jetway at her usual brisk pace. Today,
however, she was in a particular rush to get home. She was in such a
hurry that she nearly passed Mulder in the waiting area at her gate. He
was leaning against a column, his asymmetrical lips sucking sweet tea
through a straw shoved into a big paper cup. As he took a final sip, he
twitched an eyebrow at her, as if to tell her that he rather be taking sips
of her sweetness. Then he tossed the cup in a trash can and walked
toward her, opening his arms beatifically like a cheap plaster statue of
Jesus.

She gave him a simmering smile and handed him her bag.

"Couldn't wait for me to get home?" she asked.

"You got it," he said, resting a hand between her shoulder blades as
they walked.

"But you realize that my car in parked here?"

"Yeah. I thought I'd carry your bag for you, then send you on your
way," he said blithely.

Scully stole a glance at him as they made their way through the terminal.
In the past three weeks, they had exchanged many humid phone calls late
at night, and now she was struggling not to be embarrassed about some of
the things she had revealed to him. Halfway through her stay in Boston,
she had been invited to dinner by a group of her colleagues -- the fact that
they were all men was not unusual, given her field. But the wine she had
drunk and the preponderance of testosterone that seemed to pour off her
companions combined with her longing for Mulder to form a heady brew
of lust. As soon as the dinner was over, she had called him, only to
realize that he had gone to Iowa City to investigate a report of little gray
men shopping in a Gap Kids store. In a frenzy of unrequited lust, she had
stripped off her most of her clothes and thrown herself onto the bed,
writhing hotly against her fingers until she summoned up her own orgasm
in a messy tumble of Mulder fantasies and memories of Stuart. And just
as it was ending...the phone rang. Knowing that it could be no one other
than Mulder, she picked up the phone without speaking and held it so that
he could listen as she tried to catch her breath. He talked her down from
her transcendent state with soft words of longing and love. And now,
walking through National Airport, Dana blushed at the memory even as
she felt the product of her imagination oozing sticky and warm between
her legs.

"You okay, Scully?" Mulder innocently asked as they came out of the
terminal.

She paused at the curb and looked at him. In the soft light of late
afternoon, he seemed younger and more vulnerable, somehow. A breeze
lifted his dark bangs and dropped them back in his eyes. He pushed them
away, and smiled at her, and it was then that she realized that it was not
the light that had this effect on Mulder. It was love.

"Yeah. I'm just really glad to be home."

He offered her his hand, and she took it. As they walked to her car, she
told him about the seminar and her various expeditions around Boston to
visit medical libraries and shops. Mulder shook his head in amazement.
Only Scully would derive as much satisfaction from research as from
shopping.

When they reached her car in the long-term lot, Mulder tossed her luggage
in the back seat and opened the door for her. She sat behind the wheel and
started the engine. For a moment she stared at the speedometer, lost in
thought.

Mulder leaned through the open window, hoping for a kiss. What he got
instead was a caress of his cheek and a tense smile.

"Scully?" he gulped.

"I need a favor, Mulder," she said, rummaging in her pocket.

She produced an ivory vellum envelope on which she had written his
name in her precise, flowing hand. She handed it to him, her eyes
imploring him to take it without making a joke of it.

Mulder's heart sank. He knew what it was: the proverbial Dear Mulder
letter. Should've known it was too good to be true. It's better if we can
just be friends. Jesus. Just like all the other women -- all two of them.

But this is Scully, for God's sake. Scully is like no one else.

"I need you to take this home and read it," she was saying. "Please."

"O-Okay. Whatever you say." He swallowed the lump in his throat.
"But are you --"

"I'll wait to hear from you, Mulder," she said, covering his hand with
hers for a second.

Then she put the car into gear and drove.

XXXXXXXXXX

It was only with an uncharacteristic surge of self-discipline that Mulder
made it home without ripping open the letter and reading it in the car.
He even managed to leave it on his desk long enough to pour himself a
glass of tea and strip down to his tee shirt and trousers. Finally, with
a deep, shuddering breath, he sat at his desk and opened the envelope.
He was prepared to be dumped in an eloquent, heartfelt, Scullyesque
way. What he got instead was painful all right, but in an entirely
unexpected way.

"Dear Mulder,

"This letter contains information that you should have before our
relationship progresses further. Since I arrived in Boston, I have been
writing it in fits and starts in the hope that the requisite introspection
would help me find a way to tell this secret that I have kept for so
long. My cowardice has won out, however. In spite of my faith in
you, I am fearful even of giving you this written record. It is my
conviction, nonetheless, that you have the right to this information
regardless of my discomfort. Here, then, are my ramblings.

"As you know, UFO lore is filled with stories of female abductees
who undergo a sort of empathic 'Mindscan' by the 'Tall Gray', the
apparent leader of the 'Small Grays.' The Mindscan is usually
followed by an intense sexual experience with the Tall Gray that some
female abductees recount as rape and others as particularly satisfying
intercourse. Clinical psychologists attribute these abduction stories to
a need on the part of the 'abductee' to metaphorically express her
underlying feelings of loneliness, neglect, and sexual disappointment.
Expressing these feelings for what they truly are has been met with
indifference in the past, so the abductee resorts to a more lurid
explanation for her suffering. I believe this to be a highly probable
explanation for the phenomenon."

Mulder snorted and took a sip of his tea. Typical Scully. Thank God
for her constancy.

Then, as he read on, his entire body seemed to clench in a spasm of
horror.

"During the three months that I spent in that unknown place, I was
raped. My rapist was not a Tall Gray. He was Alex Krychek. I
remember his face, hovering above mine, his thin upper lip curling,
nostrils flaring, saliva stringing between his upper and lower incisors
as he raped me. The  plane of his cheek was spotted with my
blood, splattered from a wound to my head incurred when he threw me
against the table on which this particular assault took place. A hank of
pomaded dark hair flapped repetitively over his forehead with each
violent blow to my body. His dark eyes bore into me as he struggled
to achieve his immediate goal, which I can only guess was to reach
orgasm while humiliating me. Occasionally he looked away to see if
anyone was watching; at times the smoking man was there, or a man
in a military uniform. But there were no Small Grays."

Mulder emitted a cry from the depth of his being, a whimper of despair
and disbelief and wonder at the evil coincidence of it all. Krychek had
been telling the truth in the jail. Now, through her words, Mulder saw
it as she had seen it, and began to weep.

"I have always maintained that I remember nothing about my
abduction. Now you know that I lied, at least in part. Although
nothing else about those three months is even remotely clear to me, I
certainly remember his raping me, repeatedly, both vaginally and
anally. I remember the room in which it happened: a conference
room, cheaply furnished, but with central heating. The only other
persistent memory I have of that time is of being incredibly cold
whenever I was not in that room. You may recall that since that time I
have been particularly averse to cold. Or perhaps you never noticed.

"I have struggled to find a safe place in my personal history for this
memory, and have failed. I cannot live with the memory and function
at the level to which I aspire. Because of this, I have refused to
acknowledge it, and its effect on me, for four years. Whenever I
begin to feel the first warning nausea that always precedes this
recollection, I distract myself with some sort of extreme challenge: I
run for three hours straight, I work all night, I clean my apartment
until it is all but sterile. This technique has served me well. I have
been able to accomplish more in my career than I thought possible,
while also managing to numb myself to the point that the chill I feel is
in my heart rather than in my extremities.

"Until I met Stuart Novak, I rejected any man who sought any sort of
ongoing romantic relationship with me. I feared that emotional
intimacy would lead to the suppuration of this psychological wound,
and that would have been intolerable. Why was I able to allow Stuart
into my heart? Probably because he sought so little in return. He only
wanted to love me, and for me to accept his love. Occasionally
flashbacks interfered with our lovemaking, but Stuart never asked me
to explain. He had the strength to wait them out, to reassure me, and
then to love me even more. Perhaps I trusted him initially because of
his age, and because he bore a slight physical resemblance to other
men whom I have trusted: Walter Skinner, and my own father. I
loved him in response to his love for me, rather than out of a discrete
appreciation for the traits that comprised his essential self. Eventually
I came to realize that this was not the sort of love that could make
either of us happy in the long run. It would not be enough to sustain a
marriage.

"The love I feel for you, Mulder, is something completely different. It
has grown steadily over the years and was born out of an abiding
respect for your spirit. It has become as much as part of me as my
faith in science, my belief in God, my red hair, my right-handedness.
It has endured many tests, and I now believe that it will flourish even
in the difficult conditions presented by our life together.

"Revealing to you this secret that I have harbored for so long is a
particularly strenuous test. I expect you will be angry that I did not tell
you earlier, and that I could not tell you in person. This is where I
exhibit behavior typical of a rape victim: I feel great shame over what
was done to me. Of course I know that I am not responsible for
Krychek's viciousness. Nonetheless, a part of me still demands to
know, even after four years, why I did not use all the skills I learned at
the Academy to stop him. In retrospect, I can imagine a dozen
different scenarios in which I could have deployed those skills and
effectively deterred him. This is a demand that I will never be able to
assuage. Shame, as well as a reluctance to feed the guilt that I know
you feel over my abduction, has prevented me from telling you until
now. But if we are to be lovers, Mulder, I want you to know this
about me."

He sighed and sniffed away his tears. Lovers. I love you, Scully,
and we will be.

"I almost wish that I could conclude this letter by writing something
impossibly romantic -- I love you beyond all reason, I cannot live
without you, my life was meaningless until you loved me. But such
phrases would not only be inaccurate, they would be hopelessly
uncharacteristic. I have endeavored to be utterly honest with you in all
the years of our partnership, and this letter is my attempt to correct a
lapse. It is only fitting that I close with the one truth of which I am
most certain: I love you above all others, now and forever.

"Scully"

Mulder's hand dropped heavily to the surface of the desk, and he
allowed the letter to slip from his fingers. Through bleary eyes he
took in the graceful curves of her handwriting. He could feel all the
thought and self-examination that had gone into the letter. The thrill of
knowing that she loved him enough to lay her soul bare before him
almost took away the horror of what she had revealed.

He did not care, at the moment, that she had hidden it from him. All
that mattered to Mulder at that moment was that it had happened, and
that Alex Krychek had done it. He had raped Scully. His Scully.

"My Scully," he whispered, covering his eyes and sobbing again.

XXXXXXXXXX

Mulder ran to the river. He slowed down only when the water was in
sight, and then continued at a more moderate pace alongside the
Potomac. Across the river the lights of the city were flickering on.
Sailboats bobbed at anchor in the midchannels. The smell of the
Chesapeake Bay blew in from the east, salty and fishy and reminiscent
of Mulder's island childhood.

He told himself that nothing had hurt him like this since his sister had
been taken. Not until tonight had he been able to admit to himself that
losing Scully for those three months had been worse; heretofore he
had thought it some sort of a betrayal of his carefully maintained guilt
to consider anything more important to him that the loss of Samantha.
Before Scully had gone to Boston he had tried to tell her that she was
more important to him than his guilt, and she had refused the pledge
inherent in that statement. He had assumed that she, being the wise
one of the pair, had been right. Now he could feel with each step he
took that all the pain that had accumulated in the years before he found
Scully was subsumed by his need to find some meaning in all the
suffering he had brought to her. Now he knew that his worst fears
about her abduction had been realized. She had finally trusted him
with the information; now he had to prove himself worthy of her trust.
There was no hope of finding Krychek, much less hauling him in for
prosecution. No. Justice had to be found in how he and Scully chose
to incorporate the fact of her rape into their daily lives. It could
destroy their relationship, or make it stronger. Scully had made her
choice. Now it was up to him.

As the moon unfurled a white scarf across the river, Mulder turned
around and headed home.

XXXXXXXXXX

"Hey, Scully, it's me...you don't have to pick up. Look -- I read it. I
read it and then I went for a run. I'm about to get in the shower and
then I'm gonna pack up a few things and come over there. Okay? I
really need -- I really want to be with you now...because I love you,
Dana. Hope that's okay. 'Bye."

End The Cry of the Truth 07/22


The Cry of the Truth, 08a/22
The Awaiting of You
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: NC-17 (sexual situations, language)
Category: S,A,R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary: Consummation.

See part 01 for the Disclaimer. Feedback would be great.

Please forward to ATXC and Gossamer. Thanks.

Author's Note: Look, if you're under 17, don't read this. I have no
desire to corrupt the youth of our world. I'm old enough to be your
mother -- so go read Dickens or Dorothy L. Sayers or Robertson Davies,
for heaven's sake, instead of this schlock! As for the rest of yall:
remember, this is fantasyland and my leaving out the STD/birth control
discussion between our two heroes has no repercussions. Presumably
they've had that little chat before the action of this chapter begins.

XXXXXXXXXX

   My life has been the awaiting of you...
   your footfall, my own heart beat.
                 -- Paul Valery

It was nearly nine o'clock, and Dana was trying valiantly to maintain
her hope that Mulder would come as he had promised in his message.
It had been an hour since he had called while she was in the shower.
Surely an hour was enough time for him to clean up and drive
over...or maybe he'd changed his mind. Maybe he had ditched her
once again, this time to hunt down Krychek and get revenge on her
behalf, like a some crazed knight in a simplistic technicolor adventure
set in the days when a woman's virtue was still a commodity, like
pork bellies. Or maybe he had decided that he didn't simply want a
woman who had been raped, regardless of who she was.

It's more likely the lie that's bothering him, Dana mused as she turned
back the covers of her bed. He's going to want to know how I
could've told Stuart before I told him. That's easy, Mulder, she said
to him in her mind. Stuart was making love to me, and doing a really
great job of it, while you were still trying to decide what role I played
in your past lives.

She smirked at that thought. That was mean, Dana. Yeah. Too bad.
I may be in love with him, but that doesn't require me to buy into all
the accoutrements of his spookiness.

She sighed and shook her head. A touch of repressed anger, Scully?
Yes. Just a touch.

In her closet, she absently flipped through her collection of
nightdresses, hoping for inspiration to carry her through until he made
his appearance. The dark emerald silk chemise that Stuart had given
her peeked out from her more innocent gowns like a guilty secret. She
smiled at the memory of the first and only time she had worn it. Early
in their relationship, it had been delivered to the Hoover building in a
gift box. It was thoroughly x-rayed, and then the security staff had
opened it anyway. By the time she got it, the wrapping was ripped,
the silk wrinkled, and half the Bureau knew about it. She had
castigated Stuart thoroughly; he took her anger well, and then coaxed
her into wearing the damn thing. Within minutes of donning it, she
was pressed against the wall in his hotel suite, gasping for breath as he
plundered her mouth with his tongue. Grasping her thighs in his big
hands, he had easily lifted her, then held her in place with the pressure
of his body as he guided his cock into her. He had fucked her hard
against that wall, harder than she had ever imagined would be
pleasurable. But it was, and in the end she asked him to do it again.

Ah, Stuart. Man of many talents.

She moved on through the nightdresses until she found the one she
wanted: the sheer chiffon tee shirt of palest pink. It fell midway to her
knees and had a wide neck that made it easy to slip off. Tossing away
her terrycloth robe, she put on the shirt and then wrapped a persimmon
satin kimono around herself. She tied the sash and looked at herself in
the mirror. Admittedly it was an unusual color combination, but it
suited her. The persimmon matched her hair, and the pink matched
her nipples. Good.

Her silk garments rustled around her body as she walked barefoot to
the kitchen. There she poured a few ounces of red wine into a
stemmed glass, and took a tentative sip. The tannin of the wine
conflicted wildly with the taste of toothpaste that lingered in her
mouth. She was about to pour the wine down the drain when she
heard the rattle of a key in her door.

Mulder came in quietly and put his overnight bag on the floor of the
foyer. He peered at himself in the mirror near the front door and
attempted to pat his hair into place.

"You look fine," Scully said, watching him from the dining room
archway.

He grinned at her through the mirror, then turned and presented the
bouquet of red roses he had brought.

She took a few steps forward and took the flowers from him. With a
shy smile, she bowed her head to sniff them.

"Thanks, Mulder," she said, stretching up to place a kiss on his cheek.

"Predictable," he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

"Not for you," she said, heading for the kitchen.

She found a Delft vase under the sink and filled it with water. As she
unwrapped the roses, Mulder came up beside her and fingered the
blue-and-white porcelain.

"It was my grandmother's," Scully said.

Mulder's brow knit with the memory of his visit to Arlington
cemetery.

"Delia Forrest told me she collects this kind of china," he said. "She
found a shard of it at the dig site when I was there."

Scully arranged the roses in the vase, the flowing sleeves of the
kimono twitching with the movement of her arms. She glanced over at
Mulder as she worked, wondering who would be the first to broach
the subject.

"Mulder."

"Hmm." He was still staring at the vase.

"It was a painful coincidence," she said evenly. "I had already made
up my mind to tell you before we talked to Delia."

"You said you were sure it was someone she knew..."

"That's a good reason to block the memory so effectively," Scully
said, drying her hands on a striped dish towel.

Mulder swallowed and chanced another question.

"Did you..."

"I remembered being raped," she said matter-of-factly. There was no
room for innuendo here. "From the first, or maybe the second, week
after I came out of the coma. For a while I wondered if it was true --
there was no physical evidence, as you know -- since I couldn't
remember anything else. But over the years I've come to believe that I
was given opiate derivatives following each procedure, to ensure that I
wouldn't remember.  What Krychek was doing to me was part of a
separate agenda."

Mulder hissed in a breath between clenched teeth.

"Why didn't you kill Krychek when you had the chance?"

"Why do you think, Mulder?" she shot back.

He nodded in somber understanding of her meaning.

"Scully, I'm astounded by how calm you are about this," he said.

"I've had four years to work through it, Mulder," she said gently,
taking his hand between hers. She stroked his knuckles with her cool
fingertips, and immediately felt his tension easing. "I'm sorry I didn't
tell you sooner. I just couldn't...for many reasons. I suppose I came
out of it relatively well -- my psychological scars don't seem to be so
bad. I don't want this to come between us, as lovers."

"You're so damn resilient, Scully," he whispered. "How do you do
it?"

"It beats the alternative," she replied with a soft laugh.

He regarded her, the low light of the kitchen reflecting off the satin of
her robe, her head cocked slightly to one side, her smile gentle and
warm. Suddenly he was overwhelmed with a vision of the two of
them, thirty years hence, standing in a kitchen late at night discussing
their mutual history. He liked what he saw.

"Mulder?"

He refocused on the present, lifting her hand to his lips.

"I'm afraid that you'll think of him when -- if --"

"When," she said, stepping closer to him. She stretched up on her
toes and wrapped her arms around his neck. "When. And I won't.
Trust me."

With those words, Mulder's face softened into a tender smile. His
arms slipped low around her hips, and in one smooth motion he
hoisted her up onto the counter. She was laughing as he struggled not
to drop her -- the satin of her robe made it difficult to hold her. Once
settled on the countertop, she wrapped her legs around his waist and
pulled him close.

"I like this. Now I can look you in the eye," she said.

"My neck thanks you," he murmured, inclining his head as he zeroed
in on her smiling mouth.

At first he kissed her tentatively, like a child, as he had that night in the
office so many weeks ago. Scully was gentle with him, aware that,
after the day's revelation, this was almost like starting over for him.
Her hands rested lightly on his chest; he cradled her head in his hands
as he touched his tongue to the soft tissue just inside her lower lip,
then flicked it against her upper lip. Mulder was mildly surprised to
hear her moan when his tongue slid across hers. Finally she was
allowing herself to be aroused, because she knew that this time, there
was no reason to hold back. The effect on him was immediate.

He spread his hand across her lower back and pushed her pelvis
forward until he could feel the hard ridge of her pubic bone pressing
against his rapidly growing erection. His kiss became more desperate,
less methodical, as he fumbled with the tie of her robe. The satin knot
slid open easily; he pushed the robe from her shoulders, then pulled
back slightly to see what he had unveiled.

"God, you're beautiful," he said, his hands skimming over the pebbly
texture of the silk.

His brows rose and converged in an expression of such tenderness
that Scully wondered if he might weep. He watched raptly as his
fingers delicately traced the mauve nipples, and gasped in amazement
when they tightened at his touch. When she moaned, his eyes flew up
to her face, and he smiled proudly when he saw that her eyes were
half-closed with pleasure.

Pressing a gentle kiss to her lips, he cupped her full breasts in his
palms. She wanted more; she took his face between her hands and
steadied his head as she plunged her tongue into him, tasting salt and
the evening air and her own mouth there. When she felt his fingers
easing under the hem of her shirt, she moaned in anticipation of his
touch on her bare skin.

Scully licked his lips neatly and then drew back, resting her head
against the cabinet door and watching as he stroked her thighs with his
long fingers.

"You know, Scully," he said, his voice gravelly with arousal. "While
you were in Boston, I spent a lot of time here, thinking about you and
eating all the food in the pantry."

He massaged the strong ridge of quadricep along the top of each thigh,
down to her knees and back again.

"I looked at all your stuff." She cocked an eyebrow at that; Mulder
shrugged, slightly embarrassed. He rubbed the edge of her translucent
shirt between his thumb and forefinger. It rasped like the wind in the
grass. "I saw this hanging in your closet. I was hoping I might get to
see it on you."

"Hmm. What else did you do here that I should know about?" she
asked, her eyes dark with the suggestion of her words.

Mulder chuckled as he smoothed his palms over her bare hips.

"Eventually I think I experienced some sort of mind meld with you,"
he said.

"A mind meld? Oh, so you know all about that incredible night I spent
with the Harvard rugby team last weekend?"

He nodded.

"Ah, so it was rugby. I assumed they were soccer players since they
were so reluctant to use their hands."

Now it was her turn to laugh, an infectious, feminine sound building
and repeating back on itself like a song trilling softly in his ear. It
ended in an off-tone grunt when his hands delved smoothly between
her legs. His fingers splayed over the tops of her thighs as his thumbs
skimmed through the hair at her apex and traced the circular entry to
her body.

"Oh, Mulder," she said, smiling slyly, as if she had just discovered his
secret talent.

"Oh, Scully," he retorted with his own wicked grin. His eyes
flickered downward to watch his thumbs dipping into her, stirring the
warm liquid that had pooled in her vault. The scent of it wafted up,
stirring a primal response in his own body.

She felt a marvelous tightening in the underlying musculature of her
chest and neck. Her face burned, her mouth was dry, and she could
not stop smiling. After a long moment in which Mulder was finding
his way along the protective folds between her legs, she sighed her
delight and grabbed two handfuls of his shirt. With a growl, she
tugged his shirttails free and leaned forward to slide her hands over his
abdomen.

"Maybe we should move," he said as she tugged his earlobe between
her teeth.

"Think so," she mumbled, her fingers working on the buttons in the
fly of his jeans.

Mulder gasped as her fingers skimmed along just inside the waistband
of his boxers.

"You know, Scully..."

"Mmm," she grunted. She was popping the remaining buttons in his
fly and pressing her knuckles against his cock in the process. As she
began to comprehend the contours of him, she leaned back slightly in
order to watch his expression.

"You were saying," she prompted, pulling back the fly of his boxers
with one finger and reaching in with the other hand.

"I was -- ah. Your hands are so warm..." For a moment he closed his
eyes and allowed his head to roll back. His hands now grasped her
hips for stability. "Sculleee..."

"Talk to me, Mulder," she said tersely, thoroughly enjoying the
spectacle of his pleasure.

His head rolled back around and he opened one eye.

"I haven't done this in a very long time," he said hoarsely. "And I
know you *have*."

"Mmm." She stroked him gently, but with a firm grip that hinted at
the skill with which she handled her weapon. "Do you really think
that matters?"

"No. Yes. And don't say it's like riding a bike."

She chuckled languidly.

"You learn as you go. That's what makes it fun."

He smiled, his heart suddenly overflowing with the warmth her
presence generated there. He kissed her again, gently and thoroughly
with his tongue, then deliberately with his lips.

"There's so much I love about you, Scully," he said.

"I know." She gave him the warm, broad smile that he lived for. "I
know and it makes me incredibly happy that you do."

Her hands drifted up from his fly to his chest, then around his waist.
For a moment she rested her forehead against his sternum, listening to
his breath coming and going, enjoying the warm scent of their bodies.
Then she faced him once again.

"We probably should've talked about this before we got to this point,"
she said. "In that letter, I said that I loved Stuart because -- well,
basically because he loved me. He came along at a time when I had
lost my certainty about my work, about my identity, my goals. I
felt...like a ship without a port."

"And he made a cozy port," Mulder said.

Dana inclined her head in a gesture of reluctant agreement.

"But I need more than cozy, and you know it."

"I dunno, Scully. This is pretty cozy..."

She sighed her exasperation.

"Mulder...that letter...I thought about what I said for a long time."

"Mmm. I could tell," he said.

"I never meant to lie to you," she said, her voice thick with emotion.
"For a long time I kept it a secret because I didn't want it to be true.
Then...I just couldn't bear to think of myself as a victim. And
now...Mulder, I knew I couldn't -- shouldn't -- make love to you until
I had been completely honest with you."

Make love to me...she's going to make love to me. So there is a God,
after all.

Dana licked her lips and continued.

"I didn't want the lie to come between us, but I don't want to truth to
come between us either."

"What d'you mean?" he asked, his ability to think analytically
resurfacing for a moment.

"I'm telling you that I'm all right, and I want you to accept that. Don't
hold back, don't try to protect me, don't -- don't worry about me
while we're making love. Okay?"

"Okay," he replied. He kissed her forehead. "So, can I be your port
now?"

She cocked an eyebrow at him.

"You're more like a docking station in space," she said.

"Hold on tight then, baby. I'm taking you into orbit."

She wrapped her arms and legs around him, and he easily lifted her off
the counter. He carried her like a child through the apartment,
grinning as she nuzzled his neck and murmured endearments to him.
When they reached her bedside, he was sorry to release her.

They stood face to face, eyeing each other. Mulder was enchanted by
the way the diaphanous tee shirt floated around her body, caressing
her breasts whenever she lifted her arms to touch him. He had always
anticipated that he would first discover her body by peeling off the
layers of one of her dark suits, yet this bit of gossamer seemed perfect
for her -- the practical structure of a nightshirt, yet the fabric
undeniably provocative.

She tossed her head slightly to clear a wave of hair from before her
eyes, then fixed him with a look that he had often hoped to see on her
face. She was flushed, warm, almost drunk with desire -- for him.

End The Cry of the Truth 08a/22


The Cry of the Truth, 08b/22
The Awaiting of You
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
*Rating: NC-17 (sexual situations, language)
Category: S,A, R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary: Consummation.

See part 01 for the Disclaimer. Feedback would be great.

Please forward to ATXC and Gossamer. Thanks.

*I really mean it this time! If you're under 17, please read something else.


"You know something, Mulder? You're a beautiful man."

"Oh *stop*," he drawled, rolling his eyes.

"It took me a while to see it," she continued, skimming her palms over
his chest. "I couldn't afford the temptation, so I guess I just made up
my mind not to notice. But then..."

Her fingers were dexterous from years of wielding a scalpel, and she
made short work of the buttons along the front of his black twill shirt.

"I had a dream about you," she said, pushing the shirt off his
shoulders. "In which you came to my apartment in the middle of the
night, every night for a week, and knocked on the door. Each night
when I opened the door, you were missing one more item of clothing,
until the last night, when you were naked."

Mulder chuckled as she slid the shirt down his arms and allowed it to
drop to the floor behind him. He was just beginning to live his dream.

"How do you know it was a dream?" he asked.

She buried her face in the notch of his sternum where his snowy white
tee shirt met the soft skin of his neck. He smelled of clean cotton
laundry, soap, and a faint tinge of something herby -- probably
shampoo, since she knew he never wore cologne. She tasted the
invisible traces of something sweet on his chin, at the corner of his
mouth, on the tip of his nose as she kissed her way around his face.
He smiled under the pressure of her lips.

"Scully...."

"Hmm...."

Her hands slipped under the tight-fitting tee shirt and pushed it up and
over his chest until he pulled it over his head and discarded it.

"Scully," he said again, tucking his head to get a look at her eyes,
rapidly becoming dilated with passion. "How do you know it was a
dream?"

A lazy grin crept over her face. "I'll let you know in a minute."

His brow knit in a query, but the warmth of her fingers trailing down
his bare belly distracted him from pursuing the conversation. He
looked down to see the shadowy fingers of her right hand skittering
across his ribs as her left hand steadily pressed against his back. Her
nails scratched at the thin trail of straight, dark hair that formed a path
down the center of his abdomen.

Mulder was holding his breath when the jeans hit the floor and her
hand molded itself over his cock, sliding the soft cotton of his boxers
over the delicate, inflamed flesh. He grinned when he felt her left
hand cup his ass as her right hand slipped between his legs to jostle his
testes. He heard the rustle of his pubic hair against his boxers, and
then nearly fell over when she dropped to her knees in front of him.

Scully grasped the boxers by their elastic waistband and gently slid
them over his bulging erection and down his legs. She tugged off his
socks and helped him pull one bare foot and then the other from the
puddle of clothing in which he stood. Mulder instinctively reached for
her head as she surged toward him, her hands kneading his strong
thighs on their way to the base of his cock. She caressed him with
long, sweeping strokes that began in the wiry hair at his apex, spread
over his lower abdomen, and came back again. An undulating wave
of warmth followed the path of her hands.

She took the tip of him between her lips, tasting and sucking, stroking
and nibbling until he could no longer keep quiet. Then she released
him, and with his help, stood before him again. She was smiling
breathlessly.

"It defies everything I believe, Mulder, but it wasn't a dream," she
said in a husky voice.

"Astral projection?" he suggested, giving her the goofy grin that she
loved. His eyes narrowed to slits, his brows drooped, and his even
white teeth glinted behind taut lips.

She was laughing quietly as he reached out and took her face in his
slender hands. With a delicacy that was a tribute to his self-control,
Mulder kissed her facile brows, the narrow bridge of her nose, the
mole on her upper lip, and finally her mouth. His lips murmured
against hers, forming words that she could not have readily translated
had she not spent six years interpreting his unspoken messages. She
opened herself to him, accepting his tongue as it continued its tale in
the recesses of her mouth.

Scully felt his strengthening cock pressing against her. She pressed
back with her pelvis, and he moaned his approval. His lips repeatedly
brushed the soft flesh of her neck, and he could not resist biting her in
the sweet spot where her neck merged into her shoulder.

"I guess that proves I'm not dreaming now," she said, pushing her
fingers through his hair as he bent over to nuzzle her breasts.

"So what exactly happened in that dream, Scully?" he whispered.

She pressed her knee between his thighs, undermining his balance.
With a light touch to his chest, she pushed him over onto the bed. He
fell, laughing, with a great whoosh like a tree in the forest.

As Mulder watched from the bed, she pulled her nightshirt over her
head in one graceful motion and flung it like at streamer into the dark
depths of the room. Then, stealthy like a cat, she crawled over him.
Mulder waited until her face hovered above his, then grabbed her and
rolled her over onto her back. She laughed into his kisses until his
hands began to wander her body; then his touch demanded all her
attention.

"Ahhh...Mulder...you're so..." she murmured, her fingers closing
around his erection.

"So what, Scully?"

"Gorgeous," she breathed, shifting her pelvis up toward his roving
hand. "Every inch of you is...I -- oh --"

"Tell me," he said, spreading his long fingers across her belly. "Tell
me about your dream."

"This is pretty much it," she admitted, thrusting involuntarily as his
fingers crept into the flange between her legs. "You were naked, I
pulled you into my apartment, I took off my clothes, and....that's it.
Those fingers...I should've known...Mulder..."

"Tell me," he insisted, licking the first nipple he came to, then tugging
at it with his teeth as his tapered fingers slipped into her.

"I took you into my bed, and -- and you did the most marvelous things
to me, things that I -- like that, actually." She smiled at the top of his
head as he busied himself at her breasts; she was almost surprised to
see that he was actually there, doing what he was doing. "That sort of
marvelous thing. Do it again."

"That? Or that?"

"Both," she sighed. "Everything."

Mulder groaned as he tasted the other nipple; her hands were gliding
over his back as his fingers tweaked her clitoris, pressed into her,
learned the way to her cervix. She moved under him like a flickering
flame, warm and smooth, reacting to his every breath.

"Scully," he croaked, rubbing his face in the sweetly scented valley
between her breasts. "I want to tell you..."

"Better hurry," she said, writhing even more determinedly under his
fingers.

He lifted his head to see her face; she was flushed and glowing with
sweat.

"Dana," he began again, his voice low and tender with the tears that
were accumulating in his throat.

When he called her that, the last remnants of the often-patched wall
between them disintegrated into dust. She reached up for him, and
pulled his face to hers so that she could kiss the corner of his mouth,
then the side of his nose -- the tremors building up in her thighs and
belly made it difficult for her to be more precise in her aim.

"We'll be all right, you know," she whispered.

He nodded, and his tears began to spill. She grabbed his hand and
held it hard against her, then thrust against his fingers once, twice, and
on the third approach she cried out softly as she unexpectedly left the
earth behind.

Mulder watched her face in amazement. His fantasies had never lasted
to this point. How wrong he had been, he told himself, when the
reality was so much better. She came at his touch. He felt like a demi-
god.

With one hand Dana pulled gently at his engorged cock, while she
used the other to guide him over her. He knelt between her legs and
looked down at her still-quivering body. Her copper hair tumbled
across the white sheets; a shock of it rested on her pale shoulder, near
the spot where he had bitten her. Her chest was flushed and dewy,
her nipples deep mauve and taut. Mulder grinned when he felt her tug
at him again. She was impatient for him.

"Scully, you believe that I love you, don't you?" he said, stretching
his legs out between hers.

"Oh yes," she said as he slid one arm under her back.

He felt her cool arms slip around him, and moaned happily into her
shoulder.

"Too heavy?" he asked, rubbing his cheek against hers.

"Not at all." She had long been hungry for the press of his body
against hers. She guided him into her body with one quick,
swallowing thrust that made him gasp for joy. "Now; perfect."

He watched her face as he stroked into her over and over again. The
joining was so easy, so natural, that it hardly felt like the first try.
Mulder forgot all his anxieties about pleasing her when she rose up to
meet his gentle thrusts. The look of absolute contentment on her face
instilled in him a confidence that he had rarely known.

As his rhythm intensified, Dana wrapped her legs around his waist and
allowed him to keep time. Overmastered by pure sensation, Mulder
finally knew the warmth of her depth, the unconditional acceptance of
her softness for his hardness, the sweet sigh of her breath against his
shoulder as he pressed into her. He felt her hands on his straining
back, encouraging him. He felt her strength pulling him in deeper and
deeper until he was at the entrance to her womb, a place he had longed
to visit.

Lost in the interior landscape, he was startled by the low burr of her
voice. He had to remind himself of language, and strained to focus on
what she was saying.

"I love you too," she said, quite clearly this time. He smiled, and she
saw it. "How does it feel? I need to know."

"It feels like...like all roads lead here," Mulder replied. He performed
a mental assessment of his reactions, searching for the words. She put
up a hand to clear the damp hair from his forehead as he continued. "It
feels like -- *you* feel like the place I've always wanted to visit, but
could never quite get to. The person I always wanted to be, but could
never quite measure up to. It was you, all along. See why I believe in
fate?"

She nodded, for once not arguing with him. Mulder relished that
small victory, and kissed her once again.

"Are you okay?" he asked, thrusting more aggressively now. His
knees and quadriceps were beginning to scream in protest to the
unaccustomed strain.

"More than okay," she replied. "What can I do?"

"What can you do?" he repeated in amazement. What a question.
"Scully, you're magnificent, just as you are. I'm -- hey, I felt that.
How'd you -- ohhh. Is this something you learned in med school?"

She grinned up at him. Her gentle fingers remained busy, and Mulder
began to tremble. He turned his head from side to side, trying to get a
look at what she was doing. Then he gave up on the investigation and
focused on her lovely face, and the way her head moved against the
sheet with each determined thrust. Chest heaving, she licked her lips
and murmured his name, plus some other words that he could not hear
over the sound of his own moaning. His aching legs were long
forgotten.

Dana saw the wave coming for him before he did. Her fingers
delicately squeezed his scrotum where it connected to his body,
staving off the crash for another minute. He looked at her like a
drunkard. She tried not to laugh, and failed.

"What're you doing to me, Scully? Will I ever walk again?" he said
hoarsely.

"Just a little more," she cooed. "Just a little deeper, a little harder --
that's it. Oh, Mulder, you're very, very good at this, you know."

"Yes I am," he panted, throwing himself into his work. "Very, very --
you're doing it again, Scully. How can I last when you -- you're --
when you're --"

"Yes."

She agreed, and answered, and assented, all in one word, and with her
permission Mulder forgot once and for all what it meant to be a child
left alone with his grief for too long.

Dana felt his body tighten and draw back from her, ever so slightly,
and then an enormous wave of heat poured from him into her. She
floated in a warm, spiraling space, like a grotto of liquid light, and
every cell in her body was basked in its radiance. In the distance she
could hear herself making a sound like a long, soft sigh. And
someone was laughing, not laughing at her exactly, but laughing
gently and delightedly and with resignation to the incredible
overarching sun.

Mulder kissed the sweat from her hairline and whispered her name
repeatedly in a singsong voice. She was smiling, her eyes closed, and
a sated sigh was purring in her throat. As he watched, her brow began
to twitch, and words formed on her lips.

"Mulllllderrrrrr," she crooned, much to his relief.

"Right here," he replied, kissing her lightly. "It's me. Open your
eyes and you'll see."

She reluctantly opened her eyes. He was smiling down at her,
exhausted and soaked with sweat, but smiling nonetheless, as if he
had just cheated death.

"Oh," she said.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm...I've never..." She reached for him, and he lowered his head to
receive her kiss. "...Ever..." She applied another kiss to his smiling
lips. "...Ever felt anything like that. What happened?"

"You did it, Dr. Scully. I'm not sure how you did it, but you did it.
I've never felt anything like that either." He pushed his lank hair away
from his brow and released a profound sigh. "I guess it's the
intoxicating effect of -- uh, you know -- of love."

She stared at him for a moment, trying to piece together all the steps
that had led them there. It was too difficult a task at that moment.

"I'm thirsty," she said.

"At least you don't want a cigarette," he quipped, reluctantly moving
off her. "I'll get you a drink, assuming I can walk that far."

Groaning as he left the bed, Dana tugged the sheet up over her body to
try to trap some of the warmth they had generated. In the distance she
could hear him grunting and mumbling about overtaxing muscles he
hadn't used since Ronald Reagan had been president. When he
returned, she was giggling softly.

He sat next to her and gave her a tall glass of ice water.

"You're laughing," he said sternly.

"You sound like a old man," she said.

"Yeah, well, I'm just out of practice, Scully. But by Monday morning
I'll be qualifying for the pros."

"Think so?" she asked, offering him the glass.

He took a long drink and placed the glass on the table beside the bed.

"If the coach is willing," he said, wrapping his arms around her and
pulling her down to the mattress with him.

"More than willing," she said. She turned to look at him. He was
blinking up at the ceiling, still panting a little. "You all right?"

"Oh yeah," he replied. Then he glanced at her and saw the frown of
concern on her flushed face. "I'm -- did you -- did you have any
flashbacks?"

For a moment she had to search for his meaning. Then it all came
back to her with a dull thud.

"No, sweet -- Mulder."

"What was that?"

"Nothing," she mumbled, tucking her head against his breast.

"You were about to call me something sweet, Dana," he said.
"Weren't you. Admit it."

She lightly scratched his chest, liking the raspy sound of her nails
amid the hair there.

"Oh, all right. I've never been very good at endearments," she said
reluctantly. "But I *feel* one for you, like a big lump in my throat."

"Well then, what is it?"

She fidgeted against him, reaching up to adjust her pillow.

"That's just it. I don't know. I can't even call you by your first name
-- how am I supposed to come up with some ridiculous pet name that
you'd probably detest anyway?"

Ah, his thorny Scully was back. He grinned at her.

"You can call me Fox," he said.

She stared at him for a long moment, then looked away, a ghost of a
smile playing at her lips.

"Fox..."

A tingle went through Mulder at the sound of his name on her lips. It
sounded exactly as it had when she had said it all those years ago, late
one night when he was still trying to decide if she had been sent by the
Bureau to spy on him or by God to save him.

"Say it again," he said, his voice husky with emotion.

Dana cocked her head and considered his face. His eyes were sleepy,
but intensely focused on her. His hair, still damp, had been pushed
back from his temples, and in the dim light that streaked through the
draperies from the street lamp outside, he seemed to have regained the
smooth face of the man she had met so long ago. The FBI's most
unwanted, indeed.

"Oh, Fox...I do love you," she said, reaching for him.

He kissed her lips over and over again, holding her as if some unseen
force threatened to pull her away, until his own tears mixed with hers
on his cheeks and her need to reassure him was as desperate as his
need to be loved by her.

No one, not even his mother, had ever said those words in association
with his first name. In that instant, he realized that he had never
expected anyone to love him. He had planned on being alone, on
being just Mulder, for the rest of his life. And as with so many of his
carefully laid plans, Dana Scully brought new evidence to light that
forced him to reevaluate even his most deep-seated assumptions.

She rolled them over so that his head rested on her chest and her arms
snaked around his neck. She stroked his face with a light, dry touch
until his tears stopped as quietly as they had begun. Her belly was wet
with them; she reached down and rubbed the moisture into her skin.

"Don't worry, sweetheart," she whispered. "I won't leave."

"...Love you..."

He fell asleep, his nose just inches from one flushed nipple, the
rhythm of her strong heartbeat soothing him into his dreams. Dana
continued to hold him, and her last coherent thought before sleep
overtook her was of how painless it had been to call him sweetheart.

End The Cry of the Truth 08b/22


The Cry of the Truth, 09/22
Glossolalia
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: *NC-17 (sexual situations, language)
Category: S,A,R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary: Consummation continued.

*This chapter is REALLY not suitable for anyone under the age of 17.
The entire story has an overall rating of NC-17, and this chapter is one of
the reasons for that. Please skip over it if you are under age. I'm not
writing an instruction manual here, at least not intentionally.

Please forward to ATXC and Gossamer. Feedback would be most
welcome.

XXXXXXXXXX

   Glossolalia: See speaking in tongues. // A prayer characterized chiefly by
   incomprehensible speech...now practiced...in ecstatic forms of worship.
       Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language

Dana was up at six the next morning, brewing a pot of tea and
skimming the Saturday paper as her computer booted up. She
followed the same ritual every morning, weekday and weekend alike:
tea, news, e-mail, shower, clothes.  The fact that her lanky partner
was sleeping in her bed, totally naked and stretched diagonally across
the mattress, had little influence on these deeply rooted personal
habits.

She poured tea into a thin porcelain cup and carried it to her desk.
Tugging her robe over her bare knees, she sat before the computer and
opened her field diary template. She sipped the tea and peered out the
window at the rainy spring dawn. Through the glass she could feel
the chill that during the night had betrayed all the early blooms in the
gardens of Washington.

As she began to type, her mind relaxed into the analytical mode that
she found most comfortable. Facts and assessments flowed from her
brain onto the screen like an orderly waterfall.

