EROSION (1/10)
By: Annie Sewell-Jennings (Auralissa@aol.com)

Disclaimer: The characters portrayed in this story aren't mine, and judging by
the pain and angst that I put them through, they probably don't deserve to be
mine. They belong to Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen Productions. This work
probably infringes on a buttload of copyright laws, but that won't stop me from
writing/posting it. Until Paula Graves or Karen Rasch is loaded into a police
car, I have no intentions to stop writing it, either.

Summary: After being terribly defeated by the enemy, Mulder and Scully struggle
to beat the game. (I maintain my right to be vague when summarizing my story,
and if anyone wants to debate this with me, send all mail to Auralissa@aol.com.
I just *love* a good controversy. I'm a self-proclaimed soapbox queen. <g>)

Category: SAR.

Rating: NC-17.

Keywords: Mulder/Scully Romance.

Archive: If you wanna archive, go ahead and do it! Just let me know where this
story's being sent. It'll be posted by me to ATXC and XAPEN. Other than that,
just ask for my permission. I'll grant it. :)

Author's Note: This is not the happiest of pieces, and is inspired by the
classic movie, "Same Time Next Year". Only that movie was a little happier than
this. Well, it was actually a lot happier than this. Just thought that I'd warn
you.

Also, this story garners a hanky warning. I know that a lot of people want to
be warned if there's a sad story up ahead, and well, this is it. :) This story
has taken a lot of effort from me, and I hope that you decide to read it.
However, if you don't want to be angsted out then what's wrong with you?!? No,
just kidding. Seriously, you can try a couple of my lighter pieces. On second
thought, just go re-read "Smoking" and "The Patch" by Michaela and Alanna
Baker. It makes me smile. :)

Dedication: To Kristin Pohaski, for encouraging me to write this and for beta
reading/editing all of my work. Thank you for your patience, your talent, and
your creativity. But most of all, thanks for being a friend and taking those
long walks on the beach with me. No, we did *not* talk about feminine hygiene
products during those walks... Much... ;)

More author's notes will be at the end of the story. :)

*****

EROSION

*****

"Man wonders but God decides
 When to kill the Prince of Tides"
 --Pat Conroy

*****

There is something tragic about abandoned sandcastles.

Perhaps it is the way that they lay silently and listlessly along the
shoreline, surrendering to the fate that washes in with the tide. There is no
resistance, no rebellion, and nothing but quiet resignation to their inevitable
demise. And though there is no possible means to cease this onslaught of ocean
onto turret, wave onto tower, there is always a feeling of sad compassion
associated with these beautiful creations. As though we mean to protect them,
we mean to salvage the ruins, but we never move a muscle. Never try to protect
them. We just allow them to disappear, fade into the waters, and sink below the
surface without a second thought.

Yes, abandoned sandcastles are some of the most tragic figures I've ever
witnessed.

But not the most tragic.

Why I ponder these imaginative creations is beyond me now. Recently, it's as if
I can feel my mind wandering to points where return is impossible, and perhaps
undesirable. For when my mind stays still, I have to face all that has
happened, and face the fact that my sandcastle washed away. And I let it wash
away.

We let it.

Wavelets and ripples smoothed over with foam tug at my ankles, but I barely
notice it. I've been pulled and tugged at all of my life, and there have been
times when allowing myself to bend with the breeze has done irreparable damage
to my life and my heart. I crane my head to the ocean, marveling at the
distance of the Atlantic, at the seeming endlessness of it. As though I could
wash into the darkness of it, and fade and wane like the aforementioned
sandcastles. After all, if the rest of my life has been swallowed by time, why
can't I be swept away as well?

It is not a suicide plea, or a death wish. I carry the same resignation as
those doomed sandcastles, knowing there is no one who cares whether I live or
die, simply waiting for the time when I am finally claimed by the tides as
well. Until that time, I will exist, I will function, and I will carry on. But
there's little purpose to my life now; I am no longer driven and propelled.
There is no quest that I share. No plan that I follow. I amble on aimlessly,
for my truth has been stolen and my journey has been ended. Without these vital
possessions, I feel empty and dazed. It became an essential part of me, and now
the essence of me has been drained away.

And if my life has been a sandcastle, then I am the last remaining turret,
awaiting the sea to sweep me away, and forever being lapped at and taunted by
time. All other decorations and barriers have been torn down, scattered to the
oceans, and I wait for the tides to take me as well. Patiently, assiduously, I
wait.

As I wait, I remember.

Remember the life that is now nothing but a part of the never-ending tide.

*****

 Like all extraordinary nights, the night was quiet.

There was absolute silence, not breached by the gentle blare of a television or
a radio, and the intimate light cast the apartment in shades and tints of coral
copper. All of the lamps were turned on, illuminating the woman sitting on the
couch with her hands folded in her lamp, seemingly completely and utterly
composed. Her posture was impeccable; her shoulders straight and even, her
hands never moving to fidget or fuss. Facing the fireplace, she seemed to be
contemplating the leftover ashes and cinders that were strewn around the burned
logs.

In reality, Dana Scully was mulling over the end of her life.

A knock sounded at her door, and she closed her eyes. She knew who it was, but
did not move to answer it. Her hands tightened in her lap, the fingertips
closing over the knuckles and turning white from the pressure. //Give me a
minute more, God. Just one more minute.// Just one more minute before her life
flew away from her on the wings of a thousand black doves, scattering her in an
impossible amount of directions. Just one more minute, and then she could cope.

Her visitor knocked again, and she opened her eyes. Nothing was changed.
Everything remained the same. There were still dead embers in her fireplace,
still dust on the mantle, and there was still that pesky cobweb in the corner
that she wasn't quite tall enough to tear down by herself. <<Should've asked
Mulder to take care of that.>> Mulder... Her eyes almost closed again, the
dagger of pain twisting once again in her heart at the thought of him. Tearing
her life apart was manageable, something that she could comprehend, as long as
she could pick up the pieces with his support.

But this time, reassembling her life was virtually impossible.

One more knock, dropping off at the end and softening into a gentle tap at her
door. Odd, how he hadn't called her name out of concern yet. Breathing in,
Scully wondered how many more opportunities she would have to hear his voice
speaking her surname in that sumptuous, dark voice, filled with so many depths
and fragments that it was indescribable. Mulder's voice was one of those subtle
seductions, whispering against the hairs on the back of her neck, settling into
her skin, then coursing through her blood with the swiftness of an aphrodisiac.
Whenever he said her name in that intimated whisper, she felt it with all of
her senses, leaving her completely and utterly aware of every facet of him.

Rubbing her fingers over the bridge of her delicate nose, Scully wondered how
she would manage to survive without the hushed crepe de chine of Fox Mulder's
voice.

Finally, there was another knock, this one soft and almost longing, lingering
on the last rap. She knew that he was waiting in silence, waiting with dread,
and she stood up. Her arms swayed limply at her sides, dangling like empty
pendulums, swinging without purpose and without weight. Feeling  as though she
were running on auto-pilot, she walked to the door, and numbly put her hand on
the doorknob. She turned the knob halfway before pausing, the realization
sinking into her stomach.

//This is the last time you will ever get a house call from your partner at
three in the morning.//

A different person would have laughed at the irony. Dana Scully simply
recognized it and felt her entire face tighten, all of the muscles contracting
at the clenching pain inside her heart. And with some desperation, she tried to
memorize the feel of the moment, the memories of her life, before it all fled
her, but she realized that it was all too late. Even without the final verdict,
the solid evidence of Mulder's words, that feeling of day-to-day chaos that was
her life had disappeared, and she had missed the moment.

Bracing herself against the door, she slowly, blindly, turned the knob.

She knew that it would be him, and there he stood, long and lean and lost in
her hallway. //Don't look at his face; everything will be ruined if you look at
his face./// Scully instead kept her gaze on the rest of him, carefully
committing every part of him to memory. The white of his cuff peeking out from
the dark, quality fabric of his suit jacket. The fine, spindly bones of his
hands and fingers. The ragged thumbnails, worn away by worrying and pondering.
The crease of his trousers, falling around his lanky legs with room to spare,
especially around his somewhat knobby knees. Those slender feet that seemed
gracefully large when compared to his longer legs. The colorful necktie that
was not as wild as his earlier selections, but still subtly rebellious to a
stranger... Oh, she would miss those wonderfully bright concoctions of shape
and color.

Only when there was nowhere else to look, nothing left for her ravenous eyes to
consume, did she lift her gaze to his face.

She knew.

Oh, God, she *knew*.

And he knew that she knew by the slow, heavy fall of her eyelashes onto her
cheek.

Scully's eyes reopened, dark and sad as she looked him in the eye, seeing there
her answer and her damnation in the cluster of gold, amber, and green. She had
never seen Fox Mulder so desolate. Desolate; it was the only possible fitting
adjective that she could apply to her partner. Desolation, devastation,
absolute and total destruction had all found their way into his heart, and he
was marked by all of their signatures. Eyes huge with despairing grief, he
stared into her and she knew that they were both irreparably shattered. Slowly,
she found herself drawn into the dolor settling into his skin, and she managed
to suspend herself in the moment, losing all sense of reality or consequence...

He shattered it. "Scully--" he croaked, and idly, she thought of the sound of
his voice. What she had once compared to a virtual rainbow of ripples and
rumbles was now a strip of splintered satin, hoarse with heartache and pebbled
with pain. Dully, she found herself walking to the couch, and through the haze
of impossible recognition, she never felt her legs working to carry her there.
She lowered herself onto it with the same distanced numbness, her eyelids
drooping of their own accord.

"It's what we expected, isn't it," she quietly stated. Her composure was not
compromised. For a moment, Mulder had never seen her so tranquil, so calm, and
then he saw that she was far from peaceful. Only her outer body remained
intact, because he heard in her voice the meticulous unraveling of Scully's
soul.

"Scully, don't..." Mulder whispered, and her eyelids swooned shut, feeling the
stinging pain of repressed tears. His voice wasn't just stripped of its caramel
caress, but completely ravaged and ragged. He pleaded with her not to drag the
words out of him, and it touched her.

"We can never see each other again; that's the gist of it, right?" She did not
feel the crack in her voice on the last word, never heard it, but Mulder did.
Mulder heard the underlying tremor to her low-spoken words, and he nearly
doubled over in the hallway from the wrenching feeling that was enclosing his
entire soul. Instead, he leaned his forehead against the doorframe, and the
early beads of tears clung to his lashes despite his attempts to keep them at
bay.

"Yes," he whispered, and he heard her long, shuddering breath that cautiously
walked the thin wire between a sigh and a sob. Arms falling in the dead air by
his sides, he seemed to dangle in her doorway. Scully watched him there; he
looked like a battered marionette. Perhaps that description fit them both quite
perfectly. Two puppets whose strings had been pulled by their united truth and
quest, and when those strings were severed, they swayed indecisively and
blankly, without direction and without a puppeteer. Swinging from the gallows,
blind and deaf at first, and then increasingly aware of their mutual fates.

As realization sank in, Mulder started to slide down the doorframe, and then
crumpled on the floor, fingers spreading over his face like a veil of skin and
bone. Never again. He would never see her again. Everything was ruined,
everything gone in the blink of an eye. Like children, they had wandered toward
the torch of truth with blind eyes, tantalized by the glowing duplicity of it,
and when they reached out to touch it, they were burned and charred by its
brutal, ugly reality. They were naive to want to touch it, to want to hold it,
to believe that it was beautiful and not dangerous.

Now, because of their actions, consequences were rising, and they would have to
give up everything.

Lifting his head back, he rested it against the doorframe again. He stared up
at her ceiling, noticing a cobweb in the corner. In it, a spider was starting
to eat a fly that it had earlier managed to catch in its trap, and Mulder
tilted his head. "It all ends, doesn't it?" he whispered to no one in
particular. To Scully, to himself, to the fly that the spider was devouring. If
Mulder still believed in God, perhaps he would speak to Him. However, Mulder
had a feeling that even if God did exist, he would have very little to say to
him.

Scully raised her head, turning to glance at the man who sat in a rumpled heap
on her floor. "What are we going to do?"

He bowed his head, feeling her stare on his face, and he couldn't lift his head
to meet her gaze. Not with what he was going to say, not with what he was going
to be forced to say. "Tomorrow, I'm handing Skinner my letter of resignation,"
he slowly said, "and a letter authorizing the closure of the X-Files. I could
just request reassignment, but this is the safest way. They can't suspect me of
anything that way. And after that, I'll go somewhere for a little while to plan
my next move. You know. Figure out what to do next."

"Where?" she asked, and he shook his head.

"I don't know yet," he admitted. "But... I will know." He swallowed. "That's
not the hard part of all of this." No, it wasn't the hardest part at all. In
comparison to what he would have to say next, it was the simplest thing in the
world. "Scully, they know us. They know that, if we're together..."

She finished for him. "We can never see each other again. Never."

Never. The word held so much finality, forbid them so much. Like the sound of
her name on his lips or the feel of his suit jacket against her cheek. Simple,
trivial things that the word "never" stripped them of. Their rights, their
access, were reproached by the word, and Scully bitterly turned her head away
from him. "Giving up the X-Files, our jobs, and now each other," she harshly
said, and Mulder turned his head to look at her, watching the rage rise on her
face. "It's awfully submissive, isn't it, Mulder? Accepting our fate and
relinquishing everything?"

There were soft glimmerings of tears on her cheeks, and Mulder traced their
path with his eyes, knowing that she was crying unconsciously. "You know what
they'll do, Scully," he murmured in a soft, gentle tone. It was more for her
benefit than his. If he weren't so intent on controlling himself, he would
explode in a string of violent, fitful sobs. "They'll start with our families,
start with our friends, and tear our worlds apart before finally killing us."

"What, we're just supposed to hand our lives over on a silver platter?" Scully
nearly spat the words at him. "We were so *close* this time; if we just keep
going..."

"Scully, we weren't just close. We *had* it. And we got burned by it." Turning
his head back to the spider and its half-eaten prey, Mulder continued. "We were
trapped and now we are being consumed."

Which was the more dignified approach, fighting until the very end or complying
at the very beginning? Which was the better? The worse? There was no right and
wrong in a situation like this. There was no graceful way to lose now. Clasping
her hands together, Scully bit down on one of her knuckles, controlling her
outrage and keeping herself in check. She shouldn't be directing this internal
anger towards Mulder. It wasn't about him, anyway. She had personal standards
to live up to, personal beliefs about herself. And by surrendering to her foes,
holding up her silent white flag, she felt as though she were failing herself.

"So we lose the game," she muttered. "Renounce our lives, hand over our work
and our time, and quietly fade into the woodwork. We comply with every demand
without any negotiation, and when we've given up everything we own, maybe, just
maybe, we'll be allowed to live." Shaking her head, she almost smiled into her
palms, but the painful sting of what had happened was still clenching in her
chest. "We lose."

Quietly, Mulder lifted his head, craning his neck to watch her. For five years,
he had seen her fight. Dana Scully was never one who would throw in the towel.
He had never seen her walk away from something that she believed in, and now he
was telling her that cessation was her only option. Pained, Mulder almost
turned away from her again, but was stopped by the picture that she presented.
Head bowed in defeat, eyes drooping from a mixture of exhaustion and failure,
Scully was the last person in the world he would ever want to hurt. And she was
also the last person he would ever want to leave.

He had prepared to live without her a thousand times before. When the X-Files
had initially been shut down, when she had been abducted, when they had been so
damn hurtful to each other, when she had been dying of cancer, when she was
ready to walk away from it all... But this time was different. This time, he
was the one giving them the hard facts, and he had only himself to blame. If he
wished vengeance on anyone, he could only turn the loathing on himself. This
time, he was the one who was letting her go.

And he couldn't do it.

The different features and facets of her all started to blur and tangle
together, swirling in an insane kaleidoscope of color and trait. The
dusk-tempered carmine of her hair, shuffled in an innumerable amount of layers
and textures, began to haze with the sharp cinnamon arches of her thin,
distinctive eyebrows; the stark whiteness of her skin started to obscure with
the light peach of her blouse. And as she became a pool of cerise and cream,
Mulder's heart clenched and contracted with the impossible thought of never
seeing this woman again. It couldn't happen. There *had* to be another way out,
something that would allow him to keep her...

Slowly, realization dawned, and Mulder slowly lifted his head. One small idea
formed in the back of his head, surfacing and snowballing with opportunity and
possibility. "Scully," he murmured, and she turned her head, her blue eyes
darkening into sapphire from anguish. "I know how to beat the game."

"Excuse me?" she asked, confused. Excitedly, he stood up, his eyes wild with
the thought of it.

"When my father died, he left my mother a beach house in South Carolina," he
started, his voice starting to spin in a flurry of idea. "She rented it out
permanently to a family, so the deed is in their name. But we're entitled to a
week out of the year in the beach house if we want it, and Mom never takes it
because she doesn't travel well anymore."

Brow furrowed, she turned her face up to watch Mulder's. There was an old fire
burning in his eyes, gathering sparks and flashing with the usual fever that
had always impassioned the both of them. Briefly, she was grateful to see that
expression one more time; never wanting to forget the calenture behind the man
she was soon leaving. "What do you mean?" she asked, still riveted by the dark
hazel inferno in his eyes.

"It's a private beach, very secure, and no one would need to know that we were
there," Mulder said, rising to stand. He was pacing now, pacing in true Mulder
fashion, the way that he did whenever he was struck by inspiration. "No one can
get access to the island, and security's incredibly tight... It could work,
Scully. It could work."

She had no glimmering of what Mulder was thinking, but the animation in him was
enough to intrigue her. "What could work?"

With long, broad steps, he crossed the room to sit next to her on the sofa,
turning his body toward her and smiling. It wasn't one of his bright, brilliant
smiles, but it was enough to provide her with a little solace. "What if we
could beat the game? What if, one week out of the year, we met in that beach
house on Seabrook Island? Just for a week, and then we went back to home?"

The proposal was risky. The proposal was dangerous. If they were ever to find
out about this clandestine meeting, the consequences would be fatal. They would
start with their families, go down to their friends, and eventually touch
Mulder and Scully themselves. Their one stolen week out of the year could be a
disastrous affair, one that they would regret for the rest of their lives.

But without that week, she would never see him again. Turning to look at his
face, she made herself face the facts. Could she honestly manage to live
without him? Never see that plush, inviting mouth with its ravishing lower lip?
Never see that adorably disproportionate nose? Never see the length of his
lashes touch his cheek when he slept, or the lock of mahogany hair that
sometimes fell tantalizingly onto his brow? In all honesty, could she manage to
live without Fox Mulder in her life?

Their meeting would be purely selfish. There was no greater good to their
stolen week. They couldn't work, plan, or possibly go back to their old games
of cops and robbers. It would never be the same, never truly helpful to any
kind of resistance, but it would still be *them*. He would be tangible to her,
more than an eternally misting memory of a man she had once loved and then
foolishly lost. And perhaps in that one pilfered week, she could love him the
way she needed to.

She needed his time. She needed *him*. If it all came down to it, she could and
would die for him. But the question was, could she make the rest of her family
die for him?

"What about our families, Mulder?" she asked, meeting his eyes and never
letting them go. "What would happen if we got caught?"

His hands found hers, and she almost broke in his touch. She couldn't do it,
couldn't let go of his skin. The warm copper of his fine-boned, capable
hands...

"I can let go of the X-Files," he whispered, and she suffered the effects of
his pain-laced voice. "I can let go of Samantha. I can let go of the truth."
And his voice broke, it nearly shattered, but it was merely torn. A rip in the
ripple. Mulder's right hand lifted to trace the slope of her jaw, and she
shivered pleasantly at the wistful lightness in the backs of his knuckles. "But
I can't let go of you." His mouth opened again to say more, but a strangled
sound was all that he could make out. Nearly matching that stifled distress
with her own, she arched her neck underneath his palm, and he swallowed before
he tried to talk again. "I don't..." And he couldn't say anymore. He didn't
need to. She knew; she knew too well.

His face lowered on hers, and her head fell back with the touch of his smooth
cheek on hers. She could feel the soft darkness of his hair on the tip of her
nose, and she deeply inhaled his gentle, worn smell. Mulder's scent was
wonderfully familiar. He smelled of some intriguing combination of shampoo,
cinnamon chewing gum, and dry-cleaned Armani, all thrown together with the
inviting, mild smell that was his alone. Perhaps it wasn't even a smell, but
just a feel to Mulder that made him smell so kind, and that was her smell
alone. Somehow, Scully knew that only she would be able to gather that
fragrance, and she wanted to bottle it and own it. Just for memory's sake.

Just to remember the aromatic essence of him.

He wanted to speak to her, he wanted to finish what he had set out to say, but
the words were snarled and snared in a thick lump of suffering that had webbed
into his vocal cords. Slowly, her hands moved away from his, and she shuddered
out an almost-sob as her hands closed on his back, wrapping over his arms and
spreading over his shoulder-blades. Whispering words onto his back with her
fingertips, she nuzzled her cheek into his with a fierceness that he
understood. Wanting to imprint him onto her memory, just like he was aching to
do. To memorize everything that was her, to learn her by heart.

"Which week?" she managed to whisper, and he almost wept with the thought of
it. She was agreeing, thank God, she was *agreeing*. One week, one week with
her in his arms, in his bed, in his eyes and in his touch. One week out of a
year with the only person that he could not function without. As impossible as
the thought seemed, it was more impossible to imagine life without that one
week. Such a simple, tiny slice of time, and such a thin shaving of paradise.

"I'll contact you," he whispered, and his hands encircled the small, thin span
of her waist. "It's dangerous to do this, you know..."

He was giving her a chance to escape. This was her opportunity to take the
"easy out", when in fact, it was the one decision that she lacked the restraint
to resist. In spite of her volumes and measures of self-control, she could not
manage to oppose seven terribly short days. She could not say no, not to this.

"It's more dangerous not to," she murmured, and he wrapped her tightly to him,
as though he could fuse her being to his and make them eternally inseparable.
As though he could fix her to him so that they would never be torn apart by the
injustice of it all, and Mulder knew that such a wish was impossible. It was
his one desire. All that he wanted. Sacrifice the truth, sacrifice the quest,
sacrifice his world, but give him this woman.

And he was refused.

"Scully," he whispered, and she closed her eyes.

"Yes?"

"Do me a favor."

She swallowed. "Anything."

He licked his dry lips, felt the tears threaten entry again, and he pressed the
tip of his nose into the thick waves and ripples of her hair. "Just... Don't
make go home tonight. Don't make me leave."

Nearly gasping out the restrained sob, Scully swallowed again. "Stay."

Carefully, she helped him onto the sofa, and they lay there together, their
bodies entangled on the small, cushy couch. His head fell onto her breast, and
she buried her cheek into the top of his dark, fine hair. Hands twining
together near his face, they clasped together in a poem of gold and porcelain,
copper and china, and her hand slipped around his waist.

Neither of them slept that night.

Neither of them cried.

And neither of them moved a muscle, terrified of losing time.

