From: Nicola Simpson <nsimpson@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca>
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 15:17:27 -0700 (MST)
Subject: The Body's Guest (1/1)
Source: direct

TITLE:		The Body's Guest (1/1)
AUTHOR:		Nicola Simpson
E-MAIL:		nsimpson@ualberta.ca
RATING:		R (implied violence, some swearing and nudity)
KEYWORDS:	SA, teensy M/S UST.  
SPOILERS:	Subtle references to Pilot, One Breath, Wetwired, Never Again,
 		FTF, Tithonus, Millennium
ARCHIVING:	Gossamer, Ephemeral, Spookys okay.  Anyone else please ask 
		first!
SUMMARY:	Mulder is asked to identify a body.
DISCLAIMER:	The usual song and dance.  The characters herein (but for 
		one) are the intellectual property of Chris Carter and Fox 
		Television, blah blah blah.  No malice intended.

The Body's Guest
by Nicola Simpson

	Go, Soul, the body's guest, 
	Upon a thankless arrant: 
	Fear not to touch the best, 
	The truth shall be thy warrant: 
	Go, since I needs must die, 
	And give the world the lie.
		-Sir Walter Raleigh, "The Lie"

It wasn't the first time the voice of a Scully woman stilled the movement
of my gun.

"If you're home, please pick up.  I need to talk to you."

My eyes narrowed against the darkness, picking out the taunting red light
on the desk.  The gun chilled my fingers, freezing them together until the
cold steel clattered to the floor.  I was such a coward.

"Please--"  The voice on the machine rang in my ears.  "They found..."

As she hesitated, I stood on shaky legs and crossed to the phone, the
sweat from the back of my neck leaving a smear on the smooth leather of my
couch.  She managed to finish before I could pick up the receiver.

"They found Dana's body."

***

We walked together down the hall of the morgue.  I'd trampled this
linoleum a hundred times with Scully, but this was the first time her
mother's hand swung by my side.

"Thank you, Fox."

I nodded, not knowing why.

"I couldn't do this alone.  I'm not sure I can do it at all."

"I understand," I murmured, cringing as my lie bounced off the walls.  I
understood shit.

She reached for my hand, but I tugged it away.  Her hand was too small,
too cool and strong.  Too familiar.  My eyes burned as I steered her into
a viewing room at the end of the hall, where a policeman waited for us.

"Mrs. Scully?  I'm Detective Kunzle."

Beside me her spine stiffened, her chin raising until my knees wobbled in
memory.  I couldn't watch.  "Yes."

"And I'm guessing you're Agent Mulder."

So he *was* a detective.  I nodded shortly, my gaze avoiding the shaded
window on the other side of the tiny room.  "What can you tell us?"

"We found the car early this morning--government tags.  We ran them but
came up empty at first."  He shrugged, an embarrassed frown slipping
across his face.  "But we found out that the last person to check it out
of the vehicle pool was a Special Agent Dana Scully, with the FBI."  
Looking down at his pad, he clicked and unclicked his pen.  "It was a--"

"Burgundy Taurus," I said dully.

"Right."  His forehead creased.  "But she requisitioned it two months
ago."

Sixty-seven days, nine hours and fourteen minutes ago, actually.  She'd
filled out the form and said she'd meet me in the parking lot.  I never
saw her again.  Sometimes I wondered if she'd been waiting for me in the
passenger seat, or behind the steering wheel.  Had she turned the radio
on?  Once I'd found her waiting for me in the car, singing her heart along
with Diana Ross.  Her blush had made my day, but I never said anything.

"Where was the car, Detective?" Mrs. Scully asked.  It couldn't really
have mattered to her.  It sure as hell didn't matter to me, though it
should have.

"Uh..."  He checked his notebook again.  "Just off the Beltway, about
eleven miles from here."