"Adelia Forrest's physical signs and symptoms were consistent with
violent sexual assault. While she claims to have been the victim of
spectral rape, the physical evidence indicates that her attacker was all
too human. Although I did not perform a neuropsychiatric
assessment, I detected signs of a paranoid delusional state most likely
induced by the trauma of the attack. Rape victims frequently repress
their memories of the attacker's face or other details of his appearance
in a subconscious attempt to undo the crime, or at least make the
aftermath more bearable. With the passage of time and the benefit of
counseling, Miss Forrest is likely to recover her memory of the
rapist's identity. The likelihood that she knew her attacker is
statistically quite formidable."

Formidable...Dana mulled over her last statement. She had known at
least half a dozen women in her undergrad days and at med school
who had been raped by men they knew -- boyfriends, acquaintances, a
bartender, even a professor. Not one of the women had pressed
charges. The ramifications of making their rapes public had been too
intimidating. They feared for their careers and their relationships. The
same fears had kept Dana from confiding in Mulder about her rape for
nearly four years. But now that he knew, and had reacted as he had,
she felt as if a burden of incalculable weight had been lifted from her.

Laying down her shield, once and for all, had been at once terrifying
and thrilling. Finally she had shown Mulder her soft underbelly, and
he had kissed it. For years she had loved him for what he was as an
individual; after last night, she also loved him for the way that he loved
her.

She saved what she had written and took the teacup between her
palms. Inhaling the smoky scent of the tea, she remembered a
morning last fall, gray and damp like this one, when she had sipped
tea with Stuart Novak. As they talked, he had watched her carefully
with his dark blue eyes. She had thought then that Mulder never
looked at her that way.  Within days, Mulder had shown her that she
was mistaken.

Dana grinned into her cup, recalling the way that Fox Mulder had
squirmed and whimpered and stretched and sighed under the touch of
her hands and lips last night. In spite of the acrid flavor of the tea, her
tongue remembered well the taste of his skin -- buttery and salty -- and
his semen, slightly bitter and acidic. She closed her eyes and allowed
her head to roll back and around, stretching the muscles of her neck
and shoulders made taut by their lovemaking.

She put down the cup and ran her fingers through her hair, releasing
the rich Mulderscent that had permeated her body during the night. In
her many dreams about the consummation of their partnership, Dana
had never imagined that Mulder would be such an emotional lover.
His tears had washed over her skin several times during the night,
commingling with her own at least once. It made perfect sense now,
without the distraction of his roving hands, when she considered all
the heartbreak they had shared over the years.  In the morning light,
Dr. Scully began to understand the meaning of sexual healing.
Although her muscles ached and her skin was chafed, her heart was
calm and full.

She opened her eyes and saw the object of her regard shuffling into the
living room. His long limbs were rubbery with sleep, and his spent
penis swung like a pendulum against his thigh as he approached her.
He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and yawned
cavernously.

"Whatcha' doin'?" he asked, his voice hoarse with sleep.

"Working on the report of our interview with Miss Forrest that I
should've written three weeks ago," Dana replied. She smiled
indulgently as he reached out for her like a blind man. "And you
would appear to be somnambulating."

"Come back to bed," he mumbled, offering her his hands.

She grasped them and stood into his embrace.

"But I'm having my tea now, Mulder," she protested.

He opened one eye and squinted at her sternly.

"You finally have me naked in your bed and you want to drink *tea*?"

She brought the porcelain cup to her lips.

"Mmhm," she uttered, sipping. "Want some?"

"Come on, Sculleee," he whined.

"Oh, all right," she said, putting down her cup and keying the
computer to sleep. "But what if I can't sleep?"

"God, you can be so noisy sometimes," he mumbled, leading her by
the hand toward the bedroom.

"What?"

"Shhh," he said, attempting to put a finger to her lips. He missed her
mouth and poked his index finger into her cheek.

She laughed softly and pulled the wayward hand to her lips.

"Get in bed," she said, kissing his knuckles and releasing him.

"Sweet words," he said, dropping onto the mattress.

She grinned down at him as he tucked his long legs under the covers.
Flopping his limbs and grunting contemplatively, Mulder finally curled
his body around the extra pillows. As his eyes slid shut again, Dana
half expected his thumb to slip into his mouth. Instead, he smiled
devilishly, like a child dreaming about candy.

"Come on, Scully. If I have to come after you again, you'll be
punished." He giggled dreamily. "Consider yourself warned."

"Dammit, Mulder. Is this what life as your lover is going to be like?"
she demanded as she tossed her robe aside. She slipped under the
comforter and molded herself against his warm back. "Because I have
too much to do to sleep every weekend away."

"Not every weekend, Dana," he said softly. He covered her small arm
with his lanky one, and patted her hand where it rested on his belly.
"But you've been gone for so long...and we have so much time to
make up."

"And you want to do it by sleeping?" she grumbled into his spine.

"I love sleeping with you." His voice was fading into sleep. "I love
everything about being with you."

"I'll be surprised if you still feel that way in another week," she said.
She pressed her pelvis into his ass, enjoying the contrast between his
smooth skin and the wiry hairs of her crotch. "After I start making
you hang up your wet towels, and take out the trash, and clean your
toothpaste off the bathroom faucet..."

"Shhh, sweetheart. You're waking me up."

Defeated, she sighed against his silky back, and found herself relaxing
deeply into the rhythm of his breathing. She slipped away into sleep,
wrapped in a cloud of his warmth and the heady scents that lingered in
the bed.

XXXXXXXXXX

Mulder was awakened a few hours later by the whisper of her hair against
his thigh as one small, cool hand smoothed over his belly like a friendly
spider. He did not open his eyes, but grinned wildly as he felt the head of
his half-erect cock meet the soft warmth of her lips. Her tongue, pebbly
and hot, slicked around the circumference of him, drawing a rush of
stiffening blood into the shaft. With her lips she nibbled along the
prominent vein that marked the underside of him; she traced it until it
disappeared into the wiry nest of hair that covered his root. There she
pressed her nose against his mons, breathing in the oceanic scent of him
and then exhaling humid sighs of approval that washed hotly across his
balls. She lifted them with the flat of her index finger and flicked her
tongue repeatedly at the crepy skin of his scrotum, sucking gently on the
sparse hair there before moving on to nibble at the small mound of muscle
that was his perineum.

Now her hands pressed his thighs farther apart and he could feel her
smooth arms passing lightly over his legs as she maneuvered into
position, hitching one of his long legs over her shoulder and turning her
head slightly so that she could nip at him more easily. She nibbled around
the corona, too gently to hurt but firmly enough to make him squirm.
Then she licked up the bead of viscous fluid that had emerged from the
tiny eye atop the glans, and growling with satisfaction at the taste of him,
sheathed as much of him in her small mouth as she could manage -- about
half his length. Then the sucking began in earnest. Mulder's thighs
twitched, his strong gluteals contracted, and a low moan originated deep in
his belly.

He felt her shifting around him again, lifting her body so that she was
parallel to the mattress, balancing on her forearms on either side of his
hips. From this approach, she was able to swallow more of him. He
could feel the vibration of her soft palate as she moaned her arousal. She
circled the root of him with her fingers and then began stroking him in a
rhythm syncopated with the timing of each long, intense suck.

Rather than opening his eyes and actually looking, Mulder allowed himself
the luxury of imagining the sight of her coppery hair spread across his
belly, her left arm pressed against his flank, her lush lips swollen and
shiny around him. He pictured the dozens of moments when he had
lapsed into a daydream of his partner performing this very favor for him --
in the car, in their office, in an elevator, on the firing range, on a plane
bound for god-knows-where, on the couch in his apartment, on that bench
near the Tidal Basin, in the theatre where they had watched her lover play
a Roman warrior in one of Shakespeare's more excruciating history
plays...

"Ahhh, Scully..." he moaned, his hips beginning to move of their own
accord as she gently squeezed his balls between her fingertips and the soft
mound of muscle where her thumb merged with her palm.

And then the fantasies were replaced by the feeling that was blooming in
him, an emotional quickening that made his brow twitch even as his hips
undulated against the mattress. The fact of her love for him was finally
setting in. It was merciful like a cool, healing touch in response to a
sudden headache; it was comforting like a slow-burning fire in a cozy,
low-ceilinged room on a snowy evening; it was thrilling and novel like the
first sentence successfully spoken in a foreign language long studied but
never before used to communicate with native speakers.

She quickened the pace of her ministrations and again hummed her
response until he stiffened beneath her, then thrust twice into her, then --

"DanaDanaDanaDana."

-- he uttered her name in breathy rasp as his hands reached for her hair,
her cheeks, her shoulders. The sensation of her swallowing the warm
semen that emanated from him drew more shuddering waves, now of an
almost painful intensity. He was grateful when she released his cock and
proceeded to delicately clean him with the tip of her tongue.

Dana eased into his arms, tugging the bedcovers with her so that they were
both cocooned in the lofty warmth of her fine cotton sheets and down
comforter. Tenderly she kissed the narrow line of skin between his ear
and his sideburn, the notch at the hinge of his jaw, the dark mole on his
cheek. Her hand came to rest just above his diaphragm, nails scratching
lightly for a moment in the fine hair there before her fingers furled into a
loose fist.

"I love you, Fox," she whispered in his ear.

With no certainty of whether he was waking or dreaming, Mulder placed a
hand over hers and snuggled closer to her, deeply content in the warmth
that radiated from her small body. He had been too many years alone, too
many years cold, not to cherish every second that he spent in her shelter.

XXXXXXXXX

Shortly before noon, Mulder awakened with a dull, thudding headache,
the result of twelve hours of sleep saturating a brain that was accustomed
to living on four a night. His eyes were dry and itchy, lashes stuck
together with sandy particles of dried tears. He rubbed his eyes and
sniffed loudly. Turning onto his side, his chest met with something
deliciously warm, rounded, and smooth.

Scully. More specifically, Scully's ass. Her naked ass, pressed up
against his happy morning erection, in her bed. At last. Mulder grinned
and pulled her closer. Eyes still shut, he buried his face in the thickness of
her hair and inhaled the lingering scent of their mating bodies. He felt her
stir against him; one slender arm reached back over their torsos to pat his
hip. He sighed.

"Good morning," he said. His voice was thick, almost as if he had a cold;
the tears he had shed the night before had left him congested and dry-
throated.

"That you, Spooky?"

"I warned you about that," he intoned, pinching a nipple.

"I'm so scared," Dana said.

"What did I tell you, Dana?" He spoke with the indulgent tone of an
overtaxed parent. "We don't use the S word. If we use the S word, we
expect to pay."

"Make up your mind, Fox. One minute you want me to call you Spooky,
then next you're telling me that if I do you'll take a big bite out of me.
What's it gonna be?"

Oooohhhhh, Mulder's sleep-intoxicated brain said. She wants me to bite
her.

"Hold that thought," he muttered, pulling away from her. "I'll be right
back."

He was as good as his word. He returned with teeth brushed, face
washed, and bladder emptied. Still quite naked, Scully was now sitting
on the edge of the bed, one foot resting on the horizontal sidepiece of the
maple bedstead, the other dangling just above the carpet. Both arms were
raised above her shoulders; one hand held a brush that she passed
repeatedly through her hair, the other hand followed the brush's path,
smoothing down the hair with each stroke. Mulder watched, entranced, as
her breasts quivered in response to her motions. The morning light
rendered her pale skin incandescent. Blue veins shimmered just beneath
the surface; cameo pink aureolae were smooth and broad.

She smiled at him and put down her brush.

"Feeling better, Spooky?"

Mulder crossed his arms over his bare chest and glowered at her.

"Scully..."

"I have a question for you," she said, resting both heels on the crossbeam
of the bed and pressing her knees together. She rested her hands on her
knees, her upper arms crowding her breasts together. It pleased her to
observe Mulder's brows arch in response. Had she allowed her gaze to
wander from his eyes, she might have noted that his entire peripheral
nervous system was reacting to her display.

"How do you decide when you're going to call me Dana, and when you're
going to call me Scully?"

"How 'bout if I just call you gorgeous?" he drawled, walking to the bed.
He stood a few inches in front of her and peered down at her upturned
face. "I had the most wonderful dream, *Dana*. I don't suppose you had
the same one? Hmm?"

"What dream would that be?" she asked coyly.

Shaking his head, Mulder sat next to her and put his arm around her
shoulders, pulling her close. He kissed the crown of her head.

"Oh, forget it. I don't know if I'll ever be able to play games with you,"
he said. "When I look at you -- you're so small and brilliant and fierce -- I
just want to hold you and kiss you and make sure that you understand
how much you mean to me."

"I understand," she reassured him, squeezing him back with an arm
wound his waist. "I do. And once we're more comfortable with all this
you'll be tossing bad puns at me just like you do at work."

"And you look forward to that?" he asked.

"Strangely enough, yes, I do."

She pulled away from him so that she could look into his eyes. They were
as unshielded as his body, and in them she saw hope for the first time in
years.

"Fox..." The word came out slowly, as if it were in a foreign language.

He grinned and rolled his eyes. It would take some getting used to.

"Dana," he replied.

"What d'you want to do today? We can't lie in bed forever."

"Why not?" he asked, taking up her brush and tapping the bristles lightly
against his palm.

"Because...it's spring, and it's Saturday, and we're young and in love --"

"You're starting to sound like a really bad song from 1973. Chicago, or
somebody like that."

She glared at him; he tucked his head and fixed his hangdog gaze on her.

"Oh, all right. We'll stay in bed all day. Talk me into it," she said,
feigning disgust.

"Turn around," he said.

Without a moment's hesitation, she turned her back to him. Mulder began
to brush her hair with long, careful strokes. He watched the sunlight
glinting off the copper and gold strands and thought of fairy tales in which
magic is done for the sake of a princess's beautiful hair.

"I want to take you for a nice lunch," he said quietly. "Is that all right?"

"Of course," she replied, wondering what qualified as "nice" in Mulder's
lexicon.

"I know that tone, Scully," he said, gently pulling a hank of her hair.
"No, we're not going to Chuck's Chili and Scripture. Well, not today at
least. Do you like horses?"

"Are you implying that Chuck puts horses in his chili?"

Mulder guffawed. "That's libelous. Of course not. But do you? Like
horses?"

"Sure. Are we going to the track?"

Mulder put down the brush. With a gossamer touch, he traced the shape
of her shoulders and upper arms, then reached further and allowed his
palms to glance over her nipples. Only too eager for his touch, she
responded by immediately easing back against him.

"We're going to a place out near Great Falls, an inn with a four-star
restaurant. During the day on Saturday is the best time to go because you
can walk around the town, window shop, hang out and watch the horses
graze..."

His touch became more earthly as he cupped the fullness of her breasts
and circled the nipples with his thumbs.

"How did you find out about this place?" she asked, her eyes fluttering
shut as she rested her head against his shoulder.

"Read about it in the Post last weekend, while I was anxiously awaiting
your return." He kissed the side of her neck with a resounding smack. "I
had plenty to time to think of all the nice things I want to do for you."

"Maybe I should go away more often," she said.

"Not without me." He nibbled his way up her neck to her ear lobe, which
he sucked tenderly before flicking his tongue into her ear. "Please don't
go without me anymore."

"I won't come without you either," she jibed, smiling languidly as his
hand smoothed over her belly.

Mulder's breathy chuckle sailed across her cheek.

"So you want to know why I call you Dana sometimes and Scully at other
times," he said, slipping his arms around her waist before resuming his
slow caresses.

"Mmmhmm," she hummed.

"I call you Dana when my heart is speaking to you." He scratched lightly
amid the loose cinnamon curls that covered her mons, his short nails
making a papery sound against the wiry hairs. "And I guess I call you
Scully when my mind is in charge, or when I wish it was. Sometimes I
call you Scully just because I've been calling you that forever..."

"And sometimes sweetheart," she whispered.

"Sweetheart especially."

His long, tapered fingers fanned out over her thighs. With his thumbs he
massaged the tendons in her groin, making her legs twitch slightly, before
opening the outer flange of her vulva with his fingertips and allowing the
cool morning air to rush in. She shivered slightly, and her nipples
immediately peaked. Mulder smiled.

"You're so beautiful, sweetheart," he said in her ear. "And what you did
for me last night was like a dream. An amazing dream. Thank you."

"This morning," she mumbled.

"Hmm?"

"It was this morning," she said, licking her lips.

He kissed her cheek slowly and deliberately, his lips lingering over the
invisible downy hairs there, his tongue flitting over her porcelain skin.
Then, pressing his cheek against hers, he watched his fingers play
between her legs. He used the first two fingers of his left hand to keep the
folds separated, then employed the same two fingers of his right hand in
sliding up and down over the inner folds. He methodically tweaked her
clitoris into a flushed, erect state, then dipped his middle finger into her
vestibule to spread the liquid that had gathered there.

"Mulder..."

"Yes, sweetheart," he replied promptly.

"The night before I left for Boston..." She paused to try to catch her
breath. "You promised that you'd --"

"That I'd go down on you?" He kissed her cheek again, his fingers
unrelenting. "Can I?"

"...Yes, please."

She felt his smile against her cheek and sighed in happy anticipation.
There was so much more to Mulder -- so much that was good and healthy
and caring -- than she had ever expected to find. She had assumed that his
painful life had beaten all the sweetness out of him. Now she was
learning that he simply kept it securely locked in the recesses of his
psyche. He had long since given her a key. Luckily, she had finally
summoned the courage to use it.

Still holding her from behind, Mulder took his right hand away from her
body and brought it up to his lips. Quickly he sucked his middle finger
clean, then touched his forefinger to her lower lip and painted it with the
glaze. His eyebrows again peaked into his forehead as he watched her
own pink tongue trace her lower lip, taking up the flavor and spreading it
around the entire circumference of her mouth.

He wrapped his arms around her chest and hugged her, then slowly eased
away from her and off the bed. As he knelt on the carpet, Mulder grasped
her legs just behind and above her knees and pulled her -- none too gently
-- to the edge of the bed. Her muscles had long since turned to jelly.
Dropping back onto the mattress with a desultory giggle, Dana spread her
arms as if to embrace the universe.

Mulder hitched her legs over his shoulders and held her by the hips, tilting
her pelvis up slightly and sliding the nearest pillow under her. She sighed
her approval.

"Dana?" he said softly.

"Fox," she replied.

"I love you, you know," he said soberly, beginning a long line of wet
kisses up one thigh and then down the other.

She sat up as best she could -- only about a quarter of the way -- and
smiled at him through eyes half-lidded with pleasure.

"You've already made me so happy," she said, far more clearly than either
of them expected, given her state of arousal.

He squeezed her outstretched hand, then released it, allowing her to fall
back to the cool surface of the sheets.

As the heat of his mouth met the heat of her body, Dana released a
small cry of joy. She had spoken the truth; she was unspeakably
happy for the first time since she was a little girl. She felt a
contentment akin to the sense of completion she had enjoyed whenever
her father returned from a long float, when the stoicism and denial her
mother had demanded from each child was replaced by absolute joy at
the return of the ginger-haired captain who inevitably brought exotic
presents from countries whose demographics the studious young Dana
could readily cite. Now, as then, the missing piece of the puzzle had
locked into place, forming out of what had previously been just a
collection of colored elements a beautiful picture of something that was
real.

And this is real, she thought as the thrumming in her belly and loins
intensified under the exquisite teasing of Mulder's lips and tongue. This is
not a story about someone else's happiness; this is my life. He is not an
actor; he is my Mulder. We are partners, now and forever.

Oh, I wish I had known a long long time ago...

Then there was nothing left between Mulder and Scully and the sky. She
shot up among the heavens and found him there, a star in his own right,
pulsating, iridescent, stunning against the blackness, exuding the most
intense heat she could imagine...and then she realized that she was the
heat. It flowed through her, sparking and burning and spinning off
binaries and novae on its way to her brain and back down again to
Mulder's mouth.

He loved her. It was that simple.

End The Cry of the Truth 09/22


The Cry of the Truth 10/22
A Lie of Omission
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: R (language, sexuality, discussion of rape)
Category: S,A,R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary: Mulder finally cracks under the strain of Scully's secret.

Please forward to ATXC and Gossamer.  Feedback is welcome!


   Why cannot truth become simply a baby
   That laughs when it is happy,
   And cries when it is hurt,
   As if to tell me which is itself?
         Cheng Min, "Student"

On his way to show Scully the horses, Mulder lost his way. He had
neglected to bring the article from the Post that described the little town
of Moncure and how to get to it from Washington; Scully suspected he
wouldn't have read the directions anyway, even if he'd had them
handy. He smirked behind his black sunglasses as he made a three-
point turn, narrowly avoiding a ditch, at the end of an unpaved road
seemingly nowhere near Moncure.

He put the Explorer in neutral and set the emergency brake.

Scully peered at him curiously.

"We're lost, Scully," he said flatly.

They were at a dead end, surrounded by a forest of loblolly pines and
hardwoods whose leaves were only just beginning bud. The
underbrush had not yet regrown after the icy winter that had just
passed. The tall, slender pines undulated in the breeze, and clouds,
almost cartoon-like in their puffiness, scudded across the sky.

"Got your cell phone?" she asked.

Mulder produced the phone from the inner pocket of his leather jacket
and extended it toward her. As her fingers touched it, he yanked it
away, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.

"Not so fast," he said.

She flashed a brilliant smile his way. Crossing her arms, she settled
back in her seat and turned toward him.

"Oh, I get it. Twenty years ago you would've said 'we're out of gas,
baby' and proceeded to convince me that if I really loved you I'd let
you take off my bra."

Mulder leered happily.

"You're dating yourself, Scully. Try this version: I forgot to recharge
the cell battery, and if you really loved me, you'd let me take off your
pants."

She grinned back at him. "Not bad, Mulder. Did you really forget to
recharge?"

"Why don't you come over here and give me a jump start?"

With a slow smile, she released her seat belt and leaned across the
console to plant a kiss on the mole on his right cheek. He had shaved
carefully that morning; she hummed with pleasure as she ran her lips
over the dewy-smooth skin. Mulder was not so delicate: he groped
her breasts through the thin linen of her blouse.

"Hey, you're not wearing a bra," he said.

She bit down on his ear lobe, provoking a wild yelp from him.

"I'm *hungry*, Mulder," she said.

"Really? Me too."

He shoved his tongue into her mouth, clanking his teeth against hers
and bruising her lips. She put up a hand to slow him, but he caught it
and pressed it against his cock. Scully's whimper was muffled by his
mouth. Mulder's aggression did not wane until she began stroking his
the bulge behind his fly. Finally he released her mouth and sat back,
panting.

He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, hardly noticing when she
pulled a tissue from her pocket and dabbed a drop of blood from the
corner of her mouth.

"Jesus, Mulder," she hissed, showing him the red smear on the white
tissue. "What the hell were you thinking? Was that some kind of
testosterone surge? I hope to God you don't have your gun with
you."

"I don't," he said dully.

They sat in the respective seats and stared out the windshield at the
cool spring noon. Mulder was imagining that they were so far back in
the woods that they could die there and no one would find them until
their bones had been bleached by the sun. Scully was thinking that he
had either lost his mind, or that he was applying some pell-mell
psychological bullshit to her brain to try to rouse her memories of
being raped.

She opened her door and dropped down to the gravel. Slamming the
door soundly, she walked around the Explorer and yanked open his
door.

"Get out," she said.

He frowned at her.

"Get out. I'm driving."


"No."

"Yes. Get out of the fucking car, Mulder."

Mulder slowly unfolded his long limbs and lowered one big foot, then
the next, to the ground. He stood at his full height and stared down at
her through his black shades. And then he slammed his own door.

She backed away from him, suddenly more afraid of him that she had
been since -- than she had ever been.

"You bitch," he said evenly.

Her jaw dropped.

"How could you lie to me all these years? You knew -- you *knew*
how much it hurt me when they took you, Scully, and then you lied to
me about it. Even after I told you you're the only one I trust...you
listened to me say it, time and time again, and you continued to lie to
me."

"Mulder, please. I --"

"That's deception, Scully," he insisted. "A lie of omission is a
deception."

Perplexed and frightened, she shook her head.

"I never meant to hurt you."

"No. I don't want you to talk right now. I'm talking now," he
boomed, his voice filling the woods. "I've wanted you, Dana Scully,
since the first day I saw you. I loved you when you argued with me,
when you told me I was crazy, when you *shot* me --"

Her bowels turned to fire upon hearing that reference. Sparing
Krychek that night had been an excruciating test of her character.
Shooting Mulder had actually been easier.

" -- I even loved you when you were fucking that *actor*, for God's
sake! Fucking him and calling him by my name!"

His voice cracked on the last word. He shook his head mournfully
and, like a bull, paced furious circles in the gravel. Scully watched,
mortified.

"How could you not tell me this? Have you got some kind of a mean
streak that I'm just now finding out about? You had so little faith in
me that you deliberately kept this from me, during these years of -- of
friendship, when what I needed above all was your faith and trust.
And now you've told me just to be on the safe side. In case you call
out his name when I'm the one fucking you."

Scully's palm flexed with the urge to punch him, but that was quickly
replaced by the urge to flee.

She looked past him, at the Explorer, its engine still running. She
could get in it, toss him his cell phone, and drive away. Quit the
Bureau tomorrow, sell everything, dye her hair blonde, move to
Hawaii and get a job as a lab tech. No more death, no more mysteries,
no more staid suits and gore-proof boots.

Or she could call Stuart Novak, ask if he still had the ring, and catch
the next plane to London. A wardrobe of expensive, cream-colored
clothes, protestations of love in the tongue of Shakespeare and Donne,
night after night of sex just sweet enough to numb her brain and
trigger her orgasm. No more balancing the checkbook. No more
cleaning the gun on Saturday night. No more Axid-and-Advil
cocktails.

Of course either option would mean no more sleepy hazel eyes or sly
grins. No more long-winded recitations of the mating rituals of
Reticulans or wooden pleas to the Section Chief for funding to chase
the conspirators who created the Section Chief's job. No more
goddamn sunflower seeds. No more scent of lemon-balm at the spot
where neck meets ear. No more puffy lower lip, trembling to be
kissed.

These possibilities thundered through her brain in the time it took
Mulder to viciously kick one of the Explorer's tires and then stomp
back across the road to where she stood, frozen with confusion, on the
edge of the forest. He ripped off his sunglasses and hurled them
away, then grabbed her shoulders with his big hands and shook her.
Shook her hard.

"We *had* him, Scully. We had him so many times and you let him
go..."

His face was streaked with tears and he was panting as if he had run
from Washington.

"Goddammit, Scully..."

His voice broke with a sob. Without relinquishing his hold on her, he
bowed his head and allowed the anger to boil up and out of the secret
place where he kept such things.

She remained frozen, having made the decision to weather the storm.

He looked up again, into her eyes, and his face began to crumple with
tears.

"He *raped* you, for God's sake," he cried.

The harsh edge of his voice disturbed some grackles that had been
watching them from the pinetops. Cawing and complaining, they
flapped away.

Scully felt his words like a blow to the bridge of her nose; the tears
stung in her nostrils, her eyes burned, and her throat constricted. She
arched her brows and inhaled purposefully, hoping the action would
ease the searing pain. At this point she could no longer differentiate
between the physical and the emotional.

Wresting herself free from his hold, she turned and took a few steps
into the woods. She patted the pocket of her jacket and found the
tissue she had used to wipe the blood from her mouth. As she took
off her sunglasses and dabbed at her eyes, Scully was overwhelmed
with a leaden realization. Mulder was right. She hadn't trusted him
enough to tell him that she had been raped -- not until he had bared
himself to her, declared his love for her, and forced himself to be
supportive of her decision to leave him for another man. She had her
reasons, of course. She knew them by heart. But now it seemed they
were just excuses.

Mulder sat back on his haunches in the road, holding his head in his
hands as he wept.

She moved toward him, stiffly, as if she had been beaten. She knelt
on the road, ignoring the pain as the gravel bit into her knees. Slowly
and deliberately, she took his wrists and pulled his hands away from
his face.

He blinked at her, and saw himself reflected in the teary sheen over her
irides, blue and boundless as the sky.

"Krychek raped me," she said unsteadily. "It's true. I should've told
you sooner. I was afraid that you'd kill him on sight, and ruin both
our lives... I had faith in you, and trust, but not enough. I'm sorry,
Mulder."

He gently pulled his arms from her grasp. He sniffed loudly, then
accepted the tissue she offered him. Staring at the spots of blood that
remained, he shook his head once and then blew his nose. When it
was over, he rubbed a hand over his face and through his hair.

"I expected more from you," he whispered. "I wanted you to expect
more from me."

Scully stood and offered him a hand. He took it and followed her
back to the Explorer. He paused, his fingers on the door handle, and
reached for her. She threw herself against him with a force that
pushed him against the door and held onto him with a desperation he
had never before seen in her.

Mulder hugged her tightly and took a few deep breaths, trying to
reorder his thought processes. He had been overcome, like an island
in a storm. Something in the frustration of being lost had triggered it
all...

"Don't," she said into his chest.

"What --"

"Don't feel guilty. Please, Mulder. You needed to say it and I guess I
needed to hear it."

"...It hurts."

"I know," she said simply.

XXXXXXXXXX

The breeze that had taunted them in the woods turned into a full-
fledged March wind, whipping up whitecaps on the Potomac and
sending bits of garbage spiraling down the empty Saturday streets of
downtown Washington. Mulder and Scully had passed the ride home
in silence, both in a state of postcathartic exhaustion like two children
after a temper tantrum. Neither were surprised when sheets of rain
sluiced down from the sky. It seemed to suit their moods.

Mulder parked on the street in front of her building and cut the engine.
For a moment he considered leaving her there and going back to his
apartment so that he could be alone with his misery. The man he had
been up until twenty-four hours ago might've done just that. The man
he had become in the course of one night in the arms of Dana Scully
could not and would not leave. He doubted if he could ever leave her
again.

Once inside her apartment, they discovered that the electrical service
had been interrupted by the storm. Scully found candles and was
arranging them on the coffee table when Mulder emerged from the
bathroom, naked and already half-erect.

"The bedroom," he said.

She saw his bare feet pad into view as she tore the wrapper off a
candle, then allowed her gaze to slide up his bare, lean legs and linger
on his flushed penis, elegantly rising away from the ruddy sac
between his legs. She skipped over his torso to his face, giving him
her best expression of incredulity.

"You're awfully certain, aren't you, Mulder," she stated, cramming
the candle into a crystal holder.

He swallowed audibly.

"That's just it, Scully," he said softly. "I'm not certain at all
anymore."

She tore the clear plastic film from another candle and crumpled the
scrap in her fist. She was still wearing her coat; her sunglasses
dangled from the placket of her white linen shirt. As she fitted the
taper into the second of the pair of crystal candlesticks, she pursed her
lips pensively.

"And if we make love then you'll be certain again?" she said quietly.

For a split second, Mulder's mouth twisted into a grimace of
resentment. But when she looked up and he saw the sadness in her
eyes, his mocking expression was replaced by dismay. Somewhere
along the way, he had forgotten the brutal facts. Last night she had
seemed so separate from the content of her letter that he had been able
to distance himself from it as well. This afternoon, she had been so
stoic in the face of his lacerating anger that it had again escaped him
that the rape had been done to this very woman, not some previous
incarnation of her. Now, with a crash, it all came back to him. This
was the woman who had been degraded in Fox Mulder's name. This
was the woman who bore the scars of Krychek's rage. Hers was the
body that had been invaded, again and again, while Mulder...while he
had indulged in a marathon of masturbatory self-loathing that
culminated with his encounter with a woman who could not have been
more unlike Scully. He had never told her about Kristen -- that was
his own lie of omission. Convenient how I forgot about that, Mulder
reflected.

She was staring at the matchbook in her hand. It bore the insignia of
the Ritz-Carlton on Capitol Hill. She closed her eyes and for a
moment she saw the luxe rooms of Stuart's suite, painted by
moonlight, and Stuart himself, strong, warm, and kind. It had seemed
at the time that nothing from the past could hurt her. There, memory
had no dominion over her or her lover.

Sensing where her thoughts had led her, Mulder took the matches and
lit the two candles she had prepared. He gave one to her and took the
other for himself.

"Come with me?" he asked, fixing her with his spaniel eyes.

The flames flickered in the stream of her sigh.

"I'm not sure I --"

"Please."

His expression had become imploring. Dana swallowed the lump in
her throat, and with a deep breath, nodded.

Dana took his candle and placed it with hers atop the dresser where the
light would be reflected back into the room through the mirror. There
had been no mirrors in the place where Krychek had raped her. She
had no memory of what she had looked like then, battered, drugged,
and used. She watched herself shrug out of her jacket and finger the
top button of her shirt. Her face was placid, her eyes nearly black
with the expansion of her pupils. She blinked at herself, and
wondered for a moment if Mulder saw her as a victim now. A sense
of dread was heavy in her belly.

"Dana."

His voice was surprisingly harsh in the soft candlelight. She shivered
when she saw him come up behind her. In the tremulous candlelight,
his reflection took on a resemblance to Alex Krychek; through the filter
of her neglected memories, she saw his familiar face mutate into a
cold, pale, angular mask of brutality. When his hands closed over her
shoulders, she recoiled. Trapped between his body and the dresser,
she could only turn in place and push against his chest.

Mulder caught her arms before she could unleash the reservoir of fear
and fury that she had banked for so long.

"Let go of me," she hissed.

"No."

Their training may have been equal, but Mulder was nearly a foot taller
and seventy pounds heavier. While it was easy for him to still the
thrashing of her body, he did not know where to begin to ease her
mind.

"What is it, Scully?"

"You can't do this to me," she said, tears spilling over her cheeks.

"Do what, Scully? I don't --"

"Let me go," she panted, pushing against his chest.

"Not until you tell me what's going on," he insisted.

He wrapped his arms around her waist, lifted her a few inches off the
floor, and holding her in this fashion carried her to the bed.

"Now sit," he demanded. "Talk to me."

As soon as he released her, she sprang away from the bed and tried to
duck around him. Mulder easily caught her. He crouched so that he
could see into her eyes, and what he found there nearly broke his
heart.

"You think I want to rape you too," he murmured.

"Let go, let go, let go," she keened, flailing against him.

Mulder worried that if he freed her she might flee, or pull her gun on
him. Simultaneously he feared that if he continued to restrain her, she
would continue to misunderstand his intentions.

But Dana decided for them both when she succumbed to the hot wave
of grief that had been pressing against her since Mulder's outburst in
the woods. Her head dropped forward, coming to rest against his
sternum, and her tears poured across his chest as she wheezed out a
high-pitched sob that was as painful to hear as it was to emit.

The sobs came again, and again, as she sank to the floor at his feet.
She crouched there, motionless except for the occasional tremor that
ran through her small body whenever the sobs came. Mulder knelt
beside her and waited. He felt vulnerable in his nakedness, but would
not leave her to find his clothes. When, after a few minutes, she
willingly nestled in the shelter of his arms, he was glad he had stayed.

The warm dampness of her tears rapidly cooled on his shoulder, and
he shivered.

"Dana, you're safe with me." His lips were close to her ear; her hair
lifted with his breath. "You're safe, I promise."

She groaned. Words could not stand up in the storm that poured from
her. Mulder rocked her for what seemed like hours, until at last she
was quiet.

"Shower," she whispered.

"Okay."

He helped her to her feet and began unbuttoning her blouse.
Cautiously checking her reaction to every movement, he tugged the
shirttails from the waistband of her khaki twill trousers, then undid the
last two buttons. His fingers made short work of her belt, flicking the
braided brown leather through its silver buckle like a tongue. The
silent zipper of her trousers came next. He released the soft wool
fabric and the garment fell to the floor accompanied only by the rustle
of taffeta lining. By the time he pushed the blouse from her shoulders,
her breathing had regulated and she was no longer trembling.

Her hands trailed down his forearms, but she did not meet his gaze.
Mulder watched her pale fingers spread across his wrists and clasp his
hands.

"Mulder, I...I thought I saw..."

"It's okay, sweetheart. You don't have to explain. I confused us both
today." He gently squeezed her fingers. "That fit of mine out in the
woods was a chunk of self-indulgence that should never've seen the
light of day."

She lifted a hand to wipe her eyes, then reclaimed his hand.

"I want to put that behind us," she said, her voice thick with the tears
she had shed. "But I have to tell you this: don't ever, ever, speak to
me that way again. You can be angry at me, you can argue with me,
you can challenge me. That's fine. But don't ever call me a bitch
again."

He nodded once.

"What did he call you." It was a dull statement more than a query.

She turned her red-streaked face up and showed him the full breadth of
her pain. Her upper lip twitched slightly as she recalled the honest
answer to his question.

"He called me every name in the book," she replied, her brow
furrowing as she struggled not to yield again to her tears.

"Tell me what he did to you," Mulder said, cupping her jaw in his
palm.

She shook her head once.

"No. Don't ask me to do that. Just -- be with me. All that doesn't
matter now, anyway."

Although he did not agree, Mulder exhaled a soft assent and released
her.

Dana stepped out of the pile of clothes that had accumulated around her
feet, turned to walk toward the bathroom, and then paused to look at
him over her shoulder.

"Coming?"

Mulder saw then, for the first time, the demure white silk teddy she
wore. Arabesques and roses of sheer white fabric had been
strategically placed to reveal the full curves of her breasts. The cut of
the teddy was loose and old-fashioned, something that could only be
worn to sleep in or under the full-legged trousers that she favored
when off-duty. It was so perfectly feminine, almost bridal, that seeing
it on her made Mulder feel, in spite of the emotional turmoil that had
barely passed, like a romantic hero.

The ghost of a smile twitched across his mouth.

"Scully, you sure?"

"It's just a shower, Mulder," she said evenly. "I'll let you know when
I'm ready for more, okay?"

"Yes ma'am," he replied, taking her outstretched hand.

End The Cry of the Truth 10/22


The Cry of the Truth, 11a/22
Between the Stars
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
*Rating: NC-17 (graphic descriptions of sexual activity, language)
Category: S, A, R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary:  Mulder wants to talk about serious matters, but Scully distracts
him in the best possible way.

Please post to ATXC and Gossamer.  Thanks.

See part 01 for the obligatory Disclaimer.

*WARNING: I just revised this section and realized that it is quite
graphic, even for me. If you're offended by that sort of thing, and
certainly if you're younger than 17, please don't read this; you might
prefer a nice, tasteful book of short stories by Peter Taylor, William
Maxwell, or  Elizabeth Spencer.  Also, there are several fairly significant
references to "The Actor" in this chapter; maybe this would be a good time
for me to plug it to those of you who still haven't read it!


     ...This word
     is far too short for us, it has only
     four letters, too sparse
     to fill those deep bare
     vacuums between the stars
     that press on us with their deafness.
     It's not love we don't wish
     to fall into, but that fear.
                         --Margaret Atwood

When Scully emerged from the bathroom, long after Mulder has
completed his personal maintenance, she had dried her hair and
dressed in a pair of pale green silk pajamas she had bought during her
sojourn in Boston.  She wore her old steel-framed spectacles.  The
swelling and redness brought on by her tears had improved greatly
with the cool shower and a light coat of elderflower eye cream.  She
felt emotionally drained but physically renewed.

She padded out to the living room and through the kitchen to the small
laundry room, where she deposited the towels and other items she had
brought from her room.  In the kitchen, she took two wineglasses
down from the cabinet and opened a bottle of cabernet.  As she
poured, she it dawned on her that she was alone.

"Mulder?"

She returned to the living room, looking for signs of him. His weapon
and holster rested on the foyer table where he had left them last night.
His duffel bag still sat on the floor next to the front door.  She knelt
next to the bag and rummaged through it.  Tee shirts, jeans, boxers,
socks, a small box of condoms (how gentlemanly, she thought with a
smile), a pair of black nubuck Cole Haan boots (size 12, she noted).
In the side pocket of the bag, she found the letter she had given him,
complete with a few tear stains.  She did not reread it.

Dana took one of the heather gray tee shirts and went to the sofa.  She
pulled her pajama top over her head, then slipped on Mulder's shirt,
and for the first time in hours, a smile spread over her face.  The
cotton was soft and caressing; the shirt floated around her body like a
warm cloud.  But best of all, it smelled like him, tangy and sweet, like
his skin, and a little dusty, like their office.

It was this way that Mulder found her, smiling and sipping wine in his
gray tee shirt and her pale green silk pajama pants.  He nearly dropped
the bags of food he was carrying.

"Scully?"

"Oh, you went for food."  She took a bag from him and put it on the
kitchen table to tear it open.  "Mmm.  Beef with oranges?  I'm
starved."

Mulder shed his jacket and took her in his arms.

"You're wearing my shirt," he said in a husky voice.

"Do you mind?"  She twined her arms around him and took a deep
breath of the undiluted Mulder.  "You smell wonderful."

"No, I don't mind. I just -- are you really hungry?  Because I -- seeing
you in that makes it hard to think about beef with oranges...."

His hands cupped her ass through the silk pants, pressing her against
him.  The delayed desire from the afternoon was back with a
vengeance.

"I really do need to eat," she said, kissing his chin.  "Protein,
carbohydrates --"

"I can give you what you need," he said with a devilish smile.

"Oh, I don't doubt that.  You brought me this lovely food, didn't you?
Go on, sit down and have some wine.  I'm not going anywhere."

Reluctantly he accepted a plate of food and a glass of wine.  He
watched as she sat in the chair to his right and began to eat.

"You know, Mulder, we still haven't decided how this is going to
work," she said, spearing a piece of beef on her fork.

"Well, the basic principal is very simple, Scully," he began.  "When
the mommy FBI agent and the daddy FBI agent love each other very,
very much, they decide to take off all their clothes and make each other
feel really, really --"

"Stop it," she said with a snort.  "You know what I mean.  Do we
keep this a secret, or what?"

He sobered quickly.

"A secret?  Do you really think we have any secrets anymore?"

She inclined her head, weighing his question.

"I say we go ahead and tell Skinner," she said.  "That way there'll be
no time or energy wasted in trying to keep it from him.  He needs to
know, anyway, in case the smoker tries to play us as a trump card."

"Like that's something new," Mulder said sarcastically.

"I mean us as a -- a couple...Fox," she said with a shy, sweet smile
that made him melt all over again.

"A couple," he said softly.  It was a word he had never applied to
himself.  "I like that.  I like it a lot."

His words had brought a thick, sweet glaze of contentment over her
troubled heart.  She sipped her wine happily.

"So we tell Skinner.  What about your mom?" Mulder asked between
bites.

"She stopped asking about a year ago, so it'll be a total surprise to
her," Dana said.

"Oh, don't be so sure of that," Mulder said.  "When I saw her at
Christmas -- while you were in England with Stuart -- she invited me
to lunch and tried to talk me into going over there and bringing you
back."

"I know.  She and I had a real falling out over that," Scully revealed.
"She didn't realize who the other man was at that point."

"And when you told her?"

Scully smiled down at her plate.

"Then she asked me why the hell I didn't marry him," she admitted.

Mulder chuckled.  Apparently Mrs. Scully reserved her very best traits
for him, while her children received the brunt of her less charming
qualities.

"So are you sorry you didn't marry him?" he asked, unable to resist
the opening.

"What do you think?" she shot back.

He watched her watching him and blushed under the scrutiny.

"I think it's a stupid question," he said.  "You gonna eat that?"

She glanced down at her half-empty plate.

"Maybe later," she said.

"Good answer."

Mulder gathered up the plates and took them to the kitchen.  When he
returned, she was sitting erectly in the ladder-back chair, sipping her
wine, green silk legs crossed at the knees.

"I want to talk," he said, tugging his chair across the floor until they
sat knee to knee.

