From: Pellinor Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 14:54:45 +0100 Subject: NEW: Another Country (4/9) Another Country (4/8) by Pellinor (Pellinor@astolat.demon.co.uk) ___ The three parts that follow make up "Another Country II: Death of Grass" CLASSIFICATION: SRA (though I don't think it will be too scary for non-shippers) RATING: PG SUMMARY: There is something deeply, terribly, wrong in Mulder's world... ****** It had been great once, this place. Crowded streets, and mirrored buildings against the sky; masonry and monuments. It was dead now - dead for untold centuries. It had died, and the wind had taken dust and soil and seeds of grass and had covered it beyond all imagination. Mulder sank to his knees. The wind came from the sea, cold and unrelenting. Only to the leeward side of the great toppled towers were there ghosts. The earth mounds had spared these buildings, and the ruins were still recognisable: an apartment block with specks of red paint on the rotten door; a store with a gaping front; a metal stairway... Silent there, his wondering hand against his mouth, it had been easy for Mulder to see ghosts. He'd seen smiling faces passing on the stairway, and women buying clothes. He'd seen children. It had looked too much like a city there, and his imagination had populated it He preferred the waterfront. Buffeted by the wind, there was little that looked like a city there. He could half close his eyes and see nothing but grass and sand and waves, and could tell himself he was in the countryside, not in a graveyard. His eyes hid from the truth. He knew, though. The miasma of low cloud that was almost rain collected on his hair and ran down his face, slow and spare. His eyes ached, and the water that dripped off his chin could have been warm tears mingling with the rain. The fall of great cities. It was no mere archaeological relic, cold and distant. He felt it with a great, personal pain. It was the nightmare future. It was... Deep shaking breath as he clenched his shaking fists. He had seen something of his own apartment in that red door, though there was nothing the same about them. It spoke to his fears. It moved him. And then he opened his eyes fully, and saw it. An animal had dug, once, though the hole was old and crumbling. Shiny with wetness, a human shin bone protruded from the earth, and, close by, barely recognisable, the immeasurably old remains of a digital watch. ****** There was the faintest whisper in the air - some small difference. Rain was falling, and the sky was greying towards the welcome veil of darkness. Wind still stirred his hair and the sea was rhythmic, hypnotic. "You left." Scully's voice, faint. He smiled internally, strangely pleased at that, but then he remembered what she did, and how she had left him, and the smile faded. "Why did you leave?" Her voice had that icy control that always masked her deepest hurt, or sharpest anger. "This isn't where I saw you last." He cleared his throat, speaking the first words he had spoken since her last coming. "You expected me to wait, after...?" He ran his hand over his wet face. "I didn't know you'd come back. I didn't know if you believed I existed." He wondered if she would ever understand how much that had hurt. "But I came back." Scarcely above a whisper. Her hair was paler than it should be, untouched by rain. He snatched his gaze downwards. There was earth on his hand, and he wondered darkly how many bodies from the long-dead city were there, rotted, on his fingers. He said nothing. He was amazed how much it touched him - that she had swallowed her disbelief and come back to him. "Did you run, after I... went?" Her words were bitter, sharp. "Run away hoping I couldn't find you. Ditch me? This is..." She spread her hands. "This is... This is miles away. There was no sea there." He took a deep breath, feeling the cold assault of the wind on his lungs. "I walked. My feet hurt, but I walked. I couldn't stay there, not after you... awakened me. I needed to find out. I need to know what sort of world I'm in. It was dying, there." Her head moved - one side, then the other. When she spoke, there was a terrible resonance in her voice. "This place died long ago. What is it? A city?" He nodded, his throat convulsing. "It could have been Washington, New York... anywhere. It could be us. _Something_ destroyed it." She shrugged. "A long time ago." "A long time ago." He could derive no comfort from that. "Something happened then, and something's happening now." He looked at her, wild, and wishing intensely that she was truly with him, truly real. "Look at it, Scully." She blinked. He could see her chest rise and fall, though it was surely nothing more than a memory of breathing. Her eyes scanned, seeing the dying grass, and, in the dusk, the spreading stain of decay on the hillside beyond. "I've seen it everywhere, Scully. Days, now." He could hear the tremor in his voice. "It's starting; it's spreading. I... I'd fight it, but I don't know what it is. I don't know... Is there anyone else? Is this world worth fighting for?" A shadow passed over her face, but she said only, "days?" Her voice was distracted. He nodded bleakly. It was a slap in the face, a rejection. "Hours." There was a challenge in her eyes. "I came back. Mom was there. I went to bed, closed the door... and came over. Only hours, Mulder." He laughed, for what else could he do? "Remember Narnia, Scully? Time runs differently here. You live a lifetime and become kings and queens, but get back in time for tea." There was no smile on her lips. She seemed scarcely to have heard him. His breathing quickened. "Scully?" Urgent, but she didn't look at him. "I might be the only person alive in this whole world. I don't belong here. It's dying around me..." His words meant so much more. Her hands were tight clasped, her attitude defensive. "I believe in you, Mulder," she said, quickly, though she spoke it as if the revelation hurt her. He closed his eyes, and said nothing. "I've been thinking about it..." She took a deep breath. "It's not unscientific. Theories of hyperspace are becoming more and more accepted within the physics community. There are mathematical equations that describe the workings of the physical world. When we assume that there are multiple dimensions, they become simpler, more unified." She recited it all on one note, not connecting with her words at all. On the hillside, the stain was darker, and spreading. He drew his emotions close, knowing that she had not changed. He had hoped that, because of was _him_, she could simply