From: "Michelle Marshall" Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2000 19:17:48 -0700 Subject: ...more than this Source: direct Title: .more than this Author: M.K. Marshall Rating: PG Classification: MSR Spoilers: Requiem, Pilot, all things Disclaimer: Not mine. Never will be. Distribution: Be my guest. Feedback: Greatly appreciated. Summary: Missing scene from Requiem. .more than this "There's so much more you need to do with your life." His soft voice caressed her ear while his hand traced a wrinkle across her brow. ".so much more than this." She took a sudden breath and held it, trying to keep the tears in her eyes from spilling. "There has to be an end, Scully," he promised and allowed his lips to whisper a kiss against her cheek before he pulled her deeper into his arms. The warmth of his body bled through blanket, but still she trembled, still shivered, his words spinning through her in a whirling echo. She clung to the hand that she held, pressed her lips into its tender strength. He was wrong. There was nothing more important than the feel of him wrapped around her. After waiting for so long, denying so much, she was finally where she wanted to be, needed to be. She would never let that go. "I'm not leaving you, Mulder," her voice was shaky but certain. She felt his arms tighten in strange mixture of gratitude and despair and guilt as they fell into a familiar silence. A silence that made and kept so many promises, held too many secrets. Words were too fragile, too hard to be said, but spoken with a lingering glance, taken with a passing touch. There were words now that neither dared speak. Abductee. Implant. Cancer. Words too risky to give voice to. To give them sound would give them strength, make them real. Scully had seen the pictures of Theresa's husband scattered over the bed and brushed them aside as she crawled beneath the comforter. Secret keepsakes, proof to unspeakable pain, and the testimony of scars. Scars too much like the one she carried on the back of her neck. She was scared and so was he. She could feel him trembling and trying to hide it with the gentle stroking of his hand over her stomach. The slow, soft circles and the heat of his palm soothed the uneasiness that had been growing since they'd arrived here in Bellefleur. Back where it all began. Back where they began. "Seven years, Scully." he whispered, his voice reading her thoughts. ".and we're no closer to the truth than we were then." His tattered sigh slipped through the waves of her hair, trickled into her heart like a slow, warm tear. She rolled in his embraced and drifted into the dark forest of his eyes, lost herself in the honey-hazel and summer-sweet green. Those muddled colors, entangled and inseparable, were the perfect reflection of their lives. "But closer, Mulder." Her hand reached up and followed the shadows and ruff stubble along his jaw. She brushed his lips with the trust of her touch, the honesty of her words. "Maybe that's all the truth we need." "Scully," his voice formed her name like an answered prayer. His eyes closed in bittersweet acceptance, pressed her hand to his cheek, worshiping it with a humble caress. Silence found them again, voiceless words given in the weighty touch of his breath upon her skin, in her gift of a simple, hopeful smile. This intimacy was still so new to them and somehow so old--trying to figure out how they fit together, but knowing that they did. It was clumsy and graceful, awkward and wonderful. He sank deeper into the bed and into her arms, noticing that the trembling had stopped. "Feeling better?" She nodded, tucking her head into the cozy nook between his shoulder and his neck. "I just wanted to be warm," she repeated. Agent Dana Scully, the Ice Queen, just wanted to be warm. She knew that's what they called her as she brushed by, just as surely those cowardice whispers tossed the name 'Spooky' through the bureau halls. "Just wanted to be warm." Her arms clutched him a little tighter. She was tired of the cold white light that came to haunt her in her dreams, tired of the cold white memories of snow and ice. She was worn weary from the countless and colorless hospital rooms that had been hers, that had been his. She shivered from too much time spent in too many autopsy bays. She ached beneath the cold white sheets of her bed that covered her, but did not keep her warm. .a lonely chill had awakened her just two months ago, despite being carefully wrapped in his Navajo blanket. She had opened her eyes to the emptiness beside her and the murmur of the fish tank. Leaving the blanket behind, she rose from the couch, and made the unfamiliar path to his bedroom. Through the open door she could see him, asleep and silent beneath the downy covers. He seemed innocent, inviting and warm. She lingered at the threshold, wanting to step through. So many moments had been started in doorways and hallways, never to be finished--afraid to be finished. Fate had brought them this far, but the moment, the decision, was hers to make. At last, she moved closer and carefully sat beside him on the mattress's edge. Her hand caught upon a cool breath of air as she reached out to touch the hair along his brow. That tender gesture made him stir, made him float from the depths of dreams to the stormy surface of the night. A low rumble of thunder roared in the distance, and flashes of lightning flared in the dark sky. His eyes fluttered, straining to see her through the blackness, surprised and not surprised to find her so close. He reached for her hand and held it, the caress of his fingers asking, waiting. She waited for the answer. Listened for it in the patience of the moment, searched for it in beat of her own heart. And it came as the rising wind stole through the window and made her shiver. She just wanted to be warm. She lowered herself into his arms and into all the things that mattered. The rain outside had begun to beat against the glass pane, harsh and reckless, but his kisses were soft and gentle, and swept over her with a maddening rhythm. The thunder and lighting sought each other in a rough game of tag, of hide and seek, straining with heat and tension. Wanting to touch, longing, reaching and pulling until finally finding tandem in a sudden fury. Trembling and tumbling together for just moments before separating again, dividing, but never alone. The breeze drifted through the window, calmed in the aftermath, but still cold. The chill hovered in the air, stirred above her, tempted