She eyed him suspiciously.  Mulder tended to turn conflicts into
opportunities for humor or investigation.  He rarely met anything of
emotional significance head-on, or so she had thought until his love
for her came to light.  Lately he had surprised her more and more with
his open heart.  She was beginning to realize that he was much better
at discussing his feelings than she was; perhaps he thought he had less
to lose.

The candles gutted, releasing plumes of smoke that twisted and
climbed their way up to the ceiling.  In the distance, an ambulance
screamed down Connecticut Avenue.  A car alarm rang on Macomb
Street.  Her upstairs neighbors were trying unsuccessfully to tape a
Van Morrison CD, repeatedly starting and stopping "Brown-Eyed
Girl". Just another Saturday night in Cleveland Park.

Mulder touched her knees tentatively, rolling his fingertips over the
silk, tracing the boundaries of her patellae like a blind man in a
museum of Greek antiquities.  The ridge of her quadricep was just
visible through the fabric, and then the profile of her body disappeared
under the generous drape of his tee shirt.  He wished desperately that it
was four sizes smaller.  He wanted to see her nipples pressing out
against the cotton, knowing that he would wear the same shirt
tomorrow, or the next day, and remember with shivering clarity the
feeling of cupping her breasts in his palms.

But a part of Mulder -- the part that had learned in childhood to
anticipate grief before it happened -- continued to fear this new
contentment.  He had developed this habit in childhood, when for a
while the losses and hurts seemed to come daily.  He had taught
himself never to enjoy anything fully; he believed that allowing himself
to feel joy would only increase the pain when it was gone.  And for
most of his life this practice had served him well.  In the past few
years, however, he had begun to see that it was no longer working.
Life hurt anyway.

Until now.  Now, the fear of pain had become secondary to the
anticipation of her smile.

"Scully," he murmured, calling her by the name his heart knew best.

"I know," she said softly.

He laughed a little at his own flair for drama, drawing out the moment
as he had; for a no-nonsense scientist, she had tolerated it well for a
long time.

"I love you," he said.

He was blushing, and this in itself embarrassed him. He bowed his
head for a moment and tried to collect himself.  When he met her eyes
again, she was waiting patiently.

"I love you, and I don't want what happened this afternoon to happen
again," he said.

Her brow went up; doubts were forming in her mind, and Mulder saw
them coming.

"I know there are no guarantees," he continued, "But I want to do
everything I can to -- to neutralize those memories, so they can't hurt
you, or us, anymore."

She blinked at him from behind her spectacles.

"Mulder, they didn't really hurt until today," she said.

He flinched.

"You're saying that I dredged them up, from where they would've
stayed safely buried until you died?  Scully, there's no such thing as
'safely buried'.  It's like toxic waste, this stuff Krychek left in your
mind.  You have to get it out."

"No, I don't," she said slowly, her voice a little squeaky with the
effort required to keep calm.

"I think you do," Mulder said gently.  He stroked her thigh with a
warm palm, his hand sliding easily over the silk, the caress as light
and repetitive as breathing.  "The sooner the better, sweetheart."

"Mulder, I told you -- I had a few nightmares when I was with Stuart,
and then that little flashback this afternoon...but that's just because I'm
not used to -- to sex, and to having a man around...that's all."  She
shrugged dismissively.  "I'll adjust."

"Adjust, Scully?"  His eyes conveyed a dark urgency.  She did not
seem to understand what he was getting at.  "Adjusting's not good
enough.  And it's not like you."

"What do you mean, not like me?"  She smiled.  "I adjust to all sorts
of things.  Working with you, for one --"

Mulder was not laughing.

"Scully.  Look at the evidence. This stuff haunts you.  Get rid of it,
once and for all.  Talk it out.  To me, or to a therapist, whoever.  But
don't keep it in your head for another day.  As long as you do,
Krychek owns a piece of you."  Then the word came back to him.
Couple. He was one half of a whole now.  "A piece of us,
sweetheart."

A stinging wave of apprehension was cresting in her chest.  Mulder
was worried about her, and that wasn't allowed.  She had not confided
her secret in him so that he could bear the burden of her experience.
The idea had been to tell him, so that if she had a flashback, he would
already know why and not ask her to explain.  Of course it could never
have been that simple.  But that was the idea, nonetheless.

"Just think about talking to someone," he said conclusively.  "Please."

The wave of fear waned and retreated.  She sighed her relief, as if she
had been holding her breath.  Taking a sip of wine, she swallowed
with some difficulty; at times like this, her throat tended to constrict,
ratcheting up her voice and drawing her shoulders and neck into a tight
chain of agitated muscles.  She took a few deep breaths,
surreptitiously so that he would not see how he had disturbed her, and
then nodded.

Scully cleared her throat.

"Okay," she said at last.  "I'll think about it.  But, in the meantime, I
can prove to you that I'm all right.  Right here, right now.  You
game?"

Mulder released his own sigh of relief.  Resting an elbow on the table,
he cradled his chin in his hand and smiled at her.  His eyes crinkled at
the corners and his lips drew back to reveal his orderly white teeth.

"Game?  What are the implications of that word, Scully?" he posed.

"I meant it in the sense of 'are you willing', but you can take it
however you like," she said, her voice bearing the academic neutrality
with which she typically described forensic evidence.

All the blood in Mulder's body seemed to flood to his reproductive
center when she talked like that. For six years she had aroused him
with her incisive observations about everything from leukocytes to
satellites. Given that, he dreaded the control he would have to muster
on Monday morning when they surveyed their first crime scene
together as lovers.  Well...dread's a strong word, he reflected.  If it
was dread, it was certainly delicious dread.

He licked his lips and leaned across to kiss her.  Her lips pillowed
beneath the pressure of his mouth; when he eased infinitesimally
away, they bloomed again like a lotus flower.  He tried it again, and
got the same result.

He pulled back slightly and stared at her.  Her face was still, her
expression just barely patient.  He could smell the desire coming out of
her pores, and the realization that he had provoked it careened noisily
off the walls of his skull.

"Stand up," he muttered.

With the slightest hesitation, she uncrossed her legs and planted her
feet side by side on the cool wood floor.  She stood slowly and
stepped between his knees.  His hands slid up the outer side of her
thighs and rested on her buttocks, his palms memorizing the womanly
curve of muscle and fat.  This close, he could smell her Dove soap as
well as the newness of her pajamas; they had a crisp shop smell that
spoke of tags made of heavy stock and a hand-painted shopping bag
stuffed with lavender tissue and tied with a cobalt grosgrain ribbon.

Her hands skipped lightly over his shoulders, then smoothed over his
neck, massaging the perpetually tight muscles there before continuing
into his hair and rubbing away the tension in his scalp.  Mulder
resisted the urge to loll his head forward and allow her to continue
until he was asleep.  After only twenty-four hours as her lover, he had
come to discern some touches as expressions of nurturing love and
some as sexual.  She mixed them all together in her lovemaking, and
the result was that he felt utterly and completely loved as both the boy
who had been neglected and the man who was raging with lust.

He whimpered as he looked up at her, his eyes heavy with lust.  She
smiled and bent to kiss his forehead.  She pressed her lips against each
eyelid, then along the bridge of his nose, and finally to his lips.

"You..."  His dry throat somehow misdirected his voice.  He
swallowed and tried again.  "You made love with Stuart on this table."

She straightened.  Frowning, she glanced at the innocent pine plank
table and then back at him.

"How did you..."

"The night before Thanksgiving," he said, still stroking her hips.  "I
came by to see you, to meet him, actually...I started to let myself in,
but then I heard something on the other side of the door."  Mulder
looked at the table as if he could see the scene replayed on its surface.
"I knocked, and you let me in.  I could feel the -- tension -- in the
room.  Stuart was sitting here, looking very pleased with himself.
And you were red as a beet."

Scully made a noise deep in her throat that was half-growl, half-moan,
as the memory flickered across her mind, leaving an extra flush of
arousal in its wake.

"Red as a beet, huh?" she said.

Mulder nodded.  He was grinning, now that he could see that while he
had lost that battle, months ago, he had most certainly won the war for
Dana's heart.

"Your pajamas were buttoned wrong, and you had a hickey the size of
Connecticut on your shoulder."  He noted the pink tone of her neck
and cheeks.  "You're not embarrassed, are you?  You shouldn't be.  I
had always imagined you were hot, but that just --"

"Hot?" she cried.  "Hot?  Are you adopting Frohike's terminology
now?"

"You and your words, Scully," he laughed.  He was hooking his
fingers under the waistband of her pajamas.  "It's a word that in this
case implies that you have a rather voracious sexual appetite and an
open mind about satisfying it."

"In that case, I think I like it," she said in a low voice.

Her gaze was, on first appraisal, sleepy, but Mulder quickly inferred
that arousal was making her dreamy.  He smoothed the pants down
over her hips; the silk disappeared like a cloud, leaving nothing
between him and her bareness but his own tee shirt.  And for now that
had to stay.

"Have a seat, Scully," he said gruffly.

End The Cry of the Truth 11a/22


The Cry of the Truth, 11b/22
Between the Stars
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
*Rating: NC-17 (graphic descriptions of sexual activity, language)
Category: S, A, R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary: Mulder wants to talk about serious matters, but Scully distracts
him in the best possible way.

Please forward to ATXC and Gossamer. Thanks.

See part 01 for the obligatory Disclaimer.

*Yes, it's graphic! Turn back if you're not interested in biology.
See 11a for the full warning and the poetry header.


When she had returned to her chair, Mulder walked out of the circle of
candlelight that illuminated the dining area. She could only hear the
occasional rasp of denim and jersey as he undressed in the darkness.
Upstairs, the recording session had progressed to "Warm Love". A
little dog barked in the courtyard behind the building as its owner
cooed ineffectual palliatives. The wind was picking up, buffeting
against the new storm windows that had been installed during the
renovation of the building when it went co-op. Just the sound of it
made Dana shiver.

She tugged the tee shirt over her knees like a little girl waiting her turn
at a swim meet.

"Pour me some wine, will you," came Mulder's voice.

"Are you coming back?" she asked, reaching for the bottle.

"I'm right here," he said, stepping back into the light.

She gave him a brilliant smile. He was as naked as the day of his
birth, gloriously tall and strong, a walking example of why she had
gone to all the trouble to study medicine in the first place.

"What're you smiling at, little girl?" he asked coyly, cupping her chin
in one of his big hands.

"You. You're a perfect example of the human animal," she said.

"Am I?" He sipped his wine. "How's that?"

"All your parts are in perfect working order," she said. "For instance:
your lips keep you from dribbling the wine when you take it from the
glass. Your tongue allows you to taste it and propel it --"

"Wait a minute. Let's stop with the tongue."

He knelt gracefully on the floor before her chair. Only then did she
see that he had brought a small down cushion from the couch; it
functioned much like the kneelers her mother was forever
embroidering for the sanctuary at St. Michael's. Scully had rarely seen
such a purposeful glint in his eyes. She clutched at the sides of the
hard wooden seat as he wrapped his hands around her thighs and
began kissing the pale skin that led up to the apex of her legs.

"I wanted to tell you how much I love you -- again." He kissed the
tell-tale birthmark that lurked in the fine sprinkling of cinnamon hair at
the very top of her inner thigh. "I wanted to tell you that our first --
coupling -- was more than I had even hoped it would be."

"Coupling?"

"Umm." He nudged her with his nose, and gently pushed her legs
farther apart with his hands. "Scully, I have a theory."

"Oh?" she said, nearly choking on the syllable.

"I've been thinking about it on and off all day, trying to name your
taste. Shall I share my hypothesis with you, before we test it?"

"If you must," she said hoarsely, her hands smoothing the shirt across
her belly.

"Okay. Here goes. Camenbert. Not the overt smokiness of brie. No,
you're much too subtle for brie." He pursed his lips together
thoughtfully. "Warm bread, when the bakery first opens early in the
morning. And the cabernet -- just a little acidic. I think that about
sums it up."

He looked for her response. All she could do was nod. She hadn't
realized that he had such a fondness for Continental picnics.

He broke into a smile, lowered his head momentarily, and shook it
with amusement at his own folly.

"You okay, Scully?"

This time when he looked she was smiling, close to laughing.

He kissed the birthmark again, and then nuzzled his way through the
plentiful hair to the slippery, inflamed district he had visited in the
bright morning light. He dipped his tongue into the vault, and licked
up all the sweetness he found there. He groaned his approval of the
flavor and went back for more.

One hand released her thigh and slipped around the outer side of her

leg, then down again. He curled his fingers into his palm, and
brushed the hair with the surface of his nails. She shivered at his
touch.

He pulled back from her slightly and watched with reverent eyes as his
left hand traced the graceful shapes that reminded him of one of
Georgia O'Keefe's paintings. He staked a silent claim that this
intense, secret beauty henceforth should be known only by him -- no
matter who else had loved her in the past. He would work to be sure
that no one else would see it in the future. He would do everything in
his power to ensure that she trusted him, and only him, with this
secret.

Scully's fingers brushed through his hair. She was concerned by the
concentrated frown on his face. His eyes flickered up to her face,
transmitting the familiar silent message in a language formed through
years of collaboration -- we're all right; don't worry; you can trust me.

Mulder suckled at the source of the newly-discovered mystery of his
old friend. He tugged gently, then more determinedly, at the folds
protecting her clitoris. He scraped her with his teeth, then licked over
the spot with his tongue. He heard the blood rushing in his ears as his
own arousal mounted. It wasn't the act alone that propelled him so
intensely, but the idea that Scully was truly his, and that he was hers.

In the distance, as if from across a woodland acre, he heard her calling
his name. He felt her small hands on his head, pulling him to her,
grinding his mouth against her softness until he was gasping, praying
that he could hold his breath long enough.

He could, and did. Scully roared her response. He was confused,
trying to catch his breath, and for a split second she seemed to rise up
off the seat. Then, in a flash, her hands were on his cheeks, and she
was kissing him madly, savoring the taste of herself in his mouth.
She pulled him up as she stood, and in his stupor, Mulder did what
her actions demanded.

She pushed him back into the chair he had occupied so recently, and
then, clutching his shoulders, straddled him. She was about to lower
herself upon him when he found his voice.

"Scully," he croaked, clutching at her waist.

"I *want* you, Mulder," she insisted, almost irritably.

"I know," he whispered, lifting her easily as he stood. He put her on
her feet in front on him.

She hung her head. A hand slipped under the fall of flame hair to
press cover her eyes. He didn't --

"Oh, no..." she moaned.

"Scully? Cheer up. It's just this stupid hip," he said, placing a warm
hand on her shoulder. "You fuck me in that chair and I won't walk for
a week."

She burst out laughing and reached out to vigorously rub the affected
hip. Then, still chuckling quietly, she took a candle and led him back
to her bedroom.

The room was once again in shadows, but the darkness had lost in
menace. Mulder embraced her from behind as she paused to place the
candle on the table next to the bed. His hands roamed over her belly
and cupped her breasts under the soft cotton shirt.

"Camenbert?" she said, squirming away from him to recline on the
bed.

The expression of lascivious hilarity on his face darkened.

"And Cabernet," he replied. "Didn't I tell you about that formative
summer I spent in France?"

"No, you didn't, but I have a feeling that I'm enjoying the benefits of
it even as we speak," she said, reaching for him.

They lay face to face, hands roaming, tasting each other all over again,
until Dana's hand closed over his hip and she pushed him over onto
his back. She climbed onto him and continued to kiss him.

"Mulder," she eventually gasped.

"Fox," he said.

She smiled slyly from behind the copper curtain of her hair. Mulder
smiled back, and for the first time since that morning, the mischief was
back in his eyes.

"Fox, I --"

"Go ahead," he said, grinning wildly.

Her feet tucked under his thighs as she straddled his pelvis. Mulder
felt a further tightening in his balls as she guided his cock all around
her cunt, rubbing the head against her clitoris, then allowing him just
inside her vault, then back up to her clitoris again.

"You're taking me on the tour?" he quipped. "I've seen the sights of
Paris and Rome, but I like this place the best."

"Like it enough to move in?" she asked, panting slightly as her arousal
compounded.

Mulder's hands squeezed her breasts through the tee shirt; he held her
nipples between his forefingers and thumbs for a long moment, the
slowly began to twist. She tilted her head to one side and closed her
eyes.

He murmured to her, and she tugged the shirt over her head and tossed
it away. The effect of this action on her breasts brought a cackle of
happiness from Mulder.

"Looks like it's completely furnished," he said, pinching bare pink
flesh.

"Got a great view," she said breathlessly, circling her hips
counterclockwise to her hand's manipulation of his cock.

"On a clear day you can see...uh..." He thrust upward and into her.
"...Forever..."

She dropped down hard, then threw herself forward to kiss him. Her
lips tugged at his as her hands plundered his hair. She kissed him
with a messy passion that he had not experienced before; this time she
seemed especially hungry for him, for the spirit behind the sex. She
licked his lips and then went back into the recesses of his mouth for
more of his essence -- the rich saltiness of sunflower seeds and the
brine of tears he had swallowed rather than shed in front of her. The
buttery taste was there as well. Smooth and thick on her tastebuds, it
was a taste she had heretofore associated with a loneliness that was
paired with shame. But after tonight, she could not get enough of it.

She smiled wickedly against his chin as his words came back to her: "I
want to swallow every drop that you give me, and pray that I can taste
you on my lips for days afterwards."

Mulder watched with wonder as Dana rose up tall above him, her
spine erect, her breasts bobbing rhythmically. She managed to flick
the head of his cock against her cervix with each upstroke, and then
drag her clitoris against his mons with every downstroke. Her hand
clutched at the spot where their bodies joined; she rubbed herself
gently at first, then more intently, a little frown of concentration
creasing her pale forehead. Mulder was fascinated by the coordination
that allowed her to maintain three separate rhythms simultaneously. It
occurred to him that she must be a marvelous dancer.

He closed his eyes tightly and focused on the mental picture of his
cock buried deeply in the sleekness of her, pushing, pulsing,
demanding, accepting the fluid that she produced to ease the way for
them both. For a moment he imagined one of his fleet-tailed sperm
finding its way beyond the gates of her cervix, burrowing into one of
her precious eggs and establishing the perfect combination of all that
was best about the two of them. With a flash, Mulder realized that he
wanted it to be true.

And then she stopped. Mulder's eyes flew open and his mouth moved
to utter a protest.

"Help," she breathed with an apologetic smile. "Tired."

A lambent grin spread across his face. He opened his arms and she
pitched forward with a grunt. For a long moment he simply held her,
allowing her to catch her breath. He rubbed her back and kissed her
forehead.

"You haven't been running, have you, sweetheart," he observed.

"No. Swimming. Not quite the same," she panted.

"So how are you going to hold out to catch a federal criminal if you
can't last long enough to fuck me blind?"

"Mulder, everyone knows you're the brawn and I'm the brains," she
said, gently biting his neck. "And what kind of expression is that?
Fuck me blind. God, you're such a romantic fool, aren't you."

"Actually I am," he said, pushing her hair back from her face and
delicately kissing her cheek. "I love you madly, you know."

"Are you sure?"

"Mmm. I think I found out today how much," he said, gently rolling
them onto their sides, as if they were about to execute a particularly
lewd dance.

 "Fox," she said, her voice gravelly with the constant, drying rush of
breath over her vocal chords.

"Dana," he said, grinning like a fool.

"What'd you say -- fuck me bald --?"

"Fuck me *blind*," he said, laughing even more.

Now she was laughing too, so much so that she had to pause her part
in the dance and flip over onto her back. Mulder followed. He
hovered over her for a moment, taking in the glory of her arousal. Her
hair was wild, shooting across the pillow like the plumes of a
firecracker. He brushed a few strands away from her eyes, then
cupped her face between his hands and kissed her. When he felt her
small hand close around his overheated cock and guide him gently
back into her body, he smiled his relief and thrust upward.

"Oh, Scully. I missed you."

"It was only thirty seconds, Mulder."

"Thirty-seven years, sweetheart," he whispered in her ear.

She moaned then, well aware of his meaning. She felt it, too; she had
waited her entire life to feel him in her arms, in her body, loving her
back. It did not erase the sense of need, but made satisfying it
possible. He was a specific answer to the vague question that had
haunted her for so long.

One at a time, his hands found her knees and lifted her legs up over his
shoulders.

"Too hard?" he gasped.

"Yes, but don't stop," she replied, clutching the sheets in her fists.

Mulder abandoned himself in the task and thundered away, at times
wincing with the force of the contact, his balls slapping against her upper
thighs, their pubic bones grinding together momentarily at the apogee of
each thrust. She was weeping now -- whether with pain or joy, Mulder
could not determine.

"Don't *stop*, Mulder," she said through clenched teeth. "Almost --
almost."

He frowned with concentration and tried his best to give her what she
needed.

Then she cried out, a high-pitched, whispery sound that tore straight
through to his heart. She gave him a nod and a tearful smile just as
Mulder felt the bottom drop out of his control. He stiffened and bellowed.
Saw a blur of white, then a flare of copper, then a smile like roses and
pearls, and he knew. His Scully, his sweetheart, had returned from that
cold place where he could not follow, where she was hurt and humiliated
while he sat helpless and impotent. Her arms slid across his back and she
rocked him like an infant, wiping the sweat from his brow and clearing the
hair from his eyes.

When he could move again, Mulder cradled her head in his hands and
kissed her eyelids with the delicacy of a moth contemplating a flame.

"Hey Scully," he said between kisses.

"Hmm," she breathed, her fingers rhythmically caressing his back.

"You want to get married?"

Her hands stopped. She stared at him, agape. Her thought processes
had come to a screeching halt.

Mulder, too, was in shock. Had he really said it out loud?

"Some day, sweetheart," he said, hoping he didn't sound utterly
horrified. He kissed the tip of her nose. "Did I scare you?"

"No. Yes. Are you serious?"

He looked into her face, so familiar and so beautiful to him. It had
dawned on him that since he had first touched her the night before, he
had been thinking of himself as her mate.

"Yeah. I am," he replied quietly. He took a deep breath, preparing for
the inevitable, well-reasoned response that she gave to each and every
one of his theoretical proposals.

But she surprised him, once again.

"Do you remember how I kept that photocopy of your hand, to remind
me of the day that you first told me you loved me?"

"You still have it?" he asked.

"I keep it in a safe place," she said, her fingers cool and comforting at
his temples. "This time between us...this goes there too. In the place
where I keep things I want to be able to call up, large as life, in my
memory."

"So..."

"Maybe some day," she said. "In the meantime..."

"In the meantime, sweetheart?" he prompted, rubbing his cheek
against hers.

"You are...my partner," she said with a tiny shrug, her voice thinned
by emotion.

His reply was soft and simple.

"Yes I am."

End The Cry of the Truth, 11b/22


The Cry of the Truth, 12a/22
So Long Shorty
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: R (language, descriptions of rape)
Category: S, A, R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary: Mulder acts on the strength of his beliefs, and destroys his
relationship with Scully.

Author's Note: Thanks for all the encouraging mail, particularly in the
past few days. Now for the next part.  I should warn you - the story gets
very dark from here on out. You may think you've wandered into a different
story. This is a problem with that I couldn't figure out how to solve, and
is one reason this sequel took seven months to write (well, not full-time;
I do have a life). My excuse is that real life is full of tonal changes.
Mulder and Scully will be showing their flaws, some actively and some
passively. So let me be blantantly insecure and say please be kind!


On Sunday morning, as the clouds from last night's storm were
clearing and the bells of the National Cathedral was announcing the
first Eucharist of the day, Mulder and Scully -- or Fox and Dana, as
they were learning to call each other -- rounded the curve in
Massachusetts Avenue where the gates to the Vice-President's
residence abut to the entrance to the Naval Observatory.

"You holding up okay?" he asked, barely winded. He was keeping a
slow pace to accommodate her shorter legs.

"Oh yeah. Just great," Scully lied.

She mopped her forehead with the stretched-out cuff of her long-
sleeved tee shirt. In spite of the cool March morning, she was hot and
weary after only a couple of miles. Her medical training told her that
something was amiss: this level of fatigue was disproportionate to the
pace and distance of their run. Three months ago she had given up
running regularly because of an old hamstring injury. Since then, she
had been swimming a mile every other day, and walking three miles
on the off days. The weekend of exhilarating sex did not warrant this
exhaustion.

"Do you?" he was saying.

"Do I what?" she panted as they crossed P street.

"Do you think Skinner will fund us for that meeting in Seattle? I could
give a paper on Bureau protocol, or something dull like that, to make it
sound good. Be a great place to make contacts --"

"Seattle? You go," she said, finally giving in to the thudding in her
chest and slowing her pace. "You go...I'd...rather...go to
a...Forensics...meeting..."

Mulder made a U turn and jogged back to her side.

"Scully? You okay?"

"Yeah. I'm fine," she wheezed, pacing on wobbly legs.

Mulder circled her a few times, cooling down, before falling into step
beside her.

"Gonna need CPR? How 'bout mouth-to-mouth? I'm really good at
that," he joked, rubbing the damp spot between her shoulder blades.

"Maybe later," she said, again wiping her face with her sleeve. She
looked around them, at the broad boulevard and imposing Georgian
mansions where armed guards kept watch. "Where -- oh. British
Embassy. Not too far from home. Ready to head back?"

"Sure," he said judiciously. He was ready to run to Maryland, but he
could see that she was not. "We'll walk."

Good, because that's all I can manage, she thought disgustedly as they
began to walk. After ten years of struggling to maintain her
cardiovascular fitness, a two-mile jog had reduced her to jello --
slightly nauseous jello, at that. She turned her face up into the cool
breeze and took a deep breath.

"We have to be careful when we're on the road," Mulder was saying.
"We don't want what happened to Sayers and Marlowe to get us."

"What happened to Sayers and Marlowe?" she asked.

"Blow job in a surveillance vehicle."

"Did the bad guys get away?"

"No. But the audio team got a real earful. It seems he has a certain pet
name for her that nobody --"

"I don't want to hear it, sugarboy," she said in a tone that was more
lewd that sweet.

He laughed, a little hesitantly at first, and then full-heartedly when he
saw that she was joking.

"Where do you pick up this gossip, Mulder?" she asked.

"Oh, here and there. Gym. Firing range. Motor pool. Don't you ever
overhear anything?"

"Yeah, but it's usually about us."

"Oooh? Think it's true?" he asked with a leer.

"It is now," she replied with a smile. They were approaching a square
that was dominated by a statue of Winston Churchill. Nascent croci
and tulips were pushing through the carefully groomed beds at his
feet. The lawn was green and fine-haired, and Scully wanted nothing
more at that moment than to stretch out upon it. "Come on. Let's pay
a visit to Sir Winston."

Once sprawled on the cool grass, staring up at the sky, Scully's
nausea subsided. Mulder seemed none the wiser; he sat at her side,
arms wrapped around his long legs, observing the traffic
contemplatively.

Scully watched the clouds blowing eastward and shivered slightly on
the dew-damp grass. She had awakened in pain that morning. It was
not the treasured ache in her hips and thighs that came from making
love with Mulder late into the night. That she did not consider pain.
Soon after dawn, she had screamed herself out of a nightmare in
which Krychek burst into her apartment and raped her as Mulder
watched, frozen in a beam of white light. Before Mulder was fully
awake, she was in the bathroom, dousing herself with cold water.

The run had been her idea; she needed to get out of the apartment, and
was hoping to distract Mulder from questioning her about the
nightmare.

She covered her eyes with her forearm and slowly exhaled. Just as
she was contemplating sitting up, she felt warm fingers lightly tracing
a line from her elbow to her wrist.

"I haven't made out in a park since...since..." His voice faded as he
tried to remember the date.

"Since your formative summer in France?" she asked, peeking at him
from beneath her arm.

"Has it really been that long? I must be getting old," he said, easing
down beside her. He rested a hand on her belly and leaned over to
kiss her. "Mmm. If I'd known you tasted this good, I would've
kissed you years ago."

"I wish you had," she said softly.

He stroked her cheek lightly until she turned her head toward him, lips
parted in anticipation of his next kiss. But a frown passed over
Mulder's face, and with that hesitation, the moment was lost.

"Scully..." he began.

"Let me guess," she said, sitting up. "Marie-Claire."

"What?"

"The girl in France?" she said uncertainly.

He laughed under his breath as he rose to sit next to her.

"Oh. Her name was Elizabeth, and she was from Scotland, but that's
beside the point." He shook his head, still chortling. "Lot of water
under the bridge since then...Hmm."

He coughed slightly and fidgeted in the grass, trying to order his
thoughts. With Scully's nightmare, he had come to a decision.
Enacting it was going to be more difficult that he had imagined,
however.

"What is it, Mulder?" she asked for the second time.

"There's something I should've told you, Scully," he said, squinting
slightly in the rising sun.

She smiled down at her mud-splattered running shoes and tapped her
toe against his.

"Okay, then. Spill."

Mulder stretched his long legs in the grass and slumped forward a bit. The
muscle at the hinge of his jaw flexed as he struggled to maintain his
emotional equilibrium. He felt as if he were about to jump -- or be pushed
-- off a cliff.

"Dana, when I was in the gulag, in Russia, Krychek...he told me."

"Told you what?" she asked, perplexed.

"He told me all about raping you," Mulder said. Every muscle in his
neck, shoulders, and belly clenched as he recalled Krychek's story, and
the stench of the cell came back to him sickening detail. "He told me about
your body. He told me how he felt about what he was doing to you. He
told me...too much."

She watched him with a cold detachment she usually employed at crime
scenes. His suffering was apparent to her; she had been by his side
through too many harrowing moments not to be able to spot the signs of
his undoing. But today it was not sympathy that she felt.

"Mulder." She said his name tersely, immediately causing him to snap to
attention. She knew he recognized the tone. "If that's true, then why did
you ask me to tell you what he did to me? Which one of us do you
doubt?"

Mulder clutched at his hair, then pushed it away from his face into a
haphazard mess. Eyes glinting coolly at her, he exhaled a harsh sigh of
impatience.

"I don't doubt you, Scully. Not for one minute. And I resent the
question, by the way. I asked you that because -- because I didn't ask you
the first night. I had been flying by the seat of my pants the first night,
and I got lucky. I didn't want to risk reminding you of anything that he
had done to you."

"You know that rape is not a sexual act --"

"Yes, I know that." Now it was his turn to be terse, and he regretted the
hard edge of his words as soon as they left his mouth. A chasm was
forming between them, and he was unsure of how to stop it. Instinctively
he reached for her. When she recoiled from him, his heart dropped into
his stomach. "Sweetheart. Please don't be angry at me. I just --"

"You should've told me as soon as you came back. Or at least as soon as
the case was wrapped up."

A truck rattled by, and they were momentarily engulfed in a cloud of diesel
exhaust. Mulder coughed again.

"I --" he began.

"You were putting it off, weren't you." She scrambled to her feet and
paced back and forth on the grass. Her face wore the cool, impassive
mask with which she had met his many wild theories. "You were trying to
decide if you could deal with changing our relationship, once you knew
that I was a rape victim instead of your reliable old low-maintenance
Scully. You have a right to your choices, Mulder. I just wish you had
told me what was on your mind."

"Survivor, Scully. Rape *survivor*. And it wasn't *on* my mind. Not
in that sense," he insisted. He remained seated in the grass, watching as
she strode like a sandpiper at the water's edge. "I told you the truth. All I
wanted was to get home to you and put my arms around you and never let
go."

When she paused in front of him, he saw that a faint sheen of sweat had
arisen on her forehead. In spite of the tension of the moment, Mulder
wanted to kiss it away with a slow caress of his tongue.

"So what was that all about in the woods yesterday?" she demanded.
"Explain that to me."

He blinked at her for a moment, sensing that the question had many
implications.

"It just hit me, Scully. In the quiet, out of the city, with you next to
me...I
had just learned your body...you're so small and fragile and..." He saw
irritation rise in her face, and held up his hands in surrender. "All right.
I'm sorry, but when I'm in bed with you, I think of you that way. Small
and fragile and womanly. So sue me."

She glared at him.

"Wait a minute." He held up a hand to stop her tirade. "Let me finish. I
didn't say that you were powerless, or ineffectual, or weak. On the
contrary, it's the combination of your strength and your femininity..."

"The woods, Mulder?" she prompted, her voice low and hard.

"Right." He scrubbed his hands over his face, then pulled his knees back
to his chest and circled his legs with his arms. "I was angry because you
had lied to me all those years. I wanted to -- to strike out, to make it not
be true, to break the spell...I dunno, Dana. It's hard to explain. But I'm
sorry for taking it out on you. You didn't deserve that."

She surveyed him for a long moment. He looked as if he were awaiting a
death sentence.

"So you have your own lies of omission," she said quietly.

Mulder's brow twitched. That was pure, unadulterated Scully -- calling
him on his own folly.

"Yeah. I guess I do."

For a moment she considered asking him if there was anything else he'd
been keeping from her. But because she wasn't entirely sure she wanted
to know, she skipped that question in favor of another.

"In Russia, when he told you this story, did you believe him?" she asked.

"No. Absolutely not. I only began to suspect that there might be some
truth to it after our meeting with Delia Forrest. You seemed disturbed by
her story. And then...and then you seemed fine. I wasn't sure what to
make of it." Mulder closed his eyes for a moment, and saw the picture
that Krychek had painted with his words. He quickly opened his eyes
again to see her standing above him, still somewhat angry, but with him
nonetheless. "If you really want to know...of course you do. Being
there, listening to his bullshit, helped me clarify what I wanted when I
came home. If I came home."

She stilled, hands on her waist, and peered down at him.

"Why are you telling me this now?"

He bowed his head out of respect for the fairness of the question.

"That nightmare this morning," he said. "I was in it, wasn't I?"

Dana tilted her face toward the statue of the late Prime Minister. He leaned
on his bronze cane and nursed his bronze cigar; the smug expression on
his cherubic face seemed to be reminding her to keep a stiff upper lip. As
if she needed to be reminded. Bastard.

"How often does it happen?" he asked.

"Not...often," she replied.

Knees popping like firecrackers, Mulder got to his feet. He walked over
to the statue and rested a foot on its pedestal, then leaned into a hamstring
stretch. He changed feet and stretched the other leg as she watched.

"You know, Scully, 'denial' is a term that has been grossly overused by
the paperback psychologists. I know what a stickler you are for correct
terminology, but in this case, I'm afraid the cheap word is the right word."

"Are you saying I'm in a state of denial about having been raped?"

"About the entire abduction," he said. "The rape -- the rapes are perhaps
the most violent element of the experience, therefore the most difficult to
repress."

"Jesus, Mulder. I don't want to talk about this," she said.

"I know you don't. But we have to go back to work tomorrow," he said.

"You expect to work out all the details of our relationship in a weekend?"
she shot back.

"No." He extended his hand, and for a long moment she stared at it with
contempt. At last she took it. "It scares me when I'm in a nightmare that
makes you scream like that."

She tried to smile.

"Most of the dreams I have about you are really good," she said,
squeezing his hand. "Want to hear one?"

He wrapped his long arms around her and hugged her like a bear.
Grunting affectionately, he kissed the crown of her head and then released
her.

"Okay. But let's walk with the traffic. I have a feeling that I'm going to
have a very obvious reaction to what you're about to tell me."

End The Cry of the Truth, 12a/22



The Cry of the Truth, 12b/22
So Long Shorty
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: R (language, descriptions of rape)
Category: S, A, R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary: Mulder acts on the strength of his beliefs, and destroys his
relationship with Scully.

Please forward to ATXC and Gossamer. Thanks.

See part 01 for the Disclaimer!


   Certainty, fidelity
   On the stroke of midnight pass
   Like vibrations of a bell
              -- W.H. Auden


Late in the afternoon, Mulder's cell phone awakened them from a nap. A
Russian contact he had been cultivating since his return from Tunguska
had arranged a meeting with an emigre astrophysicist at the Vietnam War
Memorial. Mulder got the details and then curled up with Scully for
another hour of sleepy conversation and intermittent dozing.

"We're like animals," Mulder said after dinner, spooning ice cream into
her mouth. "Sleeping, fucking, eating, grooming, fucking."

"You already listed that one," she pointed out.

"I mentioned it twice because it's my favorite part of being an animal," he
said.

"Oh, it's just the blush of first love," she said, popping a raspberry into
his mouth. "It'll wear off."

"You think?" He leered at her and offered another spoonful of ice cream.
He loved the way she closed her lips around the cream, sliding it off the
spoon and into her mouth, all the while keeping her eyes shut so that she
could give herself over to absolute enjoyment of the experience. "Oh, I
hope not. I like being an animal."

"Stick with what works, Mulder," she said, licking away a trace of ice
cream that lingered at the corner of her mouth. "You want to go home and
get changed? I'll meet you at the Wall in a little while."

"You're trying to get rid of me," he pouted. "You're just like all the
others. You use me as your sex slave, you tell me you love me, but when
Sunday night rolls around, it's so long shorty."

"So long shorty?"

She cocked her eyebrow at him, and he dissolved into giggles.

"If they've been calling you shorty, Mulder, you've been hanging out with
a myopic crowd."

"Flattery will get you everywhere, my sweetheart," he said, kissing her
cheek.

He took their dishes into the kitchen, rinsed them, and loaded the
dishwasher. When he returned, Scully was smiling her approval.

"Thanks. You're a nice boy."

"Be sure to tell my mom," he said, ruffling her hair. "I'm going now.
Bundle up, sweetheart. I won't be able to keep you warm out there."

XXXXXXXXXX

The cool, damp morning had progressed into a rainy, cold afternoon --
hence the nap before the fire with Mulder -- and the afternoon had turned
into a misty, bone-chilling night. As she parked her car next to his
Explorer on Constitution Avenue, she called up the memory of lying in his
arms, safe and warm at home, in the hope that it might keep her warm a
little longer. Then, gathering her black balmacaan coat around her, she
slipped out of her car.

Mulder fidgeted in his seat. After a weekend spent naked in bed with
Scully, he could barely tolerate the constriction of his admittedly baggy
suit. If he had fallen for any other woman, he might've worried about
going soft, but he knew that Scully probably felt the same way about
being back in her work clothes and would keep them both from becoming
complacent.

She was like that about most things. Never one to take the easy way
around, through, or out of anything, she hated it when he tried to excuse
himself from the necessary evils of life, such as following Bureau
protocol. Mulder attributed this to her military upbringing. The United
States Navy, personified by old Bill Scully, had imbued Dana with many
admirable traits. Mulder suspected that Captain Scully was also
responsible, at least in part, for her few maddening habits as well.

Remembering her abduction was probably the only challenge Dana had
ever spurned. Her refusal to delve further into the matter had always been
hard for Mulder to accept, but over the years he had remained silent about
his concern. Although he had studied enough abduction case histories to
know with considerable authority that emotional fallout was inevitable, he
never spoke of it to Scully. His interference would not have been
tolerated.

Now, however, things were different. Throughout the weekend Mulder
had struggled with the matter, and he had finally come to a conclusion. He
would no longer allow her to cloak her pain in Navy-brat stoicism. Her
memories of the abduction, including the rape, had to be reclaimed and
processed.

Mulder's introspection was disturbed by the hollow sound of her hand on
the passenger door. She clambered into the Explorer, bringing a blast of
cold air in with her.

"I wore my warmest suit," she said. "But I'm still freezing. Think there's
a conspiracy afoot to suppress spring indefinitely?"

Mulder stared out at the Washington Monument, studiously avoiding her
brilliant smile. It had taken him all day to get his resolve up, and he didn't
want it spiraling away in a warm, slimy jet of lust. Later for that.

"Scully, I want you to undergo hypnosis," he said.

She gaped at him, or at what she could see of him, in the darkness.

"What?"

"Hypnotic regression, to get back your memories about the abduction," he
said gruffly, fumbling in the back seat for his knapsack.

She watched him for a moment, half expecting him to burst out laughing.
But his face was set in stern lines that did not flatter him.

"Mulder, what're you talking about?"

He pulled his binoculars out of the knapsack and trained them on the
illuminated facade of Arlington House on the hill across the river. At night
the white grave markers were less apparent, and he could almost imagine
that it was just a beautiful old mansion.

"I feel certain about this, Scully," he said, turning in his seat to face her.
"We have to make sense of what was done to you, once and for all, before
these resurfacing memories hurt you any more."

She opened her mouth as if to speak, and then closed it again, smiling
faintly with disgust and disbelief. The usual Spooky Mulder was back
from his vacation, apparently.

"You know I don't believe in hypnosis," she said.

"Yeah, I know, but it's been proven to be helpful in patients with post-
traumatic dissociative disorder." He spoke with the conviction with which
he defended all his strange beliefs to her. "You have a classic constellation
of symptoms -- the nightmares, the flashbacks, the --"

"That's crap, Mulder. I didn't have any problems with this until
yesterday."

"No? You said in your letter that you'd turned away all the men who'd
pursued you because you were afraid of reopening this wound. Well here
I am, Scully." His whisper emphasized the intimacy of the issue. "I'm the
one who can help you heal that wound once and for all. I got you into
this. At least give me the chance to get you out of it."

"No," she said simply.

"What do you mean, no?" he demanded.

She gave one firm shake of her head.

"Absolutely not," she elaborated. "It's my brain, my memory, and I'm
not letting some quack mess with it."

Mulder bowed his head and tried to corral the emotions that thundered
between his ears.

"I know of a therapist who can take us through it with --"

"Us? I'll be the one who gets dragged through the mire. I don't *want* to
remember anything else about that time. What I can remember is horrible,
humiliating violence. How could you wish more of that on me?"

"I don't, Scully," he hissed. Her response was not a surprise to him, but
after all they had shared, particularly in the past few days, he had expected
more from her. "But -- Listen. Listen to me, Dana. If we can get back
any details of where you were, and who kept you there, and what they did
to you, then maybe we can at least make your suffering count for
something. Before you told me about the rape, I assumed that the chances
of your ever remembering the abduction were pretty slim. But now we
have a place to start, and to ignore that would be...would be a terrible
waste."

Scully peered out at the quiet street. It was late, and she was tired in spite
of the nap they had shared. She wanted to be in her bed, spooned up
alongside Mulder, instead of staking out some crackpot Russian physicist.
Their weekend of passionate discovery was coming to a bizarre end.

She felt tears stinging her nostrils, and inhaled sharply to stop them.

"You're turning me into a piece of evidence," she said. "Stop it."

Mulder rubbed his forehead with one hand, trying to see through his
muddled feelings to the point behind all this. If they were to successfully
maintain their working relationship, he had to be able to argue with her
constructively.

"You're an investigator, Scully." His voice was raw with the effort to
control his temper. "Don't you want to examine all the possibilities?"

She shot him a cold glance that chastised him for using her own belief in
scientific methodology to coerce her.

"This is *not* a viable possibility," she said. "Memories recovered
through hypnosis are not admissible under --"

"Aw, come on, Scully! We could never take this to the courts. You know
that. But at least we could get some resolution, maybe some clues to
understanding the bigger picture."

She shook her head, scrubbing her collar with the bristly ends of her hair.

"I will not be subsumed into your paranoia, Mulder."

To the south, the enormous white obelisk glistened proudly in the cool
glare of spotlights. Mulder squinted at it from the within the darkness of
his car, and wondered how he had wandered into this world. Surely
somewhere in the universe there was a place where sentient beings mated
without regularly trying to kill each other.

