From: daveandsue Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 19:55:30 -0400 Subject: night at sunrise (1/1) Suzanne Title:NIGHT BEGINS AT SUNRISE (1/1) Author: Suzanne (sue-dave@erols.com) Spoilers: The End Rating: Very mild R for a bit of sexual imagery Classification:VRA Distribution: Archive wherever it might be appreciated Keyword: Mulder/Scully Summary: A bitter, Mulder POV morning after the end. Not cheery, but'shipper friendly. Disclaimers: I have borrowed these characters to tell a story and convey some emotion. I don't have any rights to these characters except as a mind who thinks these thoughts about them. I'll give them back if you promise to take better care of them next season. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Oh My God, what have we done? What have *I* done? No. What have *we* done? We both did this. We wanted it desperately. But we knew we shouldn't, we couldn't have it. It just wasn't possible if we were going to survive. We knew better. We still know better. We did it anyway. After all these years. Five plus years of denial and then acceptance that we could not be lovers. Not for a long while. Maybe never. Five-plus years of hard work. Damned hard work. We worked so hard at not coming together, at not giving in. Not physically anyway. We've always been lovers, it seems. We've been lovers for a long, long time. But we couldn't act on it. We didn't dare this. How could we do this? They torched the place. Somebody did. I don't really know who did it. I don't know that it matters. It's gutted. Nothing but ash. I remember in high school and, for a while, in college at the end of a semester, I'd burn my notebooks. I'd get so fed up. I'd make a big heap of them in a field and light them. I'd watch each page, each leaf, dry and crimp, crinkle and brown, then curl and blacken. The smoke would spiral toward heaven. A burnt offering of blood, sweat, and tears, measured in semesters and quarters. Black, grey, laced with white ash. Beautiful in a terrifying and horrible way. It was cathartic. The office looked like that, but without the beauty. No catharsis. Only the terror and horror remained. This was an involuntary sacrifice. Most definitely not offered. Not by me or by her, the woman who lies sleeping next to me. This beautiful, precious treasure who, miraculously, has chosen to stay with me through it all. Even against her better judgement. And mine, what little of it remains. I know what everyone in the Bureau is thinking. "How tragic. There goes the Spook's life work down the drain." Six years for me, five of them for the two of us. All of our work gone. Well most, of it, we've got back-ups and duplicates here and there. But frankly, it'd be rough to try to reconstruct it, even with the Bureau's full support. Trust me, we don't have the Bureau's full support. They're planning on splitting us up. Reassigning us. Maybe to opposite coasts. But it wasn't the work. That's not the tragedy. It wasn't the work that went down in flames. It was our life, our history that was destroyed. It was the place where we were centered. Where we had come together for five years. We'd laughed and cried, near hysteria with fatigue and stress. Ridiculous slide shows I'd put together for her, just so she'd give me that look of frustration, disgust and maybe a little tenderness, all packaged into one raised eyebrow. Nights past two a.m. drinking stale coffee in a basement where all light was absent except for her eyes, all sound extinguished except for her breathing and a soft, occasional "Mulder." I couldn't touch her body so I caressed her mind and she, mine. Where we denied our bodies the blending they'd hungered for, our souls had come together in passion and ecstacy. Nothing in my life has ever approached the experience of being, just being with Scully. We didn't need words, we didn't need touches (though I sure as hell wanted them). We just needed to be. "I am to my beloved as my beloved is to me." The office was where it happened. Where we were. They didn't want us to be. I fear we will be no more. They raped us. Rape and pillage. Our village has been razed and we have been sent into exile. Our home, it is that which they have destroyed. The Mr. and Mrs. Spooky residence. Our basement office bedroom, where we made love the only way we were allowed. With words and glances, arguments and flights of cognition, reason, and intuition. It's all gone. I guess that's why we did this. We were trying to find our way home, or make a new one. After the fire I was a complete wreck. I was disoriented. Hell, I think probably I was dissociative. I'm generally the weaker of the two of us. My strong, take charge Scully, (yes, my Scully, she always has been) led me out of the ashes. Somehow she got me back to my apartment. I don't remember how. I don't remember a thing except finding myself in the shower, Scully washing the soot and ash out of my hair, my back, my chest, my stomach. . . Her fingers traced a line of fire and ice, downward. We had nothing left to hold on to. Nothing but each other. We've always been all we had, but that fact has never been brought home quite so clearly or forcefully. I looked down at her, pink and ivory, and sodden hair dripping gold red flames down her neck, her shoulders. "Mulder," she said. Simply "Mulder" We fell into each other, nothing could have stopped us. I had to. I knew that I wouldn't be able to draw another breath if I didn't. Time could not progress, the world could not turn, my heart could not offer up another beat unless I held her, entered her, became her. I had to surround myself with Scully or I would die. I did it to survive, and I believe, so did she. The irony is that this is the one thing that now may spell our destruction. I will never be able to stop now. I can't go back. I know this to be a certainty. I am too weak. But whereas I survived before to go on to fight another day, another day of struggle for answers ever elusive, now I'm going to survive so that I can love her again. That is now my purpose in life. Before, the task was to take care of each other. Now the task is to nuzzle her hair just one more time, to run my cheek against the milk-white silk that is her inner thigh, to kiss the underside of her breast. Certainly there could be worse goals in life, and were our world like that of so many other people, it would be the best of all possible reasons to live. I want to quit. All I want is to run away, someplace far away with Scully and just live, loving her. But that will get us killed. They will not leave us alone. They will not relent. They will not let us be, regardless of what we want. We know too much and have seen too many things. They are vengeful. But we are no longer up to the struggle, Scully and I. We are soft now. Our spare touches, once austere and purposeful, are now tender, lingering. We are lovers now, not fighters. We have tasted heaven and now we are lost. We are no longer of this world. We will not be able to survive in it. I'm raised up on an elbow in the cool, gossamer light of early morning. Scully stirs beneath me. She is warm and sweet. Her fragrance wafts up to my nostrils returning me to last night's coupling. If musk were a rose, Scully at this moment would be it. Last night. We cried, we sobbed as we came together. I hurled myself into her and she met me with equal force. We buried our heads in each other and called out each other's names in ecstasy and despair. We clutched each other for life as we climaxed, our bodies heaving with sobs, our lovemaking lubricated by tears. We gave in and now we will die. It will end. One day we won't be paying attention. I'll be tracing circles on the inside of her wrist, or she'll be grazing her fingers up and down the back of my neck. We won't notice the gun barrel pointed toward us, the explosive attached to the rental car's engine, the filings from the brake cable which has been severed. I am as certain of our doom as of anything I ever have been. I am besotted with her. I can not function. I was not ready to accept this gift. It is too soon and I have no safe place to keep it. How dare they ruin this, my first time with her? I'd imagined all sorts of idyllic fantasies of our first time, on a beach, in the sea, even on her mother's kitchen table at Annapolis while her stupidass brother slept upstairs, but always with joy. Always with joy. And peace. She deserves peach colored rosebuds and cream satin sheets. Candles and moonlight. This isn't how it was supposed to be. Her Scully-scent was edged out by the smoke and ash burned in my nostrils. How could they do this to my Scully? They've poisoned our first time. It's been laced with tears, despair and fear. They've snatched it away from us, never to be recovered. God damn them to hell eternal for that. My beauty, my exquisite poem in flesh takes in a sharp breath. She rolls nearer to me and rests an arm on my hipbone. Her eyelids flutter. It is the morning after. It may be the last morning, our only morning. Bless us Father, for we have made a grave mistake. Wake up Scully, and weep.