From: Brighid <earthstone@goplay.com>
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1998 22:19:21 -0700
Subject: NEW: Playing Orpheus (1/1)(prequel to Gravity and Bird Bones)

Title: Playing Orpheus (1/1)
 Author: Brighid
 Spoilers: Major spoilers for Scully's arc in Season 4 & Season 5 arc
Rating: PG - a few words
 Category: A
 Keywords: Prequel to Gravity and Bird Bones, Character Death
Summary: Sometimes even faith is not enough, and it means saying good-bye.
 Warning: One teeny, slightly slashy moment.
 Archive: Sure, but keep my name & let me know.
Constructive feedback greatly appreciated. Please. Please. Please.

Disclaimer: All things X-files belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox. This
is not for profit, but for love.

Someone asked for some back story to Gravity and Bird Bones. I dusted this
off and tidied it up during a block in another piece.


Playing Orpheus

by Brighid

There once was a man who loved a woman very much. He was a driven man,
dogged by a passion that kept him travelling, kept him pushing the
boundaries of all he knew. Yet however hard he pushed, however far his
passions carried him away, he knew he always had a calm center to anchor
him.

He always had her.

****************************

Mulder closed his eyes and let A.D. Sharpe's voice become nothing more than
an alto drone. It was over. Almost. He felt tired to the bones, and oddly
restless, as if something inside of him yet doubted their success. It had
all happened too quickly for him to truly process it.

The big puzzle pieces had fallen into place in one chain reaction, setting
off a wave of suicides and accidental deaths around the globe. Over the last
three weeks, most of the 'consortium', or 'colluders' as the press called
them, had either died off or gone to ground. In the wake of their
disappearances, the World Health Organization and a variety of other global
organizations had undertaken a massive inoculation program, ensuring
immunity to the alien conquerors. Even as that happened, government agencies
underwent a ruthless housecleaning; those who had neither disappeared nor
died were facing review committees at best, and trial for treason at worst.

Now all that remained were the little pieces, the edges to the puzzle.
Pieces like Sam. He sighed and shifted in his seat, wishing he'd had a
chance to get hold of the black-lunged bastard before someone had seen fit
to redecorate the sonuvabitch's walls in shades of brain and bone.

A small, soft noise penetrated his inward focus; he opened his eyes to
sudden silence. Across the table Scully's eyes grew impossibly wide in her
face as a cascade of blood, rich and red and clotting, painted her face and
front. Under the gory half-mask her mouth moved helplessly, and there was a
faint gurgling, but no other sound.

He went across the table rather than around, his lanky body spinning wildly
on the polished surface. He thrust the useless silk square from his breast
pocket under her nose, and used the other hand to pinch just below the bone
with delicate ruthlessness. His stomach rolled once, twice and a third time
as his hands grew ruddy in direct contrast to her rapidly paling face. She
shifted beneath his hands from cream, to alabaster, to frosted glass, even