From monicav@mindspring.com Sat May 10 22:48:13 1997 Subject: Lie To Me (1/1) by Wendy Shapard From: Monica Vallejo -------- I did not write this. Please forward all feedback to the author at Thanks, Monica _____________________________________________________ &*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*& Subject: Lie To Me (1/1) Date: Sat, 10 May 97 12:10:54 -0800 From: Wendy K Shapard To: "X-Files Fan Fiction" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Lie To Me (1/1) by Wendy Shapard (wshapard@concentric.net) Reposting/Archiving: Yes, by all means, as long as you use my name as author. Pleeease send feedback, either in private mail, or to FicTalk. Disclaimer: I don't own Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, or the X-Files. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so please don't sue me for expressing my love for "The X Files" this way. SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers for "Elegy" and "Memento Mori". Rating: PG. Content: MSR WARNING, but nothing graphic. Classification: S with some A and some R. Summary: Continuation of "Elegy". Mulder and Scully react to the implications of her visions and come to an insight about the nature of truth and lies. Author's note: This story assumes that M&S have an ongoing sexual relationship. It is not directly mentioned, but it's part of the background. Lie To Me by Wendy Shapard This was it. Time to confess. "I saw something, Mulder," Scully began. "What?" he asked, surprised by her apparent change of topic. "The fourth victim. I saw her in the bathroom before you came to tell me." "Why didn't you tell me?" He was quite clearly shocked by her revelation. "Because I didn't want to believe it." Her voice caught with a tiny laugh of disbelief. "Because I *don't* want to believe it." "Is that why you came down here?" he demanded, his throat tight with the need to control his reaction. His eyes slid from hers, searching the empty hallway for some other target for the anger her words engendered in him. "To prove it wasn't true?" "No. I came down here because you asked me to," she countered, responding to the challenge in his words with a corresponding defensiveness in her own. "Why can't you be honest with me?" His gaze was piercing now, and inescapable. "What do you want me to say? That you're right? That I believe it even though I don't? I mean, is that what you want to hear?" "Is that what you think I want to hear?" he demanded, cutting through her incredulous tone, refusing to play games. Scully heard the first notes of real anger seep past his control and into his voice, and it gave her pause. "No," she admitted quietly. "You can believe what you want to believe, Scully. But you can't hide the truth from me, because if you do, then you're working against me. And against yourself." Scully felt her breath speed up from the emotional impact of his words. She knew what he said was true, and he made her ashamed of questioning him, but before she could retract her words, or offer an apology, he had changed his tack. In the space of a heartbeat, and without so much as moving a muscle, his entire demeanor had changed, allowing her to see the pain he carried because of her. "Now, I know what you're afraid of; I'm afraid of the same thing," he began. "The doctor said I was fine," Scully insisted, but her voice trembled, and the tears threatened to break from her eyes no matter how confidently she tried to nod her head. Mulder stared at her for a long moment, as if he would see right through her and make his own diagnosis. "I hope that's the truth." Scully's eyes withdrew imperceptibly from his. She didn't want the truth right now. If her health was a lie, then she wanted the right to believe in that lie until it was no longer an option. "I'm going home." Her voice was a bare whisper because all of her energy was consumed with the effort of drawing the mask of professional detachment over her face so that she could escape to the safety of the car. Once there, she closed the door and let the tears come, not knowing what hurt most. Mulder was angry at her. She was angry at herself for being too afraid to trust her own eyes. She hated the cowardice that had kept her from telling him what she had seen. She hated the cowardice that left her trembling in fear of her own fate, of the malignant mass that she sometimes thought she could feel sitting there, like a bullet between the eyes and just as deadly. 'I don't want to die!' her mind screamed. Through her tears, she saw the bright lights of the ambulance pass by, carrying Howard to the morgue. How long would it be until an ambulance came for her? Or would she die in the hospital, wasting slowly away while Mulder and her family sat by her bedside and tried to hide their fear, their tears, to put on a brave face for her? How long before there was nothing left of her but a cold, lifeless corpse on a slab in the morgue, or being lowered into the dark depths of a grave, and Mulder grieving over her? Seeking to escape her thoughts, she reached for the ignition and automatically checked the rear-view mirror, only to freeze at what she saw. Sitting in the back seat of her car, smiling benignly at her, was Howard. Scully whirled around to check... but the back seat was empty. She sat back in her seat and stared forward. Not another one. One vision could be excused, ignored, passed off as something else. But two... Two was more than a coincidence, more than stress or suggestion. Either she was going crazy, or she was seeing ghosts. And she knew she wasn't going crazy. She had seen another ghost. She had confirmed Mulder's theory that only those who were close to death were seeing these spirits. Close to death. 'Oh God, I don't want to die.' Frozen in place by grief and fear, she sat immobile and let her tears fall. *** Mulder leaned against the cold sterile wall as she passed by. He would give her time to leave the parking lot without having to see him again, and then he would go home, change into sweats, and run until he was too tired to think about what he had just done. God damn it. He had been so careful. Ever since she had told him, he had been so goddamn careful to consider her feelings. To tell her where he was going, instead of just disappearing. To express just enough of his concern, but not too much. To ask if she was feeling up to an extra task, or a late night conference, instead of just assuming. To be there for her when she needed him. And within a moment he had ruined it all by lashing out at her. He knew it was hard for her to accept the paranormal at face value; he depended on her for that. And so, in the absence of a scientific explanation for what she had seen, it was perfectly understandable that she had hesitated, wanting to formulate her own interpretation of the facts before presenting them to him. But to hide it from him until the case was solved! To stand there and look at the body of the murdered girl, whose spirit she had seen just minutes before, and to not say a word. To listen to him theorize and not to say anything! What was she thinking? What else was she hiding from