*****

(end part one)

*****

EROSION (2/10)
By: Annie Sewell-Jennings (Auralissa@aol.com)

*****

The airport terminal did not pay its respects to the man standing by the Delta
gate. It never realized the importance or significance of the stranger's
journey, and when all was said and done, Mulder rather appreciated its lack of
attention. He had made so many flights from this airport, eaten their bad
airport food, and sat in their uncomfortable airport chairs an astounding
amount of times, but this final departure was different from all previous
flights. In all of his former travels, she had been sitting in the next seat,
typing an expense report or going over medical reports, discussing cases with
him over bland spaghetti, or teasing him about squirming in the plastic chairs.

Dana Scully shared his reflections as she stood next to him, never meeting his
face for fear of losing control of herself and making a scene in the middle of
Dulles. Instead, she checked his baggage one more time, carefully thumbing his
messy handwriting on his luggage tags, smiling fondly at his sloppy penmanship
and missing it already. The ink was fading where he had crossed his name out
when he had accidentally misspelled it so many years ago, and the tag was
yellowing from years of use and abuse. It was his one carry-on bag, a laptop
computer that she knew the password to and knew the contents of. She knew which
folders were filled with UFO reports and conspiracy theories and which folders
held his "secret" pictures.

She knew the contents and secrets of him, and now she would have to tell him
goodbye and watch her life fly away on Delta Flight 2032, one-way to
Providence, no return flight planned.

No return.

No looking back.

And one tentatively planned week in seclusion.

They both stood in the middle of hundreds of people, yet it felt as though they
were very much alone. Just Mulder and Scully against the rest of the world.
Just like old times. He looked away from her, not wanting to dwell on the hurt
that was eating at his insides, the ripping, searing pain that was ravaging his
chest and his heart. If he looked at her, if he dared to focus his attention on
her, then that vulture of disparage would take him into its talons and never
release him. Swallowing hard, he rocked from heel to toe, fidgeting while she
remained completely still.

//Look at his shoes, remember the scuff marks? When he gets nervous, he rocks
like a kid. Remember that. Look at the shirt he's wearing; he's actually
wearing a suit in spite of the fact that this isn't a business trip. That's
Mulder, pure Mulder; he probably did it out of habit rather than out of
formality. Remember the suit that he's wearing. The threads on the buttons are
all perfect, except for one loose string that needs to be cut. He'll do that;
he always pays attention to his wardrobe. And it's your favorite suit, too. The
pinstriped one.//

These notes and memories raced through her head and heart as she tried to
remember a thousand different Mulderisms at once, those little qualities and
details that made him into the most complex creation she had ever been witness
to. She had a million different pieces of him to catalogue within her memory,
and there were only fifteen minutes left until his flight boarded and he was
gone. She had fifteen meager minutes to memorize the whole worth of one
complicated gem of a man, and Scully was becoming worried about time
constraints.

The silence was not unbearable, but the time was getting agonizingly short.
Every second fluttered by like a frenzied hummingbird, rushing and racing away
from them. He had to break the silence, had to hear her voice, and as he opened
up his mouth to speak, someone else did.

"Agent Mulder." Assistant Director Walter Skinner stood there, dressed
immaculately in the dignified suit that had become his uniform and a statement
of authority to Mulder. Surprised, Mulder reached out and shook his boss's
//ex-boss's// hand.

"I'm surprised to see you here," Mulder said, and Skinner gave a half-hearted
smile.

"After four years of riding your ass, I figured that it was only appropriate
that I see you off," he explained. "The entire Bureau's still in shock over
your sudden resignation." He frowned. "So am I."

Mulder flinched, as did Scully. There was no possible way to explain the
reasons of their sudden disappearance, and there never could be. To explain the
length and depth of their trouble would only cause harm to Skinner, and that
was something that neither agent desired. "Personal reasons," he archly said,
and Scully turned her face down. //Look at how one of his shoelaces is coming
undone...//

Sighing, Skinner looked at Scully, and she felt the intensity of his glare on
her face. "And I'm disappointed in you for choosing to follow your partner's
footsteps in this matter, Agent Scully. Everyone is disappointed to lose the
both of you."

Mulder almost laughed. //Yeah, real damn disappointed to lose the two most
expensive agents in the history of the FBI.// "I bet that the Review Board is
having a party," he dryly said, and Scully gave a short, dry chuckle in return.
Skinner did not seem amused, though Scully had a feeling that even if he were
amused, he would never show it.

Suddenly, she regretted never hearing Skinner laugh.

"Well, I just wanted to drop by and say that both of you should have full
recommendations from the Bureau as well as personal recommendations from
myself," the older agent said. "And I wanted to wish the both of you success in
whatever you choose to do. It's been a pleasure, agents." He shook Mulder's
hand, shook Scully's, and turned away.

Skinner did not look back as he left the two partners. He aimed to make his
goodbye brief, and he had his reasons to do so. He knew Fox Mulder, and he knew
Dana Scully. They didn't need a witness to the scene that they were bound to
make, and Skinner didn't need to see them leave.

"Boarding call for Flight 2032, Washington to Providence... All first-class
passengers..."

Sucking in her breath, Scully felt her insides knot and turn at the
announcement, and she finally turned her head up to look at her partner. "I
guess this is it," she whispered, trying to keep her voice casual and neutral,
not for his sake, but for her own.

"Yeah," he whispered back, his voice ragged.

She inhaled tightly, her ribcage aching for another one of his breaths, and her
heart raging with the thought of losing him. "Do you have your ticket?" she
asked, just like she always did, feeling like the protector of Mulder's
insensible soul for what may very well be the last time. He nodded, flashing
the boarding pass at her.

"Unfortunately," he said, and she felt tears prick her eyelids at his wistful,
pitiful quip. //Look at how his eyes tear up...//

She sighed, turning her face away from him, and looking to where Skinner was
walking away, his dark trench coat standing out amidst the crowd of people.
"What do you think Skinner knows about all this?" she asked, turning to work as
a distraction from her storming emotions.

He breathed in, finding his composure in the less emotional talk, and shrugged.
"Who knows what Skinner knows other than Skinner himself?" he said. "For his
own sake, I hope that he has absolutely no idea as to why we resigned from the
Bureau."

She shook her head, furrowing her brow in the fashion that pained his heart to
remember. "He has to know something, Mulder," she said, and he flinched at the
soft way she said his name. No one said his name like that, no one made his
name sound so treasured. No one could ever say that name again; he loved her
pronunciation of it too much. "If he knew nothing, he would have asked
questions when we resigned."

Mulder gave a sideways grin. "Scully, with the reasons that we resigned, I
think that he would have asked questions either way." She sighed, closing her
eyes in a bout of memory. Mulder leaned in, closing some of the distance
between them, and he was puzzled to see her face tighten. It was almost as if
she was holding back tears.

//Remember the way that his voice changed when he stood so close to you.//

"Scully..."

//It was so trusting.//

"If Skinner knew anything..."

//So intimate.//

"He would be leaving right alongside us."

She opened her mouth, preparing to add to the conversation, when the
loudspeaker cut in with a burst of static. "Final boarding call for Flight
2032, nonstop Washington to Providence..."

//This is it.// They had just engaged in their final snippet of impassioned
diatribe, their final battle of wits and banter, and now he was going to leave.
His heart clenched and tightened upon this realization, that there would be no
more of these heated and intelligent dialogues with his partner //ex-partner//,
and no more Dana Scully. Not until that one blissful week, that one whispered
meeting between he and the only person on earth that he ever truly needed.

Heart stinging and stomach turning, Mulder wanted to throw up as he turned to
face her. It wasn't a sensation of revulsion, or a sensation of nausea, but
rather one of internal agony, unable to comprehend the fact that he was going
to leave her. A weak smile attempted to light her face, and he choked on a tear
at the pain that was inscribed on her features.

"This is it," she whispered, her voice raspy. "You, um, take care, okay?"

//Please, Mulder, don't look at me like that... I can't take the thought of
remembering you looking so heartbroken.// The desolation that she recalled from
the previous night was ascending in his eyes again, darkening his eyes to a
dusky chocolate brown that was barely speckled with olive shards. "Yeah," he
whispered.

Lifting her hand, she smoothed her palm over his shoulder, her fingertips
running over the smooth fabric of his fine suit. She should have touched him
before, should have done this ages ago, and now he was leaving. Five years of
being with him and denying her heart seemed wasted, because now he was going to
leave and those were five years that she could have had differently. She had
told him that she wouldn't change a day. Now, she wanted to change five years.

His arms reached up and around her, taking her near to him and enclosing her
within the span of his body, pressing his chin to the top of her head and
leaning his lips to her hair. Mulder yearned then to take the taste of her hair
with him to wherever he may go, just to carry a little piece of heavenly Scully
inside of his memory. Things had gone by too fast, everything had fallen with
too much precision and speed, and now they stood among the ruins, preparing to
make the final incision.

Holding back tears, Scully pressed her face to his chest, feeling the rise and
fall of his stunted breath beneath her cheek. She knew that it was hard for
him, too, despairingly difficult, and nearly impossible. To sever all other
ties had been relatively easy, but when it came to this, everything was
shattering around them.

"Final boarding call..."

She withdrew first, sensibly not wanting him to miss his plane and emotionally
begging him to stay, and shuddered in a breath of composure. "Behave," she
joked through her near-tears, and he shook out a laugh, a strangled, insane
sound that didn't hold much humor in it at all. She felt the same way, and then
they both gave a wobbly smile.

"I'd better go," he softly said, and she nodded quickly.

"Yeah."

There was a long pause between them. Her mind hurried and rushed through a
thousand different memories of him, of telling him goodbye before he went off
to interrogate a witness or went to catch a serial killer. All so casual,
counting on the other's return as though it were an assurance of life. And now,
there was no return. A faint, possible reunion for one week out of the year,
but she would never hold that casual contact with him again. That reassuring
phone call that whispered of deeper meaning, an occasional embrace that sang
with possibility... And now, she was just supposed to let go of all possibility
and meaning, and let him walk away.

On an impulse, a final way to connect herself to him, Scully rose up and kissed
his cheek, feeling the smooth surface of his fresh skin beneath her lips. "I
love you," she said, keeping her voice casual, and the kiss was a soft peck,
not a lingering thing. His heart pounded in his chest at her words, and he bent
down to match her kiss, swiftly placing his lips on the corner of her mouth, a
friendly affair except for the roughness of his voice.

"I love you, too."

There was a moment of quiet, and then it shattered.

Their mouths caught in a tumble of frenzy, storming the other wildly and
unabashedly, and their hands flew everywhere. Her tongue crashed into his, and
their minds were as untamable and tumultuous as their bodies, trying to carve
every sensation into their memories for future reference. The kiss was
desperate, consuming, and their hands roved everywhere, not wanting to miss a
place, not wanting to forget a touch, never wanting to lose a sensation in the
seconds that they had left together.

And when their lips managed to part, the tears fell. They streamed down her
cheeks as she wildly laced her fingers in the gently curling hairs at the back
of his collar. They swam from his eyelids as he ravished her hair with his
hands. They scaled down her cheeks as she suckled on his earlobe, barely
nipping at the flesh with her teeth. They careened down his neck as he brushed
his lips down the length of her neck, teasing the chain of her necklace with
his tongue.

Gasping, she felt the length of his escalating hardness nudge the inside of her
thigh, feeling the warmth of his erection through the clothing between them,
and she arched her back to allow him more access, more hands, more touches and
more caresses. //You're making a scene, Dana,// a voice within her scolded.

//Yes,// she thought wretchedly, moaning as one of his hands found one of her
breasts and then frenetically kneaded the center, //and it'll be the last scene
that we ever make.//

Mulder's senses burned out of control, and he blindly sought out more of her,
needing her, trying to recall all of the forbidden areas of his partner that he
had fantasized about, wanting to realize these dreams before he had to leave
her. Thighs; he wanted to run the backs of his knuckles inside the pale,
delicately colored skin along her inner thighs. Breasts; he needed to press
open-mouthed kisses on the pliant, creamy rise of her chest. He needed her,
needed to be with her, and he couldn't leave now. Not now, not yet...

A stewardess tapped him on his shoulder, and his arms tightened around her
back. Not wanting to face the woman interrupting this first-last touch, Mulder
closed his eyes and danced his lips over her hair, never wanting to forget the
one strand of cinnamon-gold that was brushed over his nose. "Sir, if you're
boarding Flight 2032, this is your last chance," she said, her voice
uncomfortable from interrupting the two, and he stopped.

This *was* his last chance. This was *their* last chance. Not his last chance
to leave, but his last chance to stay. It was the final decision that he had to
take, and the last opportunity to throw everything away and stay in the warm,
brilliant circle of her arms. If he decided not to go to Rhode Island, he could
continue this, end this, and remain with her.

But if he stayed, then his family, his friends, and eventually Scully, would
die.

It was his Harsh Edict. His Catch-22. Misery lay either way, but just in
different incarnations, volumes, and time restraints. The plane was leaving,
there was no time, and Mulder met her eye, begging her with his eyes to help
him make the final choice.

This was her turn to hold the strength. Her turn to gather the forces,
reinforce the walls, and emerge the wise, the courageous, and, inevitably, the
heartbroken. In the end, they took their places and resumed their old roles,
playing the parts one more time before the curtain lowered and the spotlight
died. She was the sensible, the logical, the reasonable one, and Mulder was the
wild, the impetuous, the impassioned one. And as much as she resisted this
role, loathed and hated the responsibility of the position, she knew what she
had to do.

Smiling tightly, she placed her hands in his hair //remember his hair// and
gently swept the thick, chestnut threads with her fingertips, and she licked
her lips before she spoke. She could still taste him on her lip, still feel his
kiss from before, and she hoped that the sensation wouldn't fade and wane over
time. "You have to go," she said, her voice steadying and strengthening as she
gathered courage. "You'll be fine... But this is what we have to do, okay?"

And he knew that there was no other possibility. He had to leave her, had to
let go, at least physically. Emotionally, spiritually, it was impossible for
him to let her go. She was in his blood, teeming beneath his flesh, and
stirring in his veins. Scully was a tapestry that was interwoven into his skin,
and it was so tightly threaded that it was permanently fixated. And though
their artwork wouldn't fade over time, he couldn't hold her, couldn't see her,
and couldn't speak to her until that one, hazy week.

"Sir?" The flight attendant was looking at him, waiting for him to board the
plane, and Mulder nodded, never taking his eyes off of her face. The feel of
her hands in his hair was the most soothing, reaffirming touch he'd ever
experienced.

"I'm coming," he sighed, and she smiled a little tighter, nodding jerkily,
barely able to keep her decision intact. He had to go, he had to leave, and she
had to let him go. His mouth lowered to hers, and she accepted it, gently
kissing him, dipping her tongue subtly into his mouth, and their faces clung
together for one extra moment.

And then they parted. Brushing her hair back with his hands, making sure that
Scully appeared as professional as she always appeared to be. He kissed her
forehead one more time, and then he let go.

He let go.

She watched him leave, watched him disappear down the gate, his shoulders
hunched and his eyes flickering back in lingering glances, and she let him
drink her in his eyes. She watched the plane take off, standing at the
full-length window in mild hopes that perhaps the vivid red of her hair before
he had to go. She knew that she would not see him in the airplane, and she was
correct in her assumption. And she watched as the plane disappeared into the
clouds, watching him blend into the horizon, spending the miles and trailing
the distance between them.

Scully slowly sank into the plastic chair behind her, leaned her elbows on her
knees, and covered her face with her hands. She closed her eyes, and did not
weep. She merely sat, surrounded by a thousand different varieties of people,
and felt alone.

Scully did not move for a very, very long time.

*****

(end part two)

*****

EROSION (3/10)
By: Annie Sewell-Jennings (Auralissa@aol.com)

*****

The United States of America was a blur of green and brown beneath him, dashing
the miles in a rich mixture of soil and shrub, and the coast was a strip of
blue trimming alongside the dashes and dots of color. Mulder watched the land
pass beneath him, trailing streaks of rich color and spiked with dabbles of
clear aquamarine water. The scenery was beautiful, but there was little
admiration for the country that it represented. Admittedly, there was a little
regret that his cynicism had devoured his patriotism, but it was the natural
course of progressions.

"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your
country." Mulder had asked that question a thousand times, and the balance
between the two was decidedly biased. When totaling the grand sum of sacrifices
that he had made over the years, in the end, things didn't quite add up. A
sister, a father, a reputation, a friend here and there... These were some of
the highlights of Mulder's forfeitures, dashing emotional pain to the physical
loss. And even then, Mulder could believe in a greater good, until they tried
to take Scully away from him. All of the times they took Scully from him.

And the one time that they finally succeeded.

Needless to say, after the atrocities committed unto him by his government and
by his fellow Americans, Mulder was not exactly being selfish to demand a few
items in return. But there was no possible reciprocation for the misery that he
was living in now, without her and without his job.

Mulder swallowed a little bitterness at the thought of his career. Or rather,
his complete lack thereof. Things had been tough for Mulder, and he had been
unable to find a steady job since his resignation from the FBI. Though Skinner
had promised him a good word from the Bureau, his previous history of running
off and nearly getting himself killed wasn't winning over prospective
employers. And though his mother frequently wrote to offer him money, he wasn't
willing to support himself on his father's wealth. Not when the source of the
money was so shady. Mulder wasn't ready to take blood money in order to keep
himself alive.

So, he managed to support himself on the occasional article, contributing to
various conspiracy, psychology, and paranormal phenomena magazines.
Surprisingly, he was doing rather well in the writing business. Scully would
tell him that with his martyr's lifestyle, he was born to be a starving artist.
He allowed himself the mildest of smiles when thinking of her, just the
smallest curl of his lips whenever he let himself remember Dana Scully. And
later, he would smile a wider smile at her memory, and at her reality.

But now, he was stuck on thinking about his future. Great. <<You know, Mulder,
most guys think of their futures at seventeen, not at thirty-seven.>> Well,
most guys never lost their futures the way that he had. So there. And that
brought him back to the time before his entire life had crashed and burned. He
remembered such a time, after all. When Mulder had just been a dumb kid,
bitterly naive and desperately angry at the world.

His friends had all come from wealthy, well-known households and had gone off
to Ivy League schools to learn the family business. His senior girlfriend (who,
consequently, he had lost his virginity to out of the bliss of actually
*having* an attractive girlfriend), Mae, ended up going to Stanford to study
law. He'd heard through the grapevine that she still lived in Massachusetts,
raising a family and being a homemaker. And if he had actually cared to attend
his high school reunion, it would be the same scenario all over again. The
outcast. The pauper among the princes. The failure amidst the successes.

Groaning, Mulder massaged his temples. His headache was returning; his constant
companion since he'd left the FBI and lost his job and his partner. Mulder
wasn't too concerned about it; he'd always just downed a few Advil tablets and
chased the worse ones with a shot of tequila. Scully had taught him that trick,
saying that some mild alcohol quickened treatment and did no damage to the
body. It had been nice to have a doctor around... Especially a redheaded one
with the kindest eyes known to man.

But she wasn't here now... But he'd see her soon.

Mulder opened up his carry-on luggage and picked up the bottle of Advil,
cursing under his breath at the childproof cap and then swallowing two of the
pills. Wishing that the pain would dance away soon, he leaned back in his seat
and turned his head to the window. He had missed her like hell, missed her
smile and her gentle hand, just missed her in general. And sometimes, he just
missed the *idea* of Scully, the thought that she existed just minutes away, in
his distance if he needed her, breathing the same air and watching the same
newscast. He didn't even need to talk to her or see her, just to know that she
was there *just in case*.

And Scully was still out there. But if he felt the depression coming on again,
threatening to drown him out, he couldn't pick up the phone and hear her voice
making short talk or sleepily tell him to go to bed. He couldn't even be
comforted by the thought of her on the other end of the line. These were things
that he had mildly appreciated before, thanked on desperate occasions, and now
yearned for on a daily basis.

Funny, how you only did the things you were supposed to do when you couldn't do
them anymore. Like give Scully a compliment.

He'd done it before, on occasion. And it was always wonderful. Her face lit up,
but it wasn't a blinding beacon of light. That wasn't her style. Scully was a
subtle, heady beauty; the kind of woman that a stranger would double take at
and then wonder how they'd missed her originally. Mulder, however, having seen
that low shimmer of loveliness for five years, was caught by it every single
time he glanced at her. And she was quite radiant whenever he paid her that
rare compliment.

He had kept a mental list of compliments that he would pay her when he saw her
next. Nearly everyday, he thought of something new to mention to her. Little
things, small details about her that he wanted to tell her. Admittedly,
openness had never been his strong suit before, but now he felt as though he
could be the most honest man God had ever known if he could only be given a
second chance.

Yeah. Right. There was a drought on second chances from God these days.

Bending his head over his open bottle of Advil, Mulder closed his eyes and
relied on his memory. There was the picture of the beautiful woman that he'd
always known, smiling that little turn of a smile, just moderate enough for the
casual watcher would have to guess whether or not it was a smile or a frown.
Mulder could always tell, and there was a certain pride that he felt in that.
He smiled a little to himself, and leaned his face on the window. Turning his
forehead on the glass, he looked out at the land below him, and noticed how the
houses and cars were all getting larger. The plane was making its descent into
Charleston, and butterflies started to churn in his stomach. Not of anxiety,
but of anxiousness. The two were separate entities, after all.

He was almost to Scully. So close, that he could feel her.

He swore that he could feel her.

*****

Dana Scully remembered when her father had been stationed at a beach in North
Carolina. It wasn't a very large town, mostly naval men like her father and
local fishermen and shrimpers. Shrimping was the big industry in the South; no
matter where you went, people shrimped. And because of that, she had wonderful
memories of walking down to the seafood market with Missy and buying fresh
shrimp and crab, and then learning from their neighbor how to make she-crab
soup and shrimp and grits. It was one of those little towns that was dependent
upon the waters and tides for its livelihood, and that was what had inspired
her to remember Crane's Creek.

Imagine living on something as untamable and as irrational as the tides.
Existing only for the chance of fortune, and managing on poverty when the
seawaters didn't bring the best catch. If the shrimp wasn't heavy one day, then
a family had to deal with it. Shrimping was a business that depended on an
irresponsible, reckless, and unmanageable source of income, and a shrimper had
to rise and fall with the magic and fate of the wild tides.

It was the best comparison that she had for her six years of working with Fox
Mulder.

Mulder was like the tide, unpredictable and wild. He carried in fortune at some
times, and he carried in misfortune at others. And Scully was the keeper of
those tides, the patient shrimper who reaped the rewards and dealt with the
repercussions. These were their roles through their six-year dance and
relationship, and she had accepted such a part with little objection. After
all, a shrimper learned to both love and hate the tide, and Scully had
passionately loved Mulder while equally hating his existence. But most of all,
a shrimper loved the ocean, the beauty of it, the wildness of it, and the
seemingly endless possibility of it.

Scully did love Mulder. And she loved him enough to ache for him when he was
suddenly no longer there.

On the beach alone, she waited on the island for him to arrive. July 4, his
letter had directed, and she had complied to that request with no trouble
whatsoever. No objections at all. Seeing him was something that was necessary,
like lifting anchor and returning home. A shrimper lived on the tide, depended
on its unpredictability, and relied on its ferocity.

