From: Laura Bontrager Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 14:52:32 -0500 (CDT) Subject: xfc: Hard Turning (1/1) Source: xfc Title:Hard Turning (1/1) Author: RocketMan >lebontrager@iname.com< Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe is intended. Dedication: This is for XL, for his stimulating conversation ;-) =-=-=-= Hard Turning =-=-=-= There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip and tales for other times. --Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm Agent Mulder, do you believe that passion can change your very nature? --Arthur Dales, The UnNatural, written by David Duchovny =-=-=-= There was the soft chuckling and faint breath in her ear that she remembered from previous places and other times, but it didn't comfort her now. She wanted to cry, but she was driving too fast on too short sleep to let the crying start. "Maybe you should call my mother. . ." She gripped the wheel tighter and blinked back the surge of darkness that wanted to pour from her eyes in the form of tears. She had to clear her throat to reply. "Mulder, your mother. . .she's been dead for six months. . ." He coughed again and blinked the blood away from his vision. "Yes." "So. . ." She stopped talking and took a squealing right hand turn onto the next street, trying to ignore the wheeze of his breath and the chuckle as he went slowly crazy with the death of things. "Perhaps you should call--" "Mulder. I'm not having this conversation with you. The hospital is right here, right here, Mulder. Come on." "I think you should call someone...let them know." She shook her head with anger and fear and the sticky seat of the van made her sweat unnaturally in the heat. It was a frightening thing to think about, sweating and dying and Mulder maybe. . .maybe this was his last breath here, or his hand gripping her thigh was slacking somewhat. It was raining too. Raining and already humid and already hot and the rain was fat and loud on the windshield and the car hood and swishing through the tires. She sprayed a large river of the rain onto the sidewalk as she passed and heard nothing more from Mulder. "Mulder?" She saw the hospital, ignored the pounding in her head as the scene from earlier played again and again--Mulder getting out of the white unmarked van, Mulder leaning over to shake his pantleg loose, Mulder righting again, the bullet hitting, the sound hitting next, his staggering back, his finger crooking at her as he fell into the van. And then-- "Call...call Scully. You need to call Scully." "I'm right here, Mulder. Right here." "Call Scully 'for it's too late." She grit her teeth and yanked the van into a half parking space, half tow-away zone and jumped from the driver's side, turning her ankle as she landed. Mulder was slumped all the way down to the floor, his face that sickly grey color and the fingers tight in fists. She ran into the front doors, marked Information, and screamed for help, the blood on her suit slick and cold against her belly. "I need help. I have an agent down. Agent down!" "This is Information. Emergency's in the next building. . ." Scully snapped her head around to face the large white woman who was frowning at her. "Get me a doctor right now!" she screamed and shoved the woman to the phone. "Ma'am. I'm sorry, this isn't--" "Do it now!" She ran back outside, ducking through rain and the slap of God telling her she shouldn't have waited, she shouldn't have let it sit so long like this, with all this between them-- "Call, Scully--" he was saying. "Better call Scully. . .don't think--" "Mulder, it's me. I'm right here. I've got to get you inside." "You'd better call her. Call her." Scully pulled on his shoulder and he slumped down into her, blood trickling from his lips to her neck, a kind of death kiss and last memory. She closed her eyes and heaved his heavy wet body to the cold sidewalk, breathing fast and furious. She watched the white woman come jogging fatly into the rain, her white uniform dotted dark with the stain of the skies, her eyes frowning into the scene. Scully screamed something about the ER and something about a gurney and the woman mumbled under her breath something about a body bag. The rain was slow all around them, so slow and fat and dripping like the nurse from Information, the white woman with thin yellowed teeth, the way Mulder was lying in the pink lemonade of his blood and the rain. She was shaking because she really did not think he would make it. She was trembling in the rain and the heat of it, the humidity mixed with the inevitable chill of the water, and the way her hands were shaking-- "Emergency is in the next--" "Help him, just help him!" Oh God. Oh God. Help us. =-=-=-= That was just one of the events in their lives. There had been others, and more frightening ones, and less frightening ones, and times where things weren't as ironicly not funny-- that was a bad one. She wanted to cry with the remembering of it. She was reliving it. She was there now, hovering as his blood was pumped back into his body and his surgery was taking hours now, and the bullet was given to her as a keepsake. Strange. She had it now. In her palm resting lightly. It was a good thing only now, looking back. Because now there was Mulder right beside her, whole and sleeping. She had his mark all in her, more than a lame, call Scully, while he was thinking of death and bleeding on her. She had his mark. His heart after its slow-turning, hard-melting journey out of that darkness. She twirled the bullet in her fingertips and leaned over to press a soft kiss to his forehead. The metal was warm against her palm, just like his skin was warm. He woke slightly and pushed his hand around her waist, mumbling. That was a moment, the blood and the rain and the fat nurse telling her she couldn't bring him in this direction--that was a moment that had led to this one. Just as her decision to join the FBI was a moment that led to this one, and would lead to further moments that were of equal importance, and yet not. It was not important that Mulder had nearly lost his life that night. It was only important that it made her heart turn to his, made his heart melt into hers, and that they were now together, whole and turned together. She slipped away from his grasp and placed the keepsake of the moment on her dresser, watching the light glint along the metal. She walked backwards to the bed, certain that she should not turn her back on the bullet. Certain that she should not ever forget. =-=-=-= end adios RM