feel it and believe, and not need reasons. "They talk about flatlanders - people who live in only two dimensions. They're like paper cut-outs lying on the desk." She closed her eyes. "If I picked one up... They would be incapable of envisaging the third dimension. If I lifted one up, to its friends it would just have disappeared. I could put it down somewhere else, on the floor, perhaps. It would think that it had jumped worlds. It would be magic. It would be... It would be beyond its comprehension." He gave a bark of laughter. "Happened to Homer Simpson once." "Coming here..." She opened her eyes and for the first time he saw the fear in them, well concealed. "It's incredible. It's not impossible, Mulder. There are things I haven't explained yet, but..." Her hand snatched out for his, then withdrew, as if remembering how she would go through him. He had never in his life felt so alone, so bereft. He was without an anchor here, not knowing what to strive for. "The so-called laws of physics are only theories, Mulder, though we treat them as fact. Theories can be overturned by empirical evidence." She swallowed, looked down. "I haven't always remembered this. I've clung to what I knew as fact. I've been quick to dismiss evidence as anomalies." He lashed out at her. He would make her hold him, make her accept. "Feel this, Scully." His fingers sank into the essence of her, closing round where the bone of her wrist should be. "Can't you..." There was a catch in his voice. "Can't you just feel this, and believe. For God's sake, it's me, Scully. I don't want to be argued away as a scientific anomaly. I want..." "I can't do that." Her voice was tight. She was answering his unspoken thought, knowing. "It's wrong to expect me to. I can't be... untrue to myself. I need to argue things, to explain things. I can't work on blind faith, Mulder. I can't. It's not fair." He let his breath out in a slow exhalation. Still he held her, his wet hand closing round the appearance of her dry one. He felt wild, desperate. "I've come a long way, accepting this, Mulder. It's..." And she paused, frowning, and he filled in the gaps for her, hearing her resent him for making her, hearing her hate him for overturning her certainties. Then she smiled softly, ruefully. "It's not as hard as I thought it would be. Somehow I thought believing would change me somehow. I'm... I'm still Dana Scully." He heard his own breathing, in and out, in and out. It was shaking as he shivered in the wind of the darkening night. "You want me to believe you without question," she said, dully, as if he had disappointed her somehow by his silence. "How can I do that? I have never done that. You knew, always, that I would stand by what I thought was right. I believed in what you were fighting for, but if you'd started fighting using _their_ methods, become as bad as them... I couldn't have supported you then. You knew that, Mulder, didn't you?" He had nothing left to him. He had to nod, slowly, grudgingly. "I know," he whispered, mouth moving silently in the wind that never even touched her. He had no anger left. She believed in him, and she had come, and she was his hope in the darkness of this alien world, and she was his scourge, his tormentor. Tears swelled in his eyes, though none fell. Blindly, he pulled her, buckling at the knees, falling. His face sank into her chest, and he could almost feel a faint vibration on his cheek from where her heart should have been. It was sensual, strange. The feeling clutched at his throat. "You can go, Scully," he mouthed. There was the faintest touch of warmth on his face. Whisper-soft fingers touched his hair. Below him, close in the deepening night, was the creeping stain of decay, of death. When he looked up, she was gone. ****** Nights were the worst. Fox Mulder had nightmares when he was young, after that November night that changed things for ever. He would wake, his terror beyond description. He was alone in the world, alone in the darkness, suffocated in the darkness. Everyone - the loved, the hated, the unknown - all had disappeared into the void that had taken Samantha. Nothing existed - nothing. There was just him and the darkness, him and the darkness, him and the darkness... And the noise of his father crunching seeds. He had had nightmares when he was young, and now he was living that nightmare. He spent one night, days after he had last seen her, huddled in the shelter of a ruined house, head resting on a mound that hid untold bodies, and once-treasured toys and trinkets. The wind and rain gave him no relief. The silence was absolute, and every second of that dark silence told him that the world was dying, and that he was alone. He had never slept well in silence. For too long, now, he had lulled himself to sleep with the murmur of a soft television, though he had never before realised how absolutely he had come to depend on it. As a child it had been his father's seeds; as an adult, the television. They were human sounds in the darkness and dread of the night. They were a promise that he was not alone. But now the silence was absolute, and he _was_ alone. He clutched his arms round his knees, holding them tight to his chest, curling for comfort as well as warmth. He was shaking, rigid with terror. He saw himself as an ant - a tiny creature on the face of a vast world, insignificant and solitary. Emptiness swirled beyond him, and over the hillside the stain of decay spread, fiercer, ever closer to him. He _could not see_. "Scully," he mouthed. Scully was gone; Scully was an illusion; Scully was never coming back. "Scully..." But he was alone. He was alone. Alone. ****** In the rain-soaked mornings, with the blackened grass drooping and dying behind him, he would stand up and he would walk, following the sea, seeking... what? He was alone. Death surrounded him, but always ahead was the elusive impossible goal - some thriving emerald city, perhaps, where the people smiled and bathed him in love, and a wise man would show him the way home. He had been here before. As a child, he had been so needy of love, so starved. After Samantha had gone, no-one had smiled at him. He had been alone in his broken family, and alone at school on a small island where everyone knew his name and pointed. He had been alone at work, treated as a flawed genius by men who used his talents, then discarded him, and never bothered to hide their laughter. He had been alone, and death had surrounded him. Images in his dreams - Deep Throat, Melissa, his father... Every step forward brought suffering, and yet more