From: Auralissa Date: 17 Feb 1999 04:01:41 GMT Subject: NEW: "Achromatic (1/1)" By: Annie Sewell-Jennings ACHROMATIC (1/1) By: Annie Sewell-Jennings (Auralissa@aol.com) DISCLAIMER: The characters of Dana Scully and Fox Mulder do not belong to me. They are the property of Ten Thirteen Productions. SUMMARY: When Scully surrounds herself in Fellig's photography in an attempt to understand the man who sacrificed his life for her, the colors stop seeming so vibrant. CATEGORY: VA. UST. RATING: PG-13. SPOILERS: Post-"Tithonus". ARCHIVE: This story will first be posted at http://members.aol.com/auralissa/index.html and then at ATXC and XAPEN. Please request permission to archive or feature this story. AUTHOR'S NOTES: I've been suffering from writer's block for a while now, in case you didn't know, but it's finally lifted. I've got stories working and things cooking. And my smut has come back to bless me with, er, smuttiness again. So this is my story, my little work to celebrate the episode that marked the return of my ability to write -- "Tithonus". Thanks to Kristin Pohaski, Heather Stone, and Khyber for being supportive of my work, and I especially thank Kristin and Heather for editing. ***** ACHROMATIC ***** The butterfly's broken wings were crooked, disabled, brittle and torn. Once, they were the color of ripe tangerines, spotted with the inky markings unique to each individual insect. The color of tiger lily, the texture of fine silk, the butterfly was once a creature of graceful, delicate beauty. Soft, elegant, pretty and dainty, with wings like stained glass. It should still be fluttering through cerulean sky, basking in sunlight and sunset with its Spanish orange glory. Instead, it lay there on her windowsill, motionless and lifeless. Wings broken, spirit discarded, unique vibrancy drained. Dull, shattered, the butterfly lay in the pale sunlight and died, just the faint, helpless twitch of a wing being the only sign of its dwindling life. Scully took its picture. She regrets the photograph now, holding the package of developed film like she is cradling a dirty secret. Close to the breast, covered by her hands, as though someone could see through the pack of photos and see the pictures she has taken inside. As if the image of her gilded butterfly is burning through the paper, and she bites the inside of her lip to keep from throwing the photographs away. She took two rolls of film into the photo shop earlier this morning. One was Alfred Fellig's, and the other was Scully's. She had to know, had to know if her picture was on that roll. If he had taken her picture. If she was supposed to have been the next addition to his morbid portfolio. Now, she sits alone on her couch, silence deafening and colorless, and opens up the first packet of photographs. It is the butterfly, awash not in brilliant nectarine hues but in the dull, lifeless shades of black, white, and gray. Achromatic. Just like the rest of Fellig's pictures, stark and harsh. Cruel dispassion. The butterfly has been drained of its distinctive, divine colors, of its brightly colored paper wings, and it just lies there in the photographs like a frail piece of broken glass. She recalls the color, the beauty of the butterfly as it lay dying on her windowsill. How delightfully bright the colors were, how dainty it seemed. But now, painted in cold black and white, none of its fragility comes across. It is not delicate, frail, dainty or sweet. Expressionlessly, Scully examines every photograph of the butterfly with equal attention, from the gray, toneless light that sweeps over the delicate wings of the butterfly, to the bent angle of the antennae. She studies her photographs until the shapes and images no longer make sense, losing all substance and definition, until it has no meaning. Then she picks up the binder and opens it again. The first picture that Alfred Fellig ever took was that of a dead butterfly. The grays and black, the desolation of the photograph, was only the beginning for Fellig, as his artwork escalated into portraits of elderly men and women, of whores and of gang members. She has looked through Fellig's portfolio for the past week. The first time she looked through it, she vomited. The second time, she cried. But by the third time, she just looked. It was during the ninth time that color stopped registering. She does not remember what shade of burgundy the binder is colored, or the hue of the dead monarch's wings. She looked at herself in the mirror this morning, and all that she saw was dark, bland gray. Her own red is no longer distinguishable. And she does not feel the gunshot wound. The fire in her side is dull and numb, like a part of her skin that she does not feel. Scully does not feel much of anything these days. The dead insects and animals progress into photographs of human beings over time, and Scully looks at these creatures with a feeling of nothingness.No feeling, no emotion, no empathy. They are simply models, objects for Fellig's camera to capture. She sees them, registers their existence, but nothing is there that she can relate to. They are merely subjects for the art. Posing for the lens. She keeps these portfolios because nobody else wants them. Nobody else cares. Deep underneath the numbness, beneath the grays, Scully cares. She does not understand why she sits on the couch, holding photo albums that hold death instead of wedding pictures or graduation photographs, instead of six feet underground. She does not know why she is alive, and why Alfred Fellig is dead. She does not know if she has inherited his disease. Scully does not know if she has eternal life, and she is scared. She is very, very scared. She took her first photograph the other day, of a butterfly dying, and she is afraid that in a few weeks' time, the subject matter will change. As she looks through the photographs, her eyes registering only achromatic shades, she slowly begins replacing the victims