"El--eleven miles?"  Her voice faded, and she paled.  "She was so close,"
she whispered to me as I prodded her towards the puke green vinyl couch in
the corner.  It was there for families to collapse on *after* the blinds
had been opened, not before.

"There's more," Kunzle cautioned with a soft sigh.  "We're not exactly
sure if this is Dana, Mrs. Scully."

"What do you mean?  You said on the phone--"

He looked to me for support, but I just crossed my arms.  Then he turned
to Mrs. Scully and shoved his pad in his back pocket.  "We found the body
inside the car, but it had no ID."

"Can I see her clothes?  I'm sure we could fig--"

"There aren't any, ma'am," he interrupted in a pained voice.

My throat tightened as I imagined her lying naked in the car, cold and
slumped across the plush seat.  Maybe the door was left open, and the
night had wrapped around her skin.  Were the keys in the ignition?  Did
the headlights from oncoming cars sweep over her slim throat and make her
hair glow?  Or was she curled up in the trunk, her skin burnt by the
exhaust pipe beneath the rough carpet?  I shook my head of the image and
glanced at the faceless window again.

Pain flashed across Mrs. Scully's face, but she found herself again
quickly.  "What condition was she found in, exactly, Detective?"

It was obvious he didn't want to say.  I nodded when he looked to me for
guidance.  If there's one thing I know about Scullys, it's that they want
the truth.  No ribbons, no bows.  "Ma'am, she was naked and, uh,
decapitated."

My throat loosened as quickly as it'd constricted, and I resisted the urge
to vomit all over the peeling linoleum.  The fact that I hadn't eaten in
three days made it easier.

"Her hands were cut off, too," he added.  "The blows are clean," he
reassured us lamely.  "I'm sure she didn't suffer."

Mrs. Scully looked like she was about to pass out.  Hell, I was about to
join her.  I stood beside the couch, my knee lightly touching her leg as
she sat there in shock.  She reached for my hand, but this time I didn't
pull away.

I looked down at her, my heart squeezing.  "You don't have to do this, you
know.  I can--"

"No.  No, I can do it."  The cloud over her eyes cleared and she stood.  
She dropped my hand and strode to the viewing window, fists clenched at
her side.  "I'm ready."

I wasn't.  I wanted to pivot on one heel and bolt out the door.  To run
until my lungs burst and body screamed.  It wasn't supposed to end this
way.  I'd been in front of a window like this before, but I'd known then
that it couldn't have been her.  It sounds corny to say that I'd know if
she was dead, but I always thought I would.  But this time I didn't know.  
I felt nothing except the floor under my feet and the soft breathing of
the woman beside me.  Did this mean Scully was dead, or that I was?

Kunzle rapped a knuckle on the window, and the blinds rose on the other
side, revealing a small shrouded body on a gurney.  Shit, it was small.  
Even without the head.  Scully wasn't--isn't that tiny, is she?

Her mother breathed in sharply, then pressed her fingertips against the
glass and nodded to the technician inside.  I had to hand it to her--she
never failed to surprise the hell out of me.  Her strength shamed me until
I wanted to crawl under the vinyl couch and play with the dustbunnies.

Gently, the sheet was lifted and arranged artfully above the slim
shoulders, so we couldn't see the bloody stump that used to be a head.  
What tact, what compassion.  I should send them a fucking thank you card.

They'd already wrapped the wrists, taking care to make it seem like she
was intact, like she hadn't been hacked at and mutilated.  My gaze trailed
down her pale arms.

Kunzle leaned towards me.  "It was done post-mortem, Agent Mulder," he
whispered by way of reassurance.  I didn't know whether to kiss him or
throw him through the goddamn window.

Perhaps he felt my body tense.  Maybe he just looked into my eyes--I don't
remember.  Anyway, he wisely stepped away from me, clearing his throat.  
"Take your time, Mrs.  Scully."

She turned to me, anguish etched in her face.  "Fox, I don't know.  *I
don't know*," she said hoarsely.