horrible revelations. But he had never stopped. He was the shark, doggedly swimming. There had been lapses along the way - nights when he had wanted to curl in the darkness of his solitude and just give up - but in the morning he had been ready, his head raised and his hand on his gun, ready to face impossible odds, always hoping, hoping... And so, in the rain-soaked mornings, alone, with the blackened grass drooping and dying around him, he walked. He had been in this world for his whole life, and he had never once stopped walking. ****** There was no emerald city, but there was a man. Sunk to his knees in a field of sparse coarse corn, there was a man. His head was bowed. One hand was pressed to his chest, and he was breathing deeply. Mulder stopped, watched. Hope flared inside him. He had seen sharp eyes low in the grass, and occasional dark birds, but this was the first real human life he had seen. The man coughed. "Are you okay?" Mulder stepped forward, hands stretched out to show that his palms were empty. The man gave no reaction. The hand on his chest moved to his brow, kneading it with his fingers as if his head was throbbing. "Sir?" There was a tremor in Mulder's voice. He had walked so far sustained by the hope that there was life, but it had been wild hope, not sure expectation. The man lowered his hand. His eyes were full of fear. Mulder's breathing was tight. He ran his tongue over his dry lips. "Sir?" The man's mouth fell open. Mulder knelt down, one hand reaching out, his neck lowered submissively. A distant part of his mind registered that the people of this world could be hostile, but he needed to overcome this man's fear - needed to. The man would know truths. "Are you okay? Can you..." Pause. "Can you hear me? See me?" The man's face was lined, with age and care. Beside him in the corn was a scythe of gleaming steel, cast seamlessly, though his clothes were little more than rags in shades of brown. As Mulder watched, his eyes flickered, and he spoke... He spoke words. A flow like water of unintelligible words in an alien language, painted with the unmistakable tone of fear. Mulder tensed, almost cried out in dread. He could be praying, a torrent of pleading words to some otherworldly god, begging for protection from some spirit he could only sense. "Can you see me?" His hand twitched. He wanted to grab the man's wrist, to force him to look at him, to _see_ him. Words flowed, high and angry, punctuated with gasps for breath. Was he seeing him? Was he seeing him? "Are you okay?" But it was desperate now, the tone almost accusing. He lunged for the man, and his fingers closed round his wrist and the man's flesh was solid. It was solid. He let his eyes slip shut, relief depriving him of strength. It was solid. "I'm..." His tongue was heavy. "I'm sorry." He looked down at his wrist, and the man's emaciated hand, whitening under his grip. But it was too soon to let him go, to forgo the sweet welcome touch of something human. The man's lips moved, framing unknown words. He seemed to go limp. "Can you understand me at all?" Mulder asked, wearily. His elation was fading. The man was solid, and he was not alone, but he could remember days at the Bureau, surrounded by people, talk and laughter swirling around him, but excluding him. Loneliness could be most acute when there were people. The man let out a breath, shaky. His eyes glinted. "You can't, can you?" He closed his eyes again, and it felt like a hand closing round his throat. And then fire slashed at his arm. Words like bullets, high and angry. Fire... He opened his eyes, and stared, betrayed, at the warm blood on his hand, and the way the knife shone even in the light rain. It shone still as if it fell to the ground and lay there, and as the man's blood-spattered fingers uncurled limply. Words still ran from him. Mulder was beyond words. He pressed his right hand against the slash on his left forearm, feeling the blood well between his fingers. He let his eyes fill with betrayal and reproach. Still the man spoke. Pain like swelling fire throbbed with his heart beat. "I don't understand," he cried, hurt and lost. The previous night he had felt unutterably alone. This was worse. If the emerald city was there, it was full of people who didn't speak his language and whose smiles were not for him. They would attack him, drive him out, hate him. It was Samantha in a field in Canada, not knowing him. It was Samantha in a diner, pulling away from him, fear in her eyes. And still the man spoke. "What are you saying?" he almost sobbed. It was staggering, hurt and exhausted, through a field of blood, and reaching the gorgeous tower, but finding it locked to him. "He's asking if you've come back. Are you the first of them, come back to finish it?" ****** end of part 4 ****** Another Country (5/9) ****** Life was rushing from the man like sand in an hour glass, inexorably. Scully's face was clouded. "I can't touch him properly, Mulder. I can't see what's wrong." There was still fresh blood seeping through Mulder's fingers, though less now. "He was short of breath. He was kneeling when I found him." She faced him, speaking only for him. "He's dying, I think." Then she faced the man, speaking to his closed eyes. "Where does it hurt?" His lips moved. "It doesn't," she said, wonderingly, though the man's words had not been in English. "He says he's just tired. Numbness. Where?" A word, like a child half asleep. "Starting in the extremities. Spreading... where? God, I don't... I'm sorry. I know how to help you." Nothing. The skin on his exposed throat seemed to flicker, and then there was nothing. Soft as a whisper. "Touch him for me, Mulder?" His fingers were encrusted with dried blood. He reached out and touched the man's neck; counted... waited... "Nothing." Her shoulders slumped. "Everything dies here, Scully," he said fiercely, and felt the moisture rising in his eyes. "Everything." ****** He buried him, using the scythe and the knife, and just one hand. He buried him in the middle of a circle of wilting corn. Scully watched, hand pressed to her mouth. "I can't help." "No." Harsh. He was out of breath, and in pain, and hurt more fundamentally than that. "Your arm..." "I'm fine." He had torn a strip from his sleeve - from the dirty shirt that had travelled with him from another world. Reborn in this world, knowing no more than a child, he had thrown his clothes off and luxuriated merely in being alive. When he became Fox Mulder again, shamed, he had put them on again. "No, Mulder. I won't accept that." He reached for him, and