"You have this information inside your own head and yet you refuse to
contribute it to our search. After all these years, Scully, how. . .?" His
gaze, plaintive and rather childlike, drifted back to her pale face. In the
semi-darkness, his hand found hers. "How can you do this to me?"

With a vicious tug, she freed her hand, then grappled to find the door
latch. As soon as the door was released climbed out of the Explorer and
paced onto the Mall, her coat flapping around her legs as she walked.
Dropping heavily to a bench that overlooked the Wall, she tried to calm
herself. The only thoughts that were clear, in a storm of anger, were of
escaping Mulder's influence.

She heard his footsteps on the gravel walkway nearby, then the rustle of
his coat as he padded across the grass to join her. He sat wearily, long
legs splayed, arms lax at his sides.

"Dana --"

"No."

"Dana, I love you," he whispered.

She sighed her irritation. If he didn't know why it was wrong to say that
at this particular moment, she wasn't about to explain it to him. Idiot.

With her eyes on the red lights atop the flagpoles of Arlington Cemetery,
she spoke as evenly as she could. It would be hopelessly unprofessional
to start screaming at him while their contact could be in earshot.

"I know you do. But that doesn't give you the right to treat my memories
like a commodity. It's another form of rape, and this time I'm not sitting
still for it."

His hand gripped her shoulder and pressed until she was forced to look
into his face. The intensity that she normally found seductive cast a chill
over her heart as she began to see it, stripped of its beguiling mask, for
what it was.

"Do you hear yourself, Dana? You've lost your perspective on this thing.
You --"

"What could you possibly know of perspective?" she snapped. "You're a
man who's spent two-thirds of his life obsessing over his lost sister,
attributing what is probably just a sad case of kidnapping and murder to a
wild myth of alien abduction." What the shadows hid from her, she could
feel pouring off of him as undiluted fury. She immediately regretted
bringing Samantha into the argument. "Look, Mulder, I can't do this. I'm
saying things I don't want to and I --"

"You want to," he said woodenly. "You've wanted to say that to me for
years."

She shook her head. It was true, but he did not need to know that.

"We should talk about this later," she whispered, looking down at his feet.

"We still have about fifteen minutes," he said tonelessly. "Tell me
everything else."

"There isn't --"

"Tell me everything else you've been holding back," he said.

She clasped her forehead as if checking for a fever.

"Look, I'm just -- I'm disappointed. I thought we were moving forward
by changing the way things were between us. But now...now we're right
back where we started. The skeptic and the believer, and never the twain
shall agree. I can't live with this kind of stress in my personal life too,
Mulder. It's too much..."

Her voice trailed off into a whisper.

"Our work has become your life too," he reminded her. "You can't deny
that, Scully."

"Yeah, but I'm still hoping for more." Her eyes glinted aquamarine in the
lamplight. "I thought you were, too."

He twitched an eyebrow curiously.

"Did you really think we'd end up living in the burbs, with two kids and a
minivan and no taint of the fluke man? Did you forget who we *are*?"
He shook his head, a gesture of weary resignation as well as disbelief.
"Sex doesn't change that. I thought you knew better than to expect a
cataclysmic change."

He rested his elbows on his knees and hung his head. She might have
reached out to touch his shoulder if his words about their relationship had
not taken on a cynical edge.

"Not cataclysmic, just...a change. In you. In me. We --"

"For once, why can't you try it my way?" he cried. "For six years I've
tried to bend myself to fit your requirements, Scully. I've tried to go by
the book, to be conventional. Would it kill you to try a page out of my
book, especially where your own mental health is concerned?"

She glanced down at her watch. Seven minutes to go. Too much time, or
not enough?

"I don't believe it's my mental health you're concerned about," she said
coolly. "This reeks of one of your wild goose chases, and this time I'm
the goose."

"Absolutely not, Scully. That's --"

"I will not deny what the data says about hypnosis," she continued, her
voice wavering slightly. "The incidence of confabulation, of false
memories and --"

"Scully, it helped me," he said in a low voice, now more tender.

"Did it? Or did it just help you dig yourself in deeper?"

Mulder threw up his hands in frustration.

"Jesus, Scully, you'd think I'd asked you to let me fuck you in the ass
while the whole of Congress watched! This is just --

Fine gravel spat from under her feet as she tried to surge away from him.
He caught her arm and pulled her back to the bench. As struggled against
him, she cursed him wholeheartedly.

"Goddamn you, you paranoid son of a bitch," she sobbed. "You've used
me all along and I won't --"

"No, no, I'm sorry, Scully. I --"

"Let go of me," she hissed. Her squirming had ceased, but her body
remained tense and ready to flee at the first opportunity. Her brows pulled
together in fierce frown. When she spoke again, her voice was tight and
whispery with pain and bitterness and a vulnerability that shocked Mulder.
"You're the one he wanted, you bastard. He wanted you for himself and
he couldn't have you so he banged my head against that table pushed my
face into the sofa so I couldn't breathe ripped me on *purpose* so he
could see me *bleed* because he liked the blood he thought it was
*pretty* let go of me you idiotic --"

Mulder lurched over her and, wrapping his open coat around her, pulled
her hard against his body and pressed her head into his chest. She flailed
against him for a few seconds, screamed silently into his shirtfront, and
then quieted almost as abruptly as she had exploded.

He loosened his hold on her so that she could catch her breath. No tears
marred her smooth facade, yet Mulder was trembling with grief and
horror.

She stepped away from him and, with in almost mechanical gesture,
smoothed her hair. She cleared her throat. She glanced at her watch.
Then she faced him again.

"In this case, Mulder, the victim -- the *survivor* -- is not some
charming, unfortunate stranger like Delia Forrest who has no idea that
you're expecting to find that the semen collected in her rape kit belonged to
something other than a man." She flinched slightly at the pounding
headache that was forming behind her eyes. "This time it's me, Mulder."

He nodded grimly.

"I know. That's why I want to get to the heart of this." His voice was
soft with regret. He reached for her, but she stepped away. "Please,
Dana, don't --"

"No, Mulder, it's over between us. It was a mistake in the first place."
She shrugged her coat up higher against her neck, suddenly wishing that
she had worn a scarf. "Let's just stick to what we do best, and go meet
your Russian. If nothing else, we still have a job to do."

End The Cry of the Truth 12b/22


The Cry of the Truth, 13/22
A Gift for Burning
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: NC-17 (sexual activity, language, descriptions of rape)
Category: S, A, R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary: After ending her affair with Mulder, Scully meets Ed Jerse.

Please forward to ATXC and Gossamer. Thanks.

See part 01 for the Disclaimer.

*From the Author: Let me spoil my own story, and hopefully buy
your tolerance of this chapter, by saying that yes! this story will have a
happy MSR ending. Like a house, a story has to be built in pieces,
and this chapter is not one of the pretty pieces. I considered calling
this story "Great Expectations," because many of the problems come
from the characters' failing to live up to their expectations of each
other. With that in mind, let me reiterate what I said in the beginning:
Mulder and Scully may not live up to your expectations in this story.
They are portrayed as having many all-too-human flaws. They are
capable of hurting each other. Both have made and will make serious
mistakes.

   If I'm lonely
   it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
   in the last red light of the year
   that knows what it is, that know it's neither
   ice nor mud nor winter light
   but wood, with a gift for burning
                  Adrienne Rich, "Song"

Scully unlocked the door to the basement office at six-thirty, before the
sun was all the way out of its eastern couch. Sleep had become
irrelevant at this point. When she finally closed her eyes at four-thirty
in the morning, she could not rest. She was chilled to the bone from
their argument at the Mall, as well as from the cold night air. After an
hour of staring at the ceiling, she took a shower, put her red suit back
on, and went out into the predawn.

If I wanted a lover, I should've looked elsewhere, she told herself as
she paced about the dark office. But I wanted to know what it felt like
to be the focus of *his* complexity, his genius, his -- his angst. I
wanted to experience the sexual translation of the language he speaks.
I thought I understood its expressions. My expectations were founded
on my own naivete. I thought I was taking a lover. What I got was
much more than that. Too much.

She paused at her desk, which was actually a credenza in the rear
alcove of the office. From her e-mail inbox, she retrieved a message
she had read and reread several times already. Stuart Novak had
written to say that he would be coming to New York for a few weeks
on a press tour for a film he had completed before his visit to
Washington. Dana wondered if he had regrown his silky silver beard
since returning from filming in Morocco. It softened his intimidating
countenance. She had told him so, quite often.

She closed the message and paced around the room again. Here,
surrounded by the detritus of Mulder's obsession, she felt a sense of
alienation that she hadn't experienced in years. Since he first fixed his
sultry gaze on her, and leaned a little too close to ask her if she
believed in extraterrestrials, she had been unable to see the situation for
what it really was. Mulder was an addict, the dark, unsolvable puzzles
his drug. In turn, he was her drug. She was utterly and absolutely
addicted to him.

In the far corner of the office stood the old black vertical file cabinet
that marked the site of their first kiss. She could easily call up the
feeling of his lips brushing hers for the first time, and the surprise she
had registered when she realized just how gentle he could be. He held
her hand as he kissed her cheeks, forehead, and nose, before finally
returning to her mouth. Sighing against her lips, he seemed to steady
himself before first touching his tongue to the sensitive underside of
her upper lip.

>From that point there was no more denying her need for him. Now
she just had to figure out how to live without having him as anything
more than a partner. And after the things they had said to each other
last night, he was not even a friend.

Sitting at his desk, Dana considered his nameplate. What an odd name
he had. He had certainly lived up to its singularity. On Saturday he
had asked her to marry him...a joke, of course, but still she wondered
if he would expect her to change her name if she became his wife.
Probably not. He had said last night that their life together could never
be conventional. Even if it were possible, she doubted that being
called Dana Mulder would suit her.

Just before eight, Mulder stormed in and out of the office in a petulant
whirlwind, muttering something about being forced by Personnel to
take his accumulated leave or be fined. Dana suspected it was an
excuse to get away from her, and from the shame he might (he damn
well *should*, she determined) feel over their argument. Once again
he had asked her to enable his addiction by taking on a ridiculous case.
She had tried to refuse. She intended to refuse. Then she realized that
if she didn't go to Philadelphia, the temptation to take the shuttle up to
New York and fall back into bed with Stuart would be too great. She
was in no mood to fight temptation, or anything else, after yesterday.
Besides, it would just be another example of how idiotic Mulder could
be at times. The more negatives she could cite to herself, the faster she
could stop loving him.

Yeah, right.

She went to Philadelphia.

XXXXXXXXXXX

Slightly...tipsy. Somewhat...buzzed. Oh, forget it. Drunk.

Why vodka? Seemed appropriate after a day pursuing Boris Badenov.
Besides, it left few traces. No smell, no color, no taste -- well, no
taste if you didn't call that burning bitterness a taste. By the time she
returned to Ed Jerse's apartment, just before midnight, Dana's nerves
were singing with the combination of the vodka and the tattoo. The
experience had been invigorating, titillating, liberating -- she was still
struggling to define it to herself as Ed closed the door behind them.

She watched him move around the room, touching his desk, his chair,
the windowsill. He was nervous. She supposed she was the first
woman he had been with since his divorce. He seemed too young to
have two kids and an ex-wife, although Dana suspected that his face
would remain boyish when he was fifty. Ed Jerse would never make
a distinguished old man. Not like Stuart Novak. No. But she
wouldn't be with Ed when he was fifty, and that was just fine. For
now was good enough.

Inexplicably, Dana felt that his face was familiar to her. It was that
vague familiarity, more than any sort of original attraction, that drew
her to him. That and the fact that, beneath the cigarette smoke, he
smelled wonderful, like lime and sandalwood.

His kiss was sadly lacking in inspiration. That much was clear with
the first touch of his lips to hers. Dana was not particularly surprised,
nor was she disappointed. She wanted that part of her life to be dead.
Mulder had effectively proven to her that sex led only to heartbreak
and ruin, just like the songs said.

As Ed held her and rubbed her back, carefully avoiding the tattooed
area, Dana tried to tell herself that her feelings for Mulder had been
nothing more than a sexual response. The accelerated firing of
neurotransmitters in answer to stimuli. Had biochemistry sustained
six years of commitment to Mulder? And was it commitment, or
addiction? If biochemistry allows addiction then, after a short period
of withdrawal, I should be fine, she mused.

And to get through the withdrawal period, a little distraction would be
helpful...

She looked up at Ed and tried to smile.

"Ed...I've just broken off a -- a --" A friendship that meant more to
me than my own life, she thought, flinching inwardly.

"It's okay, Dana. Really." Ed reached for her hand and brought it to
his lips. He kissed her knuckles and then smiled back at her, his dark
eyes void of challenge. "Why don't we both get some sleep? You
look beat. I know I am."

She nodded and sighed. "You're right. It's been a rough few days.
I'll take the couch --"

"No, no. Let me. I don't sleep much anyway."

Dana tried to shrug off the familiar ring of his words, but could not
stop the image of Mulder's sleepy face, eyes drooping, long lashes
sweeping his cheekbones, mouth lolling open slightly as he pushed
back against the pillows in her bed. One arm rested on the pillow
above his head; one knee was cocked, tenting the sheet over his bare,
spent body. Weary from their lovemaking, he watched her through
slitted eyes as she moved about her bedroom, preparing to join him in
sleep.

She turned away from Ed.

The emotional exhaustion of the past few days colluded with the vodka
to send her off to sleep soon after her head touched Ed's pillow. And
it conspired with the vodka to bring back the nightmare of Alex
Krychek, his knee in the small of her back, pressing her face-down
into the sticky vinyl upholstery of a narrow couch. When she tried to
lift her head, her cheek peeled painfully away from the fabric, but not
for long -- his palm came down on her head, and her face was back in
the cushion again. Again he was pronouncing his curses in his low,
steady voice, occasionally lapsing into Russian, and using Mulder's
name like an invective. His other hand clawed between her legs, and
then she felt a searing pain that seemed to go right up her spine and
into her head.

She sat up in Ed's bed, sweaty, tearful, and alone. And without really
remembering calling out for him, she knew that Mulder's name
lingered on her lips like the taste of his kiss.

Ed appeared in the bedroom doorway, clad in undershirt and trousers,
his hair tousled. He moved toward her quietly, as if afraid of waking
her.

"Dana? You okay?" he asked in his soft voice.

"Yeah. Just a bad dream," she replied, wiping her tears against the
back of her hand.

Ed sat on the edge of the bed. His movements were jerky and
uncertain, as if he were wearing another man's body.

"Sometimes it helps to talk about it," he suggested, his voice thick
with sleep.

The dingy sheen of the streetlight leached through the slats of the
blinds that cloaked the window at the head of the bed. The light fell
across Ed's face, bringing his cheekbones into sharp relief above the
smooth plane of his jaw. He awaited Dana's reply with the patience
and understanding that had encouraged her to spin a vodka-enhanced,
two-penny self-analysis to satisfy his interest in her. Mulder had
looked at her that way, not so long ago; being the center of Mulder's
attention had turned her resolve to frank arousal.

"I -- There was a man," she began, trying once again to fill the
expectant void that Ed had created. "There was a man who I knew
from my job. Four years ago, he -- he hurt me...very badly. And
now...well, now I can't seem to keep what he did to me from
interfering with my life."

"Oh, Dana," Ed sighed. He scooted closer to her and put a hand on
her shoulder. He squeezed her through the thin fabric of the white
shirt he had lent her. "You can't let the past rule the present. You'd
just be turning back around on yourself, like that snake on your back."

She exhaled a dismissive laugh, and with the movement, her hair
brushed his hand. Ed's hand strayed from her shoulder to her hair.
He rubbed a hank of it between his thumb and forefinger, assessing
the silky thickness of it. Dana watched the fascination she had seen in
the tattoo shop returning to his face, and with it arose in her a
repetition of the strange arousal she had felt during the experience.

"Ed, I...oh..."

Her feeble protest turned into a sigh as he caressed her cheek with the
back of his hand. He moved closer once again, and cupped her face
between his hands. When he kissed her, Dana felt nothing more than
she had earlier. But now the memory of her nightmare was fresh in
her mind, and she was hungry for anything that might obliterate it. So
she silenced her doubts and returned the kiss.

Ed swept his tongue across her lips, and she readily opened herself to
him. He tasted of cigarettes and the gin-soaked olives from the
martinis he had drunk in the bar. The ashy taste stirred a deep sense
memory of the cigarettes she had stolen as a girl, then of the cigarettes
she had smoked in a cosmic rage over Mulder's infatuation with a
small-town detective a few years ago. Suddenly she wished she had
taken the evening's rebellion one step further and smoked one of Ed's
cigarettes. At this point, what was the point of prudence? What was
left to lose, really? She had lost Mulder, and Stuart. Her sister and
father were dead. Her work had alienated her once and for all from
her mother and brothers. But of all those losses, the one that she rued
the most was the loss of her numbness. She had worked hard to
silence her memories of being raped. Since confessing her secret to
Mulder, the pain of the experience had resurged anew. She had
thought that telling Mulder would be just a formality. But Mulder had
expected more.

Ed was pressing her down into the mattress, his fingers dispatching
the buttons of her shirt as continued to kiss her. Once she was on her
back, he parted the shirt and slid his warm hands around her waist.
He was murmuring something under his breath, but Dana was
working hard not to listen, not to feel, not to think. She tried to focus
on the sensation of strange hands coming up to cup and knead her
breasts. Lips that had never called her by her last name nipped at her
flesh. Her nipples were licked by a tongue that had never spoken to
her about a boy who was lightening, or a man who was also a
parasite, or any of the other unfathomable topics that she and Mulder
had studied over the years. Ed was whispering again, something
about her hair and her skin and the way she smelled, but the only
words that Dana could hear inside her head had been uttered by
another dark-eyed young man. "Here your brains, your spotless
record, your pretty face make no difference. Just a cunt. That's all.
You understand, don't you Scully?"

Trembling fingers skittered over her belly and into the thatch of hair at
the crux of her thighs. Ed's tongue thrust in and out of her mouth as
his index finger plunged into her body. With his left hand, he caught
her wrists together and pinned her arms over her head. She
whimpered, and he paused to listen. Dana could no longer hear her
own voice; every sound in the room had been replaced by the memory
of her silent screams in the only warm room in that cold, white place.
Unfortunately Ed took the her utterances for expressions of pleasure
and anticipation, and pressed a second finger into her. And then a
third.

Dana struggled to free her arms, surprising Ed with her strength. He
chuckled with delight as she pushed against his shoulders. As he
opened his fly, he held her down with a hand over her sternum. Again
he was talking to her, small words about her body and its effect on
him. When he grabbed her bare thighs in his hands and pulled her
legs apart, Dana's brain was jarred back to the present. For a moment
she surveyed the scene as if from a great distance, his words filtering
through her terror like a thready transatlantic telephone call.

"I want you, Dana." His words were slightly slurred and his voice
tremulous and rather high-pitched, like a teenage boy's. "God, you're
beautiful. Your pussy is so red, it's like a rose. Like a red rose. Do
you want me to go down on you first? I'm not very good at it, my
wife -- ex-wife -- said I wasn't, but I could give it a try. Or do you
just want me to fuck you?"

For a split second, some part of Dana Scully -- the little girl who had
been left behind too many times by her father, the adolescent rejected
by boys who were felt diminished by her brainy reticence, the woman
who had just lost the love of her life in a battle that spoke of their
mutual fear of dependence and loss -- for a moment, some suffering
part of her said, let him do it. Let him hurt you. You deserve it.

**No.**

She gasped for her voice. As with Krychek, she found that she could
form no words. Instead she wriggled out from under his grasp and
swung her legs off the bed. Ed laughed lightly and, closing his hands
around her waist, pulled her back. He lifted her easily and pressed her
into the mattress, this time on her belly.

"Yeah, that's better. This way I can see your tattoo. Lift your ass, so I
can see your cunt too." He climbed up on his knees and positioned
himself between her legs. "It's so beautiful, Dana. Like the pictures
I've seen on the Web, but better, because you've got hair. Why do
those women shave their --"

"Ed. Stop. Now." His prattling had given her the extra moment she
needed to find her voice. She looked into Ed's crestfallen face and
shook her head. "No. This is not going to happen."

Even in the dim streetlight, she could see him blush with shame.

"Dana, I'm so sorry. I thought --"

"I know you did, and I'm sorry too."

She hurriedly buttoned the shirt, then headed into the bathroom. There
she found a clean washcloth, which she ran under a stream of warm
water and used to methodically clean herself where he had touched
her. She rinsed the cloth carefully and scrubbed between her legs
again.

When she returned to the bedroom, Ed had straightened the sheets and
blanket, as if to erase all signs of what had just taken place. His
trousers had been closed and his tee shirt tucked in. He stood
awkwardly at the end of the bed, slouching and shaking his head as
she pulled on her pantyhose.

"I never meant to hurt you," he said softly. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay, Ed. I was kind of out of it -- the vodka, I guess -- and I
didn't quite understand what was going on until you had already
gotten the wrong idea." She stepped into her black pants, then
buttoned and zipped them. She looked around the dark room for her
sweater. "I should really go now, Ed."

"There's freezing rain," he said dully. "Look out the window."

She peered through the blinds and saw that the street was indeed
glossed with ice. Her rental car was parked below, the windshield
white with ice. No cars passed. In the beam of the nearest streetlight,
she detected the steady shower that poured from the night sky.

"You're right," she said, facing him again. "I suppose -- Ed, are you
okay?"

"Headache," he mumbled, rubbing his forehead with the fingers that
had so recently invaded her. "Please stay. I promise I'll leave you
alone. It's just that I heard you crying after your nightmare and I
wanted to help you...I can't believe I --"

"You didn't do anything wrong, Ed," she said, not completely certain
of her words. "I asked you to stop, and you did. That's good.
That's what you're supposed to do. We had a misunderstanding,
that's all. And we're probably both still a little drunk."

She sighed. Why was comforting this man who, when all was said
and told, had almost raped her?

"Go back to sleep if you can, Ed," she said. With a sad half-smile,
she added, "I'll see you in the morning."

*Note: Expect a delay in receiving part 14; I'm moving this weekend.
Advance apologies!

End The Cry of the Truth 13/22


The Cry of the Truth, 14/22
Heart Into Stone
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: R (language, adult conflicts)
Category: S, A, R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary: After Scully's encounter with Ed Jerse, a heartbroken
Mulder confronts her.


   So much to do today:
   kill memory, kill pain,
   turn heart into stone,
   and yet prepare to live again.
         -- Anna Akhmatova

Dana vomited in the bathroom where she had tried to wash away the
evidence of her encounter with Ed the night before. She could not
remember the last time she had eaten; most of what came up was
vodka and bile produced in painful, wrenching heaves. She rinsed her
mouth with tap water and spat in the sink. And then, as she was about
to leave, she caught a glimpse of her own blurry image in the mirror.
The rivulets of blood zigzagging from a cut on her forehead reminded
her of a something Mulder had tried to keep from her, years ago: a
video capture of herself, bound and gagged, in the trunk of her own
car. She had discovered it in her own X-file, about a year after the
incident, when Mulder was out of the office one afternoon. Try as she
might, she was never able to remember actually being there in the car,
bleeding, terrified, as good as dead. For what seemed like hours she
had studied the photo, hoping the draw some connection between that
moment, frozen in celluloid, and her memories of Krychek's brutality.
She had tried to bridge the white void of memory, and failed.

She tore off some toilet paper and pressed it against the wound on her
head. Then, moving automatically, only peripherally aware of the pain
in her body, Dana rushed out of the apartment.

As she clattered back down the wobbly stairs that led to the basement,
she wondered if she would be breaking her Hippocratic oath by not
administering first aid to Ed. She was afraid to approach him. Semi-
conscious, he was writhing on the floor in a pool of his own urine, his
burned arm bent with a horrific rigidity at a ninety-degree angle. It
was not the smell of his suffering that frightened her. In the lurid
yellow glow of the incinerator's flames, his handsome face, contorted
in agony, took on the cast of the man who had hurt her beyond
measure. Scully sank down to sit on a step and cradled her throbbing
head in her palms. As soon as she closed her eyes, she saw thin, pale,
masculine hands reaching for her; a knee clad in gray wool trousers
pushing her bare thighs apart; a bruise in the shape of a hand on her
right breast; splatters and streaks of her own blood, suprisingly vivid.

Ed was moaning. Dana's instincts overrode her fear and propelled her
off the steps. She knelt on the floor beside him and put a cool hand on
his forehead, praying that he would have no memory of this day when
he finally came around.

The paramedics were scrambling down the steps, calling out
information to each other as they approached. Before she could explain
what had happened, Scully was plied away from Ed and taken upstairs
and out into the street. Her forehead was bleeding again, her sweater
was ripped, and she was shivering uncontrollably. As if from a great
distance, she watched herself being wrapped in a blanket and helped
into the back of an ambulance. An EMT gently pressed her down onto
a gurney. As the safety straps were fastened across her body, her
teeth chattered and her skin crawled. She stammered as she tried to tell
the paramedic that she was an FBI agent and really did not need help
from him or anyone else.

In the ER, Scully managed to quote her badge number and Mulder's
cell phone number as a nurse took her vital signs. Each person who
administered to her smiled indulgently as she struggled to string words
into sentences. Finally she was seated on an examination table behind
a striped curtain that occasionally billowed in the breeze released from
the heating system. Alone, Dana wept her longing for Mulder's
familiar smell and the protective cage of his arms. But her tears ceased
to flow upon the entrance of a tall female physician who was only a
few years older than Dr. Scully.

"I'm Dr. Burnett," she said, extending her hand.

Scully shook her hand and looked into her soft brown eyes. Dr.
Burnett's hair was a light brown streaked with gray, and her face bore
a few golden freckles against a background of fair skin. She glanced
down at her hand, entertwined with Scully's, when she realized that
her patient was holding on for dear life.

"Miss Scully? I understand you're an FBI agent?"

Dana nodded. Her blue eyes were tinged with red from the smoke of
the incinerator.

"It's Dr. Scully, actually," she said hoarsely. "I'm a forensic
pathologist."

Dr. Burnett made a note in the chart she balanced against her left
forearm.

"So, Dr. Scully. The paramedic who brought you in tells me that he
took you out of a dangerous situation. How are you feeling?"

"I'm -- I'm in shock," Dana said, tittering lightly. It seemed absurd
that she should be aware enough to diagnose her own shock.

The physician nodded soberly. Her eyes, flecked with streaks of
gold, assessed every outward element of Dana's status as they talked.

"You are indeed," said Dr. Burnett. "Is there anything else you can
tell me about your experience with Mr. Jerse?"

"How is he?" Dana countered.

"He's in good hands," Dr. Burnett said, smirking faintly at the double
meaning of her statement -- he's in the capable hands of my colleagues
and Philadelphia's finest. "But my concern is for you, Dr. Scully.
I've spoken with one of our rape crisis counselors, and she's ready to
help you. Why don't we ask her to sit with you during the
examination?"

Dana shook her head and massaged her temples. When she
swallowed, she noticed that her throat was painfully raw, like a
childhood case of tonsillitis.

"Really, you don't need to examine me. I can tell you that I have some
bruising over the fourth and fifth ribs, and you'll probably see some
hematuria in my labs because of the kidney blow I took." Then Dr.
Burnett's words came over her like a sudden migraine. "A rape
counselor? Why?"

"I'd like to examine you for evidence," Dr. Burnett said gently.

"Why?" Scully whispered.

Dr. Burnett glanced down at her pen, and then back at Dana's face.

"Well...you're showing all the signs of sexual assault...the blow to
your face, for starters. Your top is torn. You're in shock. There are
bruises on your neck and wrists..."

Scully looked down at her wrists in alarm. They were ringed with
fresh purple bruises.

"I...you know, this is...I don't..."

Dr. Burnett shifted her weight from one long leg to another.

"Look, Dana, many rape victims use dissociation to endure the trauma
of the experience. It's perfectly understandable. It may be hours,
days, even years before you remember everything. But I'd like to
document the evidence now, in case you decide to press charges later."

Scully shook her head, and instantly regretted it. Her brain seemed to
be sloshing against her skull, floating in a soup of vodka and smoke.
She slid off the examination table and pulled off the paper gown she
wore over her black bra and trousers.

"I'm discharging myself," she said firmly.

The doctor gaped at Dana.

"Please don't," she said. "Your eyes are still dilated, from -- from
whatever you've been through. I suspect that your labs will come back
showing dangerously low electrolytes and a generally wrecked CBC.
Look at yourself, Dana. You're shaking."

Dana stared at the doctor, surprised that she would use a clinical
appraisal to manipulate her into staying. Then, she remembered that
most physicians struggled to preserve life, rather than to clarify death.

She sank heavily to the floor, and rested there on her haunches. Her
pale back was virtually opalescent in the vibrating fluorescent lights of
the ER. The colors of the snake, permanently etched into her skin,
seemed to glow.

She turned her face up toward Dr. Burnett.

"Someone raped me, some time ago, but it was not Ed Jerse."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"Agent Mulder, your partner's jacket and personal belongings --
thought you might want to take these back to D.C. for her." The
evidence clerk, his burly face a study in neutrality, handed Mulder a
crumpled paper grocery bag. He whirled a clipboard around on the
counter. "Just sign here."

Mulder scrawled his name on the roster and took the bag. As he
walked out of the precinct station, he wondered if he would be able to
control his anger when he finally saw Scully. He was not looking
forward to trying. He wanted nothing more than to scream his rage at
her. And then he wanted to gather her in his arms and hold her and
never let her go. Too many times he had come even closer than this to
losing her. This time it was intolerable because she seemed to have
willed the hurt on herself. Was anything better than loving him? Even
a one-night stand with a lunatic?

He found his rental car in the parking garage and tossed the bag in the
passenger seat -- Scully's usual spot. He was in no rush to get to the
hospital. Under the pretense of warming the engine, he turned on the
radio and cruised through the stations until he found some slow,
mournful jazz that suited his mood. Then he reached for the bag.

Her jacket, the top half of a black wool tricotine Donna Karan suit,
came first. He held the collar briefly to his face; it smelled like her, but
also enough like Jerse's dim, dusty apartment to be of absolutely no
comfort. He placed it carefully on the seat next to him. Next he pulled
out a small black suede purse, oval in shape and apparently quilted.
Strange -- he had rarely seen her carry a purse, and this particular
purse seemed entirely too impractical for Scully. Then Mulder
reminded himself that sleeping with any man who asked was entirely
too impractical for Scully, too, but this was not the first time she'd
done it.

He tossed the paper bag in the back seat and concentrated on the little
purse. He pulled the zipper and looked inside. He took out her
badge, which was almost too big for the bag, and flipped it open.
There she was, young and stern, peering out from her picture like a
reprimand. He snapped the case shut and put the badge with her
jacket.

Inside the purse he found two condoms, a tube of burgundy lipstick, a
compact of very pale powder, and a hundred dollars in twenties. She
had left her gun back in her room at the Adams Inn, and Mulder had
retrieved it when he picked up her clothes and laptop. It never
would've fit in this stupid bag anyway, he thought.

Mulder held the two shiny foil condom packets up to his face.
Magnum, extra large. Was that optimism on her part, or were they
leftovers from Stuart?  Had she bought them in Philly, or did she
bring them along, nestled in her toiletry bag between her travel-size
bottle of madder-root shampoo and the pink soap box stocked with a
bar of Dove? Had she always traveled with condoms, on the off
chance that her reticent partner might finally make his move? Why
*two* of them? How many had she started out with? He knew that
she was on the pill, so she must have been planning -- hoping? -- to
engage in some safe sex with a stranger. Cursing under his breath,
Mulder crammed the condoms into his pocket and tossed the purse
aside.

He drove to the hospital.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Dr. Burnett sat at a makeshift desk in a small alcove behind the nurses'
station, poring over a stack of patient charts and occasionally
scribbling notes and billing codes on encounter forms. She sipped on
lukewarm coffee as she worked; it was barely nine in the morning, and
she had been on service since six. It occurred to her that maybe Dr.
Scully had made a wise career choice when she abandoned medicine
for law enforcement.

She finished her description of her treatment of an elderly lady's
injuries sustained in a fall resulting from a combination of icy
pavement and excessive consumption of bourbon, then moved on to
Dana Scully's chart. With the intention of reviewing her notes from
her initial examination of Scully, Dr. Burnett flipped through the few
pages that comprised the chart until she found a pink ER sheet covered
in her own familiar scrawl.

"Pt. is a 33 yo wf FBI agent & MD/forensic path. who presents in
post trauma shock. Of note -- tattooing within last 24 hr. Laceration
to forehead -- 2 sutures & butterfly. Contusions to 4th & 5th R. ribs;
no sign of fracture/pleural injury. Chem 11, CBC, tox screen for
ergot, thoracic XR obtained 1013. Admit for 24 hr observ. Informed
pt.'s partner by phone. Order lytes, fluid push, prophylactic
ampicillin IV overnight. Tetanus booster."

Dr. Burnett's signature and billing code were written below the short
summary, but she knew immediately that she was not reading what
she had actually written the day before. She flipped through the pages
in the chart once again, hoping to find her original note among the lab
results and insurance pages. She had inserted the summary page in the
chart herself.

She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. Too little sleep and too
much caffeine.

"My mother tried to tell me to go into dermatology, but no, I had to
pick emergency medicine," she muttered to no one in particular.

"Dr. Burnett?"

She put her glasses back on so that she could see the face that went
with the voice. A small smile immediately formed when she saw the
face of an oddly handsome man peering around the door frame of her
little alcove.

"I'm Fox Mulder," he said, showing her his badge as he stepped into
the erstwhile office. "We spoke on the phone yesterday about my
partner, Dana Scully."

"Oh, right. I was just reviewing her chart," the doctor said, her
fingers closing nervously over the edge of the folder that contained the
bastardized version of her summary. "Just move those charts and
have a seat, Mr. Mulder."

He hoisted a two-foot stack of charts off a tattered little chair and
perched himself rather uneasily on the edge of the seat. The tails of his
overcoat pooled on the floor on either side of his feet. He sat with his
forearms resting on his knees and blinked down at Dr. Burnett's feet.
She was wearing a pair of Scullyesque black suede pumps.

"Your partner...uh..." Mulder lifted his head when he realized that
Dr. Burnett had paused to see if he was listening. He nodded, and she
continued. "Your partner is recovering well from a medical
standpoint. She should have no residual problems from the blunt
trauma she received."

"Blunt trauma?" Mulder echoed, internally wincing at the words.

"To the head, lower back, right medial thorax, left knee. She also has
some abraded areas on both wrists, presumably where her attacker
tried to restrain her." Dr. Burnett frowned slightly at the mention of
the attacker. Rules of confidentiality required her to speak carefully of
her suspicions regarding the nature of Jerse's assault. "And the tattoo
seems to be just fine. I had to FedEx her specimen to Boston for the
ergot analysis; our labs here don't do that sort of thing. The results
should be in tomorrow afternoon, possibly the following morning."

"Could you fax them to us?" Mulder asked, offering her his card.
"The number's on there."

Dr. Burnett studied his card for a moment.

"Look, Mr. Mulder, I don't know what the nature of your relationship
with Dr. Scully is exactly, but..."

Mulder wondered how many times he had heard those words, or
similar ones, in situations like this one. He assumed Scully had heard
them too. He gave a grim little half-smile.

"I'm not so sure I know the nature of it myself," he said. "But go on.
We're close friends, if nothing else."

Dr. Burnett nodded her understanding.

"That's what I said about my lab partner in med school," she said with
a wry grin. "Until I married him. But that's neither here nor there.
What I need to tell you is this: she should probably get some
counseling when she gets back to Washington. From what I've
observed, she's been through hell, not just in the past two days, but
over the past several years. Even her blood count shows it. It takes a
lot of stress to show up in labs, you know."

Mulder nodded perfunctorily. Most people, upon seeing his partner's
flaming hair, porcelain skin, and apparently delicate bones, assumed
that she was in need of protection.

"It's a tough job, but it's never been too tough for Scully."

Dr. Burnett's eyes met his for an instant. He could not quite guess her
meaning, however.

"Well. Have her follow up with her usual doctor if the pain increases.
And she can take those sutures out herself."

Mulder made a face at the image of Scully standing in front of her
bathroom mirror, clipping the little black knots and tugging the sutures
out of her pale, tender skin.

"Sheesh..." he murmured, shaking his head. "See what I mean?
Tough."

Dr. Burnett chuckled.

"It's a doctor thing, I guess," she said.

He rose to go, but turned at the last minute to speak to the doctor.

"She *will* be okay, won't she?"

He instantly wished he hadn't said it. Of course she would. She was
Scully, for God's sake.

Then a flicker of something dark passed over Dr. Burnett's face, and
Mulder's stomach began to burn again.

"Mr. Mulder, since you *do* work for the FBI, I feel I should tell
you..."

Oh shit, Mulder thought, returning to the uncomfortable chair he had
just left.

Dr. Burnett opened Scully's chart to the pink page and gave it to him.

"I have reason to believe that Dr. Scully's chart has been altered," she
said. "This is not what I wrote yesterday when I first saw her the ER.
The odd thing is -- that's my handwriting, or a very good forgery of it.
And I ordered two x-rays -- one of her head, one of her chest. Only
the chest film has come back from Radiology."

"And it says nothing about the head here," Mulder said, having
stumbled through the abbreviations and jargon. "Could it just be lost
in the hospital somewhere?"

"It's not unthinkable, but it's unlikely. Especially since she had a
fairly unusual name," the doctor said. "It's also strange that there are
no notes in the chart from the nurse who cared for her overnight.
They usually make entries every two hours. That's standard nursing
practice."

"Do you know which nurse was on duty last night?" Mulder asked.

"She was a temp, filling in for one of our regulars who's out on
maternity leave. I could find out her name..."

"No. That's not necessary," he sighed. Mulder knew the nurse
would never be found. "So is this information -- presumably forged --
is it accurate? Does it sound like something you'd write?"

"Oh, absolutely. The psychosocial evaluation has been deleted,
however."

"And that's the part you can't talk to me about," he said.

She shrugged. "You can ask your partner."

"She won't tell me," he said grimly. He stood to leave. "Thanks for
taking care of her. Call if that x-ray, or anything else, turns up."

He loped down the hall, his head bowed as he tried to order his
thoughts and emotions.

End The Cry of the Truth 14/22


The Cry of the Truth, 15/22 REVISED!!!
A Feeling Disputation
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: R (language, adult situations)
Category: S,A,R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary: Overcome with jealousy, Mulder unleashes the full force of
his anger on Scully.

Note: There was a tiny but IMPORTANT boo-boo in this one. Sorry!

   I understand thy kisses, and thou mine,
   And that's a feeling disputation.
               William Shakespeare

Scully lay on her side, off of the still-tender tattoo, and tried to
concentrate
on a year-old copy of _The New Yorker_. Not even the cartoons held her
interest. Her thoughts were still slightly muddled by the ergot and vodka
that polluted her bloodstream, as well as by the depression that had
haunted her since the midnight argument with Mulder on the Mall.

She closed her eyes and wished for the release that came with tears.
Despite last night's pharmacologically enhanced sleep, she still felt
overwhelmed with exhaustion. Here I am again, she silently mourned, in
the same hospital gown, in the same weakened state, brutalized by the
same man -- well, close enough. And all because I wanted to prove that I
could get away with denial. Why is it, the one time I try to take the easy
way out, I get in even more trouble?

Apparently Mulder had been right about the toxic effects of untreated
psychological pain. The after-effects of her abduction, even four years
after the fact, made her sick with despair. Her memory seemed to be the
one thing she could not control. She was beginning to surmise that her
denial of the abiding pain of her rape was related to her fear that Krychek
would come back and hurt her again. She did not want to be herself if part
of her self was a victim who cowered with her memories, waiting for it to
happen again. Admitting that to Mulder was a different matter, however.

For a moment she thought the tears she had suppressed for so long were
finally rising, but upon opening her eyes she saw that the damp fullness in
her throat and nose was just a nose bleed. She sat up and reached for the
box of rough, hospital-grade tissues on the table next to the bed. She
pulled out three or four and pinched her nose shut with them. She
checked the tissues to see if the blood still flowed, and three big red drops
landed on the front of her hospital gown.

"Shit, shit, shit," she muttered, yanking a few more tissues out of the box
and dabbing at the blood with her free hand.

"Scully, you okay?"

She looked up to see Mulder standing in the door, a hangdog expression
of concern on his weary face. He was carrying her overnight bag.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just a nosebleed."

Mulder grabbed a washcloth from the towel rack next to the sink and
dampened it with cool water. He offered it to her as he sat in the chair
next to the bed.

He watched as she wiped the blood away, leaving a broad red streak on
the white cloth.

The bleeding quelled, she pulled the blankets up over her shoulders and
tried to suppress a shiver. The look Mulder was giving her was a cross
between a rejected little boy and a vengeful father.

He cleared his throat. "How're you feeling?"

"Fine," she replied.

Of course, Mulder said to himself, shaking his head.

"Jerse is going to live," he said tersely. When he saw no reaction on her
face, Mulder felt even sicker than he had in the car. She had slept with
this man she didn't even care about in the first place. Women weren't
supposed to do that, especially not Dana Scully. "And I spoke to your
doctor -- looks like you're going to live too."

"Figures," she said quietly. She rolled onto her side again, and felt a
slight twinge as the tattooed skin stretched with her movements.

Mulder saw the flash of pain across her pale face.

"Does it hurt?" he asked softly.

"I'm fine, Mulder. Really." She heard her own voice; it was tight and a
bit breathy. "You shouldn't worry -- it was a sterile needle. Besides, I'll
probably get shot in the line of duty long before HIV or hepatitis can kill
me."

He put a hand up to cover his face. For a second he tried to suppress his
anger, out of consideration for her weakened physical state. Then he
remembered the terror he had felt when the ER nurse had called him that
morning.

"What the hell were you thinking? That you're immortal, or something?"
he said, biting off the words. " And forget the goddamn needle -- what
about this idiot Jerse?"

"What about him?" she said coldly.

"HIV, Scully. Have you lost your mind?"

"I did not have intercourse with him," she said in the professional
monotone that she usually reserved for Skinner when he was bellowing at
them.

Mulder opened his mouth to protest. He was astounded by the apparent
ease with which she lied to him.

"I found condoms in your purse, Scully," he said in a low voice that
cracked under the heat of his anger.

She sat up, the sheets rustling around her, and lowered her face into her
hands for a moment. Her hair slipped over her fingers, silky against them
and almost a comfort. Then she looked up at him, a world-weary half-
smile on her face.

"Girl's gotta be prepared."

He leaned across the bed to fix his dark gaze on her, throwing his rage at
her like dice.

"Who else, Scully?"

She frowned at him, her brow drawn in confusion.

"Who else what?"

"Since you started playing this little game with me, you haven't been
sleeping alone, have you." It was a belligerent statement, not a query.
"After four years of celibacy, Stuart showed you a good time and you
developed a taste for it. There's me, of course, but who else? Skinner?
Did you fuck Skinner too?"

She gaped at him, but Mulder was not deterred. He desperately wanted to
hurt her as much as he thought she had hurt him.

"How far will you go to silence this memory, Scully? Is obliterating the
past this important to you? Is this why you jumped into bed with Stuart an
*hour* after you met him? If a man's fucking you for all he's worth, does
that keep you from hurting over what Krychek did to you?"