and threatened to take her back, but it couldn't. She was finally safe, finally warm in the shelter of his arms. .like now. "What is it about this town that sends you running to my bed," he mused with a smile, his words tickling at the thoughts in her head. He captured her laugh with the brief touch of his lips, savoring the taste of her happiness. It danced in his eyes before it softened, darkened a little. She remembered the darkness of those eyes one night seven years ago in a hotel room just across town. The reflection of the rain through storm-streaked windows cried the tears he would not allow. She had run to him in a sudden fear, an urgent panic, wanting answers, needing more, and had gotten caught in the tragedy of him. ".You came to me scared and shaking, and trusted me to give you the truth.That was all you wanted from me.the truth." His hushed storytelling voice lulled her to that distant memory, so far away but always close enough to touch. That night she had offered her vulnerability and in turn he had revealed his own. His burden spilled from the shadows of the room and the haze of his memories. She listened to his words, slipped into their strange sadness, followed them down through that chink in his lonely armor of arrogance. Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, she lost herself in that wild tale, saw how it had left him hurt and hollow. That always, aching need for an answer had left him weak and determined to trust any lead and any hope. He could be used so easily, manipulated, and hurt. That had been her assigned duty. To debunk, distract, and discredit him. But she abandoned that duty to follow one of her own. "I think I fell in love with you that night." he confessed in a shy whisper. "Mulder." but before she could finish he stilled her with the gentle touch of his finger upon her lips. "I don't think I realized it for a long time.but that night I told you my truth and you listened. I know you thought I was crazy, but you didn't walk away." No. Something had kept her beside him that night and for seven years. He was a fascination to her scientific mind. He was a complicated study; unexplainable, an opposite, a challenge and a tease. His brilliance and his intensity intrigued her, burned her. She was taken by his compassion, frightened by his willingness to believe, and drawn to him in a way that was beyond her understanding. "There were times when I wished you had walked away, Scully. After everything that's happened to you.everything that you've lost because you stayed with me." his voice faltered and faded. His eyes clouded with a heavy guilt carried for too long. It was a look she knew too well, recognized from that first night so many years ago. She remembered longing to reach down into that desperation and soothe the emptiness. She wanted to be his strength when his failed. It was the self-sworn promise she had made while tucked safely in his motel bedspread but caught dangerously deep in his broken memories. Over the years she had kept the secret of her own weaknesses, hid behind her silence or hardened words. She could not bring herself to add to his lonely sorrow. She would carefully guard what the rest of the world couldn't see in him. "Why?" came that pleading voice. "Why did you stay? What did you see?" The answer was simple and true. "Faith." His brow knit in confusion, asking the silent question. How could she find faith in a man who claimed no religion, a man who could not accept the certainty of a God, someone who had left behind his own soul to search for another's? "I saw a faith that you would find your sister, that you would find your answers. that you would find the truth." His fingertip traced down the line of her jaw, down the slender length of her neck to that little hollow that cradled her gold cross. It moved in tandem with the pulse that beat just beneath. His finger moved under the delicate chain, toyed with the symbol of a faith whose foundation had been tested and shattered, but never forgotten. How many times had he returned this precious token to her, held on to her faith when she could not, held on to it because it was all that he had. "But I didn't." was all he could managed to say. She could see the ghostly pain of his sister's last words forever written in his eyes. Those diary pages left hopelessly behind, haunted him despite the freedom, the forgiveness that they gave. She pulled him down into her arms, placing his head upon her shoulder as he clung to the thin gold charm. "Maybe not the way you wanted.but you found her, Mulder. You know the truth." The tiny cross slipped from his gentle grasp and fell to its natural place, the metal warmed by his worrying. "You are my truth, Scully. My faith." With the touch of his lips he pressed that sweet certainty to a tender spot below her ear. His heated sigh trickled beneath the collar of her blouse, flirted across her skin and made those chills return. She held on as the dizziness stirred again, his words tumbling through her. My constant. My touchstone. "And you are mine." Her fingers tangled in his hair, kneaded through its softness. His hand found its way over her stomach once again, rekindling the slow, graceful circles he had begun earlier, the gesture waking memories of childhood, of comfort, of safety. She had come to him tonight in need, trembling and cold as she had so long ago. She had come full circle. Like the tender swirls his fingers traced across her belly, beginning where they end, and starting over and over. "There doesn't have to be an end." Her hand covered his, joining in the momentum. "Maybe what we need is a new beginning." His long fingers embraced hers, welcomed them into that warm, round rhythm. She settled again, eased by the caresses, by the beat of his heart. The gentle weight of sleep pulled at her, tugged her eyes closed, calmed her into slow and shallow breaths. Mulder felt her body surrender, relent and drift off into dreams. His fingers slipped between the buttons of her blouse, needing the feel of her skin and tracing the pattern of every crop circle in his memory. The touch of her kept all the fears from pulling him down into madness. Losing her before her had been unbearable, to lose her again would be unlivable. He chased those circles of hope, over and over. "A new beginning." he vowed and brought his lips to hers in affirmation. ".with so much more." The promise was fated and flawed but needed to be believed. Maybe all it needed was a little more faith. End