touched him, though he saw her face tighten beforehand, as if steeling herself to do it. It was like bathing his arm in warm water - soft yet resisting, comforting and deeply sensual. The pain eased a little. For a moment, he couldn't breathe. "I'm..." He breathed, swallowed. "I'm okay." He couldn't accept her comfort - couldn't. "Why could you understand him, Scully?" Her hand fell. He saw an obscure flicker of hurt on her face. "I don't know." "I'm here, really, bodily, and... I can't speak their language, Scully." It meant so much more than a matter of mere words. She was silent. "You... You can come and go. You can understand. You can go back to... to people. People speak your language in two worlds, and I have none, Scully." Her lips moved - one syllable that could have been "me." "Why could you understand him?" And this time he shouted, full of bitter anger. "Why you and not me?" She raised her chin, and her eyes, sorrowing but defiant, showed that she would take no anger from him. "I don't know, Mulder." He held her gaze, breathed - once, twice - and forced his anger to cool, to harden. "You're not here," he said, slowly. "You're... It's astral projection, of sorts. You're here in spirit. Maybe..." He took a deep breath. "Maybe you're not hearing words at all, but thoughts, spirit to spirit." She folded her arms. Her face hardened. He ran a hand over his moist brow, and exhaled long and slow. He would accept defeat on this, and ask. He needed to know. "What was he saying, Scully?" She stiffened. Her spirit appeared to him in the form of her body, even down to the dark shadows under her eyes and the pale tension of her neck. "I need to know, Scully." Desperate. "Tell me. I need to know..." "He said..." Her hand reached out for his, then retracted, and he knew that his touch still revolted her. She seemed to draw her emotions inwards, and her voice become tight. "He was scared of you, Mulder. He couldn't understand you. He thought you were one of 'them' come back. He slashed at you to see if you bled like normal people." He felt cold inside. "He said 'you've given us so little time. You left, and we were shattered. We didn't know how to live without the lash, or how to think. You left, and have given us a few years without your rule. We've begun to learn. We can grow food, and live, and...'" Her gaze was clear, and her voice became intense, personal. "He said that they were beginning to hope, Mulder. He said that the world was being reborn." He saw dying grass, and the world darkening like a stain. "Hope for a few years. Not now." "How can you say that, Mulder?" She flashed fire. "You know nothing of this place. I have never known you to give up." He almost hated her then. "Live here, Scully, and then say that. Wake up in the morning to see grass that was green last night all withered. Live here alone, with no chance of getting home. Live here, Scully, and then see if you can talk of hope." "I'd live here with you if I could," she said, softly. The anger faded. He was standing there, heart racing, breathing fast and shallow. "I don't know what's happening," he said, almost a murmur. "There was a civilisation, and it died, long ago now. I don't know... Was it the whole world, or just one country in it? If I walk far enough, will I find another country? Will I find...?." Wind whispered in the corn. "If what he said is true... What does it mean, Scully?" He looked at his blood, and wondered. "Was it a war? This country was invaded, and ruled for... centuries?... by the enemy. The people were enslaved, or oppressed somehow. They forget what freedom was. There were no cities. It's like Rome sacked by the barbarians - the new rulers infinitely less advanced than the old ones, but ruthless. And now, recently, the rulers have gone and they're beginning to struggle back to life. It's a rebirth." But there was no joy in it - none at all. "They have so little." Scully's voice was distant. "So little, but they see hope ahead of them. _We_ have so much... so much to lose. Better to be here, with nothing..." "But you don't understand, Scully," he cut in, dully. "There's something else wrong here - something... I don't know what it is..." ****** For years, Fox Mulder had been haunted by the alien. Sometimes he had felt as if he was on a thread, dangling between two opposing poles, pushed and pulled between their warring forces. On one side, there was his little girl with braids - his goal, his heaven. She was happiness. She was a family and childhood made complete again. She was his teenage years spent smiling, warm in his parents' love. She was fullness, and life. She was his sister, but she was so much more than his sister. She was his elixir, his grail. On the other side, there was the alien - the whip lash on his back, driving him on. The alien... It was a spindly figure bathed in light, stealing happiness. It was failure, barricaded in a deserted observatory, close to the truth but frozen with fear. It was smoke. It was Scully, dying. It was hard eyes and a 'can you die now?' Like darkness, it stole Samantha, it ate happiness. It was his enemy. Alone in the darkness of a world that was not his own, Fox Mulder knew that _he_ was the alien. ****** He was ready for her this time, his senses attuned to her coming. He had spent another long dark night, and awoken to a day still darker. She came so easily, shared so little, and left at will. Part of him wanted her to hurt for that. "Why do you keep coming, Scully?" he said, harshly, not looking up. He held a withered grass stalk in his hand and twisted it, twisted it. She was silent for several breaths. "I want to see you," she said at last, softly. "This often?" He raised his head, made his eyes hard. "Time runs differently, you said. How long is it for you since last time? Just a few hours?" "Hours." She nodded. "Yes. I came in the night, and the morning. Now it's afternoon." "Why do you come so often? Haven't you got a life?" He could feel himself, careering down a steep rocky slope. He wanted to hurt, to strike out. Why? To see the hatred in her eyes and hear her say goodbye? To destroy himself, to push her away, to justify his self-pity? To make himself truly the alien? He was hurting himself; he was hurting her. He could not stop. "I come..." Soft, but he could hear the tension there. She could hardly bring herself to look at him. "I want to, Mulder. I miss you." He pulled his knees up, wrapping his arms around them. The dead grass fell from his hand. He was silent, eyes closed. "Mulder?" He felt the brush of gentle breeze that was her