She stared at him as if he had been possessed by a demon. He pressed
on, mining her heart for agony.

"Now, during the week, there's Pendrell -- he's kinda dull, but he drools
after you. And that seems to be the key, Scully. Unabashed appreciation
for your impressive tits, your thirteen-syllable vocabulary, that
cocksucking mouth of yours -- and probably not in that order."

A flare exploded behind her eyes, and she was nearly blind with anger.
She pulled her arm back to punch him, but he was too fast for her. He
caught her wrist and wrestled her arm down to her side, where he held it.

"What about Nick Barrett, your friend in the VCS? He's a good-looking
guy; even I can see that. He's probably got it all worked out in his head --
he's a profiler, after all -- and he's already developed a pretty solid theory
about what you like, so he could do the job a little more efficiently --
during lunch, maybe. That way you don't miss any time from work." To
his satisfaction, Mulder saw that she was beginning to redden. Still, his
voice splintered as he spoke. "He wouldn't need you to actually love him,
commit to him, sleep through the night with him. That's more like it,
right, Scully? You don't want someone who actually needs you.
Someone like *me*."

She looked away from him. Beads of sweat had formed on her forehead,
and her heart was pounding. But at least he had finally revealed
something of himself. Her indignation began to dim a little.

Mulder released her wrist and saw that he had left a bright red ring on it,
just above the purple imprint that Jerse had made. He shook his head and
covered his eyes with his hand.

"Why Jerse, Scully? What was it about him in particular? I saw him -- he
looks like a kid. He looks like --"

"Krychek," she whispered.

Mulder looked up abruptly.

"Is that it? You're trying to exorcise this demon by finding some guy who
looks like him and fucking him?"

"Shut up, Mulder," she said wearily.

"Well? Did it help?" he asked, his voice finally cracking into a baritone
sob.

Shaking her head, she watched the tears crest over his cheeks. He quickly
wiped them away.

"Do you really think I slept with those men?" she asked, her voice flat and
almost indifferent.

Mulder rested an elbow on the mattress and cradled his forehead in his
hand. He shrugged his shoulders and made a little flinging gesture with
his hand before using it to once again cover his eyes.

"I dunno, Scully. You tell me."

"You're being ridiculous," she said sternly.

"Why should I believe you?" he asked softly, still staring down at the bed.

"Because I'm Scully," she said.

He peered up at her then, and saw that she was now sitting very erectly,
her shoulders squared, chin held high, gazing down her impressive nose
at him. She looked very much like the Scully he remembered.

He swallowed noisily. In the light of what he thought she had done, the
reason did not seem to be good enough. And that made him all the more
sad.

She looked back at him again, her face nearly impassive except for the
blush of anger and humiliation that lingered in her cheeks.

"Thanks for bringing my stuff. I'll get dressed and discharge myself."

She threw back the blanket and climbed out of bed again. Accidentally she
brushed against Mulder's knees as she tried to get around him, and he
reached out and grabbed her hand. He stood and tried to embrace her.
She was unyielding at first, and then relaxed only slightly as his warm
hands skimmed over her back.

"Dana. I'm so sorry," he whispered into her hair. It disturbed him to note
that her usual scent had been usurped by the smell of smoke and bandages
and someone else's bed. "Please...Please. I need you. Come on back,
okay?"

She wriggled away from him and bent over to retrieve her bag. Through
the slit in her gown, he caught a glimpse of the gauze bandage taped over
the tattoo. He wondered if he would ever see it.

"Scully?"

"I have to get dressed now, Mulder. I'll be out in a minute."

He knew that, no matter what had led her to that hospital, he had been
dismissed.

End The Cry of the Truth, 15/22


The Cry of the Truth, 16/22
The Forest for the Trees
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: R (Discussion of rape, language)
Category: S, A, R (Mulder/Scully)

See part 01 for disclaimer.

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.

Author's Notes: Thanks to all my correspondents for your words of
encouragement. Sorry it took me so long to post this!

Thanks, especially, to Becky, for helping me get this and upcoming
chapters written.


   Woman, *you* are a forest
   strange and deep: I see
   you are afraid of yourself.
     --Maria Wine


Her head pounding, her stomach lurching with residual nausea, Dana
Scully rested her slight weight against the edge of the counter that
separated her from the hospital cashier. He was a florid-cheeked man
with a full head of silver hair who spoke with a lilting Delaware
accent. He wore a red bandanna tied around his neck like a dancer in
the chorus of "Oklahoma." His hospital ID badge said that his name
was Cliff.

"Sorry, dearie," he said brightly. "You can't go until Dr. Burnett
signs your discharge orders."

"But I'm a doctor myself --" Scully protested.

"Then you understand, don't you, hon? Right over there. Thanks,
doll."

"You don't understand," Scully said. "I-I need to get home."

"She won't be long," Cliff said, his smile widening even as Scully's
frown deepened.

With a plaintive groan, Scully gave up and walked away from Cliff's
station. She encountered her tall, lithe partner when she was half-way
across the cavernous hospital lobby.

"I called Skinner," Mulder began. "Told him you'd wrapped up the
case and that the tattoo was necessary for you to gain the trust of your
informant. He says well done, Agent Scully, and he's not expecting
to see you on Monday. How come Dad likes you best?"

Ignoring his halfhearted joke, Scully slouched into a seat that was
close enough to the cashier's area so that she could keep an eye out for
Dr. Burnett. She emitted a series of uncharacteristic whimpers as she
struggled to find a comfortable position in the hard plastic chair. Her
body was deeply bruised, and the Tylenol she had been given by the
floor nurse just barely took the edge off the pain. She was desperate
to soak in a warm bath and crawl into her bed.

She squinted at the man who sat next to her. In her pained self-
absorption, Scully had not noticed the twitch of his arms as he forced
himself not to embrace her as they stood talking. She had overlooked
the worry in his face as he watched her wincing with pain. As far as
she was concerned, he was returning to his old emotionally
incompetent self after last week's brief stint as her mature,
responsible, tender-hearted lover, acting as if that horrible
conversation in her hospital room had never happened.

"So what did Skinner have to say about you?" she asked.

"Me? Oh, the usual." He did not look at her as he spoke. "Mulder,
what the fuck do you think you're doing. You can't stay out of
trouble even when you're on vacation. Why can't you take a week off
like a normal person."

She nodded; she could hear Skinner's husky voice berating him even
as Mulder recited the words. And then she tried to imagine that same
voice murmuring to her the endearments that Mulder had bestowed on
her during their forty-eight hours as lovers.

"Mulder."

"Hmm."

"You really think I slept with Skinner?"

They blinked at each other for a moment before Mulder looked away
again. Rubbing his hands over his face, he sighed heavily, and was
about to speak when Dr. Burnett approached them.

She wore a wrinkled trenchcoat over her white lab coat and street
clothes. In her hand was a canvas bag emblazoned with the crest of a
national medical association; it was crammed full of ragged journals,
files, sheaths of printouts, a collapsible umbrella, a pair of battered
running shoes, and what appeared to be a partially consumed two-liter
bottle of Diet Coke.

"Agent Mulder," she said, smiling shyly at him. "I'm glad you're still
here."

"Not for long," he said, offering only the faintest of polite smiles.
"I'm eager to get Scully home."

He felt Scully bristle at his words, and immediately wished he had said
something innocuous about the weather instead.

"How're you feeling?" Dr. Burnett asked Scully.

Dana was about to shrug her response, then changed her mind when
she realized how much it would hurt to lift her shoulders. She gave
the doctor a grim smile instead.

"I'm wishing my bed wasn't quite so far away," she said.

"Stick with the NSAIDs, and the pain will quiet down," Dr. Burnett
said. She presented Dana with an envelope that bulged with yellow
copies of press-through forms. "I've signed your discharge orders.
I'm just on my way out, but I wanted to...Well, I wanted to speak to
both of you, actually. Could we go somewhere a little more private?"

As she tucked the envelope into her overnight bag, Scully tried to read
the doctor's face.

"We were just leaving," Mulder said.

"It won't take long, I promise," Dr. Burnett said, already leading them
across the lobby.

She opened the door of a conference room near the main entrance and
ushered them in. Closing the door carefully behind her, Dr. Burnett
dropped her bag in a chair and asked them to sit around the oak
conference table. It was littered with half-empty styrofoam containers
of Chinese food and empty Snapple bottles.

"Apparently the residents forgot to clean up after journal club --
again," Dr. Burnett said with a tight smile. "These kids today..."

Mulder fidgeted in his seat. He was aching to get Scully alone in the
car in the hope of retracting his accusations of infidelity.

"The sleet from yesterday has turned into rain," Dr. Burnett
commented, looking through the enormous picture window that faced
the street. "Still not the best weather for driving."

For a minute of two, the steady shower falling from a shale sky
mesmerized each of them, even Mulder. As they watched through the
window, a social services van pulled up in the patient drop-off area
near the doors. An elderly man with a menacing hook where his right
hand had once been struggled to alight from the back of the van. He
clutched the van's open door with his good hand and looked around
for help. None was forthcoming; visitors and white-coated staff
jogged past him, heads tucked down, rushing to get out of the rain.
The van's driver slapped the steering wheel in time to the music that
her headphones fed into her brain. The old man contemplated the
gutter between the van's ledge and the sidewalk. The rivulet that
flowed there on its way to a storm drain may just as well have been the
Allegheny River.

Dr. Burnett's low voice, her accent dry and faintly Southern,
perforated their common reverie.

"When I was a resident, in Houston, I was attacked in a parking deck
late one night," Dr. Burnett said. Her eyes flickered from the window
to her hands and then up to Dana's face. "I was just coming off a
thirty-six hour shift, and all I could think about was getting home,
taking a long, hot shower, and crawling into bed with my husband. I
wasn't paying attention to my surroundings...you know how it is to
be that tired."

Mulder's brows twitched together; a warm flicker of hope was
forming in his throat.

Had Dana been any less exhausted, this confession probably would've
made her intensely uncomfortable. But as it was, she simply sat and
listened.

"This man stole my engagement ring, my watch, my stethoscope --
what did he think he was he going to do with *that*? -- and of course
my wallet. I had about five dollars on me; payday was the next day.
Anyway...he raped me there on the pavement between the parked cars.
Then he tried to get me to drive him somewhere. I managed to vomit,
and that seemed to bother him, so he ran."

Dana bowed her head, hoping to hide for a moment behind the curtain
of her smooth auburn hair.

Mulder clutched the arm of his chair to keep himself for reaching for
Scully's hand.

"Did you report it?" he asked.

"Oh, sure. They even caught the guy." The doctor's eyes were wide
and unblinking with the keen-edged wisdom that had come with
survival. "Believe it or not, some good came out of the experience. It
made me a better doctor. I had much more empathy for my patients
after that. And it made me appreciate my husband even more. It was
horrible for him -- it was as if he had been raped himself. But he made
it, without taking his anger out on me, or on himself."

Like Mulder, Scully recognized the turn the story was taking. But her
weariness continued to enforce her attentiveness.

Dr. Burnett took off her glasses and placed them carefully on the
golden oak surface of the table. Without the corrective shield, her eyes
were revealed in all their beauty -- round and long-lashed, without a
trace of makeup, the irises a rare golden olive green.

"You're wondering why I'm telling you all this, I'm sure. It seems so
personal, I suppose. I'm sorry if this is offensive to you...but it's
important."

"It's okay," Dana whispered. "It's not as if I have anything to lose."

Dr. Burnett's gaze rested briefly on Mulder's face, then returned to
Scully.

"Don't you?" she said pointedly.

Dana arched an eyebrow. Dr. Burnett held up a hand to ask that they
listen only a little longer.

"I would never speak so personally if I were still treating you, Dana.
I'm speaking strictly as a fellow rape survivor. It's very likely I'm the
only one you'll ever talk to -- since you're certainly very reticent about
all this. And that's your prerogative, of course. But please hear me
out. I-I've never done anything brave in my entire life.

"Because I'm a stranger to you, I have a lot of license here," Dr.
Burnett continued. "So, here goes: from what I observed this
morning, Agent Mulder is struggling to figure out how to help you
through this. I've seen it before, and believe me, it's not easy for the
good guys. At times like this, a lot of men walk. Some of them think
their property has been defiled. Some of them are overwhelmed with
guilt for not having been able to stop it from happening in the first
place. And a lot of them just can't tolerate the pain, in themselves, in
the woman they love...Your partner's trying really hard, Dana. You
have a right to expect whatever it is you need from him. Just don't
insult him by expecting too little."

Mulder gulped down a protest. His gut wanted to tell Dr. Burnett to
mind her own goddamned business, but his heart was soaring with the
possibilities she was opening with her statements of the obvious.

Scully pressed her lips into a firm line; for a few fleeting seconds she
wanted nothing more than to unleash of tirade of hideous curses while
slinging the leftover garlic chicken at both Mulder and the doctor.

Dr. Burnett shrugged.

Scully's anger subsided when she saw the gleam of tears in the
doctor's eyes. She quickly turned her head to check Mulder's
reaction; he seemed trapped between rage and relief. His forehead was
lined with deep furrows, and his lips were parted in anticipation of a
gasp.

"Let me guess," Dr. Burnett continued. "You're afraid he only loves
you because you're his partner, and you've known each other forever,
and he's never stopped working long enough to meet anybody else?
Kind of a default arrangement?"

"How do you --" Scully uttered.

"As I told Agent Mulder, I married my research partner from med
school. Four years, slaving away side by side in a lab, long hours --
you know the routine. Falling in love was the next logical step. And
in science, logic is paramount."

Mulder shook his head. The scenario was all too familiar.

"You're still married to him?" Dana asked.

A broad grin lit up the doctor's thin face.

"Oh yes, thank God. Twelve years. It hasn't been easy, but luckily I
never expected, or wanted, it to be easy." Her smile faded. "I thought
about leaving him, after the rape. We'd only been married for three
years then; I was in my last year of residency, he was doing his
neurology fellowship. I went back to work too soon after it happened
-- didn't want to any of my colleagues to think I'd lost my competitive
edge. Frank and I...we didn't take the time to grieve together. No
time to just curl up together and shut out the world for a while until the
healing was well under way. A rift developed between us until I
began to really believe that the rape wasn't my fault...and that despite
how badly I had been hurt, I still had certain responsibilities to Frank.
I owed him the opportunity to...well, to love me. I felt horribly guilty
about dragging him into it, but it was true then, as it is now: what
happens to me happens to Frank. That's what they mean by for better
or worse. I had to give him a chance to live up to that vow. And he
did."

Dana had rarely heard a woman speak of her mate so plainly, with
neither rancor nor obnoxious pride.

"You're lucky, Dr. Burnett," she said quietly.

"In finding Frank, it's true, I am lucky," she agreed. "The rest is all
hard work and obstinacy. Look, I've said entirely too much, and I
really want to apologize for putting you on the spot like this."

"No," Mulder said softly. "Don't apologize."

Dr. Burnett hurriedly put her glasses back on, as if trying to hide her
embarrassment. She rose, as did Mulder and Scully. From her
ragged canvas bag, she produced a small spiral-bound notebook and a
pen. She scribbled a few characters, ripped out the page, and handed
it to Scully.

"This is the name and number of a counselor who specializes in
situations like yours -- her office is in upper Georgetown. She -- can
you read my handwriting? -- she and I serve together on the editorial
board of a trauma journal -- I think she's someone both of you could
respect."

Mulder read the notation over Scully's shoulder, committing it to
memory in case Scully destroyed the paper in another fit of denial.

Dr. Burnett hoisted her bag onto her shoulder. Her thin frame seemed
to sag under the weight.

"One last thing," she said as she pulled a set of keys from her pocket.
"I said 'both of you' for a reason. Individual counseling is helpful to
the survivor, but it can work wonders if the significant other is
involved as well. I wish my husband were here; he could tell you
better than I can. He's a lot more direct than I am."

And with that, Dr. Burnett left the conference room.

Mulder let out a slow whistle as they watched her depart.

"Jesus fucking Christ," he muttered. "If he's more direct than *that*, he
must be a real pain in the ass."

End The Cry of the Truth, 16/22



The Cry of the Truth, 17a/22
In Wonder and Pain
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: R (Adult situations, language, sexy thoughts)
Category: S, A, R (Mulder/Scully)

See part 01 for the disclaimer.

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.

   This word is not enough but it will
   have to do. It's a single
   vowel in this metallic
   silence, a mouth that says
   O again and again in wonder
   and pain, a breath, a finger
   grip on a cliffside. You can
   hold on or let go.
     -- Margaret Atwood, "Variations on the Word Love"

After Dr. Burnett left them, stunned and morbidly embarrassed, Scully
decided to take the train back to Washington rather than sit for two
hours locked in a car with Mulder, wondering what to say. Mulder
was relieved beyond words.

On Monday, Mulder found himself unable to follow his interpretation
of Dr. Burnett's tacit advice -- that he should martyr himself to
Scully's struggle to make peace with her rapes while waiting patiently
for her to accept his love again. Dr. Burnett did not know the entire
story, he told himself bitterly. She did not know that the only woman
he had ever called sweetheart, his Scully, the natural redhead who
understood astrophysics and tasted like Cabernet and camembert, had
crushed his heart underfoot and then opened her body to some pretty-
boy psychopath before Mulder's scent had faded from her bed linens.
No. Dr. Burnett did not know the entire story.

So, rather than offering Scully succor from his deep well of tenderness
and constancy, he was initially asinine and arrogant. He made an
insulting crack about her having the dubious distinction of turning up
twice in the X-files, and then briefly tried to chalk their conflict up to
their poor office accommodations. She didn't take the bait, and this
angered him even more. Finally he ended up hiding behind his desk,
so tense he wanted to snap every pencil in two.

All the while, Dana remained composed, studying the dried rose petal
she had found during their midnight visit to the Wall. As she sat
listening more to the sound of his voice rather than to the words he
was forming, she told herself that nothing he said now could hurt
worse than what he had said in the hospital.

He tried briefly to cover his embarrassing behavior by launching into a
discussion of his next case, but soon went back to the red herring --
the desk.

"Mulder, this isn't about you." She turned the full force of her
beautiful eyes on him, and saw him wince under her examination.
"This is *my* life."

"Yes, but it's --" His mouth continued to move soundlessly for a few
seconds. She saw that his powerful mind was stumbling over his
feelings. For a long, painful moment, they watched each other,
neither willing to make a move. Then he slumped back in his chair
and rubbed his face with both hands. "Scully, it's my life too. You
are central to my life. What happens to you happens to me."

That's what they mean by for better or worse, he said silently.

As she considered the rose petal, the words that recurred in her mind
were as familiar as her own name: Take, eat. This is my body, which
is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Drink all of this, for
this is my blood, which is shed for you, for the remission of sins. Do
this in remembrance of me.

Yesterday, in desperate need of solace, she had gone to church, but
fled the sanctuary in tears as the Eucharist was being offered. For the
first time since her confirmation, she felt unworthy of forgiveness.

"When do you suppose we lost faith in each other, Mulder?" she asked
quietly.

Mulder glanced up at her, then back down at the pencil in his hand.
Yellow, number 2, Eberhard-Faber, like so many he had used to take
those standardized tests that proved that he was a genius. And now, at
37, what good does that do me, he asked himself. If I'm so fucking
smart, why can't I give this woman what she needs?

"At the risk of starting an argument, Scully," he began slowly, "I
never lost faith in you."

"If you had any faith in me, how could you possibly think I'd sleep
with those men when I was in love with you?" There was no malice in
her voice.

Mulder shook his head mournfully and lifted his hands in a gesture of
bafflement and defeat.

"I call it temporary insanity," he said. "And I'm sorry, Scully. That
was horrible. The idea of you sleeping with Jerse really made me lose
it."

"He would be worse than the other three?" she asked, her eyebrow
reaching up into her forehead.

"...Yes," he admitted reluctantly. "Because at least I know them. Oh,
Scully...."

His voice, with his anger, faded under the pressure of regret.

Scully placed the rose petal on his desk, just in front of his name plate.
Then she crossed the room, unbuttoning her jacket as she went. She
hung it on the coat rack and, in an effort to comfort herself, folded her
arms over her chest and clasped her elbows in a sort of lonely
embrace. When she turned to face Mulder again, she was surprised to
see that he was watching her raptly. His eyes bore the familiar sheen
that she had only recently learned to recognize as desire, as well as a
glimmer of something far more delicate.

She glanced down at her suede pumps for a moment, and then her
eyes met his once again.

"Why do you think they took me, Mulder?" she asked softly.

He arched a brow and released a slow breath.

"I wish I knew, Scully," he replied after a moment.

She nodded once, and with a tight half-smile, sat on the edge of the
chair she had so recently vacated. She picked up the file he had been
babbling about and began to skim it.

He cleared his throat.

"I talked to Delia Forrest," he said.

"Oh? How is she?" Scully asked without looking up from the file.

"Better, I guess. The DA is charging one of her students with the
rape. The DNA analysis pegged him." Mulder scratched his brow
absently. "So I guess I owe you five bucks."

For a second, her eyes met his, and he knew she was remembering the
passionate embrace in the parking garage of the hospital after their
meeting with Delia. Mulder took some comfort in knowing that they at
least still shared a few pleasant memories of their brief time together as
lovers.

"No, you don't," she said murmured. "Is she -- does she believe that
he's her rapist?"

"She says she doesn't really care who did it," Mulder replied. He
spoke carefully, expecting to see Scully's sympathetic anger at any
moment. "She says that the identity of the rapist is pretty much
meaningless; all that really matters is that it happened. Her family
thinks she's nuts. They want to put her in a mental hospital."

"I didn't think that kind of thing still went on," Scully said with
surprising mildness. "Except in Catholic families."

His next question popped out before he had a chance to stop it.

"Does your mom know?"

Scully closed the file and pondered her hands for a moment. She
smoothed down a hangnail and wondered if she had any lotion stashed
in her briefcase.

"She suspected, because of the nightmares I had during those weeks I
stayed with her, after I was discharged from the hospital." She closed
her eyes and for a moment was transported back to the strange limbo
where she had hovered between recovering from the coma and
returning to work. It had seemed then that no one would ever leave
her alone again -- they were all so worried about her. And now, four
years later, she felt the most profound loneliness she had ever known.
She opened her eyes and saw that Mulder was waiting for her to
continue. "Melissa knew. I never told her, but she knew. She even
tried to convince me to tell you."

"She did? I thought she hated me," Mulder said.

Scully clutched the file folder across her chest as she remembered her
sister's face -- lovely, yet completely different from her own. It had
been so long since she had allowed herself to think of Melissa.

"Melissa thought you were full of shit," Dana said abruptly. She was
smiling for the first time in days. "She wanted nothing more than for
us to be honest with each other about -- well, about everything. She
was certain that there was a worthy Fox beneath all those layers of
Mulder-denial."

"Denial? Yeah. She hit me with that, once or twice." Mulder rested
his head on the heel of his hand, finally relaxing a little. "I've often
wondered if she knew how I felt about you."

"She was certain of it. That's why she wanted me to tell you about
Krychek."

She lowered the file to her lap and passed one palm over it in a gesture
that was almost a caress. The familiar red letters were distorted by
tears.

"Mulder, I --"

"You can go, Scully."

She looked up abruptly. Tears were cresting over her lower lashes,
but her expression was one of confusion more than grief.

"What?"

Mulder covered his eyes with one hand and rubbed his brow.

"I know how you are, Scully," he said. "When you make a promise,
you stick to it. That's what you did with Stuart, and it was very noble
of you, but...That first night we spent together, you promised me
you'd never leave me. And I'm telling you that it's okay for you to
go."

She placed the folder on the corner of his desk. Mulder did not seem
the tremor in her hand; he was staring blindly at his own forearm.

"Do you want me to go?" she asked evenly.

His voice wavered severely; his heart was breaking all over again, and
there was no point in hiding it, even if he could.

"...No..."

He heard her sigh. That gave him enough hope to look up.

Her eyes bore the tell-tale glimmer of her tears. American's finest,
Mulder thought bitterly. Crying our eyes out like we're on our way to
divorce court, while the bad guys are getting away. Fuck it. Six years
of solving the unsolvable. Enough already.

And then, like the sun peeking out from behind a thunderhead, Dana
smiled.

"Well, then," she said. "Let's do Dallas."

End The Cry of the Truth, 17a/22


The Cry of the Truth, 17b/22
In Wonder and Pain
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: R (Adult situations, language, sexy thoughts)
Category: S, A, R (Mulder/Scully)

See part 01 for the disclaimer.

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.

   This word is not enough but it will
   have to do. It's a single
   vowel in this metallic
   silence, a mouth that says
   O again and again in wonder
   and pain, a breath, a finger
   grip on a cliffside. You can
   hold on or let go.
     -- Margaret Atwood, "Variations on the Word Love"

Dana was surprised by the humidity of the Texas evening when she
alighted from the sheriff's air conditioned cruiser. Over the past two
days, her appreciation for climate control had been renewed. Her first
night in Arlington had been spent staking out the crime scene -- if you
could call the billboard a crime scene -- sweating in a pick-up truck
between two good-natured but flatulent deputies. Mulder conducted
his surveillance from the roadside ditch, and had spent the next day
whining about his mosquito bites. Last night they had been called to
the scene of a possible murder, a double-wide mobile home in which
the air conditioning did not work and where someone had been
cooking cabbage for days. The victim was the missing child's mother,
the suspect her father. And tonight Scully had been laboring over the
mother's body, trying to determine the details of her death, happily
confined to the icy-cold morgue while Mulder interviewed the father
and his business partner.

Throughout those two overheated days she had been dreaming of a
swim in the motel's pristine pool. She hurriedly thanked the sheriff
for giving her a ride back to the motel and rushed inside. As soon as
the door shut behind her, she shed her suit, blouse, and underwear
and pulled on her plain sapphire blue tank suit. After a moment of
tugging at the leg openings and the shelf bra to get the fit right, Dana
slipped out her patio door and headed to the pool.

For a moment she stood at the pool's edge, toes curled over the lip of
cement and arms crossed over her ribs, watching the undulating effect
of the underwater lights as they flashed turquoise on her pale legs and
arms. Her enthusiastic anticipation of a midnight swim was now
tempered by the little debate she had with herself whenever she swam.
The illogical part of her, the part that she worked to silence every day
of her life, was afraid of the water. It wasn't drowning she feared, but
the seeming irrevocacy of going from standing on two legs, dry and
groomed, a walking, talking member of the master species, to being
reduced by the indifferent blue water to just another amphibious
creature. There she existed on the simplest level; her only concern was
of staying alive while experiencing the cool caress of the water. And
although Dana knew that eventually she would emerge to dry off and
resume her dull human activities, that inevitability seemed too distant
to be of any comfort. The water changed everything, at least for a little
while. That was both the lure and the terror of it.

"Well? You gonna jump, or am I supposed to throw you in?"

Mulder stood in the shadows to her right, a tall, dark form which she
could easily recognize, even without the familiar burr of his voice, by
the slope of his shoulders and the slimness of his legs.  He took a step
forward, into the light, and she saw that he was wearing his
abbreviated red swimsuit. He had already been for a swim: water
clung to the hair on his chest and legs, and the hair on his head was
slicked back in a way that reminded her momentarily of Krychek.

Her gaze returned to the blue water.

"I just...sometimes the water scares me," she said, backing away from
the edge.

"Yeah. Me too," he said soberly.

Scully wondered how he could share such an irrational fear with her.
Then she remembered that he was Mulder; of course he understood.

"How did it go with Mr. Byrd?" she said.

"Got a confession," Mulder said, lowering himself to the patio surface
and dangling his legs in the water. "But only about the daughter.
We'll see about the mother tomorrow. What'd you find?"

"Looks like it a classic case of transdermal arsenic poisoning," Dana
said, sitting next to him.

"How do you mean?"

"She read all the time -- pulp romance novels, up to three a week. Her
fingertips and the tip of her tongue showed a purplish premortem
necrosis. I'd be willing to bet that the pages of at least a few of those
books were dusted with arsenic."

Mulder chuckled as he scissored his calves silently in the water.

"Talk about purple prose," he said. "I wonder if it was just on the
pages with the dirty parts."

"It's ironic, really, because from what her sister said, those books
were her only comfort after Amy disappeared."

"My mom did that after Samantha was taken," Mulder said. "Except
she read Dickens, *all* of Dickens, over and over again."

His profile was set and somber in the dimness.

"Really? Did she ever read to you?" Scully asked.

Mulder shook his head. He was watching his feet as he repeatedly
flexed them just under the water's surface.

"No. I guess I was too old for that. No, she sat by herself in her little
study. It was on the back of the house -- it had a view of the ocean --
and smoked and read all day."

"All day? What about the housework?"

"I did a lot of it," he admitted. "And she did some on Saturdays, or
before Dad came to visit. Not that he noticed, of course. I guess she
wanted to be sure that she was discharging her wifely duties, beyond
reproach, so he couldn't give her a hard time."

"But he did anyway," Scully stated.

He snorted bitterly.

"Yeah, well, he never let reason stand in his way."

She wanted to touch him then, but was afraid.

Mulder cleared his throat slightly, closing the subject.

"So tomorrow, if Byrd owns up to the wife, you think we could go
home?"

"Depends on the lab results. I've asked the sheriff to bring in her
books for us to examine...Maybe Friday. Why? Got plans for the
weekend?"

Mulder exhaled a derisive sound.

"No, Scully. No plans. You?"

"My Mom should be back from San Diego -- finally." He could hear
the smile in her voice, and knew that Scully was anticipating her
mother's renewed demands for a son-in-law. "Thought I'd go see
her. And, you know, the usual. Laundry, bills, sleep."

"Yeah. Me too." Mulder reclined on the cement surface of the patio
and lay there, feet in the water, staring up at the hazy night sky. "Will
you tell her about what happened?"

Scully twisted at the waist and looked over her shoulder at him.

"About you, y'mean, or about Ed and the tattoo?"

"About me, I guess," he replied without returning the look.

She pulled one leg out of the water and tucked her foot close to her
body so that she could rest her chin on her knee.

"Probably not," she said. "Mom doesn't much care what I do these
days if it doesn't involve a church, a ring, and nine months of swollen
ankles."

"You're hard on her," Mulder said. "She likes you, you know."

"She used to like me," Scully said. "Before Stuart. I pissed her off
by not introducing her to him. She's right, of course. How could I
think of marrying a man who'd never met my mother?"

"Temporary insanity?" Mulder suggested.

She smiled faintly at the memory of Stuart's gentle laughter. For a
moment, she could feel his slim waist under her palm as they walked
through the snow. She heard him singing softly to her when he
thought she was sleeping. She breathed the spicy lavender scent of his
soap, and felt the smooth sweep of his tongue behind her right ear.

Mulder heard a low, ponderously heavy sigh escape her lungs.

"You still miss him," he said.

"No. Not really," she said without hesitation. "I miss the simplicity of
being with him. That's all."

A slight breeze cleared some of the haze, and Mulder caught of
glimpse of a constellation he could readily identify.

"There's Orion," he said, pointing to the collection of frosty white
stars in the far western sky.

"And Canus Major -- see, next door?" Scully said, reclining next to
him. She was grateful for a change of subject. "The really bright one
is Sirius A. Ancient astronomers thought it was a red star -- redder
than Mars. But of course it's really white. It has a companion star, a
white dwarf, whose gravitational pull influences the appearance of --"

"Why the ouroboris, Scully?" Mulder interrupted.

"The what?" she said, frowning at the sky.

"The snake, on your back." Mulder folded his arms under his head,
trying to keep himself from reaching out for her. "It's an ouroboris, a
serpent devouring its own tail. Straight out of Jung's big golden book
of symbols."

"Oh, well then, Dr. Mulder, you tell me." A lethal drop of sarcasm
tinged her voice. "Why the autophagic snake?"

"No. Remember?" His response was tainted with an acidic hint of
bitterness. "This isn't about me."

Ouch.

She took a deep breath and released it slowly.

"I was drawn to it. It reminded me of something in myself, like a dim
memory, or a dream...something vague and distant but definitely
there." As Dana struggled for the right words, a balmy breeze blew a
hazy blanket over the constellations. She was relieved when the stars
disappeared. Their brilliance only accentuated the deep, silent
blackness that spread between them and pressed relentlessly on her
heart. "And later that night, after a few drinks, I saw it as a symbol of
that endless pattern I had complained about. Ed talked about marking
the moment, drawing a line in time itself to say, essentially, I'll never
come back here again. I'll never make these same mistakes again. I
was feeling weary and trapped and all I wanted was to break the
pattern, to get a breath of something fresh. With Stuart, I *thought*
that was what I was doing."

"Wasn't it?"

She closed her eyes and shivered under the breeze. She smelled the
metallic traces of rain blowing up from the south.

"Mulder, it's like you and I are the head and the tail of the same snake.
The only way we ever make any progress is by struggling *together*
but in opposite directions, like a snake slithers in the grass. It sins to
the right and repents to the left, so to speak, over and over again, in
some sort of bizarre balancing act that actually leads it forward, to its
goal, to redemption."

"You're saying you got the tattoo because of me?" he asked
incredulously.

"Not exactly."

Scully sat up again, warming to the subject. She had been struggling
to understand her own actions, and now, at last --

She sniffed, once, twice, and then felt a hot splat on her chest as a
drop of blood rolled out of her nose. She pinched her nostrils shut
between her thumb and forefinger while using the other hand to dab
the spot off of her skin.

Mulder was lost in his thoughts and never saw the blood.

Scully cleared her throat and continued.

"If one of us is the head, and one the tail -- it really doesn't matter
which is which," she said. "Then if the head swallows the tail, some
sort of mutual incorporation is reached..."

"When one bites the other, each flinches because its teeth are in its
own tail," he added.

"...Precisely..."

He rose and turned abruptly to her. They sat side by side, arms only a
few inches apart. The radiant warmth of his body was enticing in the
rapidly cooling evening. His hair had dried as they talked, and now
fell in a wild spiky mess over his forehead. He fixed the full intensity
of his perennially sleepy gaze on her. His lips were parted slightly; his
pink tongue licked the full bottom lip before his teeth lightly grazed it.

"That's incredibly sexy, you know, Scully."

One well-groomed brow arched into her forehead.

"What, that you're forever biting me in the ass?"

Laughter, masculine and feminine, emotional and satirical, pink and
gray, spilled out into the evening air, danced with the water lights, and
bounded off into the sky where the stars were bored and restless
behind the clouds.

When it had passed, Mulder drew his feet out of the water and
gathered his knees up close to his chest. He watched her; she was
smiling down at the water, pushing and pulling her leg through the
thickness of it, creating a marvelous musical scale of trickling and
soughing. For the first time, he realized how thin she had become; it
showed in her face more than in her body. Her cheeks were hollow,
her eyes wide.

"You once told me that I wasn't a pain in the ass to work with," he
said with a smirk.

"Yeah, but you're a pain in the ass to love, Mulder."

He swallowed a lump in his throat. His lips pressed together, then
opened, as he formed a question. He took a breath as if about to
speak, but then allowed the question to die unasked.

She had loved him all along, in a platonic way, he reminded himself.
He may've lost her as a lover, but he still had her as a partner and,
apparently, as a friend. He knew he should be satisfied with that.

But she was looking at him. Not staring, but contemplating, as if he
were a painting she had seen studied for years in art history texts and
now, after traveling across continents, was at last encountering in its
original form. The scale was not as she had imagined. The colors
were more vibrant that she had thought possible. In essence, Mulder's
flaws were both disappointing and reassuring in ways she had never
expected them to be.

"Do you..." She let the question flutter to the surface of silence, afraid
to hear the answer.

Mulder thought he knew the question, but did not want to ask it for
her. On the other hand, he feared that if he did not prompt her, she
would never take the step.

His voice was low, but his tongue formed the words with care.

"Do I what, Dana?"

Now it was her turn to shiver.

"You didn't mean those things you said to me in the hospital," she
said.

"No. I was angry, and incredibly jealous, and hurting. Not that that's
an excuse. But it's a reason, at least."

Scully nodded; she could appreciate the difference.

"Mulder, I have many more scars than I realized. And they're
considerably deeper than I thought. But..."

He struggled not to help her. These words had to come on their own.
Still, he was dying to hear them.

"Nothing," she continued. "Nothing, in all these years as friends,
kept me from loving you, until my own pride got in the way."

Mulder grinned, his teeth almost unnaturally white in the strange blue
lights that shone up from the depths of the pool.

"Well, Scully, if it's any consolation, if this were a Jane Austen novel
it would be called 'Pride and Pride.' "

Again she laughed, the soft, redoubling sound that reminded him of
the first time he had touched her body, that night in her kitchen when
she wore the sheer pink nightshirt the same color as her nipples, when
he saw that her pubic hair was dark auburn and thick and lush, that her
waist was tiny and her tummy not at all flat, as he had anticipated, but
beautifully rounded in a womanly show of potential reproductive
splendor, and the skin, her skin...

He groaned audibly and slipped into the pool before she could see the
erection that was peeking out of his swimsuit.

What Scully did see, however, was that he was cautiously
persevering, allowing her to see that he was still her old friend, the one
nobody calls Fox, the one who's afraid of fire, the one with the
monster IQ who can't balance his checkbook for anything, the one
whose heart had been broken long before she met him and who had
learned over the years with her how to let himself love and be loved...

"It's been a long day," she said, extracting her other leg from the pool.
"I'm going in. 'Night, Mulder."

End The Cry of the Truth 17b/22

The Cry of the Truth, 18a/22
The Nearness of You
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: NC-17 (Adult situations, language, near-sexual contact)
Category: S, A, R (Mulder/Scully)

See part 01 for the disclaimer.

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.


   It's not the pale moon that excites me
   That thrills and delights me
   Oh, no, it's just the nearness of you...
        -- Rogers/Hart


As he swam another twenty laps, Mulder tried to remember the advice
the counselor had given him when he had called, just before they left
for Texas, to make the first appointment. Don't pressure her.
Encourage her to talk. Listen. Above all, listen.

Make her feel secure and loved without initiating sex.

That was easier said than done, he mused, when she was wearing that
swimsuit with the low square-cut neckline.

Mulder was beginning to allow himself to hope that Scully wanted to
resume their affair. During their time in Texas, they had at least
restored their working relationship. He was fairly certain that he had
seen more than just professional regard in her eyes as they talked
under the stars. And she had said that she loved him, hadn't she? She
had indeed.

He climbed out of the pool and shook off the water like a dog. As he
headed toward the sliding glass door that led from the patio to his
room, he passed Scully's door. About six inches of glass were
uncovered by the drapery. Before he could stop himself, Mulder
paused in the shadows and watched as she paced through her room.
Now completely naked, she was in the process of laying out her
clothes for the next day on the second bed. She turned her back to
him, and he caught a glimpse of the shadowy symbol on her flank.

Mulder turned and took a few steps back toward the pool. Even as he
felt burning shame for intruding on her privacy, his heart was
thundering in his chest and he shivered hard despite the warm breeze.
He glanced over his shoulder at her door, and seeing only an empty
room, began to cross the patio again.

He paused among the vinyl-strapped lounge chairs. There, the
counselor's words ringing in his ears, Mulder had an idea. He just
hoped he had the self-discipline to carry it off.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Soft spring rain pattered against the sliding glass door that overlooked
the pool, but all Scully heard was the roar of the shower above her
head. She was rinsing the shampoo lather from her hair, first allowing
the water to sluice off the majority of it, then using her fingertips to
work the residual bubbles out of the her hairline. She lifted the heavy
mass of her hair and bowed her head under the stream. The water
pummeled against the back of her skull, parting the hair like the Red
Sea and cajoling the tight muscles of her neck to loosen enough for her
to forget, at least for a little while, that the past three weeks had been
the most emotionally intense of her life.

As she stepped out of the water's jet and began to rub the soap over
her arm, she heard a tapping sound from beyond the shower's
plexiglass door.

"Scully?"

"Mulder?" She returned the soap to its box and cracked the shower
door. "What is it? Another murder?"

"No, no," he said, peering around the bathroom door. "I, uh, I
just..."

"Are you okay?" she asked, more urgently this time.

Mulder shook his head and exhaled a tiny laugh at his own folly.

"I'm okay, Scully. I just wanted to, uh...I wanted to tell you..."
Mulder looked down at his body, suddenly feeling ridiculous in his
small swimsuit. "This is really strange, I know, especially after --"

The shower door opened more widely, and he was confronted with
her nude, wet form. She was just as he remembered, womanly and
strong. His eyes traveled from the faint, slanted lines of her ribcage to
the clutch of wet, dark ringlets at her base, then up to the gray-green,
shortsighted eyes he loved so well.

"It's okay," she said softly, extending a hand toward him.

He took her hand, so small in his, and stepped into the steamy
shower, closing the door behind him. The water was nearly too hot
on his skin after the cool evening air.

"Swimsuits aren't required in here, you know," she said, tilting her
head toward his pelvis.

"Oh. Right."

He had it off and over the shower door in a matter of seconds.

For a moment all she could do was stare at his face, memorizing the
expression of fear, grief, and regret. He seemed so weary, and older
than his years, yet his almost childlike need to love her was so
apparent to her now that she wondered how she could have possibly
overlooked it for so many years.

She shook her head, face crumpling under the force of her sadness,
and she placed a hand over her heart.

"Maybe I shouldn't've come," he said, more to himself than to her.

"I'm glad you did," she said, gingerly placing a finger in the crook of
his elbow. "I wanted to spend some more time with you, but I didn't
know how to ask."

"I have a feeling this isn't what you had in mind," he said ruefully,
watching the progress of her finger over his bicep.

"No, but...the most important thing, the thing I didn't say outside just
now, Mulder," she said, now clasping his shoulders firmly, "Is that
I'm sorry for hurting you. I'm sorry I did what I did in Philadelphia,
and I'm sorry I reacted the way I did that night on the Mall."

"You believe that I love you, don't you?" he said quietly.

"I wanted to believe...," she said with a tiny smile. "But I thought I'd
given up my right to that. What I did to you was so rotten, Mulder..."

He kissed her forehead as he pulled her into a tight embrace.

"I said some rotten things, too, Scully."

She rested against his chest, enjoying the sensation of the water
pooling between them.

"I didn't sleep with Ed," she said.

"I believe you, sweetheart."

The sound of the endearment, uttered in his half-squeaky, half-sultry
voice, nearly broke her heart.

They stood, toe to toe, arms wrapped around each other, and wept in
the humid chamber of the motel shower. Mulder rocked her in his
embrace, murmuring endearments into her wet hair.

But Scully could not accept his tenderness without further
qualification. She pushed back from him so that she could see his face
as she spoke.

"I know I agree to talk to somebody -- that therapist you called -- about
all this," she began. "And I intend to, as soon as we get back. But
nothing changes the fact that I have scars... on my body and in my
heart. They may never go away, but I think can learn to live with
them. And you have to be prepared to live with them too, if this is
going to work."

He pursed his lips and cocked his head to one side to give her a stern,
questioning look. Her words reminded him of something Krychek
had said about biting her hard enough to draw blood.

"Let me wash you," he said.

She swallowed and nodded, then leaned back against the sparkling
white tile and watched as he took her soap from its pink travel box.
Her tears had eased, and now watching his graceful movements
provided a welcome distraction from the grief that had provoked them.
His biceps and pectorals flexed as he rubbed the soap between his
hands. As he dipped his head to one side in the process of stowing the
soap on the little porcelain shelf, she observed a rippling elongation of
his neck. Her eyes wandered down his belly to the orderly latticework
of abdominal muscles and the patch of dark hair that served as a
background to his quiescent penis. His body was no less beautiful for
its familiarity.