that she sees with the deaths that she has witnessed in her own life. Instead of the young woman strewn across the back seat of the Chevrolet, she pictures her own father, eyes blank and blood rich, and she sees her mother's hand covering his heart. She wonders which camera angle she would have used to capture the floral print of Melissa's dress, or what lens would best show the delicate line of her daughter's throat. She could make a thousand photo albums for Mulder's deaths, but no lens could ever capture the demise of a man like him. In the beginning, imagining his death had been impossible. Now, she just wants to take the picture. But no matter how long she pores over the photographs, no matter how much attention she gives to the angle of a leg or the lowering of an eyelid, she cannot find a reason. Cannot see an explanation. She does not know why she lives, she does not know if she will live. She just sits there, alone, looking at the pictures and not missing color. Quietly, the door opens behind her, and Scully realizes that she did not even hear Mulder knocking. She did not hear the telephone ring. And in many ways, she does not hear him now. But she can hear the sound of Fellig's camera warming up. Of the camera heating, of the flash preparing. She can hear the click of the lens as he takes his pictures, and she can remember the sound of her own camera when she captured the butterfly's death. He does not say a word as he walks to her, and he does not comment on the thirteen photo albums that cover her couch cushions. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees his hand pass over the cover of one, and her spine stiffens. He may not comment now, but he will. She knows her partner well. She knows Mulder well enough to know that his skin looks best when splayed copper with candlelight, and that no camera can ever show the beauty of his awkward nose. And she knows that eventually, his mocha voice will tell her that she is losing herself, and she knows that he will be right. She does not know if she will care or not. Mulder picks up a portfolio, the one with the photographs from the nineteen forties, and she hears him turn the pages. She wonders what he will think, what he will say. How he will tell her to step away, or that she needs to talk to somebody. That she needs to talk to him. She dismisses the thought from her mind, and her colorless fingers turn colorless pages, her eyes focused on colorless pictures. "His portfolios?" he asks, quietly, unobtrusively. As if he does not wish to intrude on her silent unraveling. She does not nod at him, and that is confirmation enough. As she hears his heartbroken sigh from behind her, she looks at a photograph of a young girl, no older than four. Fellig liked to volunteer at the hospitals. He liked to photograph the children dying. She hears a shuddering sigh again, and she knows that he is looking over her shoulder at the chemotherapy-stricken patients, at the emaciated cancer patients, at the skeletal bodies of the young boys and girls. "Is this what you've been doing this past week?" he asks, and she does not know if she hears concern or rage rippling his velveteen voice. She thinks it might be a mixture of the two. But again, she does not speak. Finally, Mulder snatches the portfolio from her, snapping it shut before her eyes, and she is forced to look at him, and she wonders what his photograph would look like. He is brimming with fear. That is the unknown element in his voice. Mulder is afraid, and she is what scared him. "Jesus, Scully, you were supposed to be recovering," he says. "I hardly call this recuperation." Narrowing her eyes, she looks at his lean, lanky frame, and knows that only a long lens would be able to capture all of his body. She would prefer to have that longer spike of hair brushing his eyes, would want to see the stars of his eyelashes against his pasty skin. She would want to see his hands folded, would want to see his hand touching hers. Mulder's eyes widen, tinted with panic, and he blinks. "Stop," he whispers. "Stop that." She can't help it. She can only see the husky charcoal of his suit, the dark gray of his hair, the shadow of stubble on his jawline. She can't see the whorls of color on his necktie or the glitter-green of his eyes. It's not Scully's fault. It's artwork. It's what she does. And he knows that she is taking her picture of him. He is afraid, and she understands. He sits down on the couch next to her, pushing the photo albums out of the way, and Scully turns her head to look at him. "Why are you doing this, Scully?" he asks, and she blinks, surprised. "Because I believe him," she says, simply and succinctly, and it's enough to express her reasoning to Mulder. In spite of all that her science and logic tells her, in spite of all her hard- earned years studying physics and the human body, she believes that Alfred Fellig could have lived forever and that he prognosticated her death. His brow furrows into those tiny webs of hurt-lines, well-defined and familiar over the years. Briefly, her finger itch to touch his forehead, to feel the texture of his copper skin, because a camera can never portray fineness. "Oh," he whispers, and she gives him a small nod. It's a hard admission for her, to tell him that she believes, but it will explain herself better than any scrapbook ever can. Then, he sees the new package of photographs, the dying monarch, and she lets him draw his own conclusions. "You believe that Fellig was immortal," Mulder murmurs, his fingers turning the photographs over and over to inspect every detail. "You believe that he could tell when a person was ready to die." "He indicated that I was the next subject for his work," Scully says. Mulder does not completely succeed in covering up his shudder, and through her numbness, Scully feels a brief, heartfelt ache for him. It bothers him to know that Fellig almost took her picture. "And you want to