hand passing close to his. "Why are you like this?" "I miss people," he said, harshly, wildly. "I miss hearing voices on the television. I miss the Gunmen. I... God, Scully. I even miss Skinner. There's no-one here - no-one I can speak to. I..." He heaved a shaking breath, and he meant what he said, intensely. "You still have all that. You only lost me; I lost everything." He hoped she heard the hatred in his voice. A moment later, seeing her concern recoil, he wished desperately that she had been able to see the need beneath his hatred. "Life's not all good for me right now." Her voice was tight. "The FBI building's gone. I have no work." Absently, her hand half- rose towards her neck, then she let it fall. He saw the image of her cross there. "So you come here for escape?" He gave a bark of laughter, though he was closer to anger despairing tears. "I don't want to be an escape, Scully - something to do because you're bored." Her eyes closed. He could see her, pulling herself in, hiding. He bit his lip. Part of him screamed out to apologise, but he had suffered too many dark lonely nights. If she could understand just part of what it was like for him... "Can you see, Scully?" He was almost pleading. She opened her eyes, and she was all steel, her eyes and her voice issuing a challenge. "I'm coming because I miss you, Mulder. I want to see you. I love you." He laughed, short and harsh. He saw the hurt on her face, but she hid it so well, passed it off as cold controlled anger. Her chest was moving in tight fast breaths. He shook his head wearily. "Don't use that as an excuse, Scully. Say it like it is." "An excuse?" She looked as if she had been slapped. Control slipped. It was all anger on her face now. He blinked hard, and kept focused. He looked down at his folded hands, at the torn nails, muddy with a world that was not home. "I remember more than you think, Scully. I remember you were afraid of something, before... before I left. If something's starting, I want you to face it, Scully. For the world...; for me. I don't want to be your hiding place." Her head snapped up. "You say that, Mulder? You remember...?" Her fingers strayed to her neck again. "Have you ever once asked? Who's running away, Mulder?" He swallowed hard. "I can't go back. Here... I'm here... It's almost more than I can live with. If I knew what was happening to home..." He felt his face crumpling, fought it, but was beyond that. There had been too many nights. "I couldn't bear it, Scully - knowing, and being unable to do anything. I couldn't..." "I'm not running, Mulder," she interrupted, firm, now, and without anger. He saw her fingers hesitate for a moment, then touch his clasped hands, sinking through them to the knee. "Do you understand? _I'm not running._" But she didn't meet his gaze. Her fingers stroked. "Why did you laugh?" she asked, softly, hurt in her eyes. She so seldom initiated contact, and he knew, suddenly, how much it had cost her to say what she had said, and to touch him now. "Love..." He turned away and looked to the horizon. "Samantha said it sometimes, when she was little. No-one else..." She sounded suddenly drowned in tears, her words thick. "Ever?" He pulled himself back from the brink, realising he'd said too much. He clutched for words, any words... "You should go." Blindly. "I can't get back... This isn't real for you. You'll be losing yourself in a... a fantasy world. I can't let you, Scully." "I make my own choices, Mulder," she said, and he heard the resolve in it, and the reproach even through the soft tone. "I choose to come. I want to." A dark bird flew overhead, fast, as if fleeing something. He watched it, wondered briefly, then returned. "I've been here all my life, Scully." He spread his hands, gesturing at the barren ruins of the countryside. "A fantasy world... A place no-one believes in. Alone." He shook his head slowly. "I can't... I don't want you to get involved, Scully. You got too deep into my world before, and you've suffered because of me. It's time for you to back off. Please." He felt as if he was dying, twisted with pain. "No." She kept her gaze level. She had knelt down while he was speaking, her hands folded gently in her lap. "No, Mulder. I can't do that. I won't." Just minutes ago, he had almost hated her. Tears blinded his eyes, and he couldn't speak. ****** It was torture without her; it was torture with her. He had been wrong to think that the solitude was the worst. At night, the aching loneliness pressed on him like the beating leathery wings of some night monster, flapping and cold. Silence made him want to scream. But when she came... Oh, but when she came... When she was beside him, he lived. He smiled, he talked, he shared... he lived. < I love you, Mulder...> She was sweet torture. She was a golden key, just brushed by his fingers, then snatched away. She was the terrible taunting picture of escape. She could come and go freely, and, when she came, she was the stabbing agony of the reminder that he could not. If he flared with pleasure at her soft feather touch, then he flared with pain and resentment that something so small could be so much to him. He was a dying man in the desert, cherishing and worshipping a blackened patch of water, yet hating it at the same time for having such power over him. In the darkness, he clutched his arms round his body, a low moan escaping his throat. He saw her lips, her hair, her eyes. He ached for them; he hated them. He had nothing, and her. Any joy that he felt in her was just a reminder of how little he had - of how the greatest thing he could hope to see was a smile on her lips. He would never fall that far. He would never say "I love you." ****** The morning was clouded. The rain had finally stopped, but he had not seen the sun since Scully had first come. Bleak, in a grey world, he walked through the grass, eyes fixed only on the building on the horizon. He felt her silent steps beside him, though, in the soft grass, only one pair of feet left prints. He didn't turn, didn't acknowledge her. He would show that he could live without her. "Mulder?" A soft whisper. He read her thoughts. "Yes." He nodded, sighed. He still felt a spark of joy to speak to her, and to have her answer. "I see it." "That's... " She paused. Her face was pale, tense. "Modern. That city was ruined long ago, but this..." It was tall, though not a tower. Its corners were regular, and metal gleamed. "It might be inhabited." She sounded uncharacteristically nervous. "You haven't got a gun." He felt the weight of things unresolved between