Barefoot, she walked on the edge of the water, letting the tangy saltwater
tickle her ankles so that her skin itched from the texture of the sea. Her
jeans were rolled up to expose her slim calves and the barely freckled skin of
her legs, and her hair blew wildly around her face in a torrent of red. It had
grown reckless since she had left the Bureau, professionalism not being a high
priority in her new line of work. Now, her crimson locks held curl around her
shoulders, not being blown smooth and straight or carefully kept under control.
She rather liked it that length, but missed the respect that her old hairstyle
had signified.

The thin linen shirt blew around her body, and she carried her deck shoes in
one hand. At first, she had been content to sit on the rocky cliffs of the
beach and watch the shrimp boats in the distance, but the smell and mist of the
seawater beckoned to her. Fireworks were booming farther away, and Scully
tilted her head back to watch the reds and blues erupt in the sky in a
thunderstorm of color and light. Without turning her head from the seagulls
that brushed the water's edge, she attended to the cuffs of her sleeves,
turning them up so that her forearms were breezed by the fair ocean wind.

Scully sighed, and the laces on her shoes whipped around her wrists, binding to
her in a tangle of thick cord. She softly hummed along to the beach music being
played by radios on the beach, but it was an absent sing-along. Scully was
rarely there these days, rarely inhabiting her body. Boredom was a major part
of her life, and a piece of her lifestyle that she wasn't particularly fond of.
She took up gardening not because she loved the plants or the flowers, but
because she needed a distraction. Something to do with her sudden abundance of
free time.

And when she had nothing else to think of, she thought of Mulder. And thinking
of Mulder was a most difficult task, something that required no initiative and
no willpower, and really no strength whatsoever. He was like a second language,
a word that slipped off of her tongue without her realizing it, and a word that
she could not take back once it was said. When she let herself think of him, it
was nearly impossible to stop.

Scully often thought of the airport. When she told him that she loved him, and
he told her that he loved her. When they had kissed, and she had never wanted
to let him go. There were many things to think about when remembering the
airport, like the texture of his lips, the smoothness of his cheeks, and the
arches of his eyebrows. But then there were the things that she had missed.

She should have lingered on the lush pout of his lower lip, taken it between
her teeth and rolled it between her upper and bottom rows. Just to test the
sweet expanse of it. She should have careened her tongue down the length of his
throat, tasted the skin there, to lap at the curve of his Adam's apple. She
should have let her hands wander over his stomach, felt that little slope of a
tummy and then reached her arms around his back and held him. These were things
that she had missed out on in six years, and things that never could be
reciprocated in a period of two minutes.

So, she had started a journal. She'd done such a thing perhaps once or twice
before, never having the time to actually write in it. But this one was stored
on her computer, as her handwriting had regressed with the more typing she
performed. This diary was a little different than the traditional brand anyway,
and she wrote in it nearly everyday. It was a journal of things that she missed
about her partner, about her job, and about her life before the end of it.

It wasn't a pity party on paper, but rather a catalogue of events. So that she
could go back and remember things about it and perhaps one day share it with
another person. Scully missed her life before, missed the chaotic lack of
repetition and the unpredictable element. She often wondered who would ever
know about her X-Files, since she was well aware of the fact that she would
never marry. Or rather, remarry. Yes, that was the word that she thought of.
Remarriage. She had been Mulder's wife for six years, even though there wasn't
a ceremony and her wedding dress was a tacky concoction of plaids and Clarice
Starling knock-off pumps.

Scully almost laughed at her latest metaphor for life with Mulder. She had them
in abundance, all recorded in her diary. She supposed that her comparison
between them and shrimping was just another cheap metaphor, but she rather
liked this one. It made so much sense, that Mulder was the unpredictable beauty
of the water and she was the steadfast sailor, depending on him and taking the
bad with the good...

Speaking of which, the tides were beginning to change, so that the waves were
no longer tickling her toes but swamping her calves, dampening the edges of her
blue jeans. Looking up, she saw that the moon was a dim circle in the sky, and
she tilted her head down again.

Perhaps this was all a ruse, and she was a fool for waiting for him. Or it was
a trap, set up by her enemies to see if she still saw him. They would be lured
to this beach on the belief that they would be together again, and then torn
apart and executed. Or perhaps she was just running on paranoia again, rather
than investing her faith and trust in Mulder. But Scully was sharp, she knew
that she had to be on edge at all times, and to always be looking.

Suddenly chilled, she stood still for a moment, and then turned back around to
continue pacing the stretch of beach that was theirs alone for the next week.
Just wait for a little while longer; just hope for a little bit more, and
maybe...

And there he was.

*****

Standing on top of the cliff, Mulder had been watching her pace for only
seconds, trailing her figure and piecing together the picture that she was. Her
hair was long, wilder and softer, and while it might have appeared to be
girlish to some, Mulder saw it for what it was. She was older, softened by her
years to him but harder in her age to others. During their time together,
they'd softened considerably toward each other, but appeared colder and
unattainable to other onlookers. But he knew her, knew her like he knew his own
skin.

She seemed thinner, but perhaps it was just the oversized shirt that fluttered
around her. And her skin seemed tanner, not quite achieving the alabaster sheen
that she'd managed to procure during their work. //See Mulder? She gets away
from you and starts going outside and doing something.// At least one of the
two of them was benefiting from their separation. But somehow, judging from the
soft sway in her walk, the distance in her body language, Mulder had to concede
to a sadness about Scully that had never been so strong before.

When she turned around and saw her face, it was as though they had never been
separated. All concerns about an awkwardness, especially after the scene they'd
made at Dulles, evaporated into thin air. Time couldn't break the rope that
bound them together, and it couldn't destroy them, either. It could make them
both a little sadder and wiser, but it was funny how they were never ruined.
Never looted and savaged.

Her eyes smiled at him, lighting up with ravishing blue sparks. Her skin was
freckled, not covered up by makeup, but still... She seemed sun-kissed and
earthy. And her hair, when it wasn't ruffled by the wind, settled on her
shoulders in piles of thick, red-gold curls. The gold line of her crucifix
shone in the setting sun, and Mulder devoured her with his glance. Slowly, her
lips mouthed his name, and he couldn't bear to look at her anymore.

Recklessly, blindly, Mulder ran down the rocks, pebbles spraying from
underneath his sneakered heels and his eyes never stopping to look down at his
footing. He was focused solely on reaching her, and he watched a slow smile
spread across her face as he descended the cliffs in a swift, wild dash. And of
course, given the remarkable luck of Mulder, one of his feet landed on the
wrong, loose rock, and he tumbled the last foot down the cliff.

Gasping, Scully ran from the water's edge to the rocks to where Mulder sat in a
sprawl of long, gangly limbs, and his lean body seemed clumsy and klutzy rather
than elegant and sophisticated. Scully would have chuckled at her ex-partner's
condition if not for the bleeding cut on his forehead where he knocked himself
on a rock, and she shook her head, bending down to him. His hand covered the
wound in a lame attempt at covering it, and she smiled a little dryly as she
took the hand away. Doctor Scully returneth, she thought, and never thought
that she'd actually have missed Mulder's myriad scrapes, bumps, and bruises.

It was just a little dash, something that was barely bleeding and hardly
noticeable. A minor scrape to add to the well-worn body of Mulder. If God
marked every one of those injuries with the proper scar tissue, he would be
nothing but a network of white, smooth blemishes. Fortunately for Mulder, he
seemed to possess the ability to heal himself with little difficulty, and she'd
only seen a few little marks on him. Nothing much, nothing notable to anyone
else other than her.

"It's just a little mark, a graze, really," Scully assured, and he looked up at
her with that lopsided smile on his face, grinning nothing if not a little
madly at her. She smiled at him, her eyes glimmering, and when his smile broke
out into the full-fledged blaze he possessed, she felt the empty spot inside
her heart suddenly begin to fill. Beautiful Mulder, her beautiful Mulder, and
Scully could gaze at him now in their stolen oasis.

His hair was a little longer and definitely untamed. It seemed more rebellious
than ever, even though its length and sideburns had been something of a scandal
among the secretaries and interns at the Bureau. No mousse, no gel, no
hairspray now. Just pure, thick, unruly darkness, with no bridles or saddles to
keep it under control. And that was even more comely somehow; she wanted to
wrap it around her fingers and burrow into it. His face was a little thinner,
and she wasn't quite sure yet if the lost weight was flattering or worrisome.
There was a dashing of gold across his skin, and she detected a little bit of
what seemed to be perennial suntan over his nose and across his cheeks. Mulder
had rarely gotten any sun at the Bureau; perhaps he was outdoors more often
wherever he was now.

And when she noticed his hands, still those softly fidgety and tapering
fingers, she needed to touch him. That was when looking was no longer
satisfactory, and relying on another sense would be the only thing that she
could derive any gratification from. So, she wrapped her arms around him,
touching as much as she could, and it all came back in a rush.

Her memory that had been storing up all of the secret and desirable places of
Mulder that she had forgotten to touch or smell or taste shot spots at her,
demanding a million things for her two hands to do. His hair, his nose, his
eyelashes, his fingertips, his tummy, his ass, his thighs, his elbows and
knees, those gangly and slightly knobby joints... She was aching for these
things, needing them and completely indecisive about which to dwell upon first.

When her hand first caressed his hair, it was redemption. All failures, all of
his errors and mistakes made over the past months in her absence, were forgiven
and accepted with that sweet, encompassing hand. Mulder wondered if what he was
experiencing was rapture, and decided that rapture was probably something as
mysteriously blissful as this. Perhaps there could be a new definition for the
word, constructed solely for them and their unique situation. Turning his face
up, he leaned and kissed her wrist, feeling her pulse beneath his lips, beating
with the constant undertones of her heart.

She was welcoming him home, and even though he had never visited the beach
house his father had purchased so late in life, Mulder felt a home beginning on
this beach and in this woman. After all, what were the essentials of home?
Shelter and comfort. Scully held both of those objects. And so, even when he
had only been in Charleston for a matter of minutes, he was already beginning
to feel as though he could never leave.

Home is where the heart is, and he was feeling her heart beating fervently
under his kiss.

When their arms met, it was an embrace made out of frenzied longing, with his
hands reaching for her hair with a force driven by desperation, and when his
lips finally found hers, it was impossible to ever let go. There was no
discussion over whether or not they should kiss, no awkwardness, no hesitation
and no thought. //What else is there to think about, after all?// Mulder
thought as his tongue pushed inside of her mouth without any thought of her
refusal. Mulder had no inhibitions about this final act. There was nothing left
to think of, only things left unfinished that must be remedied immediately.

Business left unfinished, words left unsaid, and acts left undone; these were
the thoughts that Dana Scully was having when his mouth covered hers. All of
the places she was supposed to touch were suddenly coming from her brain to her
hands, and she gasped at the violent speed of them. Not the violence of her
fantasies, but the violence of their amount. God, there was so much to Mulder,
a physical complexity that mirrored his inner intricacy. The thousands of
facets to him, the million little quirks and kinks about him... These were
things she'd missed and missed out on, and things that needed fixing.

Like the curve of Mulder's ear. It was something that she'd noticed before,
noted in the occasional fantasy about him, but something that she'd really
taken for granted when they were working together. Now, with the curve of his
ear being so delectable and previously inaccessible, it was possibly one of the
most enticing sexual objects ever invented in the history of the world.

This was probably number 342 on her list of Mulder Riddles to solve. And the
list was, undoubtedly, endless and rapidly increasing.

It was only when she felt the cold dash of water against her thighs that she
realized she was sitting in the sand with Mulder, crouched down on her knees
and kissing him like a dehydrated man in a waterfall. Ah, that was a nice word
to describe Mulder -- a waterfall. Ever flowing and rapid, wild and natural,
and endlessly awe-inspiring. Yes, Mulder could be a waterfall. But she still
thought he was more endearing as the tide.

Her hand reached down his back to caress the thin fabric of his simple
pin-striped shirt, button down and rumpled, and his perfectly faded 501's,
which were now dirtied by his tumble on the rocks. That reminded her of his
wound, and she raised her lips from his long enough to cover his little scrape
with her mouth, lightening the mood a little. Smiling a little, she pressed her
hand on his thigh, and he spoke.

She melted in his voice, thick like honey butter and soft as a ribbon of silk.
Yes, she had appreciated his voice when he was in her company, and was
comforted in his absence by the memory of it. "Y'know, we're getting soaked out
here," he mumbled, and his voice was deeper than she remembered. //Well, Dana,
you *are* stroking his thighs.// Yes, that could explain a lot. Like the warmth
that was starting to toss around inside of her groin, or his quickened and yet
drowsy breath.

"Hi," she replied, and he laughed. Nothing much, just a short chuckle, but it
was memorable enough for her to want to throw herself into the laugh. Laughter
with Mulder was such a rarity, and it was wonderful to hear him chuckle.

It was wonderful to be with him again.

Smiling still, he stood up and took her hand, rubbing her small fingers inside
of his larger hand. He remembered the size and agility of her fingers, dainty
digits but completely competent ones, and was still astonished by the
comparison of hers to his. When Scully had such a great presence, dominating
without being brassy, one tended to forget her height and weight. And now, he
regarded it, believing that she'd lost a little weight and that her hair was
thicker in the wet air.

The ocean rocked them both on their heels, and she gripped his shoulder briefly
to keep the waves from knocking her to the sand. Still reveling in her long
absence that was now her seemingly longer attendance, Mulder felt like taking
her in his arms and throwing the both of them to the sea, struck by the urge to
fall into the water and let the whimsical tide take them wherever it may.
Perhaps it would take them somewhere where they would live on their wits, on
their insatiable curiosity, handing them a safe haven where they would never be
separated...

Mulder realized then the brevity of her. It would not last physically for more
than a week, though their commitment was eternal. Somehow, Mulder had no doubts
of that. Perhaps it was the simple knowledge that she'd managed to stick with
him throughout the earlier six years of hell; she could deal with the upcoming
ones.

But now, they had seven days to fill up with each other, and then it was back
to their "lives". Whatever that might be. Though he had no idea what Scully was
doing now, Mulder knew that his great fuck-up was waiting for him back in
Manhattan, and he had only one week to escape from that mess and come somewhere
that made sense -- Scully.

He had only seven days of clarity before he had to live another year in
madness. It was time to see her, to know her, and to hold onto her. Before all
hell broke loose again, and Mulder would have to leave her.

He had one week. And then, he would have to leave her.

He would *have* to leave her.

Have to.

*****

(end part three)

*****

Author's Note: The town that Scully remembers in North Carolina is completely
fictional. I made it all up just because I felt like it. Just wanted to mention
that, because some people can get picky. :D

*****

EROSION (4/10)
By: Annie Sewell-Jennings (Auralissa@aol.com)

This chapter's rated R, so no one under 17 admitted unless accompanied a
parent. Or unless you pretend to buy tickets to another fanfic, go to the
bathroom, and then sneak into this one. ;)

*****

Time and distance didn't just make the heart grow fonder. It made the heart
grow desperate. Scully had learned this lesson quite well during the ten months
she had been forcibly separated from her partner. At first, the yearning had
been a bleeding rip in her soul, brimming at the surface and never waning.
Then, as time passed and she resigned herself to the restrictions of her new
life. Adjusted to the facts that though she would always love him, always want
him, always miss him, she had to manage with what she had. Life hadn't been
easy for Dana Scully, and she knew how to lose and be lost. But she was also a
survivor.

So, the fresh pain settled into a dull, constant ache that flamed up whenever
the thought of Mulder entered the forefront of her mind. And it was easier to
let him reside in the back of her heart, always there but quietly existing
rather than begging for her consideration. It was what got her through the
confusion, the indecision, and then the beginning of her new existence. She
could deal with tangible things like finances and mortgages as long as she
could push away the thought of her intangible partner. If she could sort out
her reality, perhaps she could deal with her fantasy.

And now, Mulder was here. The fantasy that had once been reality was now
reality again, standing in front of her in a house that she did not know,
looking at her with mesmerizing eyes of arousal, adoration, and despair. Anyone
else would have believed it to be an odd reaction, but Scully understood
because of her own matching reaction. If she reached out to him, if she touched
him, would he leave? Would the fantasy flee and would she be alone again,
sitting in a room that she didn't recognize as her own with memories that
always intruded and reminded her of all her mistakes?

With one hand, she reached out and traced the faint cleft of his chin with her
fingertip, and his skin was warm and real. She closed her eyes when she touched
him, and when she opened her eyes, Mulder still stood there, remarkably still
and calm in comparison to his wild eyes. She had her confirmation; she was not
hallucinating Mulder. He was real. Tangible. Solid. If she touched him, he
wouldn't leave. If she kissed him, he wouldn't disappear. And if she made love
to him, he was *hers*.

She descended upon him in a flurry of touch, her skin assaulting his in a
gentle assailing of lips, legs, hands and arms. Mulder was a banquet, and she
had been starved for ten months without him. She feasted on the slender length
of his neck, devoured the slim width of his waist with her arms, gnawed on the
luscious invitation of his lower lip, and consumed the rich mahogany of his
hair with her fingers. Beautiful Mulder, delicious Mulder, and she would
gourmandize the entirety of him before she was through. Perhaps it was
gluttony, but she believed she was famished. Ravenous, even.

And he reacted likewise, surrendering to her onslaught and surrounding her with
his own body. His lips ravished her face, starting at her temple and traveling
down to her mouth, capturing her pearly upper lip between his teeth and
lavishing attention on her with his tongue. His hands moved beneath her billowy
linen shirt to untuck the white tank top she wore, and he moaned as his hands
reached the bare flesh of her lower back. How many times had he wondered about
that place, knowing the feel of it through memory and long experience, but
never feeling the bared warmth and sensitivity of it with his hands?
Innumerable times, incalculable instances.

Lips and tongues raging, emotions storming, and fever flushing, they moved
blindly through the house, propelling themselves upstairs to the loft bedroom,
words barely decipherable and secondary to the physical concerns. Words would
come later, after the physical. Today was a symphony, and conversation would be
the decrescendo, the sweet fall from desperation into companionship. But
nothing would be accomplished with this screaming tension between them.

Mulder moaned as he felt her hands begin to unbutton her shirt, her hips
pressed against his and subtly shifting in a semicircle along him, building him
up with her motions and heat. Engrossed in her gyration, Mulder barely noticed
his shirt falling from his shoulders, and when his head fell back from the
intensity of her movements, she captured his lips in a bruising kiss.
Everything was different, he wildly noted. Everything would be different after
this. Fortunately, after the depressing turn his life had taken, different
could only be an improvement.

Scully had never been a lover of jewelry, believing that simplicity emphasized
femininity over gaudiness, and as she worked more in the field, fanciness was
impractical and potentially dangerous. After Eugene Tooms had stolen her
necklace, Scully had been wary to wear any ornamentation other than her
delicate cross and plain stud earrings. But once she saw the gold of Mulder's
skin, she realized that she could spend a thousand dollars on owning it and
loving it for the rest of her life.

Her hands swept across his broad chest, touching on shoulder to shoulder. There
was a feathering of soft, wispy brown hair on his breastbone, and she twined
her fingertips in it. Scully raced her hands over the span of his chest,
letting the small, hard nipples brisk her palms. Down, down they fled, over the
curve of his stomach, his hard, firm abdomen, and the dark pit of his navel.
She felt him shiver beneath her touch, and she shivered back in response before
moving to his blue jeans and unbuttoning them. His hands raced over her linen
shirt, pulling it insistently down her arms until she lifted her hands and the
shirt joined his on the floor. Next, the tank top, and then, the bra.

Groaning without restraint, Mulder swung his head to take one nipple in his
mouth, but she pushed him back and away from her breasts. "Wait," she gasped,
and so he busied his mouth with hers. Madly, she kissed him while undoing his
pants, fumbling briefly with the buttoned fly and then wriggling them down his
hips. Mulder used his heels to pry off his canvas shoes, and she was thankful
he'd opted not to wear socks. Off went the pants, off went the boxers, and he
remedied her of her remaining clothing as well.

And then there was the bed.

She collapsed on the queen-sized bed and took him with her in a tumble of red
and gold. His hands reached for her, and there were no more denials, no more
boundaries, and nothing but desperate passion that needed fulfillment,
long-lingering thirst that screamed to be sated. Freed by time and their former
trappings, this was a place so intimate that no one could touch them. No one
dared touch them. And perhaps it wasn't safety that Scully felt when she fell
beneath his body, but defiance. No one would *dare* touch them. Not here. Not
now.

Not now.

She lavished her hands on him, every part and aspect of him, trailing after her
fingers with her lips and her tongue. Gasping, she felt his hands on her
breasts, and he moaned in reply. Her hand wrapped around the back of his neck,
raking her fingers up through his thick, sumptuous hair. God, she couldn't get
enough of him, he was an assailment on her senses, and she needed that attack
more than she ever thought she had. Even when she lay alone in bed at night,
kept suspended between consciousness and sleep with thoughts of him and missing
him, she never could have imagined the extent of the longing. Or the extent of
the pleasure.

His hands slid up and over her breasts, fitting his palms on the firm hills of
flesh. Mulder had always considered his hands to be clumsy-looking and awkward,
but now he blessed their larger size. They fit perfectly over Scully's breasts,
and that was purpose enough for him. And later on, he would focus on the size
and shape of her breasts, their perfection and their fitting relation to the
rest of her, but everything was becoming fuzzy. It was a boiling blizzard of
passion, a gale of feeling, and her arms stretching and reaching around his
waist and her hands curving over his ass was absolutely maniacal. It was all
too much, he was surrounded with too much, and he couldn't hold back anymore.
He couldn't do it, he couldn't make it, not when her hand was gripping his
erection so tightly, an iron fist clutching an iron cock, and she was squeezing
so perfectly...

"Scully!" The strangled gasp was a plea, a desperate appeal for release, and
she felt the same desperation he had just expressed. It was too much touch, so
much that it was impossible to deny, and so much of him to experience that she
felt drunken and out of control. This was all out of control, had been
propelled out of control long before this wild dance they'd begun only minutes
earlier. It had been blown beyond their means the moment they had been forced
apart. Or maybe it was earlier than that, or later, or oh God...

"Now," she managed. She met his eyes, pulsing and murky hazel eyes, clouded by
arousal and sharpness distracted by *her*. She had made his eyes change like
that; she had controlled the wild Mulder eyes for a moment, and made them
*that* beautiful. "Now, Mulder, now, now..."

The momentary insanity that flashed over her usually crystalline eyes was the
least controlled Mulder had ever seen her. It was as though she were possessed.
But not possessed by another entity, but rather by another facet of Dana
Scully. And it was a beautiful Scully, brought out of herself and made ripe and
wonderful by their shared ardor. A Scully unleashed, aroused and spellbinding.
And she was inflaming him with her rushing vibrancy, the way that she tossed
her head back and forth so that her hair was a liquid pool of crimson magma, or
the way her eyelids fluttered and danced with the speed of her desire. She was
the most enticing creature ever brought to earth, and she was telling him
*now*.

"Okay," he whispered, "okay." There was no hesitance, no questioning, when he
spread her eager, weakened thighs apart, feeling his groin tighten again at the
sight of her dark red curls, glistening with the wet need for him. With the
first tenacity he'd felt all evening, he reached out to brush his hand over the
thick convention of rich auburn hair, and she moaned deeply, bucking her hips
up to meet his palm.