know why you lived," Mulder finishes, and he tilts his head, looking at her. "Tell me about Fellig, Scully." She feels a trickle of velvet across her lobe, and she realizes that she's hearing Mulder say her name. He has such a nice voice. "I want to know." So she tells him. She tells him about Fellig's dispassion, his lack of sensitivity when it came to the victims he so brutally photographed. She tells him about his one human emotion: envy. She tells him about Fellig's jealousy, his longing to achieve what every other mortal got to have. She tells him how Fellig became the way that he was, about his cowardice and the nurse's sacrifice during the Yellow Fever. All the while, she turns the pages of Fellig's photo album, scanning the victims' faces for the death that Fellig tried to capture. When she is finished, Mulder is silent for a moment, without his usual philosophy or fragmented psychology. Then, he speaks. "Fellig traded places with the nurse," he murmurs. "He let her die instead of him, because he was too afraid to die." "Yes," Scully says. "And then he gave his life for you, and let death take him instead," Mulder murmurs, and she bows her head. He knows now why she photographed the monarch, and why she has drowned herself in these photo albums. "Yes," she whispers, and his fingers slowly cup her chin, a thumb brushing the hollow of her jaw. Softly, he turns her head away from the photo albums, from their achromatic starkness, and she meets his eyes. "You aren't immortal, Scully." She sees the gold in his eyes, the copper, the amber and the brown, the jade. Relief is colored hazel and emerald, the incredible vibrancy of Mulder's eyes, and there is no name for their color. She sees this color, and it's beautiful. Her chin trembles a little as he speaks. "Scully, Fellig was a coward. He was a coward and he never repented for it. He let that innocent woman die in front of him, and then he let a thousand more people die without assisting them. The reason he was given immortality, the reason he was cursed with eternal life, was not because someone took his place, but because he never appreciated life in the first place." Maybe he is right. She doesn't know. She knows that death was coming for her, bleeding and slumped against the wall, and that when she closed her eyes, she was saved. Fellig took her place. But the colors of Mulder's eyes, brilliant and consuming in the bland, dry landscape, compels her to listen to what he has to say. "What did you talk about that day with him?" Mulder asks, and she stays focused on those sole prisms of hazel. "We talked about life," she says. "Love." He swallows, and something in his eyes shifts, turning darker and yet brighter. "Love?" he asks, and his voice is hoarser, rougher. Whenever the subject of love or passion comes up, the colors shift in Mulder's eyes like a sexual kaleidoscope, and there is no crayon in any Crayola box to describe that particular shade of beauty. "He said that love only lasted seventy years at best," she says. "He couldn't remember his own wife's name, and instead of that making him sad, it only irritated him." She swallows. "Like when you forget the next verse to your favorite song or something. Trivial, cheap." Though she does not say it, a part of her wonders if she would ever forget Mulder's name, or the indescribable color of his eyes. A slight flinch is all that he gives her, and the corner of Scully's mouth twitches. "He went on to tell me how he became the man that he was, and then..." She swallows again, trying not to choke on the memories of fear that are being dredged up. "He told me I was lucky, and I heard him warm up the camera flash..." "Oh," he says, his voice choked for a minute, and she shakes her head. "I panicked, Mulder," she says, never noticing how her words were speeding up or how she was beginning to see the dark navy of his suit or the rich mahogany of his hair. "I told him that I wasn't going to die, demanded to know what he was implying, and all he said..." As Mulder's pained skin starts to show its lustrous color, she feels tears that she hasn't shed for herself glimmer. "He said that he just wanted to take the picture." He just wanted to take the picture. Instead, he gave her life. A copper hand covers her pale one, and Mulder quiets Scully. "You want to know why you're alive now?" he whispers. "Not because Fellig took your place, but because he finally saw what *life* was. He was looking for death, trying to capture that, but he never saw what life was." It's true. The rationalization makes sense, that when Fellig was photographing death, he should have been photographing life. He should have been taking pictures in color. "He didn't take your place," Mulder murmurs, and his voice is a rainbow. Her shoulders sag, and Scully leans forward to hug him, to hold him tightly in her arms. Her arms encircle his waist, her hand reaches up to hold his hair, and everything is a mass of color again. "Jesus," she whispers, as the achromatic settles into a spectrum of golds and greens. Her side aches, but it's okay, because it's the first time she's felt that pain since the shooting itself. A long, soothing hand strokes her back from her shoulders to the familiar small of her back. She feels each caress of a fingertip, feels how slightly his nose nuzzles against the hollow of her jaw, and when he speaks, pink satin whispers against her skin. "You're not Alfred Fellig, Scully," he whispers. Scully holds him for a while, letting herself inhale the deep musk of his smell and his color, and she waits until he leaves to throw her photographs away. The butterfly was prettier in orange. ***** (end) ***** All feedback will be *greatly* appreciated at Auralissa@aol.com! I would appreciate any comments you have to give me. :) ***** -------------------------------------------- Visit my archive: http://members.aol.com/auralissa/index.html --------------------------------------------