them, and saw fear in her eyes. , though she said nothing, as if she had said too much the previous time. He flashed briefly onto the image of men with guns, seeing him as the alien he was, aiming at his head. "What would happen if I died here?" he wondered, aloud. "Maybe I died in that explosion, and this is death. It's my personal Hell - stuck in a dying world, powerless, alone. They show me glimpses of happiness in you, then you slip away..." Her lips moved, silently framing words. "No, Mulder..." "If I died here, would I move on? Is there an endless string of worlds, each one further away, each one worse? Would I jump back?" He breathed in sharply. "Would I jump back, Scully? Dying sent me here. Can dying send me back?" "No." Sharp. She seemed to be fighting something. "Don't try it. I want... I need you to be here. I need time." "Why?" He stopped walking and whirled to face her. "What future do you see us having? Is this part of the grieving process for you, Scully? You'll come for a while, then move on. You'll tell yourself that all this..." He gestured at the world. "That this is a... what? A hallucination derived from grief? 'It's common for the bereaved to convince themselves that they are seeing visions of the person who died,' you'll say, dismissing me." She reached into her pocket, and he knew that she was fingering the stone. "I think..." He closed his eyes. "I think I hope that they _do_ have guns..." She was silent, but he felt her shock. He wanted to wound her, and he was hurting, with a bone-deep ache. "It would be best for you, Scully." He was sinking deep, believing his own words. "It would let you move on. I know how you always hated to believe. You need to move on - to tell yourself that this was a hallucination, and to let yourself live. You have always prized control, Scully. Go back, throw away the stone, and..." He knew the next word would crack on tears. "I believe, Mulder." Her words were quiet. "I told you before. We talked about this. I believe this is real. I believe you are real, and I choose to be with you." He sought the hot core of anger and clung to that, using it to avert his tears. "You'd keep me in this prison, Scully. There's nothing for me here. You... you _visit_. Like a prison visitor and I'm left rotting in Hell. I don't want to live like this..." "You'd kill yourself?" Cold. His legs gave way. He collapsed to the ground, arms folded tightly round the biting pain in his stomach. "If death was an end to it..." He choked on a sob. "Death might be another life, and worse... worse than this. I can't live here. I can't... I can't risk dying. I..." Soft hands moved through him. She tried no words of comfort, for there were none possible. They stayed that way in silence for a very long time, until the wind had dried his tears stiff on his cheeks. ****** "Mulder?" His neck felt stiff. He raised his head and blinked painfully into the light. "Mulder? Look." The light had shifted. Still covered with white haze, the sun was struggling through the sheeting clouds. The metal on the building gleamed brighter, and the sparks shone on twisted barbed wire at its perimeter, and a dark gleam in front of it. "It's a pool of something. Not water." She was changing the subject, turning a page, running away. He was grateful. He found new facets of his fears just by talking about them. He stood up and walked on. They were close now, and every step showed more. There was a crack in the side of the building, and some dark liquid trickled from it, pooled on the ground, then moved in a sluggish stream into the sea. He no longer expected to find people here. To his surprise, he felt relief. "It looks like a... a plant of some sort," he said, slowly. "Manufacturing? Refining? What?" He ran. He felt fear tight in his throat, and expectation. The place was deserted, but not for long. Even in this hopeless, empty world, he felt something of the old thrill of answers close by. "Oil..." Scully's voice was little more than a soft exhalation. "Oil." He crouched down beside the pool, breathing fast. Above him, on the wall of the building, oil trickled from an air vent. It was if the place had been deserted with the machinery still running, oil pouring out and filling the building until it had to seek any way out that it could. It was thick and viscous, and the surface rippled with the wind. He reached out his hand and - "No, Mulder!" - touched it. It was thick between his fingers. He rubbed them together, but it was elusive. His mind was sluggish. He rubbed again, but there was nothing on his hands at all. Black oil coagulating like worms, moving up his arms, welling from the pool to embrace his knees... "Mulder," he heard, distant. They moved. He wanted to swat at them, beat at them, drive them off his body, but he was without strength. The touch of the oil burnt him with a deep hurt down to the bone. His body screamed out in remembered pain, and the knowledge of worse pain to come. Scully's fingers like a soft breeze, passing through them ineffectually. "Mulder..." He raised his hand to his face, claw-like. The other hand stretched forward, pleading. Oil moved on his neck, his face... Touch on his eye like knife in his soul. Hands from another world pawing at him, sinking into him, trying to turn him over... Her beautiful dear face, clouded with concern, lips moving in words he could not hear. And then blackness like a stain spread over her face, and he convulsed into darkness. ****** end of part 5 ****** Another Country (6/9) ****** He woke to her pale, tight fear. "Scully." His voice was scraped with sandpaper. His tongue felt heavy, and moving his head was beyond him. "Mulder." She looked deeply shaken, as if part of her world had shifted. "I... I couldn't touch you properly. I couldn't help you." His mind was bruised, straying, unsure of what was reality and whether he was speaking aloud. "Last time..." He coughed weakly, pain lancing through his chest. "When I was in Russia. I... I remember my hand. I was moving my fingers. I was reaching... All I could think of was how you had been there in Alaska, and how, if... if I reached for you, you would be there." "I couldn't help you," she said, again. "I'm a doctor..." He struggled to sit up, but could not. "I... I thought I was dying. You were there. I woke up, and you were there..." He left her to understand. She was silent, biting her lip, but then she smiled, wanly. "What was that?" was all she said. "The black oil." He turned his head and saw it, drying flakes on his skin and clothes. The oil still in the pool struggled towards