"Mulder, *now*," she repeated, stronger and more passionately this time. He
removed his hand from her pelvic hair, and raised them to the thicker, longer
hair that he loved so much, framing her face with his palms and kissing her
again, sliding his tongue between her lips as he pressed himself between her
thighs. Sliding into her, feeling her tighten and throb around her, hearing her
cry out when he was in her, and capturing that cry in his mouth. He moaned into
the kiss, she sighed into it, and they joined together for the first time
through both lip and organ.

And then, when they had fit there, came the thrust. Ripped from the tenderness
of his kiss, she arched her spine back and writhed on the mattress beneath him.
Dana Scully had never thought she could actually writhe in ecstasy, not sexual
ecstasy, not any kind of ecstasy, but she was doing just that now. Writhing and
twisting, she brought her hands down his back and up his back over and over,
expending the golden muscles and skin of his back with her love and her hands.
Her fingernails dug into them uselessly, so dulled and frayed from her new life
of worrying and gardening.

Thrust again, delicious and slow, not because he would hurt her, but because he
wanted to *feel* her. To experience every last touch and feel of her body, and
to slide into her over and over again was absolutely exquisite. Mulder thought
that he could never experience enough of her, never feel enough of her or taste
enough of her, or sense enough of her. He couldn't leave her, never never leave
her...

And the insistence of this thought rammed through his head like a train, and
Mulder pulsed inside of her fervently, speeding his pace and rushing her body
with him. Scully wrapped her arms around him, gripping her to him, and he
started to moan impossible words into her ear, words that he didn't mean and
words that couldn't come true.

"I'm never gonna leave you, never gonna leave you..."

And the assault was ended with the firm, clinging thrust into her, so deep and
so rich that it was all she *could* feel, and she exploded in a dazzling aurora
of desire, shimmering and shining as she cried out and then fell. When she
came, she didn't see stars. She became one. She glimmered and blazed in a
shower of gold, felt stardust instead of sweat, and he was the starlight that
bathed her body. As she spasmed, she kissed him, twining her tongue with his
and bringing him in with her.

Then, he was the star, gleaming and brightening in synchrony to her, and she
felt him surround her, knowing that this was everything she could ever want,
and smiled as she slipped into a slower place. A place that was Mulder, and a
place that was therefore paradise.

He fell next to her, gasping and then curling up next to her, wrapping her in
his arms. There weren't any words then, and there weren't any words for a
while. There was just them, consummated and spent in the sheets. And the sheets
weren't even mussed. They were still made. Just a little rumpled, just a little
rustled.... Scully sighed, turning into his collarbone, and she kissed the
delicate skin there.

"I love you."
They both said the words, not quite in sync. The words overlapped the other,
swimming in harmony. The language melded and mixed together, always carrying
the same idea and the same emotion. Just like they always had. "Nothing is
different," Scully sighed, and Mulder kissed the top of her hair, smiling into
the loose red locks.

"Actually, Scully," he whispered, "everything is different." And he closed his
eyes, the lashes brushing her hair. "And thank God, thank *God*, that it is."

*****

Color flushed the sky in a great stain of scarlet, tingeing the clouds bright
rose and dainty gold. Softer azalea shades rippled through the skyline, and
frailer hues of lavender perfected the pastel picture. The reflection of the
brilliant dusk shimmered on the jewel-colored sea, turning the ocean a deep
blue capped with foamy crests of pearly white, and the cobalt waves twinkled
underneath the cardinal sky.

Softly, the wind ruffled her carmine hair, twisting it across the back of her
neck and around her shoulders so that it floated in a cloud of cinnamon. He
liked watching it dance as such, liked the motion of it that he'd never been
able to experience previously. Her hair was an unbridled creature with a life
of its own, and his fingers toyed with the ends of it.

"It's a cotton candy sunset," Scully murmured, sitting in front of him on the
pier. Her legs dangled precariously off the edge, and her bare feet skimmed the
water's surface. The soles of her feet just touched the lap of the waves, and
Mulder was silently amused by the way her legs hung. He turned his attention to
the sunset once more, looking up at the rose-colored sunset and the way that
she smiled at it. "That's what my grandmother always told me. And she was
right, if you think about it. When the sky turns this color, it really does
look like cotton candy."

It was a sweet description, colorful and accurate, and Mulder thought it
fitting. The frothy frilliness of the clouds, the dusky rose of the color... It
did look like cotton candy, sweet and edible.

Scully smiled, and bowed her head into her hands. "You know, Mulder, I'm a
little disappointed with our first time," she said, and he had a quick nip of
insecurity before realizing that her tone of voice was teasing. Smiling, he
cocked his head at her.

"How so?"

She turned her head at him, the curls twining around her face. "I always
thought that our first time would happen in some seedy motel room," she
cracked, and he chuckled a little. Mild laughter, she noted. Mulder had never
been much of a laugher, but this was weaker than she'd ever heard him. More
than a little bitter. More than a little ironic. And sad, very sad indeed. Her
hand reached out and traced the softness of his cheek, freshly shaven and
smooth to touch. Mulder leaned into her palm, closing his eyes with something
she vaguely recognized as bliss. If something so simple could give him ecstasy,
what had become of his life? And if she could be so affected by the length of
his fingers rifling through her hair, then what had become of hers?

"What have you been doing all this time, Mulder?" she finally asked, and his
brow furrowed just slightly. Scully noted another line in his forehead, just
over his left eyebrow, and felt pathetic for noticing it in the first place. If
she knew his face *that* well...

"Absolutely nothing," he muttered. "Meaningless drivel." He opened his eyes,
and there was the self-deprecation she'd seen in the past with him. Not
insecurity, but self-loathing humor. Mulder was a creature full of irony,
always turning it on himself. "I can't get a job, Scully. Even with Skinner's
good word, no one will hire me. They take one look at my record with the FBI
and stamp me for a nutcase, and tell me that I'm not fit for the position. I've
applied to so many positions, gone over my resume a thousand goddamn times, but
I guess my track record speaks for itself."

Mulder was jobless? It seemed unfathomable, completely incomprehensible. With
his intelligence, his talent, and his capability, he should hold a well-paying
position and be well respected in that job. Swallowing, she dropped her hand
from his face and placed it on his knee. "That doesn't make any sense," she
said, frowning while she thought it over. "I mean, you *do* have an erratic
history, but that's not enough for someone to deny your skills..."

"What skills?" he asked, laughing sardonically. "The only skills that I possess
can only be utilized in a law enforcement environment, particularly the Bureau.
Scully, your skills are skills that can be used in so many ways, but I'm a guy
who has one trick. That's it. And when I've used that one trick up, I'm stuck
with nothing."

She shook her head, placing her other hand on top of his. "You could start a
practice, or teach..."

Smiling gently, he shook his head at her, placing his remaining hand on her
face and stroking her cheek. "I can't do that," he whispered, his voice soft
and tender. "Can you honestly imagine me in front of a class? I'd scare the
living shit out of the poor kids."

The image of Mulder as a teacher *was* mildly amusing. Scully could just see
him, expressionless expression intact, drolly listing off some of the more
gruesome X-Files in a twisted parody of Ben Stein. Or, she saw him excitedly
explaining the inner workings of the FEMA conspiracy to a group of ninth
graders. Either way, he would be the most popular professor in the school
district. At least with the kids.

She gave him a brief smile, and he thumbed her earlobe in reply. "So, what
*are* you doing to make ends meet?" she asked, and his smile almost seemed
genuine.

"I've actually been writing," he said, and she looked surprised. The old
expression that had always urged him on was back, the eyebrows arched and the
eyes wide. Smiling fondly, he placed his hand on her shoulder and urged her to
come closer. She complied, burrowing into his shoulder and breathing in the
smell of his crisp, clean shirt. //Before he leaves, I have to take one of his
shirts home with me.// "I've been writing for UFO magazines, sometimes for the
Gunmen, and some psychology magazines. And the response I've gotten has been
pretty positive."

"A writer," she murmured, and he grinned sheepishly.

"Well, it gets the bills paid." Tilting his head, he looked up into the
distance, where the magenta sky was deepening into a plum color that would soon
settle into the navy night. The deep ruby orb of sun was disappearing in the
distance, and Mulder wanted one day to watch the sun rise with her over the
Atlantic. Instead, he turned his head back to her head of carmine hair,
watching the violet highlight her hair so that it seemed to flame with color.

"Actually, writing's become second nature," he easily said, twisting threads of
her hair in his fingers. "Something to pass the time, you know?" She understood
all too well, remembering the blisters that had developed on her hands from her
work in the garden. "But I'm okay financially, I guess. I've got another hole
of an apartment, but I've got my couch and my, er..." She grinned, and he
grinned back. "Companions."

They both chuckled a little at Mulder's unspoken habit, and Mulder squeezed her
hand. "What about you? What've you been up to?" he asked, and she took in her
breath. Her story contained more success than Mulder's did, but her occupation
was sure to hurt him. Scully picked up his hand and brought it to her mouth,
kissing the knuckles there. Capable hands...

"Let's take a walk," she murmured. Suspicious, Mulder allowed her to help him
to his feet, knowing that she wasn't really changing the subject. She linked
her hand to his, walking with him down the stretch of beach. It was fairly
deserted, though Scully noticed two or three couples similar to Mulder and
herself, walking hand in hand at sunset. She realized then that she and Mulder
were lovers; they had made love back in that house and it had been wonderful.
Perhaps it wasn't the most finessed or creative lovemaking, but there would
come time for the "fun stuff".

Thoughtfully, she pressed her fingers into his palm, and kept up with the
easygoing pace his long legs set. "Tell me about yourself, Dana Scully," Mulder
quipped, and she would have smiled if it weren't the truth. He was truly the
only one who knew the real her now. The only person who knew her and understood
her, and the only person she could honestly bare herself to was a man she only
saw one week out of the year. And now, she was going to have to tell him about
the other Dana Scully, the Dana Scully she pretended to be every other day of
the year.

"After I resigned from the Bureau, I had a wealth of options of what else to do
with my life," she started, "but none seemed appealing. I could have opened a
private medical practice, or become a coroner, but neither of these positions
held any kind of draw for me. And then, I read a magazine article about an
institution in Kentucky that dealt with experimental treatments for pediatric
cancer. After taking a couple of refresher courses, I got a job as a
researcher."

When she had gotten the position, she knew that it would hurt him. And she was
right. The old guilt returned, the old sense of responsibility that Mulder had
always felt for her past illness. Oftentimes, she likened her cancer to a cross
that Mulder felt he had to bear, something he had to carry around as his
damnation for his sins. It had been the only thing that could make her hurt
worse than the thought of dying. It was kind of funny; Mulder could never admit
when he was wrong and she was right except for when it came time for the blame.

She could imagine what he was thinking now; thus it was easy to soothe him. "I
still go to the oncologist's every two months to check up on the cancer, to
make sure it hasn't come out of remission," she opened, and his mouth twisted
in pain. "It's a precautionary method, Mulder, a method of prevention. And if I
ever get sick, damn the rules and damn the rest of the world, you will be the
first to know."

"Scully--"

She jutted her chin at him in the stubborn pride that she'd always held over
him. "Don't deny me that, Mulder," she warned. "But I doubt that we'll ever
have to deal with that scenario. The chip is efficient; I have to give them
credit for it. But there *is* a fact that I've had to face about my cancer and
its subsequent cure -- I'm lucky. Astonishingly lucky. And I owe that fortune
to you, Mulder. But there are too many others dying from cancers that can't be
cured by microchips or acts of God, and that is when science must intervene to
save them."

"You shouldn't feel guilty about being alive, Scully," he cut in, and she knew
the guilty undertones in his voice.

"I don't feel any guilt," she said. "But I do feel responsibility. That my life
is not my own, it has been given back to me on so many separate occasions that
I must use it purposefully. I felt as though I was serving a greater purpose on
the X-Files. And I'm serving a purpose now. The research I've been doing has
benefited a lot of kids, and the experimental drugs have been overwhelmingly
successful. Using African plants and genetics, we've been able to find some
successful treatment for some juvenile forms of leukemia and bone cancer." She
smiled at him reassuringly. "I'm contented in my work; as contented as I can
be."

He understood her completely. Contentment and fulfillment were two words that
were stolen from him for 358 days, and the remaining seven days belonged to
her. Life without the X-Files and Dana Scully wasn't going to be peaches and
cream. Hell, it wasn't even going to pits and sour milk. It was going to rot,
and it was going to be empty. But there had to be some limit to the torture he
would have to endure.

The sky was starry, unmarred by a single cloud in sight. Scully turned her head
to the endless length of the early night and stood next to him, pointing to
three consecutive stars in the sky. "I can always find Orion," she murmured,
and he smiled at the constellation. "Orion's belt is so distinctive, so
memorable, that it's easier to find than the North Star. It's my obscure
astronomical touchstone." He chuckled, and brought his hand to her hair,
stroking the fine red hair that was ever deepening in the darkened sky. He
already had his obscure touchstone, and even if she didn't hang in the night
sky like a blazing star, she was as rare and as magical as the aurora borealis.


"I don't know anything about stars," he confessed, and she turned her face to
him, a small, delicate smile on her face.

"Now you know Orion."

They shared the smile for a moment before the fireworks began, and the
firecrackers exploded in bright ribbons of shining color, glimmering
crystalline embers across the nighttime. Their distance from the resort dulled
the noise to them, but they were still spectacular sights to behold as they
chased the stars over the obsidian ocean. His arm slipped across her shoulders,
and she allowed it to hang there in a show of possessiveness that was amusing
and quintessential Mulder. Even when no one would dare want to own her, Mulder
was worried she would be stolen.

"Kiss me," he whispered, and she laughed.

"Why should I kiss you?" she teased, and he grinned ferociously at her.

"Because when I kiss you, Scully, I wanna see fireworks," he growled, and she
sped to meet his mouth with hers, letting the sparks traverse over the sky
while her tongue melded into his mouth like candy. Wrapping her arms around his
neck, she hung onto him, smiling all the while. Through his closed lids, he
could feel the impressions of light, and felt as though he was kissing Scully
in the midst of a battle. Life was war, and she was peace.

They parted, and she smiled, turning to the night. "Fireworks indeed, Mulder,"
she murmured, and when she returned her attention back to him, she frowned. He
was staring off somewhere else, completely distracted from the light show and
from her. "Mulder?"

"Don't turn around, Scully, but I think we're being followed," he whispered,
and her heart crashed. Everything crashed. And it sounded like firecrackers.

They broke apart with lightning speed, and their feet pounded the sand like
thunder as they ran. //It was stupid to have bolted, stupid to think we could
escape,// Scully's head raged, the old FBI training rising up to chastise her
haste. //They already have evidence, they already know...//

His long legs propelled him faster, but she caught up with him as she was
dragged by the hand behind him. "Mulder, stop," she hissed, but he was a man
possessed. Possessed by the terror of losing her. Blindly, he ran through the
sands, his eyes frantically scanning the rocks for shelter, when she sped
forward and turned a bend he hadn't noticed. It wasn't a cave, or really a
curve, but it was enough to throw off whoever was following him.

Breathing heavily, she closed her eyes, sweat pouring off of her forehead and
dripping down her face. //Caught, caught...// her mind feared, and she spit
onto the sand below her in what was certainly an un-ladylike display. When she
brought her head back up to look at Mulder, she found the same frantic dance in
his eyes and the same heavy pull to his face.

"Happy Fourth of July, Scully."

*****

(end part four)

*****

EROSION (5/10)
By: Annie Sewell-Jennings (Auralissa@aol.com)

*****

This part contains sexual content that warrants an NC-17 rating. Enjoy....
Perverts. <g>

*****

Indigo starlight raced across the sky, followed by bursts of scarlet and kelly
green, each exploding in the night like ramparts. The lights were beautiful
enough to rival the stars, but not beautiful enough to rival her. The light
illuminated her fair skin, and when the firecrackers flashed, he could catch
the bright violet dancing on her cheek. Her eyelids were downcast, her features
were slack, and her hair was tucked behind her ear.

"We can't do this," she said, her voice low and dark. "We shouldn't have done
this."

His head snapped up, eyes widening and voice tightening. "Don't say that."

But she shook her head, her lashes dancing like baby's breath on her lower
lids. "It's too dangerous," she continued in a low, steady voice. If anyone
else were to listen to her, they would mistake her tone for calmness.
Tranquility. But Mulder knew her well, and he knew that mocha voice perfectly.
She was dull from the shock, hollow from the fear, and empty from the disparity
of their hell. "One photograph could ruin us. One single Polaroid sent to the
right person, and we could be dead tomorrow, along with the rest of our
families."

His heart sped up; his pulse panicked in perfect tune to his mind. Eyes
fluttering, he turned his face up to plead with her. Beg her to change her
mind. Mulder's dignity had been stripped from him long ago, and it meant
nothing to him now. Shamelessly, he would get down on his hands and knees and
cry for her if that was what it would take. He would kill for this woman, die
for this woman, set himself on fire for this woman if she would just let him
*stay*.

"Don't say that, Scully," his voice said, the frailness of it hurting him. He
had never heard himself become so broken, just with the proposal of her
abandonment. "This week is the only time when I feel right. I'll do anything to
make you feel safe, but don't take this week away from us. Don't say that you
can't do it." The hurt in her eyes was evident when she lifted her face to his,
turning the ripped blue color to his torn hazel ones and focusing the breaks on
him.

"I have a family, Mulder," she said, her voice emotional in its emptiness. "I
have a mother, two brothers, their families... These are people that I can't
let die just so that I can meet you for one meager week. Just because you don't
have these same responsibilities..."

"Please..." He reached out and took her hands, holding them close to his chest
and forcing her to meet him face-to-face.


Stricken by the agony in his eyes, by the lines along his brow and the softness
of his palms, she licked her lips and tried to speak again. "Maybe it's best,"
she whispered. "If we can move on, we can start over... No strings attached..."

He saw her resolve weakening, saw the final barriers crumble, and knew that he
couldn't watch her fall alone. Drawing her into his chest, he let her lean
against him while he wrapped his arms around her slender waist. "Scully," he
murmured, keeping his voice above the breaking point with massive effort, "I
already cut all the other strings. Samantha, my work, the X-Files, the truth...
But the last string is the only one I really care about. It's the only one that
I can't live without. It's the best string."

"Mulder," she breathed, feeling the rumble of his heart beneath his skin.

"Scully, without you, I'm going to fall."

She craned her neck up to see his face, and knew by the expression on him that
he was telling the truth. Their relationship was the best string. It was the
strongest one, the string that she couldn't manage to live without. They
dangled by the most fragile of threads, but the only one that was bound by life
was the one that bound them to each other. The silver cord, the link that was
unbreakable. If she cut this last cord, she would have nothing left of herself
but an empty, gaping hole.

It was selfish to stay with him. It could cost her everything. She was placing
her life and the lives of her family into the possibility of one kiss from him.

But what a devastating kiss...

Tilting her face up to give him her mouth, she succumbed to her fate,
surrendered to her destiny, chasing the wind with the soft luxury of his
exquisite lips. In the most gentle of kisses, she gave in to the man she was
never supposed to meet again, offering him the promise of next year and the
many years to come. In all of Dana Scully's life, she had been a selfless
person, entirely giving and sacrificial. But this man was the one opportunity
that she could not pass up for the benefit of eternal safety. He was danger, he
was marked, and she was taking him. He was taking her. Either way, they were
giving up their lives to the bliss of one vintage kiss, and she felt all
regrets dissipate into the refinement of his tongue and lip.

Never had more precious of a kiss existed. It couldn't have. There was too much
living in this kiss. Every inch of his soul that he had never bared to her was
exposed now, every word he had ever wanted to say open to her. If she wanted to
touch him, she could touch him. If he yearned to caress her, he could caress
her. Mulder had never experienced such trust, never felt safer than in the
forbidden beauty of Dana Scully. She was the one person he was never supposed
to see, but he felt protected inside of her arms.

Cupping the back of his neck, she smoothed the back of his head with the palms
of her hands. Words were minimal, words had already been exchanged, but if she
wanted to speak, he would listen. The certainty she felt about them was the
most trust she had ever felt when dealing with Mulder, and she had felt so open
to him sometimes. But vulnerability was not an issue with him. She never felt
vulnerable when with him. It was more of a heightened sense of security. It was
as though he knew her so well that she was inside of him, existing in tune to
his heart and the rhythm of his pulse. No, she never felt helpless. Never felt
weak. She simply felt tended.

She moved away from the fullness of their kiss to dot the corner of his mouth
with a lighter one, and she felt his weight fall against her in a heap of
muscle and bone. Sinewy Mulder, lanky Mulder, gentle and smooth Mulder. He was
warm and soft and forgiving, accepting all of her bumps and bruises and letting
her expose the rawness of her without ever passing judgment. And she could love
the delicacies of him with all of her heart, and bandage the bleeding wounds.

She was made for him. He was made for her. It was cruel, abnormally cruel, to
make them walk around without the other. They were empty without the other at
their side, and she could not stand to be empty for an entire year when knowing
that her other half could be hers for the simple length of one week.

"I'm staying," she whispered, and his heart filled.

*****

The fireworks had subsided ages ago, leaving them with the demure sloshing of
the waves on the beach as their only homecoming melody. It was an acceptable
song, something as delicate and tender as their earlier kisses and caresses.
They lacked all of the bleeding hunger they had experienced earlier, having
sated it in the consummation of the long-resting beast. Their second lovemaking
would be everything, slow and sweet, and he thought he wouldn't be surprised if
he cried. It would be the first time he did such a thing, but there wouldn't be
any embarrassment like there usually was. To weep from beauty was a divine act,
and divinity was something that he believed Dana Scully possessed.

Their foreplay began on the walk from the beach, her nipping at his neck with
soft, open-mouthed kisses and he dancing his thumb over the exposed nape of her
neck. The gentility of his seduction was such that it could barely be
considered seduction. He rather invited, asked, rather than command. Mulder
could be a commanding force; Scully knew this from personal experience. But
when he was with her, he was as kind as rain, as lovely as water.

When they reached the house, it was more for privacy than for intimacy. When
they were together it was as though the other five billion inhabitants of the
planet were nonexistent. They were secondary to the foremost need of Mulder and
Scully. She was as vibrant as fire, and he was as subtle as mahogany. Scully
loved him for the intimate passion that he carried with him, burning out of
control when he allowed it to override all other senses, but always smoldering
within like candlelight when he was gentle. She was experiencing the softness
of him as he led her up to their bedroom, his fingertips playing with the
warmth of her lips as he blew kisses on the curve of her right eyebrow.

There was no music behind them, none of the cliched tools for romance that
existed when a couple wished to add magic to their surroundings. Magic was
something that was always with them. It spun starlight in his motley eyes, or
twisted like kindling in the myriad reds and oranges inside of her hair. Magic
was the surrounding force of their complex relationship. It protected them from
danger, kept them away from death, and would bring them together against all
odds and circumstance.