He kissed her wet face, his soapy hands sliding over her back as he
pulled her close into the crook of his right arm. His left hand rubbed
soap over her right shoulder, her breasts and belly, then around to her
hip and down to her upper thigh. All the while he was humming
softly, just under his breath, a song about the disarming effect of love.
She closed her eyes and listened, felt his firm, even touch, smelled the
soap and his Mulderscent as distilled by the warm water.

He shifted so that he was holding her with his left arm around her
waist, washing her left side with his right hand. Still humming, he
pressed soft kisses along her hairline. Her mind wandered, trying to
identify the song, as his hands worked through the tangle of hair at the
apex of her thighs, trailing soap through the crevices he knew so well.
Then, at his unspoken request, she turned to the wall and rested her
head against her forearms.

With her face hidden from him, Scully wept a little more, despairing
over the intensity of her need for him. She had not understood the
extent of her involvement with Mulder until they had spent a week
apart, both expecting never to touch again. Now that she felt herself
loosening, warming, healing under his touch, she had no choice but to
acknowledge the effect of his love on her. It did not wholly jibe with
her ideas of independence and strength, but there it was.

Mulder's humming ceased as he encountered the ouroboris etched on
her back. He covered it with his palm, pretending for a second that it
wasn't there. But denying the tattoo meant denying everything that
had led them to this point. He should learn to love it, he told himself.
He should kiss it, lick it, nibble at it, pour his semen onto and massage
it into the skin there until he had accepted it as part of their common
journey. But tonight it still made him feel an inexplicable, gutburning
fear of her separateness.

Reminding himself that the purpose of these ablutions was to comfort
her, he kept his hands moving up and down her back lest his lingering
over the tattoo alert her to his fear. With his thumbs he massaged wide
circles into the strong muscles that paralleled her spine. He trailed his
short nails down the deep spinal valley between the twin banks of
muscle, eliciting a shiver from her that brought a slight smile back to
his face. She shifted her arms, but did not turn, and Mulder was glad.
At least for a few minutes, he needed to be alone with her body and his
thoughts.

Rubbing her soap between his hands again, he massaged her lower
back, hips, and buttocks with deep strokes. She moaned softly as the
tension dissipated under his hands. Slowly, then, he sank to his
knees. He caught a handful of water and used it to rinse the soap from
her bottom, then pressed his lips to the taut, translucent skin there.
His fingers smoothed over every spot his lips kissed, then oh so
gently parted the firm globes of gluteal muscle. Two small, jagged,
vaguely crescent-shaped scars, white against the delicate pink tissue,
were revealed to him, proving once again the agonizing veracity of
Krychek's story. He kissed the scars, and heard her whimper. Then,
with a tremulous finger, he traced one more ragged scar. It was less
than a centimeter in length, radiating out from the tight little aperture.
He placed another tender kiss there, and hoped that she did not feel the
hot tears that coursed over his cheeks.

He shuddered and, finally rising again to his full height, smoothed his
hands over her belly and down to her thighs. She moaned and moved
against his hands, her strong gluteals rippling under the pressure of his
thighs. She was whispering into the wall, a prayer, a plea, a
confession that had nothing to do with his fear of the tattoo. Her hands
slapped against the tile and reached above her head. She lurched
forward, flattening herself against the wall and then arching back
against his body.

He thought he heard her speak, and leaned closer.

"Scully?" he whispered into her cheek.

"Go ahead. Do it," she said hoarsely, just loudly enough for him to
hear her.

He frowned darkly. Where else she had used similar words, he
wondered.

"No. No, sweetheart." Although his familiar voice was warm, soft,
just above a whisper, it projected through the thunder of the shower
straight to the place inside her where the pain and loneliness were
burning. "I just wanted to touch you, to bathe you, to be with you.
Turn around, my darling. Let me hold you, please. That's it...oh,
Dana."

As she sobbed in his arms, he rocked her in and out of the spray,
smoothing the soap from her back in small strokes, turning her so that
the stream could rinse her belly and chest. He kissed her tentatively,
only with his lips lest he confuse the both of them with his motives.

And then they were clean.

"Let's go to bed," he said gruffly.

"I'm so tired," she admitted.

"Mmm. Me too." He turned off the water and offered her a guiding
hand over the threshold of the shower stall. When she was standing,
tiny and dripping, on the bath mat, he proceeded to dry her with slow,
even strokes of the towel.

Eventually he left her so that she could complete the brief evening
ritual that he knew, albeit indirectly, from years of traveling with her.
Occasionally he would stand in the bathroom door and trade theories
with her as she prepared for bed: brush and floss teeth, put on eye
cream, take sleep-inducing antidepressant drug, smooth on lip balm.
That had been in the days when he had to return to his room alone,
take a cold shower, and spend the rest of the night repeatedly listing
the monarchs of England (in order, with dates) or conducting some
other dry mental exercise to distract him from dreaming of Scully.

Tonight, as he sat on the edge of her bed, he listened to the roar of her
hair dryer and tried once again to think calm, nonsexual thoughts. He
began with William the Conqueror, and had gotten only as far as John,
the loser king, when she emerged from the bathroom dressed in a
simple pair of pale blue cotton jersey pajamas, her hair dried just
enough to give her a halo of auburn waves. She was rubbing lotion
into her hands as she walked toward him.

When he looked up at her through a veil of dark eyelashes and smiled
shyly, Dana had to pause and rethink the situation. What he had just
done for her had given her more comfort than anyone, including her
parents, had ever been able to offer her. But after the emotional
turmoil of the past week, she was not prepared to reciprocate...at least
not in the way that he seemed to have in mind.

"Mulder..."

End The Cry of the Truth, 18a/22

The Cry of the Truth, 18b/22
The Nearness of You
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: NC-17 (Adult situations, language, near-sexual contact)
Category: S, A, R (Mulder/Scully)

See part 01 for the disclaimer.

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.

   It's not the pale moon that excites me
   That thrills and delights me
   Oh, no, it's just the nearness of you...
        -- Rogers/Hart

"I'd like to stay with you," he said, hurriedly securing the towel at his
waist as he stood. His dusky look spoke of his need to twine his body
around hers and float with her into the warm nighttime respite that he
had found only when sleeping next to her. "I want to sleep with you,
just hold you, Dana, if...That's all. For now. If you --"

"Do you want to go back to your room for your pajamas?" she asked.

He gave her a lopsided grin and a nod.

"Yeah. Good idea. Be back in a minute, okay?"

"I'll be waiting," she said softly, taking up the place he had vacated on
the bed.

Within ten minutes, Mulder was back. He locked the patio door
behind him and closed the draperies, then slid into bed behind her.
She readily tucked her bottom into his lap as he closed his arms around
her torso.

"Fox..."

He sighed his response.

"I have to be honest with you," she said quietly, her fingertips
rhythmically stroking the soft hair of his forearm. "I don't want to go
back to just being friends again. I love you, no matter what, and if
you'll have me, I want to be with you for a long, long time -- as a
lover. That's what I want."

Mulder tugged on her sleeve until she rolled over to face him.

"I like hearing that certainty in your voice."

"I'm confused about some other things, but I know that I love you.
And that I need you."

As she spoke to him, she caressed his cheek, his neck, his shoulder.
He was warm and fragrant from their shower, and in those striped
Brooks Brothers pajamas his mother had given him for Christmas, he
seemed to her a cross between Cary Grant in any of his films and a
virginal bridegroom on his wedding night, circa 1949. Suddenly, in
spite of the gravity of the night's discussion, she wished she were
wearing a fitted satin nightgown and holding a glass of champagne.

Instead, she was curled up in a better-than-average motel bed with the
flesh-and-bone man of her dreams.

Dana smiled in the darkness and smoothed her hand over his breast.
The crisp cotton of the pajama shirt whispered under her touch.

"Mulder -- Fox -- I -- I love these pajamas." He stilled the hand that
caressed his chest and brought it to his lips for a kiss. She felt his
smile forming under her fingertips, and it gave her courage to say what
was on her mind. "I need you for so many things, normal everyday
things, but also I need you to help me deal with this - this thing that
happened to me."

"I will. I promise. And I won't push you into hypnosis, even
though....Okay. Never mind. I'm still amazed that you agreed to any
form of treatment. Amazed, and relieved." He pulled her close in a
tight embrace, even hitched one lanky leg over hers to add to the
intensity of his expression of love and devotion. "We'll do it, and do
it well, just like we do everything."

"You smell so good," she mumbled, sniffing his neck. "You feel even
better."

"Yeah, well, don't feel me too thoroughly, or you'll get a rude shock."

"Not so rude," she said, skimming her hand along his thigh.

Mulder rolled onto his back and away from her hands.

"Cut it out, Scully," he said sternly. "Now's not the time."

Dana sighed. Since when was he the practical one?

"I hear you, Mulder." She stretched, pointing her toes and reaching
for the wall above her head. With a grunt of satisfaction, she released
the stretch and reached for his hand. It was warm and surprisingly
soft. "To be honest, I didn't really intend to...it's just that the
nearness of you, the smell of your skin, your voice in my ear, your
smooth, soft feet..."

"You like my feet?" he asked, cutting a glance her way.

Dana smiled at the ceiling.

"They're beautiful -- like the rest of you," she said.

Mulder curled his toes self-consciously. His mental VCR was
whirring to life again, playing a naughty tape of Scully licking his
instep while wearing nothing but those nearly translucent green silk
pajama pants, the ones she had worn with his gray tee shirt that night
in her apartment. The sense memory of her taste came to life in his
mouth with a rapid accuracy that, even in the darkness, made him
blush. As the scene continued, she straddled his legs and leaned
forward to nibble at his toes, revealing the ouroboris on her bare back.

"Can I see it again, Scully?" he asked, his throat dry with arousal and
worry and weariness.

"See -- oh. Of course."

She rolled onto her belly and reached around, her elbow at an acute
angle, to hitch up her top. The mattress dipped as Mulder sat up and
turned on the light, then squirmed around until he was kneeling over
her, knees on the left and one hand on either side of her hips, to get the
best view of the tattoo.

He traced the mark with his fingertips, at first just grazing the skin and
then touching it more assuredly.

"You said..." He cleared his throat; his voice was cracking with
nearly every syllable tonight. "You said that you and I are the head
and the tail of the same snake, struggling together but in opposite
directions...in an bizarre balancing act that eventually leads
forward..."

"I think I was waxing poetic," she said. "Or waning, maybe."

"But it's true, isn't it." His fingers moved up and down her spine, his
touch as natural in its intimacy with her body as her own hand had
ever been. "Ever seen a snake after it's been cut in half?"

She clenched shut her eyes, trying for a moment to stop the painful
image of a bisected snake struggling helplessly, finding relief only in
death. Then, a quiet voice within her -- one that she had long ago
strangled into silence -- asked that she allow the feelings to live out
their natural lifespan.

"Yes," she said, rolling onto her back and reaching for him.

With a cry that registered somewhere between a whimper and a moan,
Mulder lowered himself into her arms. He nuzzled her neck and took
a deep breath of her. He heard the stubble on his chin rasping against
the velvet of her neck, and wished he had taken the time to shave...but
there was never enough time, was there?

"I can't go forward without you, Dana," he said, his voice clotted with
tears.

"You don't have to."

She held him tightly, his head tucked under her chin, one hand raking
through his hair as the other cupped his cheek. Occasionally she heard
him sniff away a tear. Her own eyes, however, were dry not because
she was denying her grief but because her contentment in holding him
again was greater than the pain that lived within her.

Outside the wind was picking up, slapping the warm rain against the
plate glass of the patio door.

"Hey, Mulder? I'm really cold. Could you grab that blanket?"

He rose a few degrees, just enough to snag the hem of the spare
blanket and pull it over their bodies. He set the alarm on the clock
radio on his way back into her arms.

Dana smiled at the little noises he made as he wrapped himself around
her. His smooth feet touched hers as he assumed a fetal position, and
she sighed her approval.

"Sleepy?" he asked.

"A bit. I wish we didn't have to go back to work in the morning. All
I want to do now is stay curled up with you."

He kissed the part of her neck that was nearest his lips; her skin was
so soft and pliant that it seemed to kiss back on its own volition.

"Which is why the Bureau frowns on this kind of thing between
partners," he said.

"You mean that Skinner wouldn't approve of Sanders taking a shower
with Milwitz, and then getting into bed with him?"

"They'd be protected by the don't ask-don't tell policy, sweetheart,"
he said, spreading his palm across her abdomen.

"This counseling business won't be easy, you know," she said,
abruptly switching to the topic that was uppermost in both their minds.
"How many sessions before we're allowed to have sex?"

Mulder shifted again, this time just enough to rest his weight on an
elbow.

She was waiting patiently for his answer, lips parted slightly, her chest
rising and falling with the tide of her breath. Mulder's brows
furrowed together; in the dark room, he could barely see her below
him.

"It's not that we aren't *allowed* to, Dana. I just -- I'm not -- I'm
worried --"

"Now's not the time," she said softly. "I understand. But do you
still...do you still want me, Mulder?"

He laughed broadly at that, tossing his head back and flopping noisily
onto the mattress.

"Why do you think I swam another twenty laps, Scully?" he snorted.

Under the covers, she smoothed down her pajama top and laced her
fingers together over her waist.

"Fox." Her voice was low and even, and immediately censored his
laughter as it reminded him to take her query as seriously as it had
been made.

"I'm sorry," he said, calm now. "I've wanted you so badly for so
long. The idea that that would ever change is -- improbable at best."

"Very judiciously put," she said.

He made more settling noises as they returned to their side-by-side
position. Soon he felt her breathing slow and deepen, and he realized
that she was asleep. He was ready to follow her, to dream of making
love to her on the beach at Gay Head again. But there was one last
ritual to complete before he could release his hold on the day.

"Dana."

At the sound of her name, she stirred slightly and whimpered.

"Dana, I love you." He uttered the words clearly, but quietly, near her
ear.

She patted his arm where it encircled her body and tucked herself a
little closer to him.

>From the hazy blue rim of sleep, she spoke. "Fox, I love you, too,
and I'm so sorry..."

"It's all right now, baby. Go to sleep, and dream about me."

She chuckled sleepily.

"...Easy..."

End The Cry of the Truth, 18b/22

The Cry of the Truth, 19a/22
Missed Perfection
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: NC-17 (Sexual activity)
Category: S, A, R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary: Scully shares the benefits of her improved mental health
with Mulder.

See part 01 for the disclaimer.

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.

Feedback would be fabulous; we're in the home stretch now!

     I know you've missed perfection,
     But your quirks and flaws
     Are not personal betrayals,
     But are the marks left
     By the kiss of angels,
     Allowing you to live within
     This far too real world.
          --Joseph Zitt, "Psalm 183"

The effort required to save the life of a retired General and help capture
his assassin was child's play to Dana, compared to the challenges she
met in the office of the psychologist recommended by Dr. Burnett.
Every Tuesday and Thursday for the past six weeks, barring out-of-
town cases, Dana had presented herself at Dr. Anna Locke's
Tenleytown office for whatever examination and exorcism the good
doctor could offer.

It hadn't been six weeks of sitting in a comfy chair telling her troubles
to a professional listener, as she had expected. It had been six weeks
of answering tough questions about herself, her needs and desires, her
petty cruelties and her stellar gifts. Dana had recounted, in lurid detail,
everything she remembered about the rape -- after initially explaining
to Dr. Locke that she simply could not talk about the criminal nature of
her abduction because it was still considered an open case. After a few
sessions, she stopped trying to analyze Dr. Locke's methodology and
allowed herself to be mystified by the seemingly effortless way that the
counselor could keep track of the complex facts and feelings Dana
threw at her. She seemed to absorb what she heard and observed,
distill it through the filter of her kindness, education, and experience,
and then return it to Dana in the form of a fresh question that more
often than not led to some sort of epiphany. As the weeks wore on,
the Gordion knot of emotions surrounding the sharp kernel that was
her memory of the rapes began to loosen. Dana's skepticism, at least
where psychotherapy was concerned, was put to rest when she
realized that for the first time in years, the cold, quiet, nameless fear
that kept her company like a war wound nags an old man was more
and more often taking a holiday.

One Thursday, soon after the Teager case was concluded, Dana
emerged from the psychologist's brick office building on upper
Wisconsin Avenue with a vague idea about wanting to reward herself
for all the emotional exertion of the past six weeks. She wandered
northward up the avenue, peering into the windows of small shops
that sold everything from antiques to tie-dye. As she neared Chevy
Chase and the Maryland border, the more expensive the merchandise
became. She considered shoes -- too likely to be ruined chasing after
monsters. A new suit -- enough of those, thank you. Jewelry -- leave
that for Mulder, who was always wanting to give her gifts these days.

She paused outside the jeweler's window and stared vacantly at the
display of platinum and diamonds. Poor old Mulder, she thought.
For six weeks all we've talked about is work and my therapy. I've
cried on his shoulder and kept him awake with my nightmares. He's
given me everything I needed, and more. He deserves a reward of his
own, she declared.

Dana tugged her cell phone out of the small, flat purse she carried and
hit the auto dial code for her partner.

"Mulder," he muttered on the second ring.

"Hey Mulder, what're you wearing?" she said with a smile that he
could certainly hear in the lilting burr of her voice.

"Hmmpf. Same thing I was wearing when you left here an hour ago,"
he replied, feigning peevishness. "Where are you?"

"On the street."

"Oooh, Scully, living beyond your means again? Had to take a second
job?"

"Shut up, Spooky," she hissed, grinning at herself in the shop
window.

"Sticks and stones, my girl, sticks and stones...."

"So you're still at the office?" she asked.

"Yeah, well, I could never make it on the street," he teased. "I always
got picked last for all the teams in grade school, y'know."

"Bullshit. Mulder, pay attention. I'm trying to proposition you in the
best possible way."

In spite of the steady drone of the passing cars, she heard him growl
seductively into the phone. She felt her face flush with the intensity of
a fever.

"Yes ma'am," he said smoothly. "Just tell me when and where and
I'll be there. With bells on."

"My place. Two hours. And you can skip the bells."

XXXXXXXXXXX

Mulder lifted one arm and then the other to sniff himself; he had taken
a quick shower following his after-work swim, but he couldn't
remember if he had put on more deodorant. He was viciously
nervous, which made him sweat, which made him more nervous.
Then he worried for a moment that he smelled like chlorine, from the
pool water. And what about the shirt -- sometimes the ancient dryer in
his building's basement turned itself off before the shirts were
dry...Not this time. It passed. Downy fresh.

He smoothed the plum tee shirt over his belly and tucked it a little more
securely into his jeans. He stopped in front of Dana's door and
wished for a mirror. His hair was still a little wet, and probably
sticking out all over. He patted his head absently and was about to
knock when the door opened as if by magic.

Almost by magic, he mused, facing his love. She was especially
beautiful tonight, her eyes sparkling with a gorgeous, welcoming
smile that until a few weeks ago he had wondered if he would ever see
again.

"Hey," he said, smiling like a child.

She stepped aside so that he could enter the apartment, and then locked
the door behind him.

Mulder felt her hands sliding the leather jacket from his shoulders
before he even had a chance to turn around and study her. Once freed
from the coat, he perched on an arm of the sofa and watched as she
rummaged in the hall closet. When she was finished, she returned to
stand before him.

He fixed his dark gaze upon her and fluttered his long eyelashes once
or twice to punctuate his expression.

"What's going on, Scully?"

She moved forward until she was standing between his long legs.
Without meeting his eyes, she skimmed her fingertip just under his
waistband until he sucked in a breath in response to the shivery tickle
that suffused his nerve endings. He lifted it to his lips and kissed the
freckles that dotted the dorsal surface, noting for the hundredth time
how tiny her bones and joints were compared to his own. As his lips
strayed to her wrist, he looked into her eyes and this time found that
she was looking back.

Again, she was smiling.

"What?" he asked, a hint of paranoia creeping into the question.

"Nothing." She shook her head and, without really wanting to, gently
pulled her hand out of his grip. "I just -- I'm just really glad to see
you."

"Really glad?" he echoed, trying to get a sense of her true meaning.

But Scully only nodded and walked away, leading him into the
kitchen.

"I hope you're hungry," she said. From the oven, she produced a
broad white baking dish containing a whole roasted chicken
surrounded by carrots and tiny red potatoes. "The proverbial spring
chicken."

"Looks great," he said, taking a deep breath of the scent of thyme,
garlic, and butter that steamed up from the bird. "Smells even better.
What's for dessert?"

"That's a surprise," she said mildly. "Have a seat, and I'll bring the
plates. The wine's on the table, if you want to pour..."

Mulder took his usual chair at the pine plank table and draped a simple
white linen napkin across his lap. The table was set in the usual Scully
style: antique hotel silver purchased at flea markets, simple white bone
china, and hem-stitched linens. A bouquet of yellow daisies and ivy
filled a small ceramic vase that looked as if it had been made in art
class by one of her nephews. He touched the small fingerprints that
had been immortalized in the clay, imagining for a moment that they
belonged to a child of their own creation.

"The wine, Mulder," she reminded him from the kitchen, in a
distinctly wifely tone.

"Oh yeah."

He turned the bottle of white wine between his palms, trying to
decipher the label.

"When did you become such an oenophile?"

"A couple of years ago, when I realized I had plenty of disposable
income and too much stress," she replied, placing a small blue faience
plate before him.

Mulder peered down at three oysters, resting in half-shells and dressed
with thin strips of prosciutto and strands of chives.

"What's this?"

"Something like oysters Rockefeller," she replied, scooting her own
chair up to the table. "Oyster season is nearly over, and I know how
much you like them, so..."

Mulder's stomach contracted in horror. He sat as far back in his chair
as he could without actually pushing back from the table, and tried to
look anywhere but at the oysters or her face.

"Don't eat them, Scully," he panted.

"What? Why not? They're not raw -- I steamed them." Her brow
furrowed deeply. "I thought you loved oysters. You were muttering
about them, in your sleep, when you came back from Russia. Don't
you remember my telling you that?"

"Yeah, but it's not because..."

He stumbled out of his chair and into the living room. Dana followed
in time to see him bury his face in the loose cushions of the sofa.

"Mulder? Are you feeling sick?"

He whimpered unintelligibly into the pillows.

Dana watched him for a moment, stymied. She had hoped that a light
meal, a few glasses of wine, and some intimate conversation would set
the scene for a return to their long-delayed status as lovers. But now
her hopes were waning.

She sat on the coffee table, near his head, and rested her elbows on her
knees.

"Contrary to those Mrs. Spooky rumors, I can't read your mind, you
know."

Her words were sardonic, but the touch of her hand on his back was
depthlessly gentle. When Mulder finally looked up from the velvet
cushion, he saw that she was patiently waiting for him to speak.

"I had managed not to think about it, not in the last few weeks," he
said, half sitting. "You were getting better, and I guess I really wanted
to forget. Rape Takes a Holiday -- not exactly the title of a Hitchcock
movie, but..."

"We both need a break from this, Mulder." Her voice was soft and
low, lulling him like a child who had skinned his knee. "That's what
this evening was about. We've both tried so hard to get through this
thing, and it's working. I thought I'd wine you and dine you, rather
than cry on your shoulder, for a change."

"I'm sorry, Scully," he said, taking her hand.

"It's okay. But tell me what the problem is, Mulder." Her eyes bore
into him with that unblinking intelligence that he always relied on to
cut through the crap. "I need to know."

He nodded.

"First get rid of the oysters?"

"Whatever you say," she assented.

He heard the whir of the food disposer and the jet of water rinsing the
food down the kitchen drain. When she returned, she presented him
with a cool glass of wine. Again, she sat on her coffee table, her
knees grazing his.

"You remember when I said that Krychek told me about raping you,"
he began, sipping the wine.

She nodded once, her face fixed in an expression of caution.

"Well, he told me what you smelled like, and -- and what you tasted
like. He said -- oysters. He said you tasted like oysters. And that's
why I can't eat them." He shook his head slowly, horrified by what
he was telling her. "I'm sorry, Dana."

Her first instinct was to run and hide. Secondly, she wanted to vomit.
Thirdly, she wanted to cry. This option held the most appeal, and so
she gave in to it. She hid her face behind her small hands and allowed
the tears to contort her eyes, upper lip, and nose into a mask of pain.
Her throat seemed to fill with tears, and she nearly choked when she
tried to take a breath through the veil of moisture. She swallowed
hard, and then gulped oxygen as if she were drowning.

It was not shame that made her cry, at least not primarily. It was the
automatic resurgence of the memory, as soon as Mulder's words had
been absorbed by her brain, of Krychek's hard, thin lips on her vulva,
sucking at her flesh with the single-mindedness a newborn dog blindly
searching for milk. She had never understood any of what he had
done to her, but his interest in tasting her body had confounded her in
particular. This sort of oral-genital contact was reserved for lovers,
she had thought, not the act of a rapist, someone who takes what is not
freely given for the sake of knowing power over his victim. But Alex
Krychek was not a typical rapist, if indeed there was such a thing. He
had used her creatively, and in perhaps the cleverest move of his
sordid career had applied his sense memories of her body to the
purpose of hurting Mulder. Dana's tears on this April evening were
for her own suffering, but also for the pain she had seen in Mulder's
face when he had to tell her the truth about the oysters. She was
learning to live with her own pain, but coping with the effect of all this
on her beloved Mulder was a different struggle altogether.

So to a certain degree, Krychek had gotten what he wanted.

At times Krychek seemed to enjoy pretending that he was her lover
rather than her rapist, feigning tenderness just long enough to take the
edge off her terror and then, when he knew that she had relaxed even
slightly, he would hurt her with a gleeful vengeance. He had bitten
her at these moments, then threw back his head like a wolf howling at
the moon and laughed about it. She could still see her blood on his
face: a smudge on his chin, his upper lip, the tip of his small nose.

In the agonized posture of her small body and the gasping sobs that
came from behind the screen of her hands, Mulder could almost
witness the memories playing themselves out. He had formed his own
mental images of the rapes based on Krychek's story and, more
recently, on what Dana had been able to tell him in the safe confines of
Dr. Locke's office. It was horrible enough, but he was getting better
at distancing himself from his own grief so that he could attend to
Dana's.

"Sweetheart. Come here. You know you don't have to do this
alone," he said, half-rising from his seat so that he could wrap his
arms around her shoulders and guide her masked, sobbing body onto
the couch. Somehow he managed to kick off his shoes in the process
of positioning her between his legs and then pulling her back to rest,
curled on her side, against his chest. Luckily the sofa was quite deep,
and there was room for him to wrap his long legs around her, creating
a cocoon of muscle and bone that she could easily escape should she
feel confined. He cooed sweet words as he stroked her hair. As she
cried out the last jagged sobs, he rubbed her back like a father trying to
coax a burp from his baby.

Her sobs turned into sniffs, which finally eased into the quiet little
sounds of a contented animal. She burrowed more deeply into his
embrace -- if that was indeed possible -- and draped a proprietary hand
over the swell of his left breast. Mulder's hand came up to cover hers,
as if to hold it in place over his heart. He sighed profoundly, and it
was only then, when she seemed to have recovered, that he allowed
himself to kiss her forehead. He had a rule for himself for handling
these waves of catharsis: no contact that can be misconstrued as
sexual. Comforting only. The stroking, the holding, the intertwining
of limbs did not strike him as overtly sexual when compared to any
sort of kiss. He attributed this to all the years of platonic friendship
between them, when they had from time to time touched each other
without sexual ramifications. It was not until their first kiss that he
really knew what it meant to be heartwrenchingly aroused by Dana
Scully. Therefore kisses had to be kept to a minimum, at least when
she was in tears, lest his body betray him. She needed his embrace,
not his erection.

"Ah, Scully," he sighed. "Sorry about that. I had to tell you the truth,
sweetheart."

"'S okay. You did the right thing." She lifted her head so that she
could kiss the smooth skin over the tendon in his neck. His pulse
thudded reassuringly under her lips. "We're getting pretty good at
this. And that's a sad commentary on our relationship."

"No it's not," he countered. "What kind of relationship is it if I can't
comfort you when you're hurting, Dana? Remember when I told you
I knew how to be half of a whole? You really *didn't* believe me, did
you."

"I was wrong," she whispered into his collar bone.

He rubbed his cheek against her forehead, then stopped when he
realized that his beard was probably scratching her tender skin.

"I could've found sex on the Internet, you know," he said, a faint
smile tugging at his mouth. "I wanted you. All of you. You and no
other."

Reaching up and across, she traced the curve of his ear, then trailed
her fingers into his hair, her nails lightly scratching his scalp.

Mulder shivered slightly.

"I love you too," she said quietly.

She cupped her hand around the back of his neck and shifted so that
she could lift her head to meet his. She kissed him firmly, as if to
clarify any lingering questions between them.

He pulled back, but not without regret. With a few more inches
between them, Mulder immediately understood the frown of
disappointment on her face.

"I know you do, Dana. I'm incredibly *glad* that you do."

"Then what's wrong? Don't you want me to kiss you?"

He made a face over the awkwardness of his situation.

"Of course. More than anything. It's just that when you kiss me, I
want more. I want to make love to you, and I know I shouldn't be
thinking about that right now. So it's easier, you know, if you
don't..."

She placed one hand on either side of his hips and pushed herself up
until she was no longer resting against him. Without her warm, slight
weight, Mulder felt a chill spread over his chest like a shadow.

"You want to make love to me?" she echoed in a dusky voice.

He nodded, swallowing and frowning all at once. Then he saw a slow
smile creep across her beautiful face, and he felt all the heat in his body
descend to his lower abdomen and wait there.

"Tell me, Mulder. Tell me how."

His mouth went dry, and he reached for his glass without taking
his eyes off her face.

End The Cry of the Truth, 19a/22


The Cry of the Truth, 19b/22
Missed Perfection
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: NC-17 (Sexual activity)
Category: S, A, R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary: Scully shares the benefits of her improved mental health
with Mulder.

See part 01 for the disclaimer.

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.

Feedback would be most welcome at this point!


"Scully, this matter of trust between us....it has to extend beyond our
work, you know."

Now seated in the opposite corner of the couch, her knees drawn up to
her chest in a protective posture, Dana nodded her agreement, afraid
that if she spoke she would betray the insecurity that was burning
through her heart. It seemed that Mulder was content to continue
denying his desires. She wondered if it was easy for him because the
intensity of his feelings for her had waned to something more like their
old camaraderie, fraught with sexual innuendo but uncomplicated by
consummation.

He saw her fear, but pressed on. Dr. Locke had often reminded him
not to allow Scully's discomfort to be his excuse for not addressing
the issues that mattered.

"That one weekend we had, making love -- it seemed nonstop, didn't
it? The trust thing didn't come up, because I didn't realize how little
you *did* trust me. If I had, maybe I would've done things
differently."

"Differently? How?"

He sipped from his glass, eyeing her over the rim like a climber sizing
up a mountain.

"At the risk of sounding sexist, and hopelessly old-fashioned...I
would've courted you, to prove my intentions. I don't think you ever
believed, truly believed in your heart, that the sex was a step forward,
and not an end in itself. Maybe if I had pursued you in a more
conventional way, outside of your work, you would've seen more
clearly what I wanted from you."

"I'm not sure I let myself think about it that thoroughly," she admitted
disconsolately. Her eyes roamed around the room, instinctively
looking for an exit -- or just an easy change of topic -- until she spotted
her own glass on the coffee table. With deceptive languor, she took a
long drink. Buoyed with false courage, she able to face him again.
His spaniel's eyes were so saturated with emotion that she nearly
sputtered the wine she was swallowing. "What exactly *do* you want
from me, Mulder?"

The ten-million-dollar question. You may already be a winner, he
mused. Or not.

"Funny you should ask, Scully, because I've been doing a lot of
thinking on that very subject." He leaned a little closer to her, one arm
resting on the back of the couch as the other hand delicately held the
wine glass by its stem, balancing it on his thigh. "I want us to be
lovers. I want an exclusive commitment -- because as you know, I'm
a jealous bastard, and because for me, Scully, you're it. There will be
no other women for me."

"Anything else?" she ventured.

Mulder took a drink. He was warming to his subject, and he liked the
feeling.

"We tell our mothers. We consider getting married, later. And most
importantly...the truth. You tell me the truth about what's in your
heart -- not just what you think about my methodology and my
theories and my sources. And you will see, Dana Scully, that you can
trust me, because nothing in your heart will scare me off. It hasn't
yet, and it isn't going to."

Scully's legs uncoiled, and she crept forward until her hand met his on
the back of the couch. Their fingers steepled together, then
intertwined. Mulder's thumb tickled the sensitive center of her palm.

She cocked her head and squinted at him. Her hair piled on her
shoulder and the ends scratched her neck.

"You do realize what will happen if we tell my mother, don't you?"

He chuckled.

"Yeah, she'll start asking the priest to say fertility prayers for us, even
before we're married. What is it with her and grandchildren? Aren't
those two nephews enough?"

"Propagation of the faithful," Scully said, withdrawing her hand so
that she could slide both arms around his waist. "Keeps the Pope in
business."

"Scully."

She was caressing the mole on his cheek with the tip of her nose.

"*Do* you trust me?" he asked.

She looked up at him, her face impassive and alert, one eyebrow
slightly arched above the other.

"I have great faith in you, Mulder, and I am certain that that will
develop into the kind of trust you're talking about."

Mulder decided to accept that, because he knew it was the truth.

He brushed the back side of his fingers across her cheek, then clasped
the back of her neck in a firm grip. She waited until he pulled her
forward, ever so gently, and only then did she kiss him. It was a
quick, graceful press of lips to lips, followed by a somewhat reluctant
separation. She lingered, just a few centimeters from his mouth, and
waited. As her eyes flicked from his lips to his eyes, barely seeing,
but still able to sense his mood, she caught the warmth of a smile.

"What?"

"I'll tell you," he said. "First I would kiss you, like that, to remind
you that I love you. Then I would take your hand, and put it over my
heart to show you that you're in charge. My body is yours for the
taking. And I'd hope that you'd help me out of my clothes, then, and
kiss me some more, all over, especially in the places I know you
like..."

"What places would you be referring to?" she asked coyly.

"This place," he said, pointing to the spot where his outer right thigh
merged with his pelvis. Then his hand moved to his sternum, over the
area where the hair grew. "And here. You like it here, don't you."

"Mmm. Where else?"

"My back. That little indentation at the end of my spine. And my ass.
You like it, I know you do. You've been looking at it for years --
admit it."

"It's true, but that doesn't mean I want to kiss it," she said in a dry
whisper.

"We're the head and the tail of the same snake. Remember?"

"So you're saying that I'm the head and you're the tail? Is that
correct? Because I wouldn't want to misunderstand you, Mulder."

"That's correct." He looked down to see that she was popping each
metal button of the fly of his jeans through the little reinforced holes,
gradually loosening the fit that had become entirely too restrictive.
"Scully, if there's one thing I've learned from Dr. Locke, it's that the
best way to avoid misunderstanding is to be very explicit. To say
what you mean. To spell it out. In blatant detail, if necessary."

"Seven weeks is a long time," Scully said, pushing the hem of his
shirt up over his belly. "And in spite of everything, I've grown
hungry for you, Mulder. Ravenous, really."

"But what about the proverbial spring chicken?" he asked, his voice
cracking with laughter as she nibbled the rim of his navel.

"Well, you're hardly over the hill, Mulder," she said, sliding a warm
hand into his boxers and over his hip.

"No, no, I mean the chicken. The one in the kitchen. What about the
chicken?"

"What about it?" she asked without looking up. Her hair was
brushing his flank, tickling him as her hands cupped his ass and slid
his boxers and jeans down.

"Aren't we going to eat it!?!?" he squeaked as he hands smoothed over
his bare thighs.

She started to laugh, but stopped herself before the tension of the
moment was dissipated.

"Later, Mulder. We'll eat the chicken later. That is, if you think you
can wait...."

"I can wait. I can wait. Definitely. Uh-huh." He cupped her elbows
in his palms as she leaned straddled his lap, her wool trousers scratchy
on the tender skin of his engorged penis.  "Scully, wouldn't you like
to take some of that off? I could help you."

"No. I like the idea of you being naked, and me dressed. It makes me
feel powerful."

"Mmm. Powerful can be good. But..."

"But what, Mulder? Say what you mean. Spell it out. In blatant
detail, if necessary," she said in a low, sultry voice that he hardly
recognized.

"Take off your shirt, Scully," he said, reaching for the buttons of her
silk twill shirt. "I want to see you. It's been a long time, as you
said."

She sat back on his thighs and watched his fingers' journey. He
unfastened each button without so much as wrinkling her blouse, and
then gently pushed the silk off her shoulders until it caught in the
crook of her elbows. With delicate determination, he unbuttoned each
cuff and then, all barriers beaten, slid the garment off her arms and
kicked it to the floor.

She smiled at his expression of awe. He seemed pleased with the bra
she had bought that afternoon, with him in mind. It was black lace
over peach satin, with half-cups that presented her breasts like two
dishes of blancmange on a buffet table. With a brush of his index
finger, he nudged each strap from her shoulders. The sturdy
underwire was unaffected, however, and her breasts remained
buoyant. He tugged the lace away just enough to reveal a nipple, and
then rubbed the smooth surface of his fingernail between the tender
pink skin and the bra's satin lining.

Reflexively she rubbed herself against his thigh. When that did not
satisfy her, she shifted toward him again and pushed him down into
the cushions where earlier he had hidden from her. With his hands
still testing the texture and contour of her breasts, Dana crawled over
him and then pressed her lips to his. Mulder opened his mouth to
release a moan and admit her tongue. The taste of his fear still
lingered, slightly sour and acrid, along with the sting of toothpaste and
a hint of his three o'clock coffee. She licked the roof of his mouth,
then slid her tongue across his, all the while slowly and unconsciously
thrusting her pelvis toward his.

Mulder's bare legs soughed against her light wool trousers in
squirming anticipation. His right hand released her left breast and
skimmed down her torso to the warm juncture of her thighs, where the
trousers were already damp and wrinkled. He rubbed his knuckles
against the spot where the seams met, and she whimpered into his
mouth. But when he began to tug at her zipper, Dana withdrew her
hands from his shoulders and pulled herself away from him.

"No. Not now," she said, shaking her head. Her eyebrow lurched
into an attitude of regret. "Do you mind?"

Mulder shook his head, but his frown told of his confusion. His
hands circled her waist to steady her as she backed off the sofa and
onto her feet.

"Are you okay?" he asked breathlessly.

"Yeah. I just need to call the shots for a while."

She took a sip of her wine, and then another, for she found that the
sight of his cock, swollen and bobbing with his every breath, made
her suddenly very thirsty.

Mulder, his eyes drowsy and half-lidded with arousal, spread his arms
wide.

"I'm all yours, sweetheart. Be gentle with me."

She snickered at that, and then bent over to push the coffee table out of
the way. She took his hand and pulled him to his feet with strength
that she usually only displayed in the gym or in the field.

"Think you can stand?"

"Just prop me up, ma'am," he replied with a dopey grin.

She led him into the hallway that connected the living room to her
bedroom and study. Once there, she pressed him up against the wall
between two framed postcards: Picasso's "Portrait of Dora Maar,"
and Sargent's "Portrait of Madame X." Her hand shot out to slap off
the light switch that controlled the lamps in the living room. In the
semi-darkness, Mulder hummed in happy anticipation.

"I like it when you call the shots," he said in a sleepy voice.

"Are you sure?" she asked darkly, sliding down his body until she
was resting on her knees.

"No," he replied honestly.

She grunted at that, and began to inflame him even further by pressing
her nose into the nest of hair around the root of his cock. He smelled
good, like chlorine and detergent and the sea. Good. The hair tickled
her upper lip as she worked her way around his balls, prodding and
then circling them with her tongue. She kneaded his quadriceps as she
laved him, her hands as hungry to feel him as her mouth was to taste
him. And her heart...her heart wanted to devour him.

The shaft of his cock brushed against her cheekbone; she cupped it
between her palm and cheek and sighed contentedly as she nuzzled
him. Mulder's fingers lightly combed through her hair, guiding it
back from her eyes and pressing his cool fingers to her flushed brow.
Then, when he was still thinking about how soft her cheek was, he
found himself in the warm depth of her mouth, her ample lips closing
around him, her tongue pressing upward against him. Then her
tongue became a probe, firm and pointed, that sought out the most
sensitive spots along the way, up and down and around, making his
hip flexors turn to string cheese. His hands flattened against the wall,
and he gritted his teeth with the exquisite tension she was creating
within him. It certainly wasn't painful, what she was doing to
him....but it was a challenge, almost. Her tongue was telling him,
through his dumb cock, that at that moment pleasing him mattered
above everything else in the world. There was nothing behind and
nothing in front, only *there*. The two of them, in the little hallway,
humid and shivery, prudent and intelligent yet nearly blind with
devotion, overwrought with a grief that was giving way like an old,
poorly engineered dam to the flood of renewed love.

She stroked his ass, her nails lightly tickling his tender skin, and
pushed him, encouraging him to thrust to his satisfaction. Her throat
accommodated him well. Her lips tingled with the friction of in and
out. Her brown eyelashes fluttered against her cheek as she
swallowed a breath around him and saw, like a curtain descending
over her vision, a white expanse that flickered with arabesques of blue
and green, then pink, then red...the deep crimson red of her own
blood, splattered across Krychek's narrow chest...before she opened
his eyes and looked up at Mulder. She saw in his contorted face the
very emotions that smoked through her own heart at that moment:
regret, lust, anger, and big, scary love.

He managed a smile for her through the intense storm in his nervous
system. Concerned for her comfort, he limited himself to a few small,
sharp thrusts until the pressure of her hands and the movement of her
head assured him that she meant it. He pushed, felt her swallow, and
pushed again. His eyes opened and rolled down, just long enough to
see the flash of her orange hair against his papery white thighs, his
cock dark like wine in the midst of her pale face. He wanted her hand;
he grabbed her forearm, too tightly, and allowed his head to roll back
hard against the wall.

He lost his hold on her arm. His hands slapped against the wall, and
his hips glanced against the sheet rock on the downstroke of each of
his penultimate thrusts. Finally, his head cracked against the wall, and
he cried out in a voice nearly broken by the dry panting that had kept
him oxygenated for the quarter-of-an-hour lifetime he had passed in
the hallway.

"Now now now now now, Dana, now please..."

The two portraits spun off the wall, landing with separate, gratifying
thuds on the thick carpet. Mulder's knees, never his strong spot,
bowed out and he began to slide down the wall. Scully released him
just in time to avoid a major catastrophe, and guided him down to the
floor, where he sat heavily, legs sprawled on either side of her, head
drooping against her shoulder.

He gasped and sobbed and laughed brokenly as he tried to regain his
focus. It wasn't easy; stripes continued to unfurl across his line of
vision, reminiscent of all the snapping flags they had seen last
weekend at the veterans' rally on the Mall. He put a hand between
their faces and rubbed his eye; he had thought an eyelash had come
loose and was tormenting him, and then he realized that he was crying.

"Sc-Sculleee," he said, lifting his head from her shoulder.