him, but could not reach him. "Why?" He coughed, and rubbed his eyes deeply against the sting of the oil. "How did it leave me?" "It went into you," she said, trouble. "You convulsed, then collapsed. I... I thought you were doing to die." She closed her eyes for a moment, then reopened them. "Then they came out again and dried up." This time he managed to push himself up to a sitting position, passing through Scully's hands as she tried, by instinct only, to help him. "I had the vaccine." He couldn't remember what he had told her about Russia. He protected her from some things, and protected himself from the telling of others. She nodded, her eyes distant. "I can't touch you, Mulder. I can't help you. If... if something happens again, I can't... I can't do anything to stop it." He opened his mouth, about to speak, but then suddenly her words faded to insignificance. He gasped, doubled up with horror, eyes staring, hands stretching... "Mulder?" Like a distant whisper. "The black oil..." His words were a horrified croak. "Here. What if... Scully..." He rubbed his hand across his eyes, fiercely. "I thought this was a different world. What if it's the future? I've jumped in time. The black oil... The city..." He whirled on her, seeing her blanched face and the comprehension in her eyes. "What if it's our future, after they come. This is how it ends." She ran a nervous tongue over her lips. "I don't believe in time travel, Mulder." He grabbed her shoulders and his hands sank right into her, though her essence was there and tangible. He held her instead with the intensity of his voice, his eyes, his fear. "If it is... I have to fight it, Scully. I have to go back. I have to stop this from happening." She laughed, then her eyes filled with apology. Her lips moved again. "I don't believe in time travel. Even if I did, I wouldn't believe that the past could be changed." "You won't give me that hope?" he said, low and reproachful. "It's not mine to give." She held his gaze, sincere and rueful. "I need to know." He pulled away from her. The pain was nothing to him now. He wanted to stand, to run, to seek. "Is this our world? Do you know this place? Anything?" She hesitated. "I don't know," she said, at last. "I saw nothing in that city that I recognised from any other city, but..." "It could be," he finished for her. "We don't know. Will we ever know?" He pushed himself shakily to his feet. "I have to live with that too." And then she seemed to spark with fire. "Wherever this is..." She raised her head, her gaze fierce and defiant. "We, as outsiders, see what this world has lost, but to the people living here... There's hope here, Mulder. I see hope. That man said their... their oppressors have left them. They have so little, but they never known a world with a lot. They have more than they used to have, because they have freedom now." "How can you see hope here?" He gestured behind her, at the brown stains on the hillside, and the death of the grass. "How can you not?" Her gaze was clear. "I have always known you to hope, Mulder. When I was... gone... you hoped for me when no- one else did. You've hoped for your sister's return. How...?" Her words were knives. He turned his head towards the sea and tuned them out. "Mulder?" Softer. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that." Her hand was like water on his back. "But is it better to live as they do, rebuilding from nothing, or to live at the start of it, when we have everything, and can only lose?" "Are we at the beginning?" He drew in a shaky breath. "At home, I mean, Scully? Is that why you come here? It's crumbling around you at home. It's falling. This is starting. You think there's nothing you can do to stop it." She was silent. "Maybe you're right, Scully," he said, slowly. "When I first came here, I had nothing, but I was happy. I didn't know what I'd lost." Breathing still hurt him. He forced himself past the pain, taking long deep breaths. "That man... He had so little, but to him it was a rebirth." She murmured. "Yes." He sighed bleakly. "But I can never be like him. I know, now. You awakened me. I know the past. I know what it was like before, and what the world has lost. I know. I could never forget that. I could never accept." "I think I could," she said, quietly. "We have fought, and suffered, and fought, and suffered. There comes a time when it becomes too much. There is hope, of a sort, in accepting what we have, and learning how to... to just conquer fear." "If you knew that this was our future, would it make a difference?" he said, almost harshly. "You'd still not fight?" "It would confirm me in my choice." Her voice was low. "I would know that fighting was just futile. I would... I would fight by not letting them conquer my spirit. I would accept, and keep my dignity." "Then we're different, Scully." His hurt eyes found fresh tears, and his vision blurred. He felt a deep sadness that was beyond words. "I would give anything to be in your position. If I could go back... God, Scully. If only I could go back to the start of it and _fight_..." He couldn't finish. Her eyes hardened into cold steel. "Don't judge me, Mulder. I made my choice." Her hand moved absently to the back of her neck. He looked back at the sea, and hated it. "I had my choice made for me." She made no answer. ****** The clouds cleared at night, and he saw stars. He saw strange constellations, and he wept. ****** He had moved on, in the morning. With the sun overhead, he stood on a hill, one hand on a tree trunk. In the valley below was a small village. Smoke curled from the houses, and people moved in gentle comings and goings. He turned a smiling face to her on her arrival. "It's not our world." He raised his hand upwards, like a prophet calling to his God. "The stars are different." "Oh." A smile flickered on her face, then died. He turned back, watching the far-away people. "I don't know where it is. Another dimension? Far away in space? It's not our future, though, Scully." She said nothing. "You know what that means, Scully?" He tightened his fingers, letting them dig into the bark. "Whatever happened here... It might not happen to our world. It can still be stopped. The future is never written. We can fight it." He drew in a breath. "You can fight it." "Don't decide my life for me, Mulder." Her voice was tight. He was carried on the wings of his passion, rushing on, unable to stop. "The black oil... Do you see, Scully? It's a warning. It's what _could_ happen to our world. Remember this. Tell everyone. Start a fight, a crusade. _Stop