He played her body like Perlman would stroke a Stradivarius, finely tuned and
heartbreakingly beautiful to experience. The sheer beauty of the act was
refined rawness, rich in its rainbow of emotions and senses. Mulder began with
her hands, picking them up in his and bringing them to his mouth. "Yes, your
mouth," she whispered, and he complied with her request, brushing his lips over
her knuckles and kissing the entire span of her hand. He began with the tip of
her thumb, lavished attention on the finger itself and bringing his entire lips
down the veins and trailing all the way to her pulse point, feeling her heart
quicken underneath his lips.

Her entire body started to come to life, and the tiny pin-prickles of arousal
turned and twisted in every pore and fiber of her. There were nerves she had
never known existed that were starting to rouse to Mulder's rich touch and
caress, and every kiss brought out their majesty. She had never felt such
sensuality, never in such gentle and ordinary things such as someone stroking
her hand or touching her temple, but the lightness of him was making her very
aware of her surroundings. Dampening with arousal, she turned her passion to
him and slowly took his earlobe between her lips. The soft, juicy flesh of his
ear rolled between her teeth, and the husky moan that he emitted was enough
encouragement for her to continue, lining his cartilage with one languid kiss.
Love would be languid tonight, it would wash and wave within an iris pool
before they finally dove in and drowned.

The delicacy of her kiss was stunning, and the tides of arousal that were
coursing through his bloodstream swelled with the sweetness of their new
lovemaking. The first time hadn't been rough, but it hadn't been as skilled as
this was now. They had done away with desperation during their first bout of
sex, and now it was time for the intricacies of the act. All of the variations,
all of the beautiful possibilities that were laid out in front of him like the
grandest feast ever known to man.

"I've been in love with you through it all," he started to say, his voice husky
but somehow matter-of-fact. "When you were gone, when you were dying, when you
were leaving... All that time, I was in love with you." He sighed as her hands
unbuttoned his shirt. "And loving someone and being in love with someone really
are two separate entities, Scully. I could write a book about it, about how
different they are..."

"Then write one," she simply said. Her mouth was occupied elsewhere, drawing
butterflies on his bare shoulder while his shirt fell to the floor.

He moaned again with the delicious pressure of her lips, and loosely wrapped
his arm around her waist. "I think that I will," he decided. "An enormous novel
about loving Dana Scully. If it's as fascinating as I think it is, it'll be a
New York Times bestseller."

"I'll buy a copy," she volunteered, her hands trailing down his chest and her
lips starting to trail kisses on his chest hair. Sharply taking in his breath
when her hands began to unbuckle the belt of his pants, he shivered.

"I'm sure that you will," he said, feeling dazed when she unbuttoned his fly
and trailed one slender little finger down the length of his hot, feverish
cock. "Probably just... Ahhh... Just because of the dirty sex... Um... Sex
scenes..."

She chuckled as she scooted the jeans and boxer briefs off his slender hips,
making him step out of his clothes so that he was naked and aroused in front of
her. "Well, if you include this chapter, I'll purchase a thousand copies," she
said, and slowly bent down in front of him, pressing a kiss on the tip of his
cock and then completely cutting off all coherent thought as she let her tongue
slide along the length of him. Caressing the underside of his erection, she
traveled down to the base of him, and his hips flew out from underneath him. He
swore for a second that he would land on the floor in a muddled cloud of
ecstasy, and she chuckled around him at the wildness of his motion. //Eager
beaver.//

His hands fluttered nervously around him, wondering if she would object to
placing them in her hair, and he received his answer when she took his hand
from his side and placed it on the back of her neck. It wasn't just permission,
it was asking invitation, and he twined his fingers deeply in the thick
vermilion of her hair. All the while, she moved up and down on his cock, using
her tongue to lavish attention on the //impressive// length of him, and his
hips were swiftly pulsing in tune to her mouth and her tongue and his cock
and...

She stopped.

A ripping groan escaped his chest, and he couldn't believe it. It was
incredibly cruel, horribly cruel, for her to let him hang there like that.
Okay, so he wasn't *hanging*, but...

"Scully--"

"Shh."

Her authority was proven accurate when she slowly consumed him with her mouth,
and he closed his eyes, his head falling backward with the surrounding roof of
her mouth and the gentle press of her lips against his skin. She applied her
oh-so-skilled tongue once again to him, and he cried out with the blissful heat
of her lips. Oh, God, she was incredible, nothing was so wonderful, nothing
could possibly be so wonderful...

And he was going to come without her being there.

"Stop," he whispered, and his testosterone screamed at him for being such an
idiot and asking her to *stop* doing something so pleasurable. "Scully, I'm..."

She complied; she stopped and let him out of her mouth, standing up and
sparkling her dilated eyes at him. "Yeah?" she asked, her voice breathless, and
the signs of her arousal suddenly jolted him. Desire practically rolled off of
her, and he was sure that she was caught by the same essence that was
surrounding him. He had never seen a woman look so aroused, never seen a woman
so beautiful when cloaked in desire, and he kissed her. There was the lovely
taste of tea and lemon balm that was hers alone, and then there was a tang to
her mouth that he could only assume was his own.

When they parted, he placed his lips on the hollow of her jaw and started to
kiss her. The fluttering of his lips below her earlobe was tantalizing, and she
was barely aware of his hands undoing the buttons to her linen shirt. He
displayed admirable skill and control when she felt the urgent twitching of his
penis against her belly, and he removed all of the buttons and pressed his
fingers to her belly, touching the navel there and tracing the flatness of her
stomach. He smiled when she sucked in her breath and her stomach contracted,
and he placed a kiss on the bridge of her lightly freckled nose as a
compliment.

"I'll put in three chapters about your body," he lightly said, and she had to
pause to remind herself that he was talking about that book again. Smiling, she
linked her arms around his neck, pressing her breasts against his bare chest.
"I'll go into great description about your breasts if you let me--"

"Start writing, buddy," she joked, and he sighed happily as he slid the linen
shirt off of her shoulders. Ah, there they were again, Scully's breasts. There
was just a hint of a tan-line around them, hinting that she had been
sunbathing. <<Hope she decides to do that again this week.>> There was a
definite contrast between the rosy gold of her skin and the light milky color
of her breasts, made sharper by the light cinnamon of her erect, firm nipples.
His hand brushed over them, liking the way that they raked across his palm, and
then he swirled a fingertip around the areola. She gasped, moaned, sighed... It
was beautiful noise, a cacophony of eroticism.

He was making love to her with the most fleeting of touches, but the bright
reality of him was something that was substantial. Her eyes could open and he
would be there, rushing his fingers down the length of her collarbone or
whispering kisses onto her eyelids. "Mulder," she whispered, and he sighed as
he touched the falling curls of her red hair.

He only sighed, and she pushed him onto the bed, smiling as he fell. He was in
love, he was blissfully in love, and it was a love that he never wanted to
leave. If it left him, then there was nothing. He was empty, he was dead...

But now, his soul was melting into her, and he was aware only of her as she
undid her jeans and slid them and her panties off her hips. When she was nude,
she lowered herself onto the bed next to him, and placed her hand in his hair.
"This was worth the wait," she said, and though her sentiment was touching, he
couldn't help but wonder if she was lying.

She kissed him, twining her arm around his upper body so that her palm rubbed
the bare skin of his back, and he helplessly ground against her, his erection
burning against her thigh like hot iron. Then, he turned so that he was
positioned over her, and brought his hand to her bare breast. Lightly, he
rolled the nipple around in the crook of his hand. The pressure was
excruciatingly gorgeous. He then brought his mouth to her breast, trailing his
tongue along the juicy underside of her breast and believing wholeheartedly
that he could exist forever in that tender crevice. His lips traveled upward,
kissing the areola but never touching what ached to be touched. Teasing her,
leading her along, but she knew that he would reward her patience in the end.

And reward he did. Circling her hard, hot nipple with his lips, he tugged with
divine pressure, lacing her breast with the marvelous gift of his lips, and she
sighed underneath his tongue and mouth. "Mulder," she sighed as he brought his
mouth to her other breast, treating her to the same luxury on her left nipple.
The beauty of the act continued further, bringing her closer to the edge of
ecstasy than she had known previously. The anxiety of waiting for him was
beginning to drive her slowly mad, but if she could live in his madness for the
rest of time, perhaps it would be better than existing in the hellish sanity
she possessed now...

His mouth ran lower, over her navel, dipping the tip of his tongue into her
belly button in a flush of frenzy that made her want to die from the pleasure,
and then he killed her with the delight of his mouth on her mound, lowering
until he was... Everything.

The skill of his mouth astounded her, the magic of his knowledge of her body
and its needs was amazing. His tongue gently brushed along her entrance,
avoiding what throbbed and pleaded to be touched and kissed like the rest of
her body had been. When he had tasted the wetness of her, felt it glisten on
his tongue, he turned to that pleading need and slowly took her into his mouth,
sliding his tongue around the thick, swollen folds as his cheeks burrowed into
her thighs. Scully's hips lifted, her hands running thankfully through his
hair, and he dove deeper, bringing his hand up to work his fingers into her
entrance.

The world was nothing but Mulder. The galaxy existed in his eyes, the universe
was controlled by his hands, and the planet orbited around his amazing mouth.
There was nothing else that mattered then but him, and she tossed underneath
his mouth and around his probing forefinger, feeling the blood pulse through
her body like a thousand perfect chords of music. He was conducting an
orchestra with her, and she was tuning to him perfectly.

The flush of color and light that was beginning to pulse behind her eyelids was
starting to warn her that this bliss meant only one thing -- she was going to
come, she was going to shatter, and the thought seemed odd to her. She had
shattered so long ago, flying to pieces with the notice that he would be taken
away from her forever. Now, she was coming together again in his arms and in
his bed. She was going to become whole once more, completing and reassembling
the scattered pieces of Scully in the glory of Mulder.

When his tongue reached out to whorl around her clitoris, she flew together
with swiftness, and came with the simple knowledge that she belonged to this
man, and that he belonged to her. She climaxed, rising and falling around him,
her voice distantly but distinctly calling his name, and her heart shouting out
that she was in love with him.

Feeling flushed with rose, she smiled at him, and he raised his head from her
body, placing one chaste kiss on her stomach before smiling fully at her again.
There weren't any words that could convey her desire better than her eyes could
describe, and he obeyed fully and happily. Positioning himself between her
thighs, he mouthed his sentiments to her, and she accepted by kissing his
cheek.

Sliding into her, Mulder shuddered out a sigh. Rapturous. Mulder wanted,
needed, *had* to taste rapture; he had never felt it tingle on his tongue like
the gold-rimmed wings of a monarch butterfly, which was what he had always
imagined rapture to taste. Like a butterfly's wings, rapid but delicate, so
that each singular beat raced so quickly that it was an encompassing sensation,
wide and sheltering. How badly he wanted to taste that rapture...

And so he kissed her.

Their previous intercourse had been desperate, born of a long famine and
indulging in an extraordinary feast. Now, it was deliciously slow, sliding in
and out of each other like chocolate, and she sighed and groaned out his name
as he pumped with quickening fever inside of her. Rapture, rapture, Mulder
thought, this is rapture, she is rapture...

And rapture she was. She was living within rapture, the shared rapture of their
love and its creation. Tossing her head back and forth on the pillow, she ran
her hands down his back over and over again as she wordlessly but still loudly
moaned her encouragement and her affection to Mulder. When her words became
comprehensible, he wildly and wonderfully realized that she was crying out his
name with such fervency and such delight.

Grinding his hips and his hardness into her, Mulder moaned out her name, and
there was one terrific slide, one blissful and rapturous brush against her
clitoris, and the bundle of nerves exploded as she cried out his name and fell
again. Falling into him, falling into her, falling nowhere but happiness. It
was falling, it was wonderful, and it didn't matter.

The glory took him, too, and he shuddered release as his body came, filling her
with his warmth and his tremulous orgasm. There was nothing but richness left
for them, nothing but exquisite beauty and full-fledged aurora. When he fell at
her side into the pillows, she smiled at him and kissed him, and then heard his
whispered words against her ear in a promise while the cool sheets fluttered
against her hot body.

"I can't let you go," he breathed. "I'm in love with you; I can't let you go."

The sadder words were a dark reminder of what lay beyond the bedroom and beyond
their lovemaking, and she closed her eyes in a tight grimace of hurt. Curling
against him tightly, she held his forearm in her hand, looking up at him with
wistful eyes. "Then don't let go," she simply said, and he sighed, wrapping his
arms and legs around her and keeping her close.

A forgotten firecracker made its belated flight over the sea, and the sky
exploded in adagio.

*****

(end part five)

*****

EROSION (6/10)
By: Annie Sewell-Jennings (Auralissa@aol.com)

*****

This part is pretty tame. If you're upset about that, I can direct you to some
*really* great smut pieces and you can get your sex fix. Just ask me when you
send... FEEDBACK!

*****

Gently, he was washed into morning with the gentle flow of the sea breeze.
Slowly, Mulder opened his eyes, fluttering the sleep out of the lids with his
lashes. Momentary confusion ensued when he couldn't recognize his surroundings,
but with consciousness came memory, and memory was blissful and sweet. Memory
was filled with images of last night, of firecrackers and Scully and
independence. Her lips, how they had blessed his entire body as though she were
communion and he were the redeemed. Yawning, Mulder reached for her in the bed,
but found it to be empty. His arms could not take her in, his lips could not
find her hair, and his eyes could not caress her sleeping form.

Blinking again, Mulder sat up in the empty bed, the sheets tucked carefully and
kindly around him. Sunlight streamed into the room in rays of dim yellow and
gold, and his mental clock told the time better than any electric contraption.
It was late morning, and the sky was overcast. There was a soft wind that
lapped against his hair, blowing the locks into his eyes. He pushed the sheets
away from his body and got out of the bed, his feet padding softly on the
carpeted floor as he searched for his Scully.

Out on the balcony, he found her.

She sat in the nude, her body obscured from his sight by the ripple and wave of
the gauze curtains. Her arms wrapped on the top of the wall, hands dangling in
the air and legs stretched out dreamily on the cushioned chair. Languidly, her
face tilted to gaze at the heavy gray of the sky, and the mild weight of the
clouds was not stiff, but rather gentle. The breeze was cooler, the air was
thicker, and thunder rumbled like rich percussion around them. Her hair was
tied back in a dark coil of red, and it licked her slim back like a ribbon. The
tender curve of her breast was just visible to him, and when she leaned her
head to the right, the thick mass of scarlet twisted around her shoulder. She
was a portrait of color, as ethereal as a Renaissance painting.

Carefully, he pushed past the light curtains with his hand, stepping out on the
balcony to join her. The sky over the sea was tinting an olive green shade, and
the sea seemed like a thousand jagged shards of emerald underneath the oncoming
storm. "It's going to rain," she said when his shadow fell over the splendor of
her body. She did not turn her head, and Mulder was able to revel in her
undisputed beauty for another blissful moment. When she did turn, her
expression was not as tranquil as her heavenly body, but rather sad and weary.
It occurred to Mulder then that she was older than he had last remembered.
Scully had aged during their ten months of separation, and there was a wisdom
that had sunken into her that no one could erase. No amount of lovemaking could
revive the whim of her youth, and Mulder felt his own age settle on him like a
mantle.

He could remember her youth burning around her like a flame, defiance and pride
gathering around her to anoint her entire being with power. He remembered that
Dana Scully when she had first walked through his door, bearing her dignity
like a weapon more powerful than the gun the Bureau had issued her. She was a
force not to be reckoned with because of her danger. Now, she was a force not
to be reckoned with out of respect.

The fire inside of her hadn't died out. Instead, it simmered like old embers,
when her body was still young and her hair still vivid. There was an aura of
age that was set inside of her, and there was something inside of her that
others would consider untouchable, but Mulder recognized it, knew it well. He
was old, too. They had aged during their work, and this last separation was the
last wrinkle in their souls.

Scully turned around and gave him a half-hearted smile, a smile that was a deep
dusky rose and a smile meant only for him. "You look good," she murmured, and
he shrugged. Their shared nakedness didn't bother her in the least, and there
was little regard for what the public eye might see when she turned her
attention back to the jade sea.

"You look better," he sighed, standing behind her and toying with the rich
spiral of red that fell between her shoulders. "I like your hair this length."

"The jury's still out on that one," she said, and he gently undid the rubber
band that kept her hair together. It flew apart in his hands, the crimson
springing to life around his fingers so that it sprayed embers around his
hands. Adoringly, he ran his hands through the thick strands, the humidity
turning them into radiant curls of cherry. Humming to herself, she tilted her
head back and forth in his hands, relishing the feel of his fingers tangled so
deeply in her longer locks. "Ah, but that just scored major points with the
judge, Mulder."

"There are some benefits," he agreed, bending down to bury his face in the mass
of carmine curls. Scully's hair was the most pure of reds, deep as ground
cinnamon and as vibrant as the shine of an apple. It was the kind of red that
was too dark and rich to be called orange, and he was certain that no child
ever dared to taunt her with "carrot-top" as a child.

A sharp dance of lightning in the clouds flashed over her hair, and the wind
picked up speed while dropping a few degrees. The heat that was so native of
the South was retreating to make way for the coming storm, and she drew her
knees up to her bare breasts, finding warmth in her own skin. Mulder saw the
beginnings of gooseflesh prickle her smooth, roseate skin, and crouched behind
her on the floor. He wrapped her in his arms, suggesting that she use his body
as a blanket, and the idea was as tempting as it was delightful. "What is it in
life that you always wanted to do?" she asked him, and he frowned.

"I already did what I always wanted to do," he simply said, and she frowned in
return. Her face was pensive and her arms lighted over his, smoothing the dark
brown hair on his forearms with her palms.

"But is there anything that you wanted to do that your other goals made
impossible for you?" she furthered. Mulder frowned in contemplation this time,
kissing the back of her neck beneath her mass of dark red hair.

"I always wanted to make love to you," he began, and she smiled, bending to
kiss his wrist in gratitude. "And I always wanted to see Rome."

"Rome?"

He smiled at her puzzlement. "Doesn't it sound inviting? Everyone says that
Rome is like another world. It's as though you leave everything behind, leave
the real world and go to a place where everything is ancient and beautiful."

"It's escape," she sighed, and he nodded into her hair. Rome was famous for its
paradise, for its offering of solitude and secrecy. Of course a man as troubled
and driven as Mulder would dream for Rome. Though it sounded odd to begin with,
it made perfect sense when she thought deeper about it. Suddenly, she wanted to
see Rome with him. To do all of the tourist attractions. See the Pantheon,
visit the Vatican, taste the fine food...

Hear that velveteen voice of his murmur Italian fluently.

"I would take you to Rome," he said, and she chuckled.

"I would go."

"I can't ever leave you," he confessed, and she leaned onto his shoulder,
feeling her hair rise and fall with the wind. Bolts of blue lightning crackled
in the clouds again, and she didn't close her eyes against the electric light.

She sighed. "I know," she murmured, her lashes falling softly on her cheek.
"But you have to."

Neither one said a word, dreaming of Rome while thunder rolled and rumbled like
velvet.

*****

With the threat of the storm turning in the distance, the resort-goers had
abandoned the beach once more, leaving it open for the two to brave the storm
and walk amiably down the stretch. Scully was rediscovering conversation with
Mulder, remembering why she had always liked talking to him. There was no
predictability to his diatribe, and the exchange was always lively and
intelligent. He would go off on tangents about his basic political views, all
of which were fascinating in their idealism. Wistfully, Mulder spoke of a
government that governed justice rather than greed, and while there was
cynicism, it was always dotted with hope. Mulder was an optimistic creature in
spite of all his jaded years, hoping for utopia when he had only lived in hell.

Or Mulder would excitedly relate a book that he'd read, his eidetic memory
proving colorful and astonishing when he recited passages from the novel that
he'd enjoyed. He relayed poetry he'd read to her, and she discovered that he
had excellent taste in literature. There were places he had been that he
vividly described, telling her about the Garden District in Louisiana or a
small deli he frequented in New York City. Mulder's eyes lit up when she told
him she'd never seen "The Boxer", and he forced her to promise to rent the
movie if they didn't catch it on vacation.

Everything he said was heartbreakingly revealing. The various cities he had
visited told her about his struggle for employment, and the inspired hilarious
imitations of landlords spoke volumes about his poor financial status. All of
the books and fine art he'd experienced spoke of his newfound free time. But
she did notice one good thing about Mulder's new experiences -- the writing.
All of his language, all of the vividness... Perhaps he had found a niche
there. Perhaps he could gather some happiness.

She sighed and leaned against him, feeling the wind creep beneath her clothing
and stir against her skin. His arm reached around her shoulder, squeezing
tightly, and she gazed out over the murky ocean. Of all the loving descriptions
that Mulder had offered her, he never told her about the beauty of the water.
Perhaps it wasn't a lack of appreciation that prevented him from telling her
about the ocean; he simply knew that she already knew about it.

>From childhood, Scully had been taught the majesty of the sea. Her family
boasted five generations of seafarers, from fishermen to naval officers. Her
brothers were seamen, her father was buried in the waters, and her mother came
from a family of sailors. Naturally, there had always been such a desire with
her, to float upon the crystalline ocean and feel at the mercy of the wild
waters. Perhaps that was her calling, to dive into the waters and be at one
with the depths of the ocean.

"Scully?" Mulder asked from behind her, and she felt his hand touch the exposed
delicacy of her collarbone. His finger trailed the hollow of her throat, and
her heart rose with the swell of the waves at his simple touch. There were so
many simplicities out of Mulder's complexities, and she was learning them all.
He found solace in gentle things like conversation and chaste kisses, liked
giving her feathery wisps of caresses in the tamest parts of her body. And
these wistful touches were the most arousing strokes she had ever experienced.

"I think I want to live here," she said, and his hand trailed down to the small
of her back, where he fit his hand into the gentle flare he had always
frequented during their partnership.

"Why here?"

The inky green of the sky swirled around, looming dangerously close to the
shore. She turned her head in the wind again, deciding that she liked the way
that her longer hair moved with the storm. "My father was once stationed in
North Carolina, in a small town based on the Navy and on shrimping," she
explained. "And I loved it when we lived there. And I love it here now." She
smiled, turning her head to him. "Do you think that's strange?"

He shook his head. Nothing about Scully was strange. Her odd moments of fancy
delighted him, knowing that she was comfortable enough with him to indulge in
spontaneity. "Not at all," he said easily, and he leaned into her ear
mischievously. "But if you decide to be a shrimp boat cap'n, can I be your
first mate?" he drawled, and she elbowed him in the ribs.

"I liked *Forrest Gump*."

They chuckled for a second, and then Mulder stepped out from behind her,
standing next to her at the water's edge. There was lightning crackling in the
sky, but not a drop of rain. The wind blew ferociously at them, but Mulder
didn't mind a bit. It just gave him an excuse to admire her, more lights for
him to worship her in. Casually, he reached into his jean pocket and pulled out
a pack of cigarettes, removing one and then trying to spark his lighter. Scully
turned her head to him, perplexed.

"When the hell did you start smoking?" she asked, her voice accusatory, and he
shrugged. Under the scolding heat of her gaze, he felt shameful about trying to
light up.