him? He took a deep breath and tried to think instead of just feeling. Scully had been scared; in hindsight he could see that. Even his brave, unflappable Scully had to have been spooked by the apparition, and he had only made it worse by suggesting that only those who were close to death could see these visions. God, he didn't want to think of Scully's illness. He wanted it to just disappear every bit as much as she did, but it wasn't going to. And since it wasn't going to disappear, he needed to know. He needed to know how bad it was and how bad it was going to get. He had to know if she was hurting or frightened or getting worse. If she was going to die and leave him alone, he had to know. But instead, all he got was 'I'm fine, Mulder' or 'the doctor said I was fine.' With tears in her eyes she told him these things, and how could he accept it? What about when the doctor said she wasn't fine? What would she tell him then? *Would* she tell him? He thought of her when she had first broken the news to him. Beyond all reason or common sense, lit by fluorescent lights and X-ray screens, dressed in a plain black suit he had seen a dozen times, she had still managed to look more beautiful, more ethereally beautiful than any mortal creature had the right to look. 'You're the only one I've called.' And he had taken those words and locked them in his heart, a talisman against the pain. Yes, he wanted to be the first to know. He wanted to be the first to know at every step along the way, because otherwise the terror of not knowing would consume him. Her reticence was understandable. His reaction was understandable. But between them, they had managed to reopen the rift between themselves. He had spoken in anger, and she had withdrawn into defensiveness, and then into denial. And he didn't know how to fix his mistake. Pulling away from the wall, he turned his steps towards the parking lot, berating himself a little more with every step. In the parking lot, he automatically scanned the area with his eyes, only to freeze when he saw Scully's car still sitting there. He hurried forward, his fertile imagination instantly providing a dozen chilling possibilities as to why Scully was not safely on her way home by now. When he saw her sitting behind the wheel, he was greatly relieved, but no less confused. She tracked him with her eyes, and then, in an uncharacteristically furtive movement, she reached across and opened the passenger side door, motioning for him to get in. He slid into the passenger seat and stared at her. Her eyes were wide enough to swallow the rest of her pale face. "Scully? What is it?" "I saw him," she whispered intensely. "Who?" "Harold." "Where?" Her only answer was to raise one finger to touch the rear view mirror. But as she tilted her face to the offending mirror, he caught the glistening track of the tears on her cheek. He reached forward to touch those rare tears, but she flinched at the contact and slapped his hand away. Their eyes locked for a moment before Scully ducked her head and swiped at the tears on her cheeks. "Don't hide from me, Scully," Mulder whispered through the protective curtain of her hair. With reverent fingers he reached out and turned her face back to his. "Whatever it is, I can handle it," he promised. "I can't," she blurted out, then gasped in horror at her admission, and new tears replaced the ones she had wiped away. But he urged her to speak with his earnest eyes and the gentle caress of his fingertips on her cheek. "Tell me," he begged, and she did, reaching out to grasp his lapel in one hand and pulling him closer for her whispered confession. "When I saw her, Mulder, I was wiping the blood from my nose." Mulder shivered at the reminder, but nodded for her to continue. "And the next moment I looked up and the mirror was painted with blood. 'She is me,' it said, and for a moment Mulder, I actually thought that it was *my* blood. "And then I saw her. She was trying to speak, to ask for my help, but her throat was cut, and there was nothing I could do. She *is* me, Mulder. There was nothing that I could do for her, and there is nothing that I can do for myself. When you told me that the people who were seeing these visions were all dying, I knew. I already knew." "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked again, but this time without the accusation that his voice had held before. "Why did you argue with my theory if you already believed the same thing?" "Because I didn't *want* to believe it, Mulder, What was I going to say? 'Yes, I agree that only people who are dying are seeing these visions, because *I've* seen one? So that proves your theory because *I'm*..." She choked on the word and had to close her eyes against the sorrow she saw in his face, but the tears continued to seep out from between her lashes. Then, suddenly, she took a deep, bracing breath, and looked at him with new determination in her eyes. "No. I want *you* to say it. I want to hear *you* say why I'm seeing these things." Her tone would not be denied, even though her demand hit him like a bullet to the chest. "Because... because you're sick," he equivocated. His voice when he said it was the little boy voice he used when he saw her nose bleed. It was the voice of a boy who sees someone he loves in pain and can't understand why he can't fix it. "An admirable evasion, Mulder," she said, with a painful smile. Her grip on his lapel loosened and changed to a soothing caress. In the next moment they were in each other's arms, clinging tightly to each other as if the contact would let them forget the frightening possibilities that haunted their near future. "You see?" she whispered. "You can't say it either. Does that mean you're lying to me? No. It just means that there are some things that cannot be said. No one can face the truth twenty four hours a day, Mulder. Not me. Not even you." She pulled back to look at him, and now the tears were in his eyes. "So lie to me, Mulder. Tell me it's all going to be all right. Tell me we'll find our miracle. *Then* you can worry about making the lies into truths." In answer, he leaned forward and kissed her, a quick hard kiss that expressed both his worry and his determination. "The best lies are made out of the truth, Scully. I love you. I am *not* going to let you die on me. We are going to find the answers we need, even if we have to tear them out of the devil, himself." Scully smiled and when she kissed him it was a kiss of need and of gratitude. "Come home with me, Mulder," she whispered, "and lie to me some more." He smiled and fastened his seat belt. "You know I won't let you make a liar out of me, Scully. You *are* going to get better, because we *are* going to find the answers we need," he said earnestly. "What about you loving me?" she teased carefully. "That part is already the truth, and you know it," he told her. "I know," she said confidently, then asked: "Forgiven?" "Am I?" he asked back. "Always," she whispered. He smiled. "Are you going to start this car and get us home, or not?" She smiled, and turned the key. The End If you liked it, please let me know. :-)