it._" "I can't do that, Mulder." "Can't? They're the same, Scully." He whirled on her, hands raised to hold her. "Have you begun to think through the implications of this? I've thought of little else since I found out." "What?" "The colonisation happened here, long ago. Is it a parallel world? Are they real?" He felt the old fire - a fire that had burnt down to mere embers over the years. "If it's the same race, and they've mastered interdimensional travel...? They're building an Empire across the worlds, Scully. Empires ebb and flow. They settled here, mined its resources to exhaustion, then left. As they pull away from one place, they expand in another. They've turned their attentions on us now." She laughed, hard and bitter. "They destroy the world, and then move on. We are nothing to them, Scully. Cities fall. The people..." He spread his hand, encompassing the valley. "Perhaps they vaccinated a few to keep them alive as slaves. Perhaps these people have hybrid blood. Perhaps some were naturally immune. Most died; a few lived. Shattered survivors keeping hope alive... Humanity refusing to give in." Her laughter trickled away. "Even if it's not the same... Even if the oil is just a coincidence... We have to fight. I have to..." He swallowed against the welling emotion. "I need to go back, Scully. I need it so badly." "To see all this start?" she said, harshly. "To see all this stopped." He raised his head as if swearing an oath. "When it started here... We don't know how it happened, Scully. Did _this_ world have men who knew the plans of the colonists like we have? Did this world have a vaccine?" "Perhaps it had more, and it was all no use to them." He shook his head desperately. "Perhaps... I need to know. Even if there's no hope at all, I need to... I need to see that hope. I need to fight it. I... I can't. Not here." "Don't live through me, Mulder." He looked up and saw her for the first time. He had heard her words, hardly registering them. He had not seen her face, or read her emotions. He saw regret in her eyes, and sorrow. "Do you believe any of this, Scully?" he asked, quietly. She was silent for a very long time, considering. "I believe in you, Mulder," was all she said. "Do you believe that the colonists are the same? Do you believe in the aliens? Do you believe in... in the date? Do you believe that a war is starting and that... that _this_ can be the result?" His fingers whispered through her wrist, his eyes burning. "Do you, Scully?" Her eyes shone with tears. "I believe in you, Mulder. Can't that be enough?" He was breathing fast and shallow. "Do you? Really? Then make my coming here meaningful. Learn from it. Fight to stop this happening in our world. Fight for me." She snatched at her hand, pulling it away with a whisper touch of angry air. "Damn it, Mulder, that's not fair." Her hand reached into her pocket and touched the stone, and he could feel her willing herself away. She was fading to him, growing transparent. He felt a sudden conviction that she would be gone to him forever. "This world's being reborn," she said, quietly. "If - if - what you say is true... Mulder, all it shows me is that my world is dying - that nothing can save it." "Your world?" he echoed. That simple word hurt him more than anything. "It still feels like mine, too. I need to be there. If it's dying, I need to die with it." There was nothing of Scully in the eyes that looked back at him. She was cold, hurt, cynical, defeatist. As he watched, she glanced over her shoulder, as if seeing back into the world he could no longer share. Just before she winked out of existence, he saw her eyes widen in horror. ****** Dusk fell, and he was alone. His back was against the tree, and, below him, flickering light came from the village windows. The sky was darkening, and alien stars began to appear in the night. There was just enough light left for him to see the spreading stain of death that surrounded him like a pool, grass turning brown and wilting. His breath caught. He turned and climbed the few steps to the top of the hill and looked back - back along the curving coast, following his path. Inland, distant hills were green. Death hugged the coastline. Between his fingers he was twisting a blade of grass again and again, its harsh edges rasping against his skin. He dropped it as if it burnt him. He remembered the man in the field of corn, and the glazed eyes of his death. Before that, he had held him. The black oil had merged with his blood, and had died. The touch of him had killed it. He could no longer believe that it was the vaccine. "I'm the poison," he said aloud, and fell to his knees. "It's me..." Alien to the world. A freak. Thrown here against nature. An alien; a virus. He was the invader in the body of this world - unnatural, unwanted. His touch was death. The world had survived untold centuries under the colonists, and was struggling towards rebirth, and he was killing it. He was killing hope. "Scully..." His voice was strangled. Horror seized him round the throat and dug in like claws, drawing blood. "Scully, it's me..." He was the enemy. ****** End of part 6 End of "Another Country II: Death of Grass" The story continues in part 7 - the start of "Another Country III: No Abiding City" ___ NOTES: for those who like to get into the author's head. If not, skip on to the next part. If the first story in this series came from philosophy, this one is purely X-Files. I started thinking about Mulder's essential solitude. I wonder if he has ever been truly close to anyone, before Scully. I doubt it. I feel that, in his whole life, he had been alone, surrounded by people who don't believe him, trust him, or like him. He is cut off from normal society, in many ways. Even Scully, as in this story, is bound to him, but apart. For her own reasons, she seldom opens up to him, and she has several times made clear to him (in the show) that, while she is his partner in his quest, she will draw the line and not go with him all the way. In this story, Mulder realises that he had been here in this world all his life, in a very real sense. To me, this is pivotal to what I was trying to do here. Mulder is alone in a world that doesn't understand him. Scully is, in this story, at once bound to him, and a thing apart. Yup, we're talking metaphors here. Sorry.... Or you can read it just as a straight story if you like. ****** Pellinor@astolat.demon.co.uk http://www.astolat.demon.co.uk/ (Deep Background) http://www.carbonek.demon.co.uk/ (My fanfic) "If there's a point, Mulder, please feel free to come to it."