"I used to smoke when I worked with VCU," he admitted, "but I decided to give
it up when I started work on the X-Files. I, um, almost burned down the office
when I fell asleep in the basement with a lit cigarette." She quirked her mouth
at him in a gesture that said "I told you so", and he nodded his eyebrows in
agreement. "Yeah, I know. So, I quit smoking and started eating sunflower
seeds."

"Sunflower seeds?"

He nodded again. "Yeah, well, some people have nicotine gum and others have the
patch. Sunflower seeds keep my mouth busy and my mind off of smoking. And
they're healthier than cigarettes, anyway." He continued working with the
lighter, and she tightened her jaw disapprovingly.

"Why did you start smoking again?" she asked, her eyes hard and piercing.
Jesus, he'd forgotten what Scully was like when she was pissed. He stopped
messing around with the lighter and let the cigarette hang off of his full
lower lip while he spoke. It was a habit that Scully found erotically annoying,
like watching Mulder chew coffee stirrers at work. The motion was irritating
but the mouth was incredible.

"Boredom. Lack of giving a shit. I don't know, maybe the seeds stopped being
good enough a substitute," he offhandedly said, and she finally took the
cigarette out of his mouth and snapped it in half. She briefly entertained the
idea of throwing the remains out to sea for further emphasis, but decided not
to be a litterbug.

"Well, you're not going to smoke anymore," she strictly said, her eyes daring
him to argue.

Furrowing his brow, he cocked his head at her. "And why the hell not?" But when
she gave her reason for her anti-smoker attitude, it was enough to make him
want to break all the rest of his cigarettes and throw the lighter in the sand.

"They could give you cancer."

Silently, he licked his lips, the craving still there but not nearly as
demanding as it had been before. The reminder of Scully's disease was enough to
shut him up, and another rumble of thunder pounded in agreement. He placed the
lighter back in his pocket and looked at the woman next to him. Her eyes were
narrowed in thought, her jaw stubborn and her chin jutted and proud. When she
wore this expression, she seemed to be the most scrutinizing person on the face
of the planet. Her hair brushed around her face, torrents and torrents of red,
and she let it fly in the gloomy wind.

"Scully, I'm sorry," he apologized, and she looked up at him, turning that
inquisitive face on him.

"They're just cigarettes, Mulder," she said, her voice calm and unbroken.

He swallowed, hooking his thumbs on the belt loops of his jeans. "I never told
you this, Scully, but it's something that I needed to say. It's something I
regretted not telling you after I left, and even if you don't want to hear it,
I need to tell you this." Worried now, she brought her hand to his chin,
crooking her finger underneath it. But Mulder just dropped his face, shrugging
off her touch in what she recognized as guilt. <<Stupid man,>> she thought
venomously for a moment. <<Can't he ever figure out that I'm going to love him
no matter what he does?>> It was her weakness, loving Mulder unconditionally,
and it was what made her stay with him through all the danger.

"Say it, Mulder," she said, keeping her voice steady and her expression calm.

Mulder couldn't look her in the face, turning his eyes to the untamed ocean. "I
want to apologize for your cancer."

She was ready for this. "It's not your fault," she promised, placing her hand
on his shoulder. He didn't turn from her touch, but she felt him slouch beneath
her hand.

"If you hadn't worked with me, you wouldn't have gotten sick. It's the simple
fact, you know it as well as I do." She sighed. It was tiring, watching him
take the blame and wear the disgrace when there was no time for it. There
wasn't supposed to be any time for regret or pain when they only had each other
for the mere span of a week. But there he was, wearing it like it was something
he had achieved, like it was a medal of shame that he'd earned. As though guilt
was an honor.

"Yes, Mulder, my work with you is what prompted my disappearance." She wasn't
going to coddle him with falsehoods and lies. It wasn't her style. "But the
fact of the matter is that I didn't have to work with you. You forget that I
have a mind of my own. You should know that by now. Even in the beginning, when
you pushed me away and kept me at a distance, it was my stubbornness that kept
me hanging on. And I will not leave you now. I promise."

"You were ready to leave yesterday," he reminded, and she held her head higher.

"Yes, I was," she agreed. "But that was yesterday. And this is today."

"And today is different?"

She nodded archly. "Yes, today *is* different."

Amused, he gave her a half-smile. "How so?"

She smiled back in whole. "Because today, I promised you tomorrow. And I
promised you the next six days before I leave, and I promised you the same
seven days the next year, and the year after that, and so on. And I'm promising
you that yesterday won't happen again. No matter what, I will always come back
to this beach." She stroked the side of his face, beckoning him to come closer
to listen to her last words. When he did, she whispered the words against his
lips. "I will always come back to *you*."

She touched her lips to his in what would have been a mild kiss, perhaps
nothing more than a peck on the lips, but when it came to them, featherweight
touches were electric with wanting. He reacted almost instantly, brushing her
upper lip with his lower, and his fingertips waltzed over the dainty curve of
her eyebrow. Scully was a small-featured woman; her bones were fine and
carefully placed with her eyes being the most capturing feature about her. But
Mulder liked the little things that only he knew about, the little treasures
that he was constantly discovering about his ex-partner.

There were small hairs at the back of her neck that spiraled like curlicues,
and they were the deepest red out of all her hair. There were dainty little
freckles across the bridge of her nose that she left uncovered because he
complimented her on them the night before. She had a small birthmark on the
sole of her foot, and he kissed it last night after they made love for the
third time. She had a bottle of bright red nail polish in her suitcase and was
planning to paint her toenails scarlet while on the beach. Missy had done that
once when they were in California, and Scully thought that her dead sister
would have appreciated the sentiment. When Mulder had seen the bottle, she had
been certain that he would laugh at her. Instead, he had offered to do it for
her, and she had refused teasingly, calling him clumsy. They both knew that she
would cave in and that he would be granted the pedicure.

That was the Scully he had missed out on knowing all those months apart from
her, and the Scully he was thrilled to find now. Investigation had always been
Mulder's favorite part of the job, and recovering information on Scully was the
best case he'd ever been given. Now he knew that she didn't like cigarettes,
did like red toenails, and wanted to live by the sea. And he knew that she
loved him, too. He knew that somewhere in between everything he'd done to her
and everything that had happened to her because of him, she'd fallen in love
with him. Where other people harbored resentment, Dana Scully had fallen in
love.

Now *that* was one hell of a woman.

One damn beautiful hell of a woman.

Taking her hand, he pulled her away from the water's edge and brought her to
the rocks behind them. The beach at Seabrook was lined with large, flat rocks
that led up to the cliffs where the large resort lay, an unnatural barrier that
was supposed to keep beach erosion and trespassers at bay. Mulder brought her
onto the rocks, smiling as they climbed up barefoot, and found a long one that
was large enough for two to lie there.

When he lay down next to her, they lay flat on their backs with the comfortable
warmth of their shared familiarity and stared up at the darkening skies. Their
heads rested temple to temple, mind to mind, and their hair intertwined as the
wind blew above them, mixing his mahogany locks with her vermilion curls. It
was a complementary companionship, just like them. When the lightning flickered
over the Atlantic again, Mulder spoke.

"When we were working together, I had to hold back from you," he said, and she
stretched her arm over his chest, playing with the collar to his button-down
shirt. "I wanted you so badly sometimes that I couldn't face you without the
certainty that you would know it. I kept telling myself to wait for the right
time, but..." He shrugged.

Her hand rested on her own stomach, and she tapped her navel in thought.

He continued. "Scully, do you wonder if we missed it?"

She frowned, but didn't meet his eyes. "If we missed what?"

"If there was a time it would be right and we would be together... Did we miss
it somewhere along the line?"

The question pained her more than possible. All the years, all the
opportunities for her to take him inside of her home and never let him go, and
they had never taken a single chance. They'd had six years to make it work, and
they never took their chance until after the opportunities were gone. It was
sadly ironic without a trace of humor in sight. How they could come together
only everything had fallen to hell and they were never supposed to be with each
other again.

If they had missed their chance, she regretted that more than anything else in
the entire world. He was the best out of her life. She knew that now. Any
insecurity she held about Mulder was gone, because she knew that he was the
most extraordinary thing to happen to her in her entire life. Loving Mulder.
Being loved by Mulder. These were events that she might have missed out on, and
was holding onto by a bare thread now.

"I hope we didn't miss it," she whispered.

It would be the saddest part of all.

*****

(end part six)

*****

EROSION (7/10)
By: Annie Sewell-Jennings (Auralissa@aol.com)

This is a sad one. Sorry. I never promised you a rose garden... BTW, read that
book. Brilliant. :) Sorry for the ad there; read the story. I'll shut up and
let you go on... For now... ::cackles::

*****

He had never unpacked his suitcase.

In the end, he thought it would be too hard to repack all of his belongings and
retract himself from the house of love they would have built on the island. And
when it was finally time for him to leave, it was hard enough for him to zip up
the suitcase and bring it out to the rental car, placing it in the trunk and
trying not to run back to the house.

Scully was leaving later on that day; her flight took off at a different time.
She would have a little time to herself on the beach before going back to
Maryland, and she had opted to take that time for herself rather than see him
to the airport. There were too many people who could see them at the airport,
anyway. Too many possibilities to be caught red-handed at their secret game.

Standing by his car, she watched him slam the trunk of the Taurus and looked
out at the sea with the memories of the past week. Add them to her journal of
Mulder. Answer the questions you had always wanted to know the answers to. Like
he called out her last name instead of her first when he climaxed, and yes, it
had felt appropriate and right. He would have been making love to a stranger if
he had cried Dana at his release, anyway. Not that Scully was much who she was
anymore, but she was herself again when she was with him. She knew how his kiss
tasted when he was tender. Warm and slow, like honey. Mulder tasted like honey,
moved like honey, sung like honey in her veins.

Last night, when they had finished making love, he had cried.

But she didn't want to think about that now.

His watch told him that it was time for him to leave. His heart begged him to
stay. These two contradictory forces battled with each other, and once again,
it was the hand of Dana Scully and her common sense that lay on his arm and
decided for him. "You'll miss your plane if you stay any longer," she gently
said. "It's forty-five minutes out of John's Island, and another twenty to the
airport. And you have to check your luggage, and board the plane. And you'll
catch the bridge."

He smiled at her calculations. "How do you know I'll catch the bridge?"

She smiled at his misfortune. "Because you have shitty luck."

And they both smiled at their synchronism.

He held the key to the house in his hand, and he swallowed hard when looking at
her. He thought for a moment before talking, and then decided that even if she
didn't need to hear it, he needed to say it. "You know, Scully, all these
years, you've been my lifeline," he began, leaning on the Taurus and holding
her hand in his. "From the beginning to the end of our partnership, you're
what's kept me going." The tears were threatening to spill again; she saw them
even when he didn't realize it, and she prayed that he wouldn't cry. If he
cried, she wouldn't be able to make him go. "And now, I have to leave you."

"I'm still your lifeline," she promised.

"It's not the same," he whispered, and there was a glitter in his eyes that was
the beginning of tears. //Don't cry. Don't cry.// "It won't ever be the same."

"I'll still see you next year."

His lower lip wavered, and his chin trembled. "It's not the same."

No, it wasn't. And she knew it just as well as he did. Ten months of separation
from him had taught her that promises and assurances meant nothing when they
couldn't be made in person, and that one week couldn't last a year of
depression and anxiety. Though it might lighten the hurt a little, in the end,
the aching would crash over them again. They both had shitty luck, shitty
lives, and shitty, shitty existences. She touched his hand with hers, knowing
she would miss it, and wondered if it would have been easier if they had never
met here to begin with.

But the ecstasy of her memory told her that if she had lived the rest of her
life without the knowledge of him as a lover, she would have regretted it into
her grave. If she had missed this week, she would have died knowing that she
could have had a real love and never did. All she would have had was the memory
of a beautiful man's love, always phantom and never realized. She regretted so
much already... She didn't need to regret that, too.

"Scully," he said, his voice catching in his throat but then steadying. She
sighed; he wasn't going to cry. "Maybe it would better for you if you, well, if
you met someone. If you got married." He swallowed. "If you got married, they
would never suspect..."

"No," she said, and she was pained to find herself near tears. "I'm sorry,
Mulder. I know that you mean that with the best of intentions, but... I'm
already married. To you." She lifted her head to smile at him, commitment
burning in her eyes. "It wouldn't feel right to me, and it wouldn't be fair to
the other man, either."

Secretly, he was relieved she had turned down his offer while being
disheartened by the fact that she couldn't let him go. The devotion and the
love behind her words and eyes touched him, but the fact that she was keeping
him made him realize that she would never find a happy life. Her existence was
just as meaningless without their old job and partnership, and now they were
leaving paradise to burn in hell again.

"Okay," he whispered, and his hand trembled over the top of her head. "Another
year."

"Another week." He wished that it were nothing more than another week. Seven
days without her, he could endure. He'd miss her like hell, but it would only
be seven days. One week was tolerable. One year seemed impossible. Tipping her
head back with his hand, he kissed her forehead, and looked sadly at her eyes.

"If you ever get in trouble, here's my number," he started, and she shook her
head.

"Don't tell me," she murmured. "I would call, and they would know." She
couldn't resist the temptation of hearing his voice if she had the number, and
seven digits would be the proverbial apple that would destroy her burning Eden.
As though life without Mulder was paradise.

Bowing his head, he nodded, and she bit her lip. "You have to go," she
reminded, and his eyes blinked back tears again. There was nothing more
heartbreaking than a grown man crying, especially when that grown man was hers.
If he cried, she couldn't do it. If he cried, she couldn't make him leave. She
would simply end up taking him in her arms, never letting him go, and throwing
her family and her lover's life to hell for her compassion. "And you have to go
now."

Startled, Mulder lifted his head and found that she wasn't pushing him away.
Scully was telling him that if he didn't leave now, she wouldn't be able to
make him leave. There was no more stalling and no more time for
procrastination. Their time together was over, and the beach would have to be
abandoned until next year. Next year, next time to see her. Next time for him
to be alive, and next time for him to be himself again.

Bending down, he kissed her tenderly, tasting her mouth with a wistful quality
that hadn't ever been so strong before. His tongue gently pressed the roof of
her mouth, and she wrapped her hand around the back of his neck. When they
parted, he swallowed, his eyes burning. "I love you too much," he sighed, and
she shook her head.

"You can't love someone too much," she gently said. "But there's someone out
there who hates us. And that's why this hurts. It's not because of you, or
because of me... It's because of circumstance." She assured herself of this,
too. It wasn't her fault that he had to go. It was *them*. The invisible party
that was responsible for their suffering, and the people who deserved the
hatred she felt.

"I'm going to leave now," he whispered, making himself kiss her once more and
then open the door to the car. She kissed him back with a lingering mouth,
never wanting to let go of his lips and let him fall away from her.

"I love you, Mulder," she said, wanting him to hear those words. She needed to
know that he could put some faith, some gleaning of hope, into those words. And
a small, dark part of her was afraid that he would kill himself before the next
July.

He lowered himself into the driver's seat, touched her hair again with longing,
and then touched the corner of her mouth. "I love you, Scully." And then the
door shut, his face still looking at hers with intensity that she longed for,
and drove away.

*****

Scully watched the car disappear around the bend in silence. The sound of his
engine fled her, and she willed her ears to ignore the rushing sounds of the
natural world around her. When silence ensued, she managed to walk to the
beach, her footsteps heavy and her shoulders straight. //Clinical detachment.//
It was the phrase that always got her through the hell. The phrase that kept
her sane until she was ready to let loose and weep.

Odd, how on a day like this, the sun could shine. Storms had passed over them
during the week, their violence almost frightening her sometimes. But today,
Mother Nature shone perfection and warmth, dancing the sunlight over the water
as though she knew nothing of two distraught lovers. It was like butterflies at
a funeral -- eerily inappropriate.

While people swam in the idealistic turquoise waters and others sunbathed
carelessly around her, she turned her head to watch the bystanders with a
hardened eye. There was a married couple there, lying out on beach blankets
with their eyes shut and their bodies motionless. Neither touched the other. A
small girl ran up to tell the woman something, and the woman snapped at the
child until the child gave up and returned to the sandcastle she was building.

It saddened Scully to see the negligence of the family. They didn't appreciate
what they had. It was love, it was stability, and it was compassion. There were
no grander forces keeping these people apart from one another. No intricate
system that forbid the other's presence. Perhaps Dana Scully was being
judgmental about this couple, presuming to know their hearts and presuming to
know their minds. But she had just spent one tremulous week in the arms of the
only part of life she liked, and she knew instinctually that it was very
different from what the foreign couple was experiencing.

Sitting in the wet sand where the water lapped at the shore, Scully pulled her
bare legs to her chest and remembered the past week. There were the restaurants
where she and Mulder had eaten crab legs and grits at. The Market where she had
bought a sweetgrass basket that had just been completed hours ago. The swimming
pool where Mulder had showed off his tiny red Speedo that she'd always wanted
to catch a glimpse of. There was the lovemaking. There was the beach. There
were the hours of conversation that only they understood, and the tears that
inevitably fell whenever the preciousness of their time was remembered.

And she remembered last night again.

When they made love on the balcony at sunset, the vibrant indigo dusk lighting
his eyes like violet fire, his head between her thighs and her hand wrapped
blissfully in his hair. That was beautiful, the most beautiful, and when he
entered her at last it was enough to bring her to orgasm immediately. It was
swiftly sweet without an inch of desperation, and when she opened her eyes, she
found him crying.

"What?" she asked, concerned, and he held her so tightly she thought she might
suffocate.

"Tomorrow, I'm supposed to leave, and I don't think that I can."

He had cried, she had swallowed tears, and in the end she was the one who was
the sensible one. She was the one who made him leave, and the one who made him
remember his duties and his promises, and she was the one who made him recall
his responsibilities.

She was the one who let him go when all she wanted to do was hold him.

Without him there, without him to smile for and be strong for, Scully sat in
the surf and held back tears until the tide came in and tried to sweep her away
into its cool, encompassing escape.

Only when the tide tugged at her legs, pulled at her clothing, did she let
herself cry.

Mulder was so like the tide...

*****

She was right. He had caught the bridge.

The plane had just reached its final cruising altitude, the seatbelt light was
off, and his seat in coach was positioned, thankfully, at the window again.
Next to him, a teenaged girl was reading a paperback, listening to some loud
rock band bark German in her ears, and chewing cinnamon gum to keep her ears
from popping. When he'd asked her to borrow some, she'd lit up like a birthday
cake and passed him two sticks of Cinnaburst. Mulder thought he might have just
made her day.

Glad to know that someone's day was made.

The airplane tilted to the side as it flew, and the beauty of the jewel-like
sky wasn't lost on him. It was as azure as her eyes. Yes, that was the color
the sky was that day. It was the exact shade of cerulean as her eyes were when
they were mirthful or laughing. When she looked at him and smiled, the blue in
her eyes sparkled like the sky did now, and these were the things he would
remember about Dana Scully. The color of her eyes when she laughed. The color
of her hair at sunrise. The taste of her mouth after she ate a caramel. Simple,
simple things. He turned his attention to the sky again, and sighed at the
clouds.

Mulder liked movies. It passed his hellish day and his even lonelier night, and
he frequented Blockbuster stores like mad, trying to find enough films to
satisfy his craving for company. Recently, his tastes had expanded past the
good old porno and into actual cinema, and that was where he had started
hunting down the good stuff. Along the way, he had discovered some of the best
movie titles ever known.

"The Twilight of the Golds." "Breaking the Waves". "Shine". These were poetic
names, names that always fit the film when he finished watching them, making
him admire the writer for the brilliance of the title and the power of the
script. Then he had found a movie title that he really loved.

"A Walk in the Clouds".

Mulder never rented the movie. First of all, it had Keanu Reeves in it, and
Mulder knew for a fact that there was more talent in an ash from the Cancer
Man's cigarette than in Keanu Reeves' entire body. He'd seen "Bill and Ted's
Excellent Adventure" and knew that that was the best performance the guy would
ever be capable of. Second, he didn't want to ruin the majesty of that perfect
title by actually seeing the movie. If the movie was awful, he would never love
the name again.

When he looked below him at the pillars of clouds spiraling upward on the
sapphire sky, Mulder thought of the movie again and thought of its title. These
were clouds that seemed so tangible that walking on them not only seemed
possible, it seemed inviting. The desire to fly from the plane and land in the
clouds was incredible, even if he knew that the pillow-like clouds would never
hold his weight. What would it be like to just fall, fall away from everything,
fall into the mass of light that resembled Scully's eyes?

Sighing, he turned his head away from the Scully-colored sky and the poignant
clouds, looking down at his folded hands. In all his years with the FBI, he'd
racked up an incalculable amount of frequent flier miles. He felt oddly out of
place sitting on a plane in jeans and a tee-shirt, thinking that he should be
wearing a suit and tie, and that instead of a punk kid sitting next to him,
there should be an immaculate, beautiful woman.

It could never be.

He wondered now if things would have been different if they had quit the FBI
long ago, settled for mundane jobs and each other. What if they had abandoned
everything for their love and existed safely and quietly in their own corner of
the world? The relationship wouldn't have lasted. They would have become
different people, people disgusted with the dissatisfaction of their lives.
They would have resented each other for the sacrifices they had made, and in
the end, parted on poor terms. They needed the danger, needed the fire, needed
the purpose that the FBI had given them.

There was no right way for Dana Scully and Fox Mulder. They had been destined
to love and destined to be thrown apart by fate. No matter what, they couldn't
win against Fate. He would have lost her no matter what he did, and this ache
in his heart would always be there.

He longed for her hands and the smell of her hair. Whenever it hit his nose,
that long curl of red fluttering in his face... Mulder sighed with the memory
and was slapped in the face with the knowledge that that was all it was. A
memory. A bittersweet token of a week in sanity, returning to a world where
nothing made sense and nothing made him happy. It wasn't fair. It just wasn't
fair. After all their sacrifices, all their hard work, the only thing he ever
understood and ever loved was taken away from him.

She was *gone*.

A hand touched his shoulder, but it wasn't Scully's. The teenager sitting next
to him looked at him through her dark, spiky bangs, her headphones lying around
her neck so that the German metal band shouted at him with a louder intensity.
"You okay, sir?" she asked, and he almost smiled when he detected a faint
Southern accent in her voice.

"Yeah," he managed, and she smiled sympathetically at him, pausing her CD
player so that the band was silenced.

"I left my boyfriend today," she said. "It hurts a lot, but I know that I'll
see him again. And I'm sure that you'll see your wife, girlfriend, hell,
boyfriend even, again soon." Her naive reassurance was vaguely comforting, and
he decided that he might be able to brighten up her day.

"I'm not gay."

He was right. She beamed at him in a radiant smile. //Not nearly as radiant as
Scully's.// "Well, it's nice to know that *someone* in this goddamn planet will
lay a woman these days," she staunchly said, and he almost laughed again.
Almost. She patted his hand one more time, lingering a little longer than he
usually would allow, and then put the headphones on again to listen to her
foreign band yell some more to her in a language she probably didn't understand
anyway.

He caught himself thinking about the bridge again. She knew he would catch it.
She was the one who understood every fiber of his soul, even if she didn't know
it. She could predict his unpredictability, make sense of his complexities even
when he himself couldn't. She was the missing half of Mulder, what made him
work and what made him function. Without her, he was worthless, useless, and
empty.