She pushed his hair back from his glistening forehead, then wiped the
tears from his cheek with soft fingertips. But it was the smile that did
it. He felt all the splintered grief, frustration, pent-up lust, and
seemingly unrequited love spinning down into a dense mass of energy
in the place where his heart used to hurt.

"Oh, Mulder..."

"Fox?" he croaked.

"Fox...I love you. You're -- you're so beautiful, you know." It was
an uncharacteristically halting admission from Dana Scully. She
lurched forward and kissed him to reiterate. "You make me feel
miracles."

He threw his arms around her and pulled her clumsily to his chest,
holding her there in a pose from a classic movie poster -- classic for a
pantless movie, he naked ass reminded him -- while he returned her
kisses.

"Am I awake?" he mumbled against her cheek.

"Yeah. You're awake," she said, combing his hair with her fingers.
"How are you?"

He grinned lewdly.

"You tell me, Dr. Scully. How am I?"

"Delicious," she replied with an equally wicked smile.

He kissed her again, this time sweeping her mouth with his tongue,
hoping to catch a taste of himself. He was not disappointed. Salty
and slightly bitter, he knew it when he found it. Not so different from
the taste of Dana...which, he had determined all those weeks ago, was
nothing like the taste of oysters.

"I think I need to eat something," she said, struggling to her feet.

Mulder snickered at that, but stopped when he realized that he needed
her help if he ever hoped to walked again. He extended his arm, and
she caught his hand, lifting him with one strong pull. He came up tall
and dizzy next to her. The hallway seemed to tilt around them.

"Ahhh....I'll be there in a minute, sweetheart. Just let me get my brain
back...."

Mulder emerged from Scully's bathroom, having showered once again
and this time quite certain that he had put on deodorant, and wandered
naked down the infamous hallway to the living room. There he found
his boxers in a wad on the floor, and shook them out with a flourish
and a snap. He was stepping into them when he heard Dana's voice
coming from the kitchen.

He slipped into the dining room and resumed his seat at the table,
ostensibly waiting for his chicken. Here he could hear every word of
her conversation.

"I'm fine, Mom. Really. Better than fine, as a matter of fact."

Mulder grinned down at his empty white plate. This had to be one of
the best hours of his life.

Scully clattered some kitchen things as she talked.

"We should get together, Mom. You and me and Mulder. I'll
cook...he likes my cooking. Yeah. Well, thanks, Mom. I learned
from you, you know. Listen...Uh-huh. Mom? I have something to
tell you, and then I have to go."

Mulder rested his chin on the heel of his hand and sighed happily.
Ask, and apparently ye shall receive.

"Mom...you know how you're always wanting me to find a nice man
and settle down? Right. Well, I found someone. I love him, Mom,
and he loves me. A lot." Dana stopped clattering her pots and listened
for a moment. Then she laughed, a light, jubilant sound that made
Mulder's brows soar above his closed eyes. "No, Mom, it's not Nick
Barrett. Sorry."

Mulder could almost hear Margaret Scully's disappointment. He
decided that the time had come for him to make his presence known,
and headed into the kitchen.

When he appeared in the kitchen doorway, she straightened from her
slouch against the counter and smiled at him. Her hair was a tumble of
copper straw, and her lips -- those omnipotent lips -- were slightly
swollen and flushed to a dark mauve. She had shed her wool trousers
and stood, poking the chicken from time to time, wearing only black
lace panties and the black-and-peach bra. When she took the lid from
a low saucepan and showed him two dozen spears of blanched
asparagus, Mulder thought for a moment that he had entered a dream
of culinary pornography. He grabbed one of the spears and nibbled
on it as she continued to parry with Margaret.

"Listen, Mom. It's Mulder, all right? Fox Mulder...Yes. My crazy
partner, the one with the baggy suits..." She gave him an apologetic
look, but quickly realized that nothing could burst Mulder's bubble at
this point. "...Since January. That's precisely why I left Stuart,
Mom. I realized that I loved Mulder. He's -- he's turned out to be
wonderful...of course he's not Catholic, but who cares?...I know, I
know. Let me rephrase that: *I* don't care. I'm thirty-three years
old, Mom. I know what I'm doing...Mom. Mom. Listen to me. I
*love* him....That's right."

Mulder dropped his asparagus and reached for her. At some point, the
conversation with Margaret ended and the phone disappeared. He was
not concerned by these details, however.

"Thank you, Scully," he muttered into her hair.

"For what? You haven't even tasted it yet."

She was laughing softly, well aware of what he meant but needing to
diffuse to intensity of the moment. Resting her head against his chest,
she stroked his back with the reassuring touch that she had given him
many times over the years; now, however, they were both nearly
naked, and finally, neither was in pain.

"You have to be careful not to always give me what I want," he said
after a moment.

"There's little risk of that, Mulder."

End The Cry of the Truth 19b/22


The Cry of the Truth, 20/22
Tea and Antipathy
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: PG (Angst)
Category: S,A,R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary: Margaret Scully has her own opinions about her daughter's
recovery.

See part 01 for the disclaimer.

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.

Author's Note: For those of you who always think of Mrs. Scully as
the perfect mother...well, think again. It's incredibly difficult for me
to write a mother who is NOT Southern, so please bear with me as I
struggle to keep from turning Maggie into my own mom.

Margaret Scully turned and looked over her shoulder, hoping to catch
a glimpse of the contours of her backside in the three-way mirror. A
lock of dark hair slipped forward over one blue eye; she blew it away
impatiently. The slate-blue silk sheath dress skimmed over her hips
with enough evasion to preserve her modesty, but also with the slight
caress necessary to illuminate the fact that she was in remarkable shape
for a fifty-eight-year-old grandmother. She liked knowing that she
could go without a jacket and have no fear of what the dress revealed.
With the strand of pearls Bill had brought her from Hong Kong and
the sapphire-and-diamond earrings Dana had given her for her last
birthday, the dress would take on the modern matronly dignity that
Margaret fancied as her signature style.

Dana watched impassively from her perch on a velvet settee in the
corner of the spacious fitting room. She sipped from a diminutive cup
of cappuccino and tried to hide her distraction from Margaret.
Normally she would've invented some excuse to avoid dallying with
her mother in such a typically female pastime as shopping, but Mulder
had encouraged her to accept the invitation. So Dana had agreed to
meet Margaret at Vetements in Bethesda at mid-afternoon. Margaret
claimed she needed Dana's help her find something new to wear to her
fortieth high school reunion. Margaret was perfectly capable of
choosing her clothes without Dana; what she really wanted was the
truth about her daughter's new love affair.

"You like this one, then?" Margaret asked, continuing the charade as
she turned from the mirror to face her daughter.

"It's lovely, Mom. I may borrow it sometime," Dana replied.

"It'd swallow you, Dana, but thanks for saying so. All right, then, I'll
get the dress and the jacket and then we'll go for tea." Margaret sat on
the edge of the settee so that Dana could unzip the dress. Beneath the
blue silk, her back was as freckled and pale as her red-haired child's.
"Maybe I'll wear it when you let me take you and Fox to dinner."

"It'll be out of fashion by then," Dana muttered as the zipper reached
the bottom of its track.

"We'll see about that," said the mother, returning to the curtained-off
area of the fitting room.

Dana placed the cup of cappuccino on an overly dainty three-legged
table. She hated cappuccino. She hated shopping. She especially
hated this over-priced little shop where the sales staff looked askance
at her Nordstrom pantsuit and the lug-soled J. Crew boots that she had
worn to wade through the mud of the Potomac at a pre-dawn murder
scene. And her mother's sly meddling made her want a cigarette.

Before the call to the crime scene came, she had been sleeping
contentedly in the shelter of Mulder's embrace, dreaming not of her
abduction but of sailing the Chesapeake Bay with her love. They
spent most nights together in her bed, bodies curled together like
mated wolves. Mulder continued to wear his pajamas like a badge of
at least partial celibacy, allowing Scully to introduce any sexual contact
between the two of them. In the week since Mulder had told her the
truth about his distaste for oysters, she had revealed a few of her own
truths to him in the dark hours they spent whispering to each other in
her bed. And finally, last night, she had taken off the protective
mantle of her long, white nightgown and allowed him to wander her
body with his lips and hands. The relief he had hoped to bring her had
not come in the form he had been striving for. At the moment when
they had both expected her orgasm to dawn, she had instead broken
into gasping sobs and wept like a child in his arms.

Fidgeting on the stiff chaise, Dana tried to ease the ache in her lower
back. She had pushed the corpse out of the mud this morning without
waiting for the techs to help, and her back had been complaining ever
since. The body turned out to be the victim of a conventional robbery
and homicide. Mulder and Scully had been called in because of the
strange tattoos on the body, including several representations of
Reticulans. Scully snorted and walked away when she smelled the
stench of alcohol on the body. Mulder soon followed, and managed to
whisper a few tattoo jokes in her ear before the returned to the office.

"You're smiling," Margaret observed. She had emerged in her usual
trousers and silk blouse, and was shrugging into her pale blue
cashmere cardigan when Dana looked up at her. "You must be
thinking about Fox."

"Uh...I was. I was." Dana felt herself blushing. "Mom, I don't feel
all that comfortable talking about this yet. You're the first person,
besides the two of us, to know about it, and I --"

"I promise not to torment you too much, Dana. But you must allow
me a little maternal curiosity."

She draped an arm around her daughter's shoulders as they walked
through the cluttered, perfumed shop.

"You've lost weight, sweetheart. Doesn't Mulder let you eat?"

Dana moaned under her breath. This was not going to be the kind of
afternoon off that she looked forward to.

Over tea and scones at the Queen of Hearts, Dana answered Margaret's
questions.

"When did he finally tell you, darling?" Margaret stirred a cube of
sugar into her milky tea, her emerald-and-diamond ring winking in the
sunlight that filtered through the mullioned windows of the artificially
quaint little cafe. "I knew all along that he loved you, of course, but I
never thought he'd have the gumption to tell you."

"God, do they sell alcohol in this place?" Scully muttered.

Margaret pretended not to hear and put a tiny custard tart on Dana's
plate.

"Eat up, baby. You're far too thin. Are you getting enough red
meat?"

"I hardly ever eat red meat, Mom. Cancer, heart disease,
hypercholesterolemia..."

Dana gave up on her diatribe. Given her chosen profession, it would
be too easy for Margaret to point out the major holes in her argument.
She picked up the tart and took a bite out of it.

"I could see it all over his face, that day in the hospital when he came
to see you. Such love...I bet he never has that kind of warmth in his
face except when he looks at you." Margaret patted Dana's hand and
gave her a bright smile. "I'm so happy for you, Dana. That's the kind
of love I always hoped you'd find."

Dana swallowed the tart without tasting it. She saw the glimmer of
contentment in her mother's blue eyes, and was amazed to find she did
not feel the need to argue with her.  For once her mother was right.

"But what about Dad?" she said softly.

"What about him?" Margaret replied.

"He hated the idea of my working with Mulder. This would horrify
him."

Margaret took her half-moon spectacles from her pocket and slipped
them on just long enough to inspect the assortment of sweets and
savories on the tiered plates in the center of their table. She took a tiny
shaved-ham sandwich. Her glasses then disappeared once again.

"Your father could be entirely too narrow-minded at times," she said,
picking the olive-and-pimento garnish off the sandwich with her
French-manicured nails. "The way he treated Melissa is a good
example. I can only pray that they've resolved all that now. As for
your job...I think he might've come around, eventually. And if he
could've lived to see how happy Fox obviously makes you, darling,
well, then...that would've clinched it for him. He'd be talking of
cashing in bonds to pay for your wedding."

"Mulder does make me happy, Mom, but it's not always that easy,
you know. There's still a lot we disagree about. I doubt that will
change. I don't really *want* it to change."

Margaret leaned forward and gave Dana a sparkling, conspiratorial
smile.

"Of course you don't, baby! You must have something to argue about
in order to have the pleasure of making up! How do think I came to
cherish your father's absurd temper? The payoff was incredible, if
you know what I mean."

Dana covered her face with her hands, desperate to avoid the knowing
wink Margaret flashed at her. She shook her head like a child and
whimpered into her palms.

"I really don't want to know that much, Mom."

"You're thirty-three years old, Dana! Do you really persist in the
belief that Bill and I had sex exactly four times -- once for each child?
I'm a good Catholic, but not *that* good, for heaven's sake."
Margaret sat back in her chair and chuckled, a marvelous, full-throated
sound that made Dana peer through her fingers just for the pleasure of
seeing her mother's pretty face light up with joy. "Your father
certainly wasn't perfect. He could be bull-headed to the point of being
dim at times. You may not realize this, honey, but he wasn't exactly
handsome, either. Not even when he was young and had hair."

"Oh, Mom," Dana moaned.

"My point is that in *spite* of his flaws, for me he had a certain
magical quality that I still can't really describe. And I think -- I hope --
I was like that for him." Margaret paused to nibble on her sandwich
and take a sip of tea. She dabbed daintily at the corners of her mouth
with a lacy napkin before continuing. "From my years of careful
observation, I can safely say that Fox has the same magic for you.
That's the most you can ask for, Dana. That's what makes it possible
to get through the bad times intact. Better than intact, really.
Stronger. More in love. How else could the two of you stayed
together as long as you already have?"

Dana held her cup in her palms and brought it slowly to her lips. She
took a long breath of the steam rising up from the tea, hoping that it
would somehow ease the pounding ache behind her brow. Her eyes
flickered shut for a moment, and she pictured Mulder as he had been
last night, grave and dark-eyed in his passion to please her.

"Dana, you're bleeding!"

"Wha--" Scully put down her cup in time to catch a fat red drop before
it landed on the pristine white table cloth. "Do you have any
Kleenex?"

Margaret struggled to keep her hands in her lap as Dana pressed the
tissue to her nose. The urge to attend to her child was almost
overwhelming; the fact that her child was a physician made absolutely
no difference to her maternal instincts.

"Did you get hit in the head, honey?" she asked in a deceptively calm
voice.

"No -- well, not lately, at least. A couple of weeks ago..." Dana took
the tissue away from her nose and found that the bleeding had already
stopped. She sniffed carefully and took a sip of tea. "I think I've
developed some allergic rhinitis. Nothing to worry about. I just need
some antihistamines -- is my face a mess?"

Given that tiny opening to assuage her parental needs, Margaret took a
fresh tissue, dipped a corner of it in her water glass, and proceeded to
dab the thin streaks of blood away from the rim of Dana's nostril.

Dana sat compliantly, remembering how her tenderly mother had cared
for her after the abduction. After she had been discharged from the
hospital, when she was still too weak to undertake many of the
mundane tasks of daily life by herself, Margaret had bathed Dana for
the first time in nearly thirty years. She must've seen the scars then,
Dana mused as she dried the tip of her nose with yet another tissue.
And the nightmares...

"Mom, I...I know Melissa told you about..."

What the hell am I doing, Dana asked herself even as she felt her eyes
prickling with tears.

Margaret poured more tea in her cup and then focused on adding milk
and sugar. She was intent on not scaring Dana off of the subject.

Dana swallowed a lump in her throat and pressed on.

"Melissa told you about what happened to me when they took me,
didn't she?"

Her mother simply nodded. She had expected this ever since Dana
had told her about her affair with Stuart Novak.

"I guess I want to tell you that Mulder has been...Mulder is being very
supportive...he pushed me to talk to someone about it," Dana said, her
voice thready with emotion as she watched her mother struggle with
her own set of emotions. "And that's really helped me, Mom. A lot."

Margaret finally stared at her daughter. Perhaps her expectations were
not quite spot-on after all.

"Talk to -- you mean a shrink?"

"A psychologist," she corrected her.

"But what about Father McCue?" she asked, trying to temper her
indignance.

Dana's shoulders slumped. She bowed her head over her tea and
sighed.

"Well, for one thing, Mom, he's a man."

"He's not a man, he's a priest!"

Dana almost smiled at that. But instead she folded her napkin loosely
and placed it on the table, a signal that she was thinking of leaving.

"Look, it's hard enough for me to trust *anyone* with this, Mom. It's
a battle at times to even acknowledge that it happened. If --"

"But you trust Fox Mulder before you trust you own family?"
Margaret's voice had grown deeper and tighter. The tendons in her
slender neck stood taut and her eyes were watery with tears. "I don't
understand you, Dana. Even before he told you that he loved you --
and don't misunderstand me, I'm very happy for you -- you always
put him first. He and his belief in psychology or little green men or
whatever it is that he believes cannot give you what Father McCue can
give you."

Dana's mask slid into place. Her eyebrow arched inquisitively, and if
this gesture irritated Mulder at times, it almost always infuriated her
mother, who saw it as her daughter's expression of her intellectual
superiority over her superstitious mother.

"Absolution, Dana. Forgiveness. That's what will heal you of this
horrible sin."

"Sin? You make it sound like it's my fault I was raped, Mom," Dana
said with icy restraint.

"In my generation we were taught the female always shares some of
the responsibility for rape," Margaret said in a stage whisper.

Dana glared at her mother with a cold furor that she usually reserved
for Mulder.

"I was held against my will for three months. Drugged. Restrained.
Subjected to experimental procedures. And raped, repeatedly and
brutally, when I had no hope of defending myself." Dana hid her
shaking hands under the table. This was more difficult that refusing to
answer the Congressional committee's accusations. "What exactly is
my share of responsibility for that?"

Margaret squeezed the bridge of her nose between her thumb and
forefinger and sighed irritably.

"Sometimes I think you purposely twist my words, Dana."

Dana bit her lip to keep herself from replying. It was as if she were in
high school again, dying for approval from her mother even as she
rebelled against her. But now the stakes were much, much higher.

"That's not what I meant, Dana. Not at all. You know as well as I do
that you need to go to confession. To begin to heal, to *really* heal,
you need absolution. You need forgiveness." Margaret's voice
faltered and then returned. "Fox -- Fox can't give you those things,
Dana."

Dana found herself fingering the cross she wore in a contemplative,
unconscious gesture that was her habit. Now her hand pulled away as
if stung by the heat of it.

She clasped her mother's hand and leaned over to kiss her cheek.

"Mulder has given me something --" Dana wanted to say that what he
had given her was more important than the absolution that Margaret
valued, but decided not to inflame the conflict further. "Indirectly,
he's helped me get to the point where I can forgive *myself* for what
happened, Mom. And that's really important to me. I feel so much
better than I have in years."

"I'm glad of that, at least," Margaret said, trying to smile.

"I'll try to see Father McCue when I get back," Dana said, squeezing
her mother's hand. "Maybe I'll call him for a game of tennis. See if
his game's improved any."

Margaret chuckled tearfully. She wiped the traces of tears from under
her eyes -- using only her fingertips so as not to disturb her mascara --
and nodded.

"When you get back? Where are you going this time?"

"Actually, I need to leave --" Dana glanced down at her watch. "I
should've left half an hour ago. I'm taking the shuttle up to New York
to meet Mulder. He got a call from one of his contacts this
morning...we're going to follow that up and hopefully go out to
Greenwich to see his mother when we're done."

They said their good-byes and planned to meet again as soon as
Dana's schedule permitted it. Margaret did not reopen the subject of
Dana's seeing Father McCue. As she watched her daughter walk
away, she knew that the chances of Dana doing anything more than
playing tennis with the priest were slim at best. So Margaret once
again committed herself to praying for intervention. Her greatest hope
was that someday soon Dana would encounter something -- anything -
- that would make her believe once again.

End The Cry of the Truth 20/22




The Cry of the Truth, 21/22
A Genius for Survival

Author's Note: Please forgive the artistic license taken with the small
details of the geography of Battery Park and nautical terminology.
Thanks to everyone who has written and nudged me to post the next
chapter. Everyone had great suggestions!


Scully bought an overpriced Snapple from the souvlaki cart in Battery
Park and paid an extra quarter for a straw. She had eaten only a few
bites with Margaret at the twee tea room in Bethesda, and although she
was hungry, she was afraid to eat after the turbulent flight that had just
brought her from Washington National to LaGuardia. Six years of
nearly perpetual travel had done nothing to improve her tolerance for
flying.

She strolled along the embankment, gazing out at the magnificent
statue in the harbor and sipping her tea. Cargo ships passed on their
way out to sea, accompanied by persistent tug boats. A couple of
supply ships from the naval base at Sandy Hook glided across the
horizon. Brazen gulls swooped across Dana's path, scavenging bits
of trash left by the day's multitude of tourists.

Normally the sight of so many ships would've spurred memories of
her father, but today Dana was preoccupied by more recent matters.
She thought of Mulder, his coral-mauve lower lip moist from her
kisses, his eyes dark and glimmering, shoulders smooth and tan under
her small hands. Something fluttered in her lower abdomen at the
memory. And then she remembered her conversation with Margaret,
and the smile faded.

Forgiveness. Absolution. She understood the concepts behind the
words, certainly. And she knew her mother was not one to speak in
metaphors.  But Dana found it hard to believe that Margaret really
blamed her for being raped. Margaret had said "sometimes I think you
purposely twist my words." Dana just wasn't sure how to straighten
them out again.

Words from a song she had once known floated back to her: "Pray,
and your sins are hooked upon the sky." Her prayers were rare and
troubled now. At times Dana had felt that every breath she took was
like a prayer for one more, and then another, and then another, until all
the breaths added up to one more day that she had survived in a
dangerous job in a lonely life.  But then Stuart helped her see that all
the days could be linked together to form something more. And with
Mulder, she had very nearly had that mysterious something, until she
remembered that she did not deserve it.

Her father would have snorted to disgust if he had known that his
Starbuck had even for one moment entertained any feelings of
unworthiness. Dana was glad, at least in part, that he was dead and
did not have to know what she had become over the course of the four
years since her abduction. Her attempts to suppress all the misery that
the rapes spawned in her had been an emulation of Ahab's famous stiff
upper lip. It was only recently that Dana had admitted to herself that
while his stoicism might've helped him weather the rough seas of his
life, it had nearly destroyed what little peace she had found for herself.

She envied her parents their seemingly air-tight faith in the ancient
creeds they had lived by. As she drew the last drops of tea through the
straw with a satisfyingly noisy slurp, it occurred to Dana that at the
ripe old age of thirty-three she had, at last, begun to rely on her own
code. It was the code of self-reliance, heavily revised in the past
month or so thanks to the influence of Mulder and Delia Forrest and
Dr. Burnett and Dr. Locke and even poor Ed Jerse.

Dana knew that her mother was right about one thing, at least. She
needed absolution, all right. She needed it from herself, first and
foremost. She needed, once and for all, to accept that there had been
nothing within the realm of her possibility that she could have done to
stop Alex Krychek from raping her repeatedly. As for
forgiveness...well, forgiveness is something for me to bestow freely,
Dana told herself. And at the moment, that would be expecting too
much.

The wind was whipping in off the river, tossing her hair madly,
fluttering the hem of her jacket, and plastering her trousers to her legs
as she walked. She pitched her bottle in a recycling bin and headed
back toward the ferry dock.

Silhouetted against the vivid persimmon and pink sunset, Mulder's
dark trenchcoat billowed out from his body like a pair of black wings.
He, too, had been observing the marine traffic in the harbor. He
turned slowly to face her and gave her a smile that made her belly
flutter again in that delicious rhythm that she had come to associate
with him.

"I was watching you, you know," he said, shoving his hands in his
coat pockets to keep himself from embracing her.

"Oh? See anything you like?"

She stood about a foot from him, arms crossed, squinting into the
setting sun.

Mulder nodded enthusiastically and leaned across the space to speak in
her ear.

"Yeah." His voice was low and raspy. "Oh, yeah."

Dana forced herself to redirect her thoughts. She stepped back a
couple of inches before addressing the matter that had brought them to
New York.

"What did your contact have to say?" she asked, grabbing a chunk of
hair that the wind was flipping across her forehead.

Mulder dipped his head slightly toward his shoulder, then peered
down at his black wingtips and her black boots. He felt guilty for
even speaking to Marita on the phone, although Scully had told him in
no uncertain terms that she did not expect him to refuse Marita's offers
of information just because they had once had a brief, and purely
sexual, affair.

"She had a message to convey," he said.

"From?"

The ferry that transported tourists from the park to the Statue of
Liberty and then to Ellis Island and back to the park at every hour was
scudding into place at the dock. It groaned and clanked and belched
diesel fumes before coming to a stop and discharging a load of tourists
down the gangplank. Roughly a third of them were wearing green
foam Statue of Liberty crowns on their heads. Mulder shook his head
at the sight.

"Now that's a fashion faux pas if ever I saw one," he declared.

Scully set her mouth in as grim a line as she could manage.

"Mulder? Who's the message from?"

A dreadheaded busker, in his last performance of the day, played a
passable version of "Under the Boardwalk" on a battered white cello
for the departing crowd. Mulder squinted at him, wondering how he
could sit on that spindly camp stool all day. Then his eyes wandered
from the mellow old brick roundhouse that had been an armory to a
pushcart pretzel vendor, and then to the long green benches that
overlooked the river. The plane trees that would shade the
embankment come summer were just beginning to put forth tender
new leaves. Their graceful silver-barked branches shuddered in the
wind and created a crisp sussuration that was rarely heard in the park,
superseded by the more intense noises of the city and the harbor that
bordered the park on either side.

Finally, Mulder allowed Dana to see the deep furrows in his forehead,
his brows drawn together in consternation, and a slight downturn of
his broad mouth. It was the bad news look.

He took a breath and released it through lips pursed in resignation to
the words he had to utter.

"It's Krychek. He wants to meet with us, on the last ferry of the day.
It's leaving in about a minute."

It came like a slap in the face, a stinging, resounding call to meet the
truth head-on.

"He wants to meet us?" she said calmly. "What about?"

"He told Marita that he has some information about the black cancer
that we encountered in Tunguska," Mulder said in a voice that
conveyed neither belief nor doubt. "Apparently he latched onto Marita
after she got us those diplomatic visas."

"How do you know he's not baiting a trap?" she asked, checking the
tab on her holster.

Mulder shrugged.

"Maybe we should expect the worst from him. But to go to all this
trouble...if he wanted us dead, there are easier ways, y'know."

Scully watched the seaman who was manning the gangplank drop the
butt of his cigarette to the surface of the embankment and grind it out
under the toe of his boot.

"Looks like we'd better go," she said.

As they boarded the ferry, Scully noted that it was kept in perfect
shipshape. The walls and decks were freshly painted, lines coiled
precisely, hardware polished until it shone. The lifeboats were
carefully rigged and fire extinguishers, mounted every ten feet or so,
bore tags indicating their recent inspection. In the enclosed cabins,
orange life vests decorated the walls like chairs in a Shaker house.

Mulder led her to the topmost cabin, a room walled on all sides by
windows and furnished with oak benches bolted to the deck in widely-
spaced rows. He followed Scully in and closed the glass door behind
them.

The ferry lurched into motion, and Mulder stumbled against her. She
caught him with a strong grip that always surprised him, no matter
how many times he felt it. For a brief moment he reflected on what it
was like to fall asleep in her arms, and to feel them wrapped around
his hips, her head resting against his pelvis, her hair soft against his
skin.

And as soon as he was able to drag his eyes away from the fascinating
auburn universe that was the crown of her head, Mulder saw the pale,
angular face of Alex Krychek, and everything went cold inside him.

"A little waltz?" Krychek cooed, referring to the awkward partial
embrace in which Scully had steadied Mulder. He allowed the door to
slam shut behind him as he ambled into the cabin. "I have to say that
you two do make a sweet couple. Maybe I could interest you in a
threesome? Hmm?"

Mulder lunged, grabbed him by the collar of his battered leather jacket,
and hissed nearly unintelligible curses at him. Krychek looked at him
as if he had lost his mind.

"Scully, get him off me, for God's sake," he cried indignantly,
pushing Mulder away with an ease that surprised both men.

Scully closed a hand over Mulder's elbow, as much to reassure herself
as to still his assault.

Krychek recovered his relaxed smile quickly. In an impressive display
of dexterity, he used his prosthetic hand to reach into the pocket of his
coat, bring out a pack of Gitanes, and light up without faltering once.
Scully read his performance as a message to them that he was as
dangerous as ever, prosthesis or not.

"What do you want, Krychek?" she asked coolly.

"Oh, let's have a little sit-down and talk about it," he said, stretching
his legs out on one of the benches, his back resting against the
windows that, at least for the moment, framed a perfect view of the
lower Manhattan skyline.

Mulder sat on the bench behind his, Scully on the bench in front.
Krychek smiled sweetly at each of them.

"Dana, you've lost weight," he said, nodding in her direction. "And
that outfit -- very butch. I bet Fox here likes that on you, hmm? Am I
right, Fox?"

Krychek puckered his lips and blew a puff of smoke Mulder's way.

Scully cast a stern glance at her partner, commanding him to control
his temper. The answering flash of Mulder's eyes promised that he
would try, if only for her sake.

"You wanted to talk to us?" she said evenly.

"Been a while, hasn't it. I wanted to show you my new arm. It's the
latest and greatest in peg technology. Cool, huh."

To demonstrate, he again brought the cigarette to his lips with the
prosthetic hand. The synthetic skin was a little too even in pigment to
be completely believable. A smattering of fine dark fibers that
simulated hair and smooth, tan nail beds without nails made it almost a
parody of a natural human hand.

"You know, Mulder, you're lucky you got away with both your arms,
you little stinker," he continued in a eerily jovial tone. "You always
did have more than your share of dumb luck, though."

Krychek exhaled two perfect jets of smoke through his nostrils, and
then cut a cool glance toward Scully.

"Not like Scully here," he added. "She's had a lot of shit happen to
her."

Scully was sickened by the same general sense of dread she had felt
every time she had seen Krychek since her abduction. Her head swam
with a disorderly flood of feelings and memories punctuated by the
usual commands: watch, concentrate, analyze, prepare, plan, protect,
act. Above all, survive.

The cabin door clattered open and a family of tourists straggled into the
cabin. Twin girls, their blonde curls in pigtails, sat next to Mulder
while their parents and younger brother took a bench across the aisle.

"Marla, Darla, leave that man alone!" commanded their mother.

The girls studied Mulder's glowering face for a moment, then
obediently went to sit with the rest of the family.

Scully rose and jerked her head in the direction of the door. The two
men followed her out onto the deck and around the corner to the
portside ladder. With deceptive leisure, Scully rested an arm on the
railing and squinted at the statue looming on the horizon.

"Smaller than I expected," she muttered.

"Yeah," Krychek said with a smirk. "Liberty's not all it's cracked up
to be."

Mulder unholstered his weapon, but held it within the folds of his coat
where Krychek could see it but the family on the other side of the
cabin windows could not.

"Spit it out, ratfuck," Mulder said. "We've got better things to do than
pass the time of day with your ass."

Krychek's brows twitched. A ghost of a smile flitted across his
handsome face.

"In your dreams, Mulder," he murmured, closing his lips around the
cigarette.

"That's it!"

Mulder slammed him face-first against the railing and held him there
with one hand on his collar and the other pressing the barrel of his gun
into his spine.

"I'm sick of the sight of your stupid face --"

"Mulder --" Scully interjected.

"You deserve to drown like the rat that you are, you --"

"Fuck you," Krychek grunted as he pushed off from the railing and
hurled himself at Mulder.

The men scrambled in a blur of black-coated aggression. Scully had
drawn her weapon and was shouting for Krychek to freeze until she
realized that it was at least as essential that she stop Mulder.

"Goddammit, Mulder, don't kick his fucking *head* in!" she cried.

As she watched, they toppled to the deck and wrestled and writhed
together until Mulder was able to kick Krychek away. Krychek slid
on the seat of his jeans, arm and legs flailing for purchase, but to no
avail -- he bounced off the taut canvas panel beneath the rail and
cracked his head on one of the ubiquitous fire extinguishers.

Mulder was on his feet in an instant, and nearly trampled Scully in an
effort to get to Krychek.

"Mulder, don't make me shoot you again," she bellowed.

Panting like an angry dog, Mulder glanced at the weapon in her hands
and then at the expression in her face. Her cheeks were pink from the
wind and her eyes glinted with righteous anger. He recognized in her
the adrenaline rush that came to both of them at times like this, but
there was definitely something else mixed with it.

He nodded once, and straightened his coat on his shoulders.

"Get up," he said to Krychek.

Krychek grasped the railing with his prosthetic hand and pulled
himself to his feet. He crouched, wheezing and glaring at them.

"We're listening, Krychek," Scully said flatly.

Krychek took another gasping breath, rose to his full height, and just
as he appeared to be on the verge of speech, drew back his non-
prosthetic fist and struck Mulder squarely in the gut, sending him head
over heels down the ladder.

Scully barely overmastered the instantaneous urge to clatter down the
ladder after Mulder and examine him for injuries. Instead, she relied
on her professional instincts, which told her to shove the barrel of the
Sig into Krychek's ribs and force him to lean over the railing, arms
spread and hands gripping the metal edge. Krychek watched her over
his shoulder as she craned her neck to try to get of glimpse of Mulder.

"Mulder? You okay?" she called, widening her stance as the ferry
lurched and dipped.

"Yeah." His voice was thin with pain. "You?"

"We're fine," she replied, scowling at Krychek.

He gave a nervous little smile, and just then the ferry shuddered and
dipped, causing him to cling desperately to the railing.

Scully moved from behind him to his side with no difficulty, thanks to
a childhood spent by the sea. She continued to level the Sig at him
while struggling to ignore, for the moment, the ugly memories that his
cool gaze stirred in her.

"You know something about the black cancer?" she asked. "Does
Mulder have it?"

Krychek managed another elegantly brittle smile.

"I doubt it," he said with a shrug. "But you might."

Scully's eyes narrowed against the wind, which had grown knife-like
in its intensity as the sun sank low into the river behind her. Her
russet hair fluttered like a banner in the gust.

"What makes you say that?"

"The other women," Krychek said, raising his voice so that he could
be heard over the wind and the whir of the diesel engines.

For a moment, Scully almost imagined that she saw concern, or
perhaps regret, in his face. But then she told herself that he was
incapable of it, and adjusted her grip on her weapon.

"Don't waste my time," she said, her throat burning with an acrid,
amorphous sensation that swelled up from her chest like a bad case of
indigestion.

"You may not have any time to waste, Scully," he said. "Nearly all
the other women who were there with you have died of cancer. I think
they may've given it to you too."

Her brows pulled together, forming little creases in the center of her
forehead. Coming from him, these words were so absurd that they
almost pleased her. She needed something nebulous to shred with the
teeth of her analytical mind, and here it was.

"Even if it were true, why would you warn me, Krychek?"

"Why do you think, Scully?" he retorted, his eyes shimmering with a
chill that seemed to be directed inwardly, rather than toward her.

Below, Mulder had managed to limp back to the foot of the stairs.
Nothing was broken, although he had a rude lump on the back of his
head and a tear in the back of his coat. His left ankle had been twisted
in the fall, and now protested when he tried to put his weight on it.
The ache of various blows to his back and upper arms acquired on the
way down the ladder sang in the background of his brain. But the
loudest voice in his head was the one that told him that the time had
come for him to redeem himself as Scully's avenger.

As he was about to drag himself back to the deck above, Mulder
looked up the ladder and saw Scully's black boots and the fluttering
legs of her trousers positioned opposite Krychek's boots and jeans.
Mulder climbed a couple of steps and contorted his long body so that
he could get a look at Krychek's face, just beyond Scully's right arm.
The wind carried their words away, but Krychek's pained expression
and agitated gesturing told Mulder that Scully was giving him an
earful.

The river tossed the ferry hard to the stern, and Mulder heard the
nervous squeals of the little girls in the cabin above. A crewman in a
green Department of the Interior windbreaker came skidding around
the corner and was ready to sprint up the ladder until he encountered
Mulder, who was again on his ass, this time knocked over by the force
of the weather.

Mulder flashed his badge and asked the crewman to ascend the
sternside ladder and escort the family to the lower deck, beyond the
range of stray fire. The crewman studied Mulder's badge for what
seemed an eternity, until Mulder sighed irritably, rolled his eyes, and
asked him again.

Muttering under his breath, the crewman headed toward the other
ladder, leaving Mulder to pull himself into a low crouch in which he
continued his slow journey toward Scully and Krychek.

"....I should kill you for what you did to me," Scully was saying.
"For what you did to Mulder."

"You've remembered."

"I always remembered your part in it," she said. "Tell me the rest.
What did the doctors do to me? What were those tests?"

Krychek shook his head, almost mournfully.

"I honestly don't know."

"Bullshit!" She gripped the gun with both hands now, her right arm
having grown weary. "Tell me the truth, Krychek. That's all I want.
You tell me the truth and you walk off this ferry at Ellis Island, a free
man."

He smiled and exhaled a little snort of laughter.

"But how could we possibly trust each other to that bargain, Scully?
What's to stop me from lying to you, or keep you from shooting me in
the back?"

Scully winced at the pain behind her eyes. Questions burned outward
from her brain, and seemed to press on her face from within. Would it
stop hurting if I squeezed the trigger, ever so gently, and if, in a split
second, I watched him fall hard to the deck, his left ventricle punctured
by a perfectly placed entrance wound, his blood pouring crimson and
steamy at my feet?

Krychek was waiting for an answer to his question.

"I can only speak for myself," she said after an interminable ten
seconds' consideration. "I will not shoot you."

Krychek's brow knit in confusion.

"Why not?"

The corner of her mouth twitched infinitesimally. She lowered her
weapon.

"Because I'm Scully," she said.

In a swirling conjunction of currents on the windward side of the
island, the ferry slammed into a wave the size of a small house. The
impact knocked Scully face down on the deck. When she looked up
again, Krychek was gone.

Mulder came up behind her as she struggled to her feet.

"Are you all right?" he asked, grabbing her by the waist.

"Where'd he go?"

"The edge," Mulder shouted into the wind.

Scully leaned over the metal rail and saw that Krychek had managed to
catch the lip of the deck with both hands. His legs swung out from his
body, buffeted by the wind and the motion of the ferry.

Mulder dug a pocket knife out of his coat pocket and quickly opened
the blade. He knelt on the deck and with two swift cuts opened the
three-foot-high canvas panel that constituted a safety barrier. Leaning
through the hole, he wrapped his hand around Krychek's artificial
forearm.

Scully dropped to her belly and reached between the deck and the lower
railing, straining to reach Krychek's shoulder.

"Can't hold on," Krychek hissed, the grip of his natural hand slipping
finger by finger.

"Take my hand," Mulder said, his feet kicking blindly against the deck as
he struggled to find anything that might serve as an anchor to his legs.
"Scully. Hold onto me."

She straddled his legs and wrapped her arms around his waist in a position
that might have been quite thrilling for Mulder had they been in a more
comfortable environment.

Krychek looked over his shoulder at the churning water and then back at
Mulder, who was now offering his other hand. His eyes widened when
Scully's face came into view from behind Mulder's head, and for a
moment, it seemed that they were a two-headed beast.

"You were right, Mulder," he panted.

As Mulder was about to pull him up, Krychek began tugging at the
ligatures that bound the prosthetic arm to his shoulder.

"Right about what?" Mulder bellowed, struggling to be heard over in the
wind and the waves.

"She's not afraid!"

Scully's eyes met Krychek's, and then she was distracted by the glint of
titanium hardware beneath the flap of his leather jacket.

"What the hell are you doing?" she screamed.

"I'd rather take my chances with the river than with the two of you," he
shouted back, tugging the last strap free. With a flick of two fastenings
over his shoulder, the arm was released, and he fell away from them, the
arm spinning after him.

Scully opened her mouth to call after him, but the wind took her voice
away. She saw him hit the water. He splashed and was subsumed,
and then his slick, dark head appeared among the white waves. He
floated away from them, never looking back, a creature with a genius
for survival.

End The Cry of the Truth, 21/22



The Cry of the Truth, 22a/22c
Here and Now

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.

*Author's Note: Here I am. At the end. Not sure what to say. First,
I should apologize for dragging this out so painfully. Thank you for
being patient with me, and for nudging me along. During the time it's
taken me to write this story, I've bought my first house, celebrated my
first wedding anniversary, started taking an experimental drug for my
multiple sclerosis, helped my husband publish three books and start a
new job, sprained my ankle, made a few new friends and lost an old
one as well...that's about it. I knew when I started it that it wouldn't
be an open-and-shut case like the plot of "The Actor." Nonetheless,
I'm a little surprised by how the plot meandered and then - I hope -
looped back around to meet my original purpose, which was 1) to
show the different ways that women might react to rape at various
stages of recovery, 2) to explain why Scully behaved so
uncharacteristically in "Never Again," 3) to give yall an MSR sequel to
"The Actor," and 4) to portray Mulder as an emotionally capable man.
I don't plan a sequel to this story. It feels complete to me. In the
words of David Bowie, "I'm happy, hope you're happy too."

   .....fashionable madmen raise
   Their pedantic boring cry:
   Every farthing of the cost.
   All the dreaded cards foretell.
   Shall be paid, but from this night
   Not a whisper, not a thought.
   Not a kiss nor look be lost.

                W.H. Auden, "Lullaby"


Delia tugged at the hem of her skirt and crossed her ankles in an
attempt to appear lady-like and demure. She had been sitting in
Arlington County court for six days, listening to police officers,
physicians, FBI agents, forensic scientists, and her fellow
archaeologists discuss her rape. A sullen jury seemed to half-dose
through the testimony, occasionally squinting at her as if she were a
gorilla in the National Zoo. The male jurors perked up a bit when
Special Agent Dana Scully took the stand as an expert witness in the
forensic applications of DNA analysis. She too wore a suit with a
skirt that came just to the top of her knees, but unlike Delia, she
seemed to be utterly at east within the confines of the garment.

The courtroom bore the smell of paper dust and layer upon layer of
disinfectant floor wax. Fluorescent lights buzzed and blinked
overhead, distracting Delia from the droning voice of the judge as he
prepared the court to hear the jury foreman read the verdict. Delia
swayed slightly on her feet when she and the rest of the court stood to
listen to the verdict. The foreman shuffled his index cards and fiddled
with his glasses as the judge recited her last set of instructions. Bored
and restless, Delia peeked at the handful of assembled spectators. She
did not acknowledge her parents, who glowered on the back row,
waiting to cart her off their rambling brick home in Middleburg and
sequester her with a private psychiatric nurse. Her smile appeared
only when she made eye contact with Fox Mulder, who twitched his
brow faintly as he touched his partner's elbow. Dana then followed
his gaze to Delia's face. Transfixed by the hypnotic, somber serenity
of Dana's expression, the cool blue eyes and long, soft lashes beneath
perfectly arched auburn brows, Delia felt as if she had left her body
and floated above the room. She could see Mulder's hand, warm and
supportive, hovering at the center of Dana's lower back. A few rows
up, in front of the courtroom, she saw her Richard Brunty, her former
student and the alleged rapist, dressed in orange, his wrists and ankles
shackled. His attorney, a tall blonde woman with a disconcerting lisp,
whispered instructions in his ear. On the other side of the aisle, the
assistant district attorney stood with his hands linked behind his back,
secretly twirling a pencil through his fingers like a majorette in a grim
parade.

And then Delia saw herself, tall and unusually dignified in the Ann
Taylor suit she'd bought eight years ago to wear to her graduate school
admission interview. She had braided her hair and tucked the tail
under the braid; her glasses enforced her scholarly air. She knew,
however, even as she listened to the foreman stumble over his words,
that her future in academia was over. She had already been branded a
hysteric by her advisor and fellow doctoral candidates. They could
summon the political correctness to tolerate a rape survivor among
their ranks, maybe even ignore the fact of her rape should Delia set the
example of denial. But a victim of spectral rape was not only a victim,
she was a madwoman who could not be trusted with the mantle of the
university. Delia had already decided not to embarrass them by going
back to her excavation site at Arlington or to her lab in Charlottesville.