Suddenly I realized this was what she'd been dreading.  This was why she
asked me here--not for emotional support, but because she thought I'd be
able to recognize Scully's body better than she could.  I would have
laughed if I didn't think I would still throw up on her shoes instead.

I stepped up to the window, really looking at the body for the first time.  
Her delicate collarbone peeped out from just under the sheet, and a smear
of blood still grazed her right shoulder.  My gaze wandered down her
strong arms, then skipped over her bumpy rib cage to linger at her flat
belly.

My mind raced back to the Antarctic, when I'd pulled her out of the pod
and wrapped my arms around her icy body.  But I hadn't really *looked* at
her then.  I'd never really looked at her, on purpose.  How the hell was I
supposed to know her now, without her slim hand on my wrist or her eyebrow
arching to heaven?

I looked at her clinically, hoping to connect the jagged pieces I saw
before me with the whole that I knew as Scully. The scar across her belly
could be from a bullet wound, or it could be from a burst appendix.  I was
interested in looking into her eyes in that hospital in New York, not
poking underneath her bandages.  Or her threadbare gown, for that matter.

The curvy calves were hers, as was the soft hair on her forearms.  But I
didn't know these slightly shriveled, puckered breasts.  I didn't remember
this crisp auburn hair between her legs, or the silvery stretch marks
across the tops of her thighs.  I'd never known them.

I could remember how her lower back felt shimmying beneath her clothes,
beneath my thumb as I propelled her through life.  I still smelled her
skin on the T-shirt she borrowed from me in Muncie.  I'd even tasted her
lips once.  But this--this person I didn't know.

Scully had never been naked before me, not really.  She shrouded herself
in self-sufficiency, in science and blind skepticism.  Occasionally she
let me into her mind and infrequently her heart, but never her body.  
Once--only once--she'd dropped her robe for me.  But sometime in the last
seven years she'd decided that her body was hers alone to protect and
defend.  God knows I'd done a piss poor job of it.  That's probably why
she fired me.

The curve of her buttocks was mottled and dark--she must have been sitting
or lying down when they killed her.  There were weeping lines circling her
ankles, and shell pink polish at the tips of her toes.

I pointed.  "Wire?"

Kunzle cleared his throat again.  "We think so.  Probably her wrists too,
but it's hard to tell."

Mrs. Scully wobbled over to the couch, and my gut clenched with guilt as I
realized I should've saved that question for later.

Shit, Scully.  I wanted to lean my forehead against the cold glass, but I
didn't.  Actually, I wanted to press my face against her cold stomach, but
that probably wouldn't be a good idea.

Even if it was Scully.

"Fox?"

My head shook slowly.  "I don't know either."  And it broke my heart.  
How could I not recognize her?  Had I been that blind all these years?  
Or had she just hidden herself that well?  Then something occurred to me
and I turned to Kunzle.  "Can you turn her over?"

The lines around his mouth deepened as he knocked on the glass and made a
circular motion with his hand.  The technician carefully lifted her so her
back was towards us.

I looked carefully, but nothing marred the slack skin of her lower back.  
No tattoo, no scar.  My body shook with relief.

"It's not her," I announced.

Kunzle whipped his notepad out of his pocket.  "You're sure?"

My head jerked up and down.  In the corner, Mrs. Scully was weeping
softly.  "I've got to get her home," I pointed out.

"Sure thing.  I'm sorry about this."

"Right."  I knew he was just doing his job.  It was a pretty crappy job.  
Gingerly, I put my arm around Scully's mother's shoulder and shepherded
her out of the room.

We just had to wait.  Sixty-seven days, nine hours, thirty- six minutes
and counting.  Maybe next time I wouldn't have to ask them to turn the
body.  Or maybe she would turn in my arms all by herself.

I could wait.

THE END

-- 
Nicola Simpson
E-mail: nicola.simpson@ualberta.ca