He was empty now.

Mulder wondered how he had ever let the best of him slip away, and was saddened
by the knowledge.

The best of him had gently reminded him that he had to go.

*****

(end part seven)

*****

Author's Note: The German band the girl sitting next to Mulder is listening to
is Rammstein, which is an in-joke between Kristin and myself. Rammstein rocks.
:D

*****

EROSION (8/10)
By: Annie Sewell-Jennings (Auralissa@aol.com)

*****

Indecisively, Mulder juggled the package of cigarettes from palm to palm,
letting the Camels jump between his hands as he decided whether or not to smoke
them or not. He'd purchased the smokes on a whim, believing that sunflower
seeds and chewing gum simply wasn't sustaining him during the hellish winter
season, and that staving off boredom required something more potent to satisfy
his oral fixation.

So, on the way home from the newspaper, Mulder had stopped off at the
convenience store and bought five things: sunflower seeds, aspirin, a six-pack
of Coors, a lighter, and the cigarettes. The clerk had thought nothing of his
purchase, but Mulder had read a thousand analytical pieces of BS into the
plastic bag he'd taken out of the store.

He wasn't buying cigarettes as an alternative to sunflower seeds. He was buying
cigarettes as an alternative to Scully.

Sighing, Mulder dumped the bag in the backseat and placed the pack of Camels on
the passenger seat, and looked indecisively at the fire-engine red lighter.
Maybe, maybe not. Scully would disapprove of it strongly, not just because of
the cancer, but because of her profession. She would arch one of those
oh-so-expressive slender auburn eyebrows, tighten her mouth at him, and stare
him down until he snapped the smoke in half and threw it out the window. Yes,
that would be Scully's exact reaction if she were in the car with him.

//But she's not here right now, is she?// a little demon in his head taunted.
//That's the whole reason you bought the damn things in the first place.//

With a defeated sigh, Mulder reached over and picked up the pack of cigarettes,
opening up the cellophane wrapper and procuring one Camel. "Just this one
pack," he promised himself, but he still saw the chagrined expression on
Scully's face as he flicked the Bic and lit the cigarette.

Inhaling deeply, Mulder started the engine to the second-hand Honda, feeling it
stall and hearing it sputter. "Come on, come on," he coaxed, his cigarette
hanging off of his generous lower lip. "I'm fucking freezing; start for me,
Bertha..." So he'd named his car. The Omni looked like a Bertha to him. It was
either that or Shit-Mobile. "Please..."

The engine stammered to life, and the heater started to produce warm air.
Mulder gave a sigh of relief, kissed the steering wheel, and backed out of the
gas station. God, he never thought he would miss a Taurus. Time to go back
home. It was Christmas break, a few days away from New Year's, and he was
spending his holidays alone with a cigarette and a crappy car that wouldn't
ever start.

It was a funny thing about New Year's Eve. The coming of the new year was
supposed to signify change and resurrection, possibility and rebirth. It was
supposed to give out second chances, allow people to resolve to change and
become better people. For Mulder, it would be his sixth year without Dana
Scully, not just the year 2004. It should be a year when he finally decided to
get his life together and try to rebuild, but Mulder doubted his capability
when it came to that particular situation.

Long ago, Mulder stopped trusting himself with his own life, and he had decided
that that was the limit of his paranoia. Though he should be thinking of how to
make his life better and how to cope with the facts that had haunted him for
the longest damn time, Mulder was pondering her.

It was the little details about Dana Scully that were haunting him, like the
spread of her fingers on the dusky rose of the bedsheets, or the way that sand
glittered in her hair like stardust. Images of her were threatening to consume
him, but Mulder was discovering more and more that consummation was something
that was desirable. If he drowned his sorrows in the thought of Scully's
smooth, manicured fingernails, then he wouldn't have to face his shitty life.

Bitterly, Mulder took another drag from the cigarette, making a face at the
hollow taste of tobacco. In retrospect, it was no better than his father's own
addictions, only Mulder's vice was a woman rather than alcohol or silence.
Actually, Mulder was beginning to get into the whole silence idea, too,
choosing to save his words for someone who would actually listen to him -- the
typewriter and Scully.

Mulder drove down the road toward his apartment, snow beginning to trickle down
on the windshield of the car like ash. Odd. It reminded him of when he had
studied the Holocaust in school, learning about how the bodies from the
crematorium had rained down on the nearby towns in a blizzard of charred flesh,
and the children had played in it as though it were snow. It was the most
haunting image he carried from that period of history. Imagine being one of
those children, walking outside and lifting your face up in childlike wonder at
the daintily falling whiteness, and never knowing that your nose was sprinkled
with the remains of murdered Jews...

Chilled, he stubbed out the cigarette, the memory of burnt snow crackling
through his memory with lightning speed and vividness. For years after that
history class, Mulder's dreams of Samantha's abduction were always blurred by
swirls and drifts of gray, flaky soot.

Turning his thoughts away from drizzling human ash, Mulder itched for another
cigarette, and then decided to deny himself the rest of the smokes for a little
while longer. It was still an early night, after all, and it would be a shame
to smoke them all now and start wanting another later.

His apartment was spare, barren of most personal belongings simply because he
never thought of hanging the pictures on the walls or hanging matching curtains
over the window. At least he still had his familiar leather sofa. Tossing his
paper bag on the couch cushions, Mulder sighed and shrugged out of his warm
jacket and peeled off his gloves. Dammit, the heater wasn't working again. He
really shouldn't have been so surprised; nothing in the goddamn building ever
worked. It was the story of his life.

When he was suitably bundled up in sweatpants and a flannel shirt, Mulder
walked to the window, his hands on his hips, and stared out at the dimmed
lights of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The city was not exceptional, and the city was
not particularly beautiful. It was just somewhere he had to call home, a postal
address on an envelope. In the winter, it was nothing but white, and the dark,
spindly trees were like phantoms underneath their mantles of crystals and
ivory. Swaying in the mournful January wind, they tilted from side to side,
whispering and moaning like discontented spirits...

Shuddering, Mulder turned away from the window and sat down on the couch. He
was tired of discontented spirits and unsettled angels. It was as though he had
unfinished business that he could never take care of, a loose thread that he
couldn't possibly bear to tie up. His life would never be a neat little bundle;
it would be a massive concoction of unraveling strings.

The hushed sighing of the winter trees crept through the windows and rushed
around his ears, and for a moment, it sounded like Scully. The low,
confidential way that his name had purred off her lips had made him feel as
though they were the only two people left on the face of the earth, and at the
time, that sentiment had been comforting rather than alienating. The chaos that
had always surrounded him seemed to slip away when Scully caressed his name in
that divine, intimated alto.

When the wraithlike branches spoke his name, he felt like he was going to throw
up. The warmth was gone, leaving the whisper a dry rasp, like talons running
over his spine in an endless circle of scratches. Ripping at his soul, tearing
it to shreds. It was a mockery of a caress, and rather than wrapping his heart
in gentle hands, it snared his heart in venomous talons.

Nothing was the same since they had parted.

He had no solace, no reprieve, from the constant ache where Scully was no
longer there. In the spring, it was her mouth that he hungered for, the ripe
lushness of her lips when she gave him that Mona Lisa smirk, or the rare
present of a full, radiant smile that showed the lines on her face and made her
cheeks flush. In the summer, he longed for the clearness of her eyes, the china
blue that either pinned him with inquiry or caressed him with depth. It was her
hair in the fall, that supernova of crimson that exploded like a sunburst
around her face, wild and rich like the changing of the leaves.

In the winter, it was her voice.

Moaning, Mulder turned on his side and wondered why he did this to himself. Why
he tortured himself with the constant memory of a woman that he could no longer
have, and why he continued on at all. There was no purpose to his life anymore,
no determination that kept him from picking up the weapon that he still kept
strapped around his ankle and ending his life once and for all. In the past,
he'd had a smorgasbord of reasons to keep himself alive. There was Samantha,
there was the elusive truth, there was Scully. There was the forever-pumping
determination in his blood, the persistence and insistence that had annoyed his
superiors and had driven his entire quest.

Stripped of his motivation, stripped of his access, and stripped of his quest,
where was Fox Mulder? Without these elements that had always defined him, what
was left of him? Nothing worth salvaging, nothing worth preserving, and nothing
worth continuing. He was prevented by greater forces from ever daring to touch
another case.  To pursue what he needed to pursue. To satiate the need for
knowledge and understanding of his past and his future. Without these things,
what made Fox Mulder so great? What point was there in continuing his
existence?

Mulder was contemplating suicide. He had done so on previous occasions, and
always ended up laying the gun back down on the table or replacing the weapon
back in his holster. There were always those essentials that sustained him
before. Now, it was getting more and more difficult to keep himself from
pulling the trigger.

In the end, it was always her face that undid him, just as it had before. She
waited for him on a shore in South Carolina, alone and bound by her word. She
had promised him that she would come to him, and he had that promise to keep
him going. With the simple meaning of her honor, Mulder found a way to keep the
bullet from entering his skull and finishing the hell he was living in.

Turning on his side and closing his eyes, Mulder pressed his forehead against
the leather and wondered if Scully had always smelled like the sea or if it had
just started when they began their meetings. He would ask her next time. There
*would* be a next time.

She had promised.

*****

Scully stared emotionlessly out the window, mechanically lifting the mug of tea
to her lips and then mechanically setting it down on the table again. She was
going through the motions, drinking tea that she used to like but couldn't
taste very well now. Constant Comment. The kind that tasted like orange peel
and cinnamon. Outside, snow collected on the ground, blanketing Pittsburgh in a
slope of ivory beauty that seemed incomparable and delicious. It was sugar
snow, delectable and sweet for children to taste. Idly, Scully thought of the
neighbor kids running through the piles of snow, collecting and gathering the
white precipitation, and then she wondered why she tortured herself like this.

Sighing, she threw away the last contents of her lukewarm tea and settled
herself down on the sofa again. Her house was silent, her mind was still, and
all she heard outside was the sound of the wind blowing against the house.
Winter was a still season, one that allowed no music from the birds and no
laughter from the children. Silence and solitude were a part of the snow, and
there was nothing graver than the impeccable quiet of a January night.

Dressed in an oversized cable-knit sweater and a pair of jeans, Scully wondered
again why she hadn't accepted the invitation. It had been a kind gesture of
goodwill, inviting the reclusive redhead out to the ballet along with the rest
of the staff at the hospital. She could have gone and enjoyed herself for the
night, spent time with others and perhaps be curled up in another's arms,
watching the sun rise in the nearly white sky the next morning.

Instead, she sat in hallowed stillness in the middle of her house, pining after
a man that she wasn't even supposed to acknowledge. He was a part of her past,
a forgotten relic of old times and old Dana Scully. The people that she worked
with now knew that she had formerly worked with the FBI, but they didn't know
that she had been Mrs. Spooky. They had no idea that she had once been a woman
driven by truth and justice. They had no idea who Dana Scully truly was, nor
would they ever.

Damn him.

It was a thought that was frequently recurring. It was not loathing toward him
directly, but a loathing toward her weakness for him. And yet again, she
contemplated what would happen if she chose not to go down there in July. If
one year, the strip of sand and shore that she had always haunted was left
empty, devoid of its one flame-haired wanderer. How would he react? Would he
weep? Would he scream? Or would he track her down and beg her to meet him
again? The last option was always the most difficult to figure out; weighing
the determination of Fox Mulder against his teeming paranoia.

In the end, she always succumbed to his seduction, and in the end, she always
imagined what she would say to him when she saw him next. It was that damnable
affair that kept her from severing the ties to her last life, and that damnable
affair that kept her locked up inside of a house that she didn't even like
anymore.

Sleep was a secondary need. If Scully pleased, she could watch the snow fall on
the hills all night, observing its thickness and texture in silent
contemplation. She desired sleep, but it would, of course, be denied her by her
own churning indecision. Perhaps he was the reason she couldn't adjust. All
year, she strove to forge out a new beginning for herself, and every year, she
always ended up reliving the past in the wings of his arms. Damn him and damn
their meetings.

Again, her mind created the scenario. It was simple, really. The next year,
when that week in July rolled around, stay at home in Pittsburgh. Gently cut
the cord. He would recover eventually, and it would be the best for the both of
them. She could continue her life without worrying about him, and he could
start anew rather than linger on the love affair that he insisted on
continuing. She wouldn't have to send him a letter or telephone him to tell him
in person. Absence was interpreted in only one way -- death.

He would mourn her greatly. Then he would bury her and move on. Perhaps Mulder
would find a woman and marry her, and Scully would find a man and marry him,
but deep inside, she knew that was an impossible scenario. Mulder had told her
that no one would suspect their actions if she were married, but Scully knew
better than that. It would be unfair to the man that she wed. For three hundred
and fifty-eight days of the year, she would be a doting wife, but for seven
days, she would give the best of herself to another man.

No, she would never be married.

For a moment, Scully regretted discarding her tea. Mulling over ending Mulder
would have seemed more poetic had she been holding a cup of tea. Somehow, being
bundled up on a couch and staring into snow-covered silence seemed disturbing
rather than pensive. Instead, she worked her lower lip with her teeth, gnawing
at the sensitive flesh until she tasted the harsh copper of her blood.

What would Mulder do with his life? It was a question that Scully had often
pondered. Without his search for the truth or his missing sister, he had
faltered but found a touchstone in a stolen week with his ex-partner. What
would happen to him if that swindled week were pilfered again from him, and
what would he do with the knowledge that the thief was none other than Dana
Scully? She never wanted to hurt him, did not want to think of Mulder standing
atop the cliffs with his heart ripping inside of his chest, looking out at the
empty abyss of the Atlantic ocean.

But in the end, would the pain she would cause him turn out to be the best
thing that could possibly happen to the both of them?

She sighed and turned her face away from the ever-thickening snowfall. Life had
become based on her own introspection recently. Amateur psychobabble and
self-evaluation. There had been a great deal of meditation and very little
action or dialogue. Ever since the holiday season, she had been closing herself
off more than usual, refusing to attend the hospital Christmas party and then
loathing herself for her own isolation.

She spared herself no pity. Her solitude was self-inflicted. If Scully wanted
to find a friend, she could up off her ass and do it. But the fact of the
matter was that every time someone reached out for her, asked her to come along
and join the parade, she fell back into the embrace where she had promised
Mulder over and over that she would return to Seabrook Island.

Snowflakes congregated on the windowsill, creating a pillow of ivory ice, and
Scully seriously considered breaking the promise she'd made to Mulder.
Naturally, the questions that had plagued her before resurfaced again, taunting
her with their quantity and their impossibility. She couldn't answer these
inquiries, couldn't give a direct and accurate estimation of her impact on
Mulder's life.

Perhaps she was the biggest fool of all, allowing herself to be seduced by her
former partner for one week out of an entire year. It would be so easy to begin
again, to let go of her past and create a new future. Happiness was just within
her grasp, if only she could let go of Mulder.

"Then, dammit, Scully, why don't you?" she muttered aloud, and then shuddered
when she realized that she was talking to herself. Jesus, she was going crazy
in her solitary lifestyle. Time to reach out for human companionship, Scully my
dear. Yes, she had to be going crazy. She was starting to address herself by
her surname.

She had stopped being Scully the day she tendered her resignation to the FBI.
When Skinner had inspected her signature and nodded her out of his office,
Scully had ceased to exist. But to call herself Dana would be even worse. Dana
had stopped showing up years ago. Besides, for one week out of the year, she
was Scully again, making love to Mulder and stirring the old embers of the
past.

Well, maybe it was time for those embers to descend into ash.

Despondently, she sighed and sank into the cushions of the old, worn couch,
dragging the thick quilt over her body as she lay down. It was cold in the
living room, but she didn't really want to travel all the way upstairs to
snuggle up under the covers and bask in the warmth of the heater. She could
suffice with the quilt and the flames of the past, and let the television set
lull her to sleep. After all, if it had worked for Mulder, it could work for
her... Right?

Suddenly, she realized that in many aspects, she had become Mulder. Focusing
all of her attention on her work, withdrawing from the rest of human society
and refusing assistance from anyone who displayed a hint of concern for her
well-being... These were all classic character traits of Mulder's. Stifling a
groan with her pillow, Scully felt like smacking herself. The most obvious of
Mulderisms was staring her in the face, if only she would acknowledge it.

She was holding onto the past, seeking a goal that she would never be able to
attain. Typical, typical Mulder.

It was only more reason for her to leave him, but it was also the evidence that
she would never let him go.

Desolately, Scully turned on her side and turned the television set on. It was
going to be one of those nights; she could already tell. One of those nights
where she tried to ward off insomnia but it would claim her as always. The TV
would provide her with no distraction, and neither would silence. She had tried
many various forms of technology to avoid her sleeping disorder with, but she
always ended up restless and aching the next morning.

Tonight would be no different.

She turned on the television set and let it cocoon her in its droning voice,
letting it invade the regal silence of January. Idly, she wondered how the
ballet had turned out. It was "The Nutcracker", too. One of her favorites.

She should have gone. She could have gone. But in the end, she had run back to
the beach where Mulder always walked, and threw herself into his kiss.

Scully contemplated breaking her promise.

*****

(end part eight)

*****

EROSION (9/10)
By: Annie Sewell-Jennings (Auralissa@aol.com)

This part is NC-17, so if you decide to mention this story on the AOL Message
Boards, don't provide a direct link. ;)

*****

Of course, she kept her promise.

Everyday, Scully saw his face in her memory. The gentle lines around his eyes.
The ebony shading of his eyelashes. The prominent and oddly alluring shape of
his nose. The splash of dark hair on his thought-creased brow. The pinpoint of
a mole on his cheek. The silken ripeness of his mouth. His face was the most
beautiful of unwanted memories, marked by the pleading in his soulful, weald
eyes. "Promise me, Scully," he had said, and she had promised.

It would have been one thing if she had only promised to appease him. It was
another when she meant the words and still believed in them.

Scully still believed that she would probably be able to start her life over if
she had chosen to discontinue their yearly affair, but she couldn't do it. To
give up Mulder would mean letting go of the most satisfying part of her life.
It would mean letting go of the only part of herself that she even liked
anymore. Scully didn't like who she had become, what she stood for and what she
had forgotten to stand for. This new woman was someone she barely understood, a
calculating woman that never allowed entrance for anyone else, and a withdrawn
and frigid person. In all honesty, Scully only liked the part of her that
surfaced when she felt Mulder's fingertips on her cheek.

Or when she saw his face.

Dimmed sunlight played with her hair, and gusts of wind whipped her hair about
with zeal, the bright brazen threads flashing about her face with a flourish.
The tide was coming in, waves crashing in a wild symphony of sea spray, and
shells dotted the beach in a rainbow of multicolored delicacy. Briefly, she
wondered if one shell might bring her a song or two, just a melody of the
ocean. It was silly, really. Conch shells that size weren't found in South
Carolina.

But somewhere in the corner of her mind, she still wanted one. A small record
that would play beach music for her to remember South Carolina and her yearly
sabbatical to the shore. Scully had no photographs of her visits, no postcards,
not even a cheesy tee shirt. There could be no evidence of her clandestine
getaway, and that was beginning to kill her from the inside out. She could
trust no one, tell no one what it was like to wade through the Atlantic at
sunrise or see dolphins break the cresting waves at rosy dusk. She could kneel
at no confessional, confide in no priest, disclose in no prayer. After the
terror of losing her diary for a day, Scully quit putting her most private
thoughts on something as silent and undeceiving as paper.

It should have been so simple. While she knew that no romance with Mulder would
have been uncomplicated, this was ripping her insides apart. Silence had become
her native language, and she was fluent in reticence. There seemed nothing more
implausible than to describe the taste of Mulder's lips to another living human
being.

Years from now, when she was an old, old woman, would she remember her yearly
pilgrimages down to the South Carolina shore, or would they simply become
moments of dementia, illusions that she couldn't determine from reality? Their
entire partnership had been founded on the search for truth, and she had always
sought hard, irrefutable evidence to back up their work.

Calmly, she brought herself to her feet, and set about on the beach gathering
up seashells. Coral-colored conchs, multifaceted oyster shells, the occasional
sand dollar, and small, perfect snail-shaped ones that she couldn't quite
identify. As the wet, sandy objects began to pile up in her hands, some sort of
serenity touched her. It was just like gathering evidence in the old days,
finding physical attestation to his claims and his ideas. Even in matters of
the heart, she needed hard facts.

Each weathered, barnacle-covered artifact was testimony to her years of
romance, and Scully fingered them lovingly before placing them on the rock that
she and Mulder had shared on the first meeting.

>From atop the cliff, Mulder watched her. How carefully she chose, the careful,
clinical way that her precise hands cleaned the shell, checking for animal life
and shining the inner curl of every conch. Puzzled but fascinated, he thought
of the scientist he used to know, finding every calculated move still resting
in the circumspect movements of her palms and fingertips. As Scully
methodically worked, Mulder remembered her skill as a doctor and physician, the
way that her hands had so systematically catalogued every inch and crevice of
the human body.

The insatiable thirst for her was starting to grow, and so he slowly walked
down the rocks, drinking in her image as she came into focus; a portrait in
fire seeming in her element amidst the maelstrom of oceanic beauty.

Her eyes lifted from the smooth pearly inside of the shell, seeing him descend
from the dune-covered cliffs above. Immediately, her doctor's mind began to
diagnose all the little differences in him. His hair, still sumptuously thick
and dark, was beginning to gray a little at the temples in a vulnerably
appealing manner. Though he was too far away to tell, she swore that she could
see a stooped quality to his walk, a hunched manner that spoke of long, hard
life and painful times. //Well, of course he's had painful times, Scully,// she
reminded herself. //And you've been through most of them with him.//

Shocked for a moment, she briefly wondered if she was walking so despondently,
too.

But all curiosity was stolen away when he found her, and all that mattered to
her resided in his eyes. Olive-colored, amber-flecked, soul-shattering eyes.
Sinking into the rich, caramel depths of him, Scully leaned forward and
drooping against his chest, sighing as she inhaled the unmistakable musk of
him. Closing her eyes, she breathed him in over and over, drawing the essential
strength of him inside her blood and capturing it within her marrow, letting it
course through her veins and careen throughout her body. With each small
breath, each awakening awareness to him, she felt herself trudge through the
murkiness of her day-to-day life, rising past and above it. While his breath
ruffled her hair and her cheek pressed against his rising and falling breath,
she felt herself come together again.

Scully surfaced.

The fist that had been so intensely gripping the seashell loosened, and the
conch fell to the sand without a second thought. Scully let go of the misery,
and emerged whole.

Chin trembling, lower lip starting to waver, Scully felt the tears come to her
eyes, and she wondered how she ever thought of betraying him. How she ever
thought of leaving him. When the sum and substance of him permeate her, the
emptiness, the hollowness, the nothingness began to fill, and she could never
abandon the sensation of finding some sort of tranquility.

The void was made full.

He rested his hand in her hair, his palm as gentle and as a cat's paw, and
stroked the back of her head as her tears spilled over, his own silent ones
caressing her brow like a christening. A baptism through saline. A promise that
had long ago been sealed through honor and a mutual respect had been fulfilled,
and they had been returned to each other, battered, bruised, and in many ways
worse for the wear.