The judge lowered her gavel and court was dismissed. Following a
rumble of footsteps and explosion of chatter, and the assistant DA
reached across the railing to shake her hand. Delia nodded numbly
and uttered some words of thanks. She sighed as she pivoted around
on her heels. Now came the hard part. "Just forget about me, Mama,
Daddy. I'm cleaning out my trust and setting out to find a new place
for myself in the world. I can't lie about what happened to me, and
you can't handle the truth. So...'bye."

Her parents were making their way up the aisle. Her mother dabbed at
her eyes with a linen handkerchief. Her father's mouth was pressed
into a line so stern that Delia marveled at how he could possibly have
ever kissed anyone, much less planted the seed to make a child.

Scully and Mulder reached Delia first. Delia immediately noticed that
Mulder was standing within inches of his partner, only a whisper
away from holding her hand and perhaps kissing her cheek. It
would've been sweet, she thought, if he hadn't looked so worried and
Dana hadn't looked so tired.

"Are you pleased?" Mulder asked, shaking Delia's hand.

Delia shrugged and began to pick the pins out of her hair. She
dropped them on the floor as she removed them, one by one, and the
unraveled the braid that had restrained her hair throughout the
proceedings.

"To tell you the truth, I feel sorry for Ricky. If he did rape me, well
then he did it through the Psychic Friends Network, or something,
because he sure as hell wasn't with me that night. I stand by my
story, as they say in 'Perry Mason.' You may be the only two people
in the world who believe me."

Dana licked her lips and gave Mulder a cautionary look.

"What are you going to do now?" Dana asked, her voice low but
nonetheless audible over the cacophony in the courtroom.

"Join the circus?" Delia smiled and reached for Dana's hand. "How
are you, Agent Scully? You look...well, you really look stunning.
Weary, but stunning."

Delia saw Mulder's hand flutter to Scully's lower back again. His
even hazel gaze remained fixed on Dana as she formulated an answer.

Dana mirrored Delia's shrug.

"I'm doing surprisingly well. My partner has been..." She glanced
up at Mulder. He was unconsciously flexing the muscle at the hinge
of his jaw as he blinked down at her. "...Very helpful. You...I..."

"You didn't talk about it, did you, until after you met me," Delia
stated. She nodded sympathetically. "That's what I thought. When
did it happen to you, Agent Scully?"

"About four years ago," Dana replied, after a moment's hesitation.

"I hope I have as much to show for myself in four years as you do
now," Delia said, flashing her hazel eyes toward Mulder's face.

"Delia, I..." Dana reached in the shallow besom pocket of her taupe
jacket and pulled out a glinting object about the size of a dime. "I
have something for you. I picked this up yesterday while we were in
New York on a case. It reminded me of you. I-I hope it brings you
luck, in whatever comes next."

Delia blushed under her freckles as she peered at the little gift in her
hand.

"Thanks. I --"

But Mulder and Scully were already gone, moving as one, there hands
now joined and swinging slightly with the cadence of their walk.

"Who were those people, Adelia?" Delia's father asked.

Her parents had taken Mulder and Scully's places before her.

Delia glanced up at them and then back down at the medallion that
Dana had given her. It was a small, golden octagon, bearing a
depiction of the Statue of Liberty and the word "libertas" in a crescent
beneath the figure.

"They're the FBI agents who helped me."

"And what is that, pray tell? Some sort of evidence?" her mother
asked, sniffing into her hanky.

Delia held the medallion between her thumb and forefinger so that the
scintillating lights of the courtroom reflected off the lady's crown. She
peered at it as she would any artifact unearthed after a long search.

"This is a badge of courage."

XXXXXXXXXX

"Do you think Delia's crazy?" Mulder asked when they were settled at
Scully's kitchen table. Dinner was over, and they were lingering over
their wine.

"I agree with the court-appointed psychiatrist, that she's suffering
from post-traumatic stress disorder. But crazy? Well, whatever that
means...No."

Mulder nodded without looking at her. He was staring the single
white camellia blossom that floated in a shallow crystal bowl in the
center of the table.

Dana watched him for a while. After their return from New York late
last night, he had gone home to his own apartment, leaving her to an
exhausted sleep punctuated by the aches and pains she had acquired
during their struggle to save Krychek from the river. They had met at
the office early in the morning before heading over to the courthouse in
Arlington. Mulder had been fearful of what effect testifying at
Brunty's trial might have on Scully. He'd even suggested that another
Bureau forensics specialist could take her place as an expert witness.
She silenced him with a stern look, but at least twice during the day in
court her small hand had reached furtively for his. It thrilled him to
know that she needed him.

"Mulder?" she said softly, reaching again for his hand.

"Mmm," he muttered, watching her fingers stroke his knuckles.

"What're you thinking about?"

He flipped his hand over and closed his fingers around hers, then
brought her hand to his lips. Her fingers were cool and smelled faintly
of the shallots and lemon zest she had used to make the vinaigrette for
their salad. His eyes closed for a moment as he kissed her fingertips.

"Do you feel free now, Scully?" he asked.

She frowned slightly, puzzling over the intensely concerned look in
his eyes.

"Of Krychek, you mean? Not completely, I suppose...but I feel much
less burdened by the memories than I did."

Mulder took a sip of water from the glass that had sat untouched
throughout dinner.

"What did he say to you, Scully, while I was lying on my ass at the
bottom of the stairs?"

"Some crap about the tests that were done on me. That they're in
some way similar to what was done to you in Tunguska. I think he
was playing another of his mind games, Mulder. Revenge for the
arm. You know how he is."

"More wine?" he asked, holding the bottle.

"No, I've had enough."

He corked the bottle and took another long drink of his water. It was
only then that Dana realized that he was nervous.

"Mulderrrr," she intoned. "What is it?"

"Fox," he murmured. "You're supposed to call me Fox."

"Only when...oh. Ohhh."

He gave her a sheepish smile as she rose from her chair and came
around the corner of the table to stand before him. She raked her
fingers through his hair and then cupped the base of his skull between
her hands. He looked up at her, eager but trying desperately not to
rush her.

"Talk," she said, smiling gently.

"I want to make love to you so badly that I think I may explode.
Boom. Just like that. I want to marry you and make you pregnant and
take care of you and our child and make sure that nothing, nothing like
this ever happens to you again." He gulped a breath and continued. "I
want to call you a million different embarrassing pet names and hold
you like a baby.  I want you to need me so badly, Dana, so -- so -- ah
shit. This is stuff I'm never going to have. It's not me. But I want it
anyway. I want it with you."

She cradled his head against her chest, stroking his hair and planting
kisses along the part.

"You've kept this bottled up inside for a while now, haven't you," she
observed.

He nodded against her, panting slightly with the relief of having
expelled the pressure within his heart.

"I can't lie and tell you what you want to hear," she said.

He looked up at her then, his eyes narrowed in anticipation of the pain
he was certain she was about to inflict.

Dana smiled and bent to kiss him. He remained frozen, trying to
gauge the situation.

"You can have some of what you want now, and some of it later.
Some of it maybe never. I don't know." She pressed her lips
together, summoning the determination to make him understand. "I do
need you. Every day I need you. Don't ever doubt that."

"But what do I do now, Dana?"

She stroked his neck with a feathery touch. Then, slowly and
deliberately, she put her lips next to his ear so that she could whisper,
ever so softly, the answer to his question.

"The dishes."

End The Cry of the Truth, 22a/22c


The Cry of the Truth, 22b/22c
Here and Now


Mulder poured detergent into the little cup in the dishwasher door,
snapped it shut, and flipped the dial. He was rewarded with a low
mechanical rumble.

"Man, I gotta get me one of those," he muttered to himself.

He turned out the lights on his way out of the kitchen.

"Hey Scully, I have a..."

The living room was dark, and she was gone. For a moment, he
wondered if he had just awakened from a dream in which he and
Scully became lovers, were divided by the harsh aftermath of her
abduction, and then were reunited by the force of their enduring love.

"Nahhh," he muttered, shaking his head.

Her laptop was still open on the coffee table. Sitting on the edge of the
couch, Mulder touched the space bar to awaken the computer. Dana
had left her addendum to their original report on Delia Forrest's rape
open for him to read.

"Comparative DNA analysis of the semen sample collected from
Richard Brunty revealed a 94.9% match with the semen obtained from
Delia Forrest's body following the rape. In light of this information,
Mr. Brunty was convicted. His sentence is pending.

While Miss Forrest, his former instructor and supervisor, does not
refute the hard evidence in the case, she continues to believe that her
rapist was somehow able to make himself invisible to her during the
crime. Following her examination by a court-appointed psychiatrist, a
diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, level 3.1.9, was made.
Miss Forrest's reaction to the outcome of the case was equivocal.

Against her parents' wishes, Miss Forrest has refused to be
hospitalized for treatment of her PTSD."

Mulder closed the document and shut down the computer. He wanted
no more mention of work tonight, or for the rest of the weekend.
Unless a Reticulan tapped him on the shoulder and offered him a beer,
Dana Scully was to be the center of his attention for the next forty-
eight hours.

He had to find her first, however.

He left the couch and set out into the darkness, stumbling over his
shoes where they lay on the hardwood near the front door. His feet
made the transition to the carpeted floor of the hallway, and he knew
he was on the right track. As he rounded the corner, he saw a soft
light flickering under the bedroom door, and immediately knew that it
was not paranormal in origin.

Tentatively he pushed the door, and stood his ground as it moved
away from him. Then, clasping the door frame, Mulder leaned into
the room and took a look around.

Immediately to his right, he saw that the tiger-maple four-posted bed
was dressed in its usual simple white cotton uniform; the down
comforter and top sheet had been furled back to reveal the smooth
bottom sheet and four firm pillows. The white draperies had been
closed snugly to hide the shuttered windows set in the wall on the far
side of the bed. A glare on the glass obscured the framed picture that
he knew, from previous visits to this room, was a museum print of
Manet's "Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe." On the wall opposite the bed
were the French doors that led to the tiny balcony above Rock Creek
Park. They, too, were closely draped, giving the room an air of
sequestration.

Wrapped in her persimmon silk robe, Dana stood before the plain
antique dresser, brushing her hair by the light of a dozen candles of
varying sizes gathered on a footed tray before the mirror.

"Hey," he said, finally taking a step toward her.

Their eyes met in the mirror. The smile on her face was seraphic,
nearly stunning Mulder into silence.

"Read the addendum," he managed to say. "Perfect, as always"

"Well, not always, Mulder," Dana said, turning and looping her arms
around his waist. "But I accept the compliment nonetheless."

Mulder kissed her forehead, lingering there to breathe in the scent of
her clove-and-tangerine shampoo.

"You already had a shower?"

"I *can* bathe myself, you know," she said gently. "And besides,
Mulder, it's hard for me to shave my legs with you in the shower."

"I could help," he said, a whine of protest creeping into his voice.

She snorted at that.

"I think I can handle it," she said. Her hands migrated from his waist
to his chest, and came to rest over each pectoral muscle. She looked
up at him with a sober, assessing gaze. "Seriously, Mulder, you're
almost paternal at times. Bathing me, brushing my hair, as if I were
your little girl."

Mulder shrugged. He felt as if the rug was about to be pulled out from
under him, and he had no idea what lay beneath.

"Just trying to find non-sexual ways of touching you," he replied.
"That was Dr. Locke's recommendation. I figured we were pushing
the envelope the other night, when I -- when we --"

"Mulder, in all the years I've known you, there's never been a touch
between us that *wasn't* sexual. And you know it," she said,
smoothing her fingers down the placket of his shirt. She pursed her
lips and peered at her hands for a moment, collecting her thoughts.
"You've done very well. You really have. You've let me set the
limits, and...well, that's been a very effective way of making me feel
safe again. But I'm better now, Mulder. Especially after seeing
Krychek again....That didn't come out exactly the way I expected, but
there was *some* resolution. Of a sort."

"Of a sort," Mulder echoed. "But it's only been a day, Scully. You
need time to absorb what happened before we try anything else."

"No. No, I don't think so." Dana plucked at one of his shirt buttons,
her mouth set in a determined line that ended with a faint smirk. "Last
night, Mulder, when we finally got home, I really wanted you to stay.
But we were both so tired, and thinking about Delia's hearing...."

He touched a finger to her chin so that she would look at him. Her
eyes were communicative, glittering and beautifully shaped without the
enhancement of even a trace of makeup. She smiled, showing her even
white teeth and just a peek of healthy pink gums.

"So what are you telling me, Dana?" he asked in a voice that was so
intimate, so low, that she wondered if he had suddenly been rendered
telepathic. Her sternum seemed to reverberate like a tuning fork in
response to it. She felt the faint vibrations all through her upper chest
and neck, over her breasts, and between her legs. It made her want to
grind her pelvis against him.

"Thank you for being so patient," she whispered, rising up on her toes
to kiss his chin. "But *my* patience as run out."

The hair on the back of his neck bristled as a jolt of arousal shot down
his spine. He closed his eyes and paused to commit the moment to
memory. In the momentary darkness, he found his senses alerted to
the spicy scent of the candles, the dry rasp of silk under his palms, and
the smooth shifting of her shoulder blades as she lifted her arms to
touch him. One small, strong hand slid over his shoulder and came to
rest on his collar; the other caressed his cheek, bringing a delightful
flutter to that spot within his neck, just under his ear, that stung like
mad whenever he sucked on sourballs as a kid. He grinned; where
some women might bring to mind cream puffs, Scully made him think
of sourballs.

When she kissed him, however, his grin faded and his sense memory
spit out the acrid candy in favor of her complex taste of almonds,
vanilla, and a hint of cinnamon toothpaste. Her tongue moved with
measured control across the roof of his mouth, then languidly stroked
his inner cheek before moving on to investigate the smooth slope
under his tongue.

Mulder held her head between his hands as if her mouth were the cup
of salvation. As he drank in her warmth, his fingers pressed through
the thickness of her hair, each padded fingertip massaging tiny circles
into her scalp. His thumbs stroked the arc behind each ear where her
glasses sometimes gave her a headache. And then, after another deep,
thorough kiss, he released her mouth. With a sigh, she allowed her
head to loll back into the waiting cradle of his palms.

Mulder swallowed hard and marveled at the sight of her lips,
glistening with their combined moisture, nearly pornographic in their
inflamed state. His cock was reminding him of how it felt to be
surrounded by those lips, caressed by that tongue, sucked into that
long, pale throat.

"God, Scully," he muttered.

She opened her eyes so that she could see to unfasten the buttons of
his shirt. Her fingers felt thick and slow as she wrestled with the tiny
buttons. The roar of her own circulation was like a windstorm in her
ears. The exigency of her need to combine herself with him silenced
all language, and she was close to hyperventilating when he gently
closed his hands around her wrists to end her struggle.

Mulder was as rooted and still as a mountain. When he smiled at her,
his wide-set brows drooped a bit and his already generous nose
broadened. Three furrows formed across his forehead, partially
hidden by the parenthetical droop of his bangs. His usually mournful
eyes, dark olive gray in the candlelight, sparkled.

Dana was coming back to herself. Her heart rate slowed and she was
no longer gulping oxygen. As he kissed her fingers, she reminded
herself that this was the safest place on earth. Here, in her bedroom,
surrounded by familiar, beloved objects, she was comfortable. No
one could hurt her here. It was not necessary to rush through the
motions of sex with him in order to silence the fear she felt. The
memories of Krychek no longer frightened her...well, almost; between
her visits with Dr. Locke and the choices she had made on the ferry,
she had for the most part dispatched with them. But without that set of
fears, another resurfaced. While she desperately wanted the absolute
intimacy of intertwining herself with Mulder, she remained wary of the
implications of such a union. What if he took more from her than she
was prepared to give? What if he absorbed her, once and for all?
What if she lost the boundaries of herself in him?

He continued to smile at her, blinking like a placid cat.

Dana finally made a small pouting sound of frustration and confusion.
At that, Mulder chuckled, released her hands, and walked away.

She gaped at him, closing her mouth only when he stopped with his
hand on the door know.

"Where are you going, Mulder?"

He glanced at her coyly through the screen of his eyelashes.

"Just closing the door," he replied in the low monotone that revealed
nothing.

"Oh," she said softly.

He leaned against the door and, never taking his eyes off her, finished
unbuttoning his shirt.

Dana did not notice the slight tremor in his hand as he unfastened the
buttons at his cuffs.

"I need you to do something for me, Scully," he said in his half-sultry,
half-squeaky voice.

Scully's own voice cracked over her reply.

"You do?"

Dropping the shirt as he moved, Mulder returned to where she stood in
the middle of the room, his footsteps absorbed by the plush ivory
carpet. The candles flickered in response to his movement. For the
time being, all was quiet around them.

His hands hitched on his waist, Mulder looked her over, his face
implacable as he studied her auburn hair, wavier than usual, her
lovely, pale face, the strong tendons of her neck, her small, almost
bony shoulders holding up the robe like a mannequin. Her breasts
rose and subsided with each breath; without the slight swelling that
buoyed them at other times during her menstrual cycle, they rode a
little lower than usual on her chest. This made them somehow even
more appealing to Mulder, reminding him that she was capable of
sustaining life and, perhaps not coincidentally, arousing in him the
urge to make her pregnant. And then came the sigmoid curve of her
waist and hips, the tapering columns of her legs, her slim ankles and
well-formed feet. Each of these elements spoke to her beauty, but
were not, in and of themselves, enough to make him love her.

He looked into her eyes, gray-green without the blue tint of her
contacts, and saw there the burning spirit that had shown him the way
through many a dark hour. There was her razor-sharp intelligence, of
course. And her courage in the face of danger. But now Mulder could
see a vulnerability that had been hidden so carefully, for such a long,
long time, that it had taken a near-fatal date with the incinerator in Ed
Jerse's apartment building for it to surface.

She had hurt him deeply then. Mulder had deduced that she had been
trying to force him into revealing his own unreliability so that she
could know, once and for all, that she was right to deny his love.
Instead of proving her right, however, he had overcome every obstacle
in his path and kept coming back for more. And now, as he watched
her watching him, Mulder saw the realization coming over her like a
shaft of warm sunlight. He loved her, for better or worse. Now she
believed it.

Scully blinked, her eyes suddenly moist.

"You were going to ask me..."

Mulder gave a low-wattage smile and nodded.

"Promise me, sweetheart, that you'll let me know if you get scared?"

A slow smile began to form, first in one corner of her mouth, then in
her eyes, and soon her entire face was illuminated by the grace that had
dawned over her heart.

"I promise," she said, giving him her hand.

He nibbled delicately on the soft pad of muscle beneath her thumb
before sliding his lips over the smooth skin, over the nail, and then
taking the entire first digit of her thumb into his mouth. His tongue
darted across the sensitive fingertip, flicked under the nail, then twirled
around and around until she laughed softly.

"Tickles," she whispered.

"Good," he said, guiding her hand to his waist as he slid his arms
around her. "Hearing you laugh makes me feel like anything is
possible."

"Is it so rare?"

"Mmm. Pretty rare," he replied, and bent to kiss her lips.

She smiled against his mouth and then began to pull his undershirt up
over his belly. Stepping back slightly, she used both hands to push it
up, then released it for him to pull over his head. Her hands were
quick and precise in their work. Preoccupied by watching her cleavage
under the low vee of her robe, Mulder was a little surprised to
suddenly find himself naked, with her hand confidently stroking his
half-erect cock.

His hand closed over hers and stopped the stroking.

"There are times, Scully, when it is better to receive than to give," he
said, stepping toward the bed as he offered her his hand. "And this is
one of those times."

"But Mulllll-der," she whined, taking his hand.

He laughed at the pout that shadowed her pretty face.

"Come on, Scully. Later for that."

He clambered over the mattress to recline against the bank of pillows.
Crossing his ankles under the comforter and grinning wildly, he
crooked his forefinger by way of an invitation.

"Over here, partner," he said.

Dana hesitated, one knee resting on the bed's edge, her finger plucking
absently at her lower lip.

"A little closer, if you don't mind," he prodded.

As she crawled across the bed to join him, her robe began to open.
She paused on her knees to tug at the knot in the belt. Her hair, nearly
the same color as her robe, obscured her face as she frowned down at
the strip of silk. Mulder could only watch, enchanted, as she picked at
the knot. Finally it gave way and she was able to tug the tails of the
sash free. Without so much as a glimmer of self-consciousness, she
shrugged out of the robe and then twisted at the waist to yank the
bottom of it from under her lower legs. Naked at last, she tossed the
robe toward the end of the bed and then resumed her journey toward
him. Her crawling reminded him of a lioness prowling the dry plains
of Africa. The gentle, pendulous swaying of her breasts, however,
reminded him of nothing more than his need to capture them in his
hands and fasten his mouth around the nipples, first one and then the
other, until the earth spun backwards and time rolled back and he was
once again an unmarred infant seeking primal succor.

It took him a moment to remember words. When she slid under the
fluffy comforter and into his arms, the surprising coolness of her skin
against his hip and chest brought him back to reality long enough to
enable him to form a sentence, albeit a short one.

"Tell me what you're thinking about," he rasped.

Dana knew it was a question he was bound to ask, not so much
because he had been trained in psychology but because he loved her.
And for that reason he deserved an honest answer.

"I'm afraid it won't go well, and you'll get frustrated and give up."

Crystal clear, he mused, his forehead crinkling and his mouth gaping
in wonder. No polite denial. No "Mulder I'm fine." Just the
undiluted truth.

"Wow," he uttered.

"What?"

Mulder propped himself on an elbow and peered at her as if she had
just pronounced the answer to world hunger, the secret to painless
weight loss, and a cure for cancer all at once.

She rested on her side, one arm tucked under her head, the sheets
tucked under her arms.

"Scully..." he began.

Oh my God, Dana thought, her heart twisting in on itself. He thinks
I've just given him permission to leave.

"Dana." He tried again. "You told me the truth, just now. About how
you feel. About what you're afraid of. That's -- that's amazing..."

As she listened and watched and finally came to understand his
wonder, the fingers of her right hand had spread wide over his left
breast. When he was finished, and his eyes had gone drowsy with
emotion, her hand smoothed up his chest and around his neck to pull
him close. She rolled onto her back, taking him with her.

The hunger she had been trying to yoke for two months was rife, and
Mulder now seemed to share it. They both sighed and panted and
grunted as they tried to touch each other everywhere at once. Their
teeth clacked together and they laughed madly. Mulder's hand
scampered over her belly, inadvertently tickling her, and when she
reflexively drew her legs up toward her abdomen, her knee caught him
in the solar plexus. Through his laughter, he moaned in pain, but did
not protest as she massaged the site of the injury. When her hand
moved lower to coax his cock back into a state of readiness, Mulder
forgot everything that had ever hurt him.

End The Cry of the Truth, 22b/22c


The Cry of the Truth, 22c/22c
Here and Now


The frenzy gave way to the paced intensity that had characterized their
entire partnership.

Mulder pumped slowly into her fist as he pulled himself up onto his
elbows and knees. His hands enclosed her breasts and gently shifted
them toward the center of her chest so that he could alternate nipples
more rapidly. At first he sucked each one, his cheeks hollowed by the
vacuum he was creating. Then, by accident, the sharp edge of his
bottom incisors scraped the underside of one erect nipple while his
tongue dabbed at the surface of it, and she screeched in delight. He
repeated this action on the second nipple, but somehow the effect was
not the same. "Go back, go back" she panted, and he did, returning to
the breast where he had begun while plucking at the other nipple with
his fingers.

Across the room, the candles gutted in a draft that had somehow
managed to creep around the draperies, casting on the wall wild
shadows of Mulder's spiky, disheveled hair and the bridge of his back
as it arched and flexed.

Dana was nearly weeping with emotional overload, her nerves raw
from their recent experiences in the outside world as well as from the
potent, private stimulus he was offering her now. Without realizing it,
she whimpered pitiably.

Mulder released her nipple with a slippery pop. He threw her a
somber look through the dark fringe of his lashes, gave the other
nipple was friendly lick, and then shifted upward to kiss her.

"You okay?" he asked in his gravelly monotone.

"Mmm," she gulped, her eyes a little wild.

"Breathe, sweetheart," he cooed, combing her hair back from her
forehead.

She inhaled slowly, and then laughed on the exhale. I'm trying too
hard, she told herself. I want this too badly. I need him too --

"I need you, Mulder," she said out loud.

"I know," he said, his palm warm against her cheek. "You've got
me."

His eyes slid shut and his mouth dropped open when she shifted her
grip from his cock to his balls, cupping them cautiously and then
grazing them against each other like dice.

"You've definitely got me," he muttered, eyes still hooded.

"I love you, Mulder," she said.

Mulder did not need to open his eyes to know that she was smiling.
He could hear it in her voice, and he could feel it in her hands as she
continued to jostle and stroke him with a touch as light as a dream.

"Scullleeee," he moaned. "Stttahhhppp..."

She rested her arms on the pillow above her head, knowing that she
had to get her hands away from him in order to truly stop.

"Fox," she said, suddenly a trifle shy.

He opened one eye and glared at her with it. Then he remembered that
he'd told her to call him Fox at times like this, and opened the other
eye.

The expression on her face was so soft, so open to him, that with her
arms draped around her head, her hair curling into copper arabesques
against the pillowcase, lips parted and moist, and eyes wide with
anticipation, he had to kiss her again to let her know that he would
honor her trust.

"Today, after the verdict..." She paused, uncertain of her words.
"You were unusually, um, reticent. You were worried about me,
weren't you."

Mulder sat back on his haunches and slowly pulled the covers away
from her body.

"Yeah. I wanted to yank you out of there as soon as they'd finished
your testimony."

"But you didn't."

"I didn't." His brows twitched with approval as the sheets slipped
away and revealed her narrow waist, the tiny dome of her belly, the
flared hips, and the thick patch of dark hair that hid his target. "It was
something you had to do. Not just being an expert witness, but
talking to Delia, giving her the medal...Still, I wasn't sure of what
effect it'd had on you until just now."

"You took a risk by coming in here with sex on your mind," she
observed mildly.

Mulder shrugged.

"I told myself: nothing can be as scary as telling you that I loved you
in the first place."

She wriggled atop the mattress, repositioning herself so that he was
between her legs. Mulder bowed his head and gave her a shy smile
before reaching down to touch the underside of her knee.

"You seemed pretty brazen at the time," Dana said.

She tucked her knee inward to nudge his thigh. Her gaze was
simmering and a little drowsy, and one brow arched softly in
anticipation of his response. She licked her lips and grazed her lower
lip with her upper incisors.

Joints popping like firecrackers, Mulder moved onto his knees. His
quadriceps stood out in high relief, ropy and lean beneath the
sprinkling of dark hair and pale olive skin. A puckered scar on his
inner thigh, just south of the general proximity of his testes, marked a
bullet wound that had nearly cost him his reproductive future. When
he saw Dana's eyes stray to the scar, and then to his cock, he felt
himself again growing turgid and warm.

"If I was brazen then, it was only because I thought I had nothing to
lose. I never expected you to love me back, not like this. I was pretty
sure you would laugh at me, and then go jump in bed with Stuart. So
what was there to be scared of?"

"Mulder --"

"Fox?" he said, uncertain.

She closed her eyes and nodded.

"Fox, my love, I never once laughed at the idea of your loving me.
Never."

Mulder made his move. He bent forward to kiss her belly under the
arc where diaphragm meets sternum. Like a whisper, he dragged his
lips lightly over the near-invisible hair there. She shuddered under
him, and he smiled.

"Are you scared of me now?" she asked, her voice more girlish than
usual.

He looked up. Her eyes were still closed. Brown lashes swept her
high cheekbones. Her nostrils flared slightly with each breath. Her
jaw was set in a firm line, as if she were steeling herself either for bad
news or a wild ride.

"Sometimes," he answered, zigzagging his index finger from her navel
to the lower hairline.

She took a deep breath that made her chest rise and fall in a creamy
wave. Mulder watched in wonder as her aerolae and nipples drew
tighter and darker in response to the delicate touch of his hand on her
abdomen.

"Now?" she asked.

Mulder exhaled a little chuckle and spread his hands over her tummy.

"Now...now I'm afraid of losing you, of disappointing you, of
hurting you." He shrugged with his face, tossing up his brows and
twisting his mouth in a wry smile. "Just the usual stuff."

Her eyes slid half-way open then, and she gave him a desultory smile
that told him that in spite of his fears, he held the world in his hands at
that moment. Mulder's stomach fluttered.

He covered her breasts with his hands before sliding down to lie on
his stomach and rubbing his chin against her pubic bone. The hair
rustled against the stubble of his beard. She moved slightly, getting
comfortable by tucking a small pillow under her neck.

This is the sweetest pussy in the history of Woman, he thought as he
combed the hair back. He wanted to tell her, but he was afraid to use
that word. The other words, clinical or otherwise, lacked
the...affection...he wanted to convey. She never used the word
herself.

"Something bothering you?" she asked dryly.

Mulder blushed when he realized that he had been staring.

"No no no of course not no."

"You're babbling," she observed with a masterful arch of her brow.

"No I'm not," he babbled.

She heaved a sigh of exasperation and rolled her eyes heavenward.

"Dammit, Mulder, I thought we had resolved this matter of trust and --
ahhh."

Her head came to rest on the pillow. Her eyes fluttered shut. She
heard him make a humming sigh of satisfaction in the back of his
throat, and smiled.  She tried to help him, tried to think sexy thoughts
about the two of them, tried to remember fantasies she had conjured
about him back when they only touched each other accidentally. She
tried, but all that really came to her mind was the fact that her chest
was cold and her lower back was beginning to ache.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mulder saw her forehead knitting with the
effort of concentration, and stopped what he was doing. He rested his
head on her abdomen for a moment before crawling back up the bed so
that they were face to face.

"Sweetheart," he murmured, lightly kissing her nose. "Stop
thinking."

"I don't think I can," she said, a tearful hitch in her voice.

"Stop trying," he said. "Kiss me. Taste how gorgeous you are."

Her hands came to rest on his arms.

"But it worked before," she protested. "Everything worked before."

Mulder shook his head to disagree, and then thought the better of it.

"Do you want..." he began.

She closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing as Mulder
formulated his question.

"Do you want me to stop, sweetheart?" he whispered, desperately
hoping that she did not.

"No. No, I don't want you to stop," she said clearly. She lowered a
forearm across her eyes and huffed out an irritable sigh. "I want all
these thoughts to stop. They're not scary. They're just...there."

Mulder's gaze wandered to the ceiling as he pondered his options.
Soon a smile crept across his face. He licked his lips and leaned over
to whisper in her ear.

"If you have to think about something, Dana, think about this." His
tongue flicked over the cartilaginous ridges of her ear, and she
shivered. "I love you. I love all of you. And at this moment, I
particularly love your sweet pussy." He nibbled on her ear lobe, then
licked the soft spot just behind it. "It's so good that I want eat myself
into oblivion, like a kid in a chocolate factory."

As he spoke, she had grown very still beneath him. Now she lifted
her arm from over her eyes and peeked at him, the telltale twitching of
her brow just visible under the crook of her inner elbow.

"That good, huh?"

Mulder nodded emphatically.

"Oh, yeah," he replied.

Dana's arms left her head then and twined around his neck. She licked
his lips neatly, and lured by the taste that she found there, held his
head in place between her hands so that she could slide her own
tongue over his, then across the roof of his mouth.

Mulder rolled onto his side and returned her kisses as his fingers
probed the soft, serrate lips, finding them sleek and slippery with the
fluid that was like a crystal-clear honey. Two fingers slid into her
channel and gently pressed upward while curling back toward his
palm, as if he were beckoning her orgasm to come out and play.

Eventually her moaning and his murmuring replaced their kissing.
Mulder continued the summoning gesture while using the tip of his
thumb and the flat surface of his thumbnail to stimulate her clitoris. As
he watched, the frustration that had haunted her face just a moment ago
changed to concentration, then intense pleasure, then a soaring
tenderness punctuated by a high-pitched, whispery wail. He
beckoned, and she came.

Mulder quickly got to his knees and bent over her still-thrusting pelvis.
He pulled her thighs probably farther apart than necessary, but he was
feeling greedy and wanted no impediments to his satisfaction. Her
damp hair grazed the tip of his nose as he thrust his tongue into her
vault. The bristles on his chin rubbed rudely against her, but he felt
her grinding herself against them anyway. He swallowed noisily and
then began to suck in earnest on whatever struck his fancy: the rim of
her opening, the outer lips, the inner lips, the pale, smooth skin of her
upper thigh, the rosy-pink hood that even now hid her clitoris from
him.

Because she had grown quiet at a time when he wanted her moaning,
Mulder gave up his sucking and began licking lavishly, from her
perineum to the ridge of her pubic bone. When his tongue crossed her
clitoris, she whimpered. With only a few more passes, she was
coming again, her thighs trembling around his face, her pelvis
shuddering.

"Mulder," she cried in a whispery voice. "Mulder, enough. Please, I
just want you inside me."

He grinned against her thigh, and then planted a loud kiss on the plane
where her leg merged with her torso.

"I must be the luckiest man in the solar system," he said as he knelt
between her legs.

"Oh? What makes you so sure?" she asked drunkenly.

"You do, sweetheart. You make me sure of so many things."

He reached for a spare pillow to prop under her bottom. She tilted her
pelvis up and then reached for his cock with blind hands. Her eyes,
lids at half-mast, were dark with the expansion of her pupils. As
Mulder lowered himself over her, he wondered whether the past few
days had taken a greater toll on her than she had admitted. Perhaps he
should just let her sleep. In the morning --

Suddenly he was inside of her. She had pulled him forward just
enough to scoop her pelvis upward and capture his cock in the opening
made soft and pliant by his earlier attentions.

"Hey Mulder," she said, her voice suddenly clear again.

He pushed into her, gently but deliberately, until he reached the sweet
spot at the end of her channel. He paused there to look down at her
and to savor the fact that this time was already better than the last,
because this time she trusted him all the way.

"Yeah, Scully?"

"You really want to get married?"

He grinned and ducked his head down to kiss her once more before
thrusting again.

"Don't tease," he said, growing a bit breathless as he began to feel,
once and for all, the bottom dropping out of his carefully constructed
solitude.

"Can you..." She grunted as she tried to tilt her pelvis even further
toward the ceiling. "I want you deeper, now."

He stopped and gulped down a few breaths. Then, he eased out of her
and sat on his knees like a man about to make a prayer of supplication.

"Come up here, then," he said, reaching for her. "And turn around."

She thought a moment, and then rolled over onto her belly. Slowly,
carefully, she rose up on her knees, her arms flailing slightly for
balance as the mattress dipped with his movements. His fingers
stroked the backs of her thighs and calves, encouraging her to separate
her knees a bit more so that he could get closer. Soon his arms were
wrapped around her waist, one hand was cupping a breast as the other
massaged her belly.

"Feels good," she mumbled, leaning back against him and resting her
head on his shoulder.

He kissed her cheek -- a long, lingering kiss that allowed him to relish
the texture of her skin and the delicate bone beneath it.

"Ahhh," he moaned, nuzzling her hair. "I love you, Dana."

"I know you do," she assured him, half turning so that she could see
his face.

His hair was wild, bangs dangling over his brow and a cowlick
shooting out behind one ear. His eyes had narrowed to sleepy slits.
His lips, moist and swollen, twitched into a little smile. And Dana
noted, for the first time, a faint sprinkling of freckles across his nose
and cheekbones.

She uttered a tender moue of the variety usually reserved for puppies
and babies.

Oh, to have a bright little boy with that face, she mused.

The novelty of the thought shocked her into blushing. Mulder,
attributing the spread of pink over her cheeks and neck to intense
arousal, continued his inflammatory caresses.

His cock was warm and sticky against her skin. Pressing back with
her pelvis, Dana quickly surmised that although the sensation of being
held from behind was supremely comforting, the difference in their
heights would make this position good for nothing but a sweet
embrace. So, slowly so as not to throw him off balance, she bent
forward and reached for the pillows nested at the head of the bed.

Her back was creamy-pale beneath the amber freckles that adorned her
shoulders and faded into a faint vee that marked the cut of her girlhood
swimsuits. Mulder's hand smoothed over a bruise over her left hip,
about the size of a plum, that had resulted from the tumble she'd taken
on the ferry the day before. Then his fingers strayed to the tattoo. He
couldn't make it disappear, he told himself, but he could do something
about the feelings that had inspired it.

When she was settled against a tuffet of pillows, he leaned over to kiss
the mark. She hummed a single, sonorous note of thanks and reached
back to catch his hand in hers.

Mulder hated to break the mood of the moment, but he knew he had to
speak.

"Dana, this'd probably feel great, but I don't want to remind you
of...uh..."

"I'm all right," she said gently. "I promised I'd let you know, and I
will, okay?"

She wiggled her fingers from his grasp and then took his cock in her
hand. Again, she guided him forward until the head was bobbing
against her entrance.

With deliberate slowness, he moved into her, and found the journey
amazingly smooth and slick. His hands skated over the Botticellian
curves of her back and hips before settling at her waist. She shifted
slightly toward him, and Mulder moaned. The fit was heavenly. He
had visited the dark warmth of her before, and had loved every
millisecond of it, but this...this was different. She felt tight and
accommodating at once. Warm and strong and eager, she thrust back
again, cueing Mulder to take up the game.

Still holding her by the waist, he began to stroke into her, his rhythm
moderate but intense.

"Does that feel good, baby?" he asked in a sultry voice that no one but
Dana had ever heard him use.

"Better than good," she replied, spreading her arms around the
collected pillows.

She felt like she was floating on a cloud of crisp white cotton with an
angel on her back.

"Good," Mulder muttered, his brow furrowing in concentration.
"Wonderful..."

As he slid deeply into her, over and over and deliciously over again,
the rigid corona of his cock stroked some concatenation of nerve
endings that might have been unique to Dana, or not....she did not
care to recall the anatomical facts of the matter. The first year of med
school was as far away as Venus at that moment, after all. What was
important to Dana there and then was the humming, buzzing waves
that skittered up and down the tiny lanes and winding roads and major
highways of her nervous system. The waves whispered and sang to
her -- or was that Mulder's voice?

"Finally...got something...right," Mulder murmured,
closing his eyes against the soft light that served only to distract his
senses from the focus of his existence: those few inches of flesh where
their bodies met in a temporal imitation of the mental exercises they
had been perfecting over the years.

For six years she had observed the evolving phenomenon of his
intensely passionate faith not only in things unknown or unknowable
but also, to her surprise, in her. How that faith had developed into the
kind of love that allowed them to merge their bodies and spirits into the
joyous union that was upon them now would remain a mystery to
them both. So be it.

His thighs stinging and his balls tightening, Mulder stopped his frantic
rhythm. He pulled out of her with grunt, and then, with gentle, warm
hands, rubbed her back until she rolled over.

"Are you all right?" she asked in a hoarse voice.

He smiled and nodded. When he had caught his breath, he moved
between her knees again. This time, he reached back and found her
ankles. Carefully he brought her legs up, and up higher still, until her
small, pale feet flanked his face. He rubbed his cheek against one
instep, and delivered a kiss to her heel.

"I want to see your face," he explained. "Do you mind?"

"Of course not," she said in an indulgent tone that made him smile.

His hands closed around her thighs and pulled her toward him until
her legs, resting against his chest, were nearly perpendicular to the
mattress. Dana lifted her pelvis slightly, and he tucked his torso a bit,
and with a sigh he was deep within her again.

She reflected, as she watched him, that he had never been a man of
mercurial moods. He was pretty consistently pleasant, if a little
depressed, most of the time. But in these moments, these few
moments when they were free of their respective demons, safe with
each other, with few barriers other than their own skin, he seemed to
be suffused with a joy that had the cool, dappled quality of early
spring sunlight filtering through the branches of a willow. It did not
surprise her that some necessary distance existed between them even
now. Had they been younger, and less scarred by their lives, perhaps
they might have achieved that seamless merging that sometimes occurs
between lovers. What little distance remained between them was
easily bridged, greatly respected, and served to remind them both of
how far they had come to get this close to their mutual truth.

Dana felt that what Mulder had given her in the past few months had
been more than the culmination of their struggle to build an intimate
partnership. His loyalty to her had withstood the force of his jealousy
and her heartbreak. He had given her the commitment of a lifetime,
one that he had proven himself capable of sustaining. She had known
for some time that she wanted to be loved by him. It was only now,
however, that she realized that she also wanted to love him back with
everything, good and not so good, that made her what she was. And
that, she would learn soon enough, was all Mulder really expected
from her.

"Please, Mulder," she said, her voice rich with emotion. "Please
now."

"Please what, baby?" he panted.

"Come for me. I want...I need to see it happen."

He swallowed, trying to find some moisture for his parched throat so
that he could speak.

"But what about you?"

"I've got everything I need...now," she said with a luminous smile
that went straight through his optic nerves, pinged off the back of his
brain, and then shot through his heart before setting off the alarms
housed in his scrotum.

He exhaled a little laugh that ended in a soft cry of exquisite freedom.

Dana watched raptly the darkening cloud that overcame his familiar
face, changing it almost beyond recognition as the layers of delay and
discipline peeled back, some easily, some roughly, until he was
exposed at his core, suddenly purified by the heat of her. He was
again the essential Fox, untainted by loss and disappointment. I've
got my girl, he sang in his brain, who could ask for anything more...

Fast and short came his strokes, bumping his pelvic bone hard against
her clitoris until the stubborn little pink hood that covered it finally
gave up the ghost and allowed the friction to combine with the
crackling-hot synaptic connections that said joy and completion and
acceptance and baby, he called me baby....

"Here," he cried. "Now."

She too cried out her delight like a child on a roller coaster, and then let
out an oof and a laugh when he fell hard against her, pushing her more
deeply into the soft cloud that surrounded them.

Ten minutes of laughter and languid talk, and then they began to argue
companionably about who should get out of bed and extinguish the
candles. Finally Dana assented that she was probably more able to
walk, and stumbled across the room to her dresser. She held back her
hair as she bent to blow out the candles, and out of the corner of her
eye, caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Suddenly she was
transported back to a birthday -- she was six, seven, eight? and was it
Charleston, or Guam that year? -- and making a wish before blowing
out the candles on her cake. Did I wish to grow up and fall in love,
she wondered. Did I? Or did I just wish for chocolate pudding and
less homework? With the flames illuminating her face, she closed her
eyes and saw the smiles her sister, brothers, and parents as they
encouraged her. "Make a wish, make a wish Dana -- but don't tell
anybody or it won't come true."

Back in the present, Dana heard the beautiful sound of Mulder's
contented murmuring as he stretched his spent body and curled up
amid the pillows.

She took a deep breath.

She wished.

End The Cry of the Truth, 22c/22c


*Thanks to Becky R, Becky D, Tzutzane, Gail Light, MustangSally,
Nessie, Karen, Kris, Lynn, Marsha, Monica, and Dawson (for
chapter 21, although he probably has no idea that he helped). And
special thanks to Dani, who has made a beautiful home for my work at
http://www.wolfe.net/~dani/aiirv.html.