Yet somehow, they had survived. They had not triumphed in their endurance, nor
had they emerged in any sort of glory or heroism. He was older, she was harder,
but it seemed to fade away like the grains of sand beneath the rolling surf,
chipping away at the shells they protected themselves with so that they were,
as always, on equal but different ground.

Nothing could break the connection. Time could not wear it down, and
circumstance could not steal it away. Nothing had ever been so clear to her as
that fact was now, and a small ripple of shame began in the back of her mind.
Shame for considering betrayal.

The ravenous tide tugged at her seashells, but Scully was sinking, falling,
diving into the rapture of spiritual reconnection.

As clouds gathered in the distance, looming thick and black above the crashing
seas, Mulder's mouth slowly met hers, the softness of his kiss more intense
than any violence or any roughness could express. It was what he withheld from
her that made the passion so striking, what was kept tightly behind layers and
layers of his defenses, but what was revealed with the tremble in his lower lip
as it tremulously brushed her upper one, or his fingers twitching in her hair,
itching to do more faster and more thoroughly.

//It would take so little to undo him,// she thought, hearing his shuddering
gasp as she lined the luscious curl of his lower lip with the tip of her
tongue. And she hissed out a sigh when he took her upper lip between his teeth
and teased it with his teeth. //And it would take even less for me...//

"The house," he murmured, and as though to accentuate the rasped reminder, the
wind gusted around them, throwing her hair around her face in a streak of
brilliant red. "Now."

*****

Every touch was flammable. Every whisper was ignitable. The whispering friction
of his satin lip brushing across the peach fuzz of her ripe earlobe was enough
to make her jangled nerves set on fire. But still, there was no rush. Their
seduction was slow, their foreplay aching with tension.

Eyelids fluttering open and shut from the shaking gentility of Mulder's hands
on her collarbone, Scully rolled her head back and forth on the pillow as
Mulder shook out cries, moans, sighs, pleas...

The side of his hand trickled down the length of her neck, gliding down to
nestle in her collarbone and dip into the hollow of her throat. The tremble in
his fingers was starting to drive her mad, starting to drive her insane. Half
of her wanted the force of his passion, and the other half wanted to be played
as lightly as his butterfly caress.

Her heart quickened and her moans increased when the slow, delectable stroke
turned to the south, grazing the tops of her breasts like feathers, and then
the bare whisper of his fingertips circled and twined around her nipples. She
saw her body respond to him, saw the way that her breasts swelled to meet the
teasing palms, saw how her nipples hardened to points underneath his touch. She
saw so much, the way that he was positioned over her, the lowered lashes as he
concentrated on her breasts, the lowering of his lips to her throat. She saw
him make her come alive.

Closing her eyes, she felt everything.

Eyes open wide, Mulder watched her as he touched her, drinking in the vision
that had eluded him all year. Watched her twist and rise to him under his
touch. Watched her eyelids flutter and her hair writhe as though the red
strands could feel her arousal, too. Back rising in an arch of lily flesh,
Scully was a flaming flower, whose flowers unfurled with precision and caution.
Afraid to reveal too much of herself. Afraid to scare anyone away.

She covered up that insecurity with cold confidence; Mulder had known that ever
since the beginning. But this insecurity seemed to be built on different
reasons, different passages of time. Licking his lips, Mulder brought his head
underneath the soft spot of her jaw, nuzzling at the tender skin there with his
lips. "I missed you here," he whispered. He was trying to tell her that he
missed the places that made her vulnerable, like the ticklish spots behind her
knees, or the soft fall of her eyelashes. He missed the delicate skin beneath
her breasts, the soft rosy pink of her cheeks when she blushed. Mulder had
missed all these things, all of these little intricacies about  Scully that
belonged solely to him. The magic of her hair playing against the hollow
smoothness of her throat. The vibrant vermilion and gold that was interlaced
like a tapestry of silk that trailed around her face. Every color, every
shadow, every delicate bone in her body was worthy of worship.

The rosy flush of her lips curled into a small smile, the twinge of her lips
inviting him to continue his compliments and encouraging his hands. His fingers
tangled in the mass of her hair, again with that deceiving gentility. Beneath
his tenderness was a magnitude of withheld intensity, kept at bay not because
he thought that it might frighten her, but because he was being overpowered by
the storm.

"And I missed you here," she murmured back, her fingers touching the corner of
his mouth and whispering a little kiss to him. "I missed you here." The slow
seduction, the fumbling foreplay, the radiant restraint was beginning to
overwhelm her, beginning to take over her senses and swarm her with thoughts of
him and him alone. Of completing this. Of finishing it.

The backs of his knuckles trailed down the sensitive skin of her belly, and she
inhaled deeply, sucking her stomach in as his fingertips trailed lower. When
his palm passed over the wine-colored thicket of curls that were deeper in
color and darker in texture, she shuddered out a moan. She knew what was
coming; knew what would come next. Knew that the end was nearing.

"Did you miss me there, too?" she whispered, knowing his answer and yet wanting
his voice. Words had been too few between them since his arrival. She had been
taunted and teased with the elegance of his face, fading and dwindling in the
uncertainty of memory for the past months, and she had been cut off completely
from the velveteen bliss of Mulder's words.

"God, Scully, I missed you," he gasped, feeling the touch of her tongue on his
earlobe, her lower lip caressing the scar from his pierced ear in college. "I
missed you." His voice combined with the eloquence of his words sent waves of
desire through her, and she knew that when she climaxed, it would be a tsunami.
Consuming. Overwhelming. Mammoth.

And there was the first brush, the baby's breath caress of his fingertip on her
clit, breathing skin over skin as though too much would destroy her. She knew
that he had learned her rhythms and her pace long ago, and knew that he was
using that knowledge against her right now. She liked the pressure firm,
unrelenting, hard and solid against her, liked the arousal threatening to
consume her. Mulder was pressing against her with more resolution now. The
tease was beginning to fulfill; Mulder was keeping his vow to overwhelm her.

Watching her writhe was delicious. The scent of her hair as it washed back and
forth on the pillow, the feel of her hands as she kneaded his ass, the warmth
of her breath as she rocked on the bed, her hips first slowly circulating and
then gaining speed and insistence as his rhythm increased and his finger
quickened. These were the elements of Scully that had been missing from his
life, and without Scully, there was no fulfillment. Pushing against her
clitoris with feverish presses thrown into the gentle caresses, he saw her face
turn rosy from the heat he was giving her. He turned his thumb against her, and
she arched her back and screamed his name with a heat that was almost orgasm,
almost climax, but not yet release. "Mulder, Mulder, God..." she whispered
afterward, and he thrust one finger into her; she clenched around him and
begged for more with her hips.

"Come on, Scully," he coaxed. "Let it go."

She couldn't let go, couldn't release herself from the *sensation*. All of the
emotion, all of the feeling, all of the senses awakened and brought out of
their prolonged hibernation. She didn't want to surrender that, didn't want to
let it go. She wanted to be brought alive like this forever, existing in
ecstasy underneath the tumultuous touch of Mulder's fingers and thumb. Never
again, never again. She never wanted to be dead like she had been again. All
that she felt now was *life*. Never again, never again...

"I'll come with you," he whispered, "just let go."

And so he joined her in that steaming place where life rushed around them,
where sensations took the place of the pain and the longing and the arousal was
dominant over everything else. Entering into her, he moaned as she surrounded
him, as her wet warmth consumed his rigid cock. It was no longer an illusionary
pleasure, but one that existed within reality and all around it, too. On the
edge of release, on the edge of climax, on the edge of bliss was a place where
everything felt. The brush of her hair against his chest was like lightning.
The feel of his hand across her belly was like fire. The wash of her lips
across his shoulder was like the ocean. All of life was poured and culminated
into this magical existence, and they were alive again.

Resurrected.

"Come with me," she finally whispered, and her voice was like a symphony within
this universe of magnified senses. "If you come with me, maybe this'll last."

She kissed his mouth, turned his face into hers, and the world shattered.
Sensation was everything, screaming senses and ferocious feeling, and then it
gave way to the world again. Reality slowed. Time regained its usual pace.
Closing her eyes, she gave it away, and Mulder took her in his arms.

*****

Waves turned dark like glass, but their ferocity made them choppy and capped
with white. The hurricane was off the coast, but moving off to the north,
making it virtually harmless. Its rough winds were still enough to stir the
ocean tides, creating danger for anyone who dared to swim or surf. The waves
crashed with astounding violence onto the sandy coastline, the jade-gray water
rampaging the coastline with intensity that was not passionate or loving like
the one that had been unleashed in the bedroom, but a violence that was
malevolent and malicious.

Gusts and gales of wind slammed them, and her hair blew about her face in a
typhoon of balmy red. He watched it spiral and flail, watched it try to battle
the ocean air, and then watched it surrender and become a mess of tangles and
brambles. Watched Scully's wild, untamed red allow the wind to blow it and
snarl. There was an element of apathy in that, and there had never been
anything apathetic about Scully. She was a fighter, a battler, a crusader and a
champion. Even when it came to her riveting red hair.

Tilting his head, Mulder came to realize that there was some sadness about
Scully that had not been there before. Even before their separation, she had
always been a woman that carried some distant mantle of grief, but now she was
a creature of great sorrow, and this despondency had worn her down.
Disheartened, Mulder knew that he could never completely cure her of that quiet
mourning, that all she had gone through and all she had seen had worked at her
and made her different. He could never know the full extent of her suffering,
and therefore he could never totally cure her. There was no antidote for
anguish like theirs, nothing that could erase it or eradicate it.

But for a week, it was lessened, and for a week, there was peace. Even if it
was only temporary tranquility.

Seashells littered the beach, broken and chipped by the hurricane's tidal
wrath, and Scully looked at them with sympathy. She understood them.

"This beach used to be longer, didn't it?" Mulder asked from behind her, and
she turned away from the shattered shells to face her former partner and annual
lover. His hands were pushed into his pockets, and his eyes were dark and
lacking a little in the intensity that had always stormed there. //His passion
has waned.//

So had hers.

"Yes, it did," she admitted, touching his shoulder and moving to stand next to
him. Propelled by the heavier winds of the hurricane, her hair fluttered in her
face, but she made no move to swipe at the uninhibited strands. What would be
the point; in mere seconds the threads would batter her face again anyway.
"There was a hurricane last year. Hurricane Eliot. The storm surge caused a lot
of beach erosion, and they still haven't worked on repairing it here yet." She
gestured to the rocks and the smaller span of sand. "The winds wear and pound
at the coast, and the sand can't take that. It fades away, and the sand is
carried out to sea with the force of the tide."

"It can't fight the surf," Mulder murmured, and she bowed her head.

"Not when the surf is so powerful."

He slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her close to him. The warmth of his
body and the height of him protected her somewhat from the spiteful sirocco
from the storm, and for a little while, there was shelter. Pressing his cheek
against her hair, Mulder inhaled the rich fragrance of her, his arm tightening
in an attempt to keep her tethered to his side forever.

"I can't ever make you happy, can I," he whispered, his tone mournful. How had
he gotten so old so quickly? She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her
off. "S'okay. I feel the same way. I just want you to know that I accept that."


"Nothing will make me happy the way that you want me to be happy," she
whispered, her hand pressing against his chest. "But this is the only week out
of the year that makes me feel alive. And it's not the water. It's not the
sand. It's you." She said this with simplicity, stating the facts and infusing
it with her once-fervent belief.

"Then promise me that you'll come back, Scully, and I'll be here," he
whispered.

It was the promise that had haunted her for a year, the promise that had hurt
her and made her worry and fret over whether or not she would be able to keep
it. It was the promise and the vow that had almost ruined the life that she had
tried to forge for herself in Pittsburgh. The promise that she had considered
breaking and considered abandoning uncountable times over winter snows and
autumn leaves. Mulder was asking for her word again, and if she gave it to him,
she promised him another year of her life.

But she would promise him it anyway, because the only week out of the year that
she felt alive was this week, and for the rest of the year, she was dead.

"I promise," she whispered, and she kissed his cheek.

She promised.

*****

It was the last summer.

*****

(end part nine)

*****

EROSION (10/10)
By: Annie Sewell-Jennings (Auralissa@aol.com)

Thanks for sticking with me throughout all of this, everybody. I hope that it
was worth your while.

*****

I never had a wedding.

Silly, really. Wanting a wedding. It seems trite at this point, after
everything that I have seen and done. After all I have withstood, after all
that I have experienced and all of the pain that I have undergone, to feel sad
about lacking a ceremony seems ridiculous. It was a fantasy in childhood, to
have a wedding in autumn under a canopy of gold and crimson. To be crowned with
the delicacy of crumbling leaves and be swathed in the finery of vibrant color
and explosive senses. And over the years, I started to accept that I would
never have such a fall wedding.

Now, without him, it comes back to haunt me.

And with that never-wedding, so does he.

Our sixth year was our final one, but I never broke my promise. He simply chose
not to come. I wandered the beaches for hours, collecting seashells, watching
the tide pull in and then meander back out, and watching the sun arch to the
top of the sky only to plummet back beneath the cerulean sea. Barefoot and
downhearted, I wandered, and with every passing moment that he did not come, I
felt the certainty within me that I would never see him again. I collected
every memory that I possessed of him, gathered them all within me, and
recreated his face with such care that I would never forget him.

The delicate line of his eyebrow, the arch of it and the lightness of it. The
hooded eyes, the luxuriance of his lashes and the kaleidoscope quality to his
ever-changing color. The plush thickness of his lower lip, pouting when he was
disappointed or ripening when he was aroused. The dark mahogany of his hair
that became sun-kissed during the summer months, so that in our last years as
clandestine lovers, he was always a hybrid between cocoa and gold. The
copper-gold of his skin. The lean, divine muscles of his back. The gentle
agility of his hands. The touch of him, the taste of him, the essence of him.

I memorized him, and then I watched the moon rise alone on the shore. It was
when the full moon became shrouded in a gauzy veil of cloud and sea mist that I
allowed myself to acknowledge him, and when I did, it was a pain that I added
to every line of his face. The pain of loss. The pain of grief. The pain of
never knowing what had become of him, and the pain of knowing that I never
would know.

For years, I have remained silent. For years, I have carried on with no mention
of Mulder, no wistful verbalization of his name and no photograph to capture
his image in permanence. I have never searched for him, knowing that any
attempt to locate him would endanger his life if he were still living. At the
beginning, I believed that he still lived. I believed that there was still life
out there for the both of us, and that perhaps one day, I would see his hair
caress his brow on the rocks and cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean on
Seabrook Island.

After fifteen years, I stopped believing that he was still alive, and after
five more, I stopped believing altogether.

The year that I retired from my work, I left Pittsburgh. I was old, I was
aging, and I was finished with that passage of time. I wanted to find a place
to settle down at last, and I wanted to feel alive when I died. I wanted to be
able to spend my last years alive with some sense of him. I thought, somewhat
naively, that relocating to the place where I had known him would give me
peace. I sold my house, I sold my garden, and I sold the life that I had never
really lived. I came back to Charleston.

I bought a house on the Battery with what money I had, and I set up a place
where I could watch the water day in and day out. There was a garden, and I was
finally able to add the magnolias and wisteria that had always been missing
from my Northern plot to the roses and tiger lilies I had always possessed. I
looked forward to this final retirement, where I could start to live my life
again with the memory of him there to overlook my last years.

The day that I moved in, there was a manila folder lying innocently on my bed.
Curiously, I picked it up, and opened it up. For a fleeting moment, I remember
thinking that I had finally discovered where Mulder was.

Instead, six photographs spilled out of the folder and fluttered to the
comforter.

Numbly, I picked one up by the corner, and felt a pain that hadn't struck me
since his first betrayal on the beach. The photograph was of me, nude, sitting
outside on our balcony, watching a storm approach. He stood behind me, a look
of total adoration on his face, and his hair being blown like luscious ribbons.
It had been our first year. It had been our first morning.

And my first thought was of how beautiful I used to be.

Each photograph was another year, another meeting, and another time that we
thought we had been beating the game. How destroyed I felt with those pictures
in my hand, looking at the youth that was slowly being drained from us from
year to year. They had always known, they had always seen, and they had never
said a word until it was too late. Until he had left, until I was alone, and
until I had resigned myself to my future. Until I had realized that I had no
future.

Just a past that had been handed to me on colored celluloid.

We had never defeated them. We were simply playing into their hand with the
unwitting innocence of true pawns. Leading the life that they allowed us to
lead. It was the ultimate defeat, the most painful string that they could pull,
simply showing me that they had always been in control, and that we had never
won.

And they had waited until I was too old and too bitter to do anything about it.

All I had left were those photographs, and I looked at them for hours. On each
one, there was his love. He had not just loved me; he had worshipped me. Seeing
that in his eyes slowly destroyed me, and realizing the full extent of what I
had meant to Mulder was all it took to undo me. Mulder's love had always
managed to unravel me.

I kissed his face again, and kept the pictures. They were all I had of him.
They were my seashells, my evidence that I had loved him and that he had loved
me. Those conchs and sand dollars that I had gathered years ago in the sunset
were passed to me in these portraits, and they had given me my concrete
romance. I had proven that there had been six years and six weeks that I had
been able to love Fox Mulder, and though those weeks had been stolen from me,
they had once existed.

That was the year that I stopped believing.

The next year was the year that I began my waiting.

Waiting for the inevitable, waiting for time to claim me, waiting for the tide
to come in and collect me. Waiting for the last little bit of erosion from the
storm. We had been nothing more than grains of sand, miniscule in comparison to
the larger picture and unable to retaliate against the mammoth savagery of the
hurricane. Our life had been a sandcastle, beautifully constructed but with
walls that could suppress nothing. I am the last turret, watching in silence as
grain of sand in that structure is lapped at by the tide and brought out to
sea, never to be seen again.

I am the witness to the erosion. I am meant to watch its destruction and then
wait for my own final demise. Fate has deemed that I will remain. We are
nothing against the vengeance of the waves, and the hurricane has spared us
nothing.

This is what has happened to me for the past thirty-five years.

This is the woman that I am at ninety-five.

I have managed to outlive too many people. My brothers are dead, and my mother
followed two years afterward. I am sure that by this time, Mulder's mother has
also passed on, and I read in the newspaper that Walter Skinner passed away
just a short time ago. Though I have no way to determine this, there is no
doubt in my mind that our cigarette-smoking nemesis died. I wish that I had a
way to know how he died, and I hope that he did not die peacefully.

I hope that his last thought was of us.

I know we would give him no reprieve.

And I also know that by now, Samantha has also passed. Again, there is no
evidence that I possess to verify that assumption, but it comes from a place
deep within myself. This knowledge that somehow, somewhere, Samantha Mulder has
passed on, and her brother never found her or saw her again. So, I must mourn
Samantha too, for she was the one who shaped the Mulder that I loved and
consequently lost.

So, I am the one that remains, and all that is left for me to do is wait. Wait
for the current that has been etching away at me to finally become victorious.
It has stolen everything away from me. My beauty faded years ago, leaving me
with my hair purely white and my eyes dulled by cataracts and hidden beneath a
network of creases and wrinkles. There is no red left, no sharp blue. It pains
me to walk, so I reside in a wheelchair most of the time. There is only one
week out of the year that I rise from the chair and force myself to pace on my
arthritis-eaten feet, simply because I want to feel the water lap at my toes.

All that remains of me is my memory, and all that remains in my memory is
Mulder.

The sun is beginning to set again, darkening from her pure gold to an orb
forged out of fire and flame. Kissing the water with her crimson lips, the sun
begins to set lower into the crystalline waters, setting them afire with her
radiance. The tide is coming in, night is starting darken the sky, and another
year has passed without him visiting our beach. I am not surprised. I am not
disappointed. I have gotten used to missing him. Missing Mulder is like loving
Mulder. It's simply a part of being Dana Scully.

Glancing behind me, I see that the child's sandcastle is nearly destroyed. The
one turret is starting to wear out, beginning to crumble underneath the weight
of the tide and its power. I wonder if the turret has any last words. I do not.
Silence has fit me well over the past years, and I stopped speaking because
there was no one left that I wanted to talk to. All of them had died before I
got to tell them everything, and I would not say another word.

The foam tries to crown the turret with a circlet of lace, and I wonder if it
has any regrets. I have many. I regret never telling my brothers that they had
become good men. I regret never letting my mother know that I had loved a man
as much as she had loved my father. I regret never really smiling at Skinner.

I regret that I never saw Rome.

Sighing, I know that these are things that were so simple that I took them for
granted, and it's painful to think of them. I could have done these things with
such ease, but fear that I would be rejected or thought poorly of prohibited me
from expressing them. Now, when all of my dignity and all of my pride has been
taken out with the tide, these acts and words remain in my memory. And I regret
them.

The child's sandcastle is torn underneath the tide, and I turn my head away
from it. Suddenly, there is an eerie clarity that I have not known in years. A
purpose that has eluded me for decades fills my being again, and it propels me
to move forward. It is as though all of my waiting has led me to this point,
and I remember waiting for him on the shoreline years ago. In that moment, my
waiting for conclusion has become waiting for Mulder again, and that waiting is
one that rejuvenates all of the parts of me that I thought deceased.

As the sun sets and the tide swipes at my ankles, a dark, incomprehensible
shape appears around the bend of the cliffs. Perhaps it is death. Perhaps it is
nothing. Perhaps it is a delusion. But perhaps it is him.

All of these years of waiting have led me to this one point, this pinnacle, and
I feel a twinge of fear. Should I go forward, or should I remain? Should I dare
to discover the identity of what I have been waiting for, or should I run from
it?

But this has been all my life has been about. Finding the evidence, finding the
truth. Pursuing the truth. Becoming the truth. I always did so with Mulder, and
it only makes sense that I continue forth now. Sailing forth on Mulder's
impulses, acting with him on a whim or an inspiration, and riding out the storm
with him.

<<It's like shrimping,>> a memory distantly tells me, and I smile. Yes, it is
like shrimping. It's riding out the storm in a brittle boat, reaping joy and
withstanding both time and sorrow, and depending on the wildness of the tide to
lead you toward rapture.

With that, I step forward and round the bend, and...

Ah, Mulder.

You were always so like the tide.

*****

"Man wonders but God decides
 When to kill the Prince of Tides"
 --Pat Conroy

*****

Author's Notes: The quote at the beginning and end of the story is from the
novel "The Prince of Tides" by Pat Conroy, a brilliant writer who captured the
magic and natural beauty of the South. I highly recommend it to anyone who
hasn't read it. It's quite possibly the best contemporary novel written yet,
IMHO.

And if I have ever called "Wallpaper" my dark little baby, this is my shining
baby. It was difficult to write, painstakingly conceived, and revised and
re-read more times than any of my previous works. It was, without a doubt, the
work that I agonized over the most. I have lost sleep over "Erosion". And yet,
in the end, it is one of the works that I am the proudest of. I hope that you
found something in it that touched you, and if there's anything you want to
comment on, just send me an e-mail at Auralissa@aol.com. Anyone will tell you
that I am more than willing to discuss anything with you, and I'll reply to
every little piece of feedback. :)

This is dedicated to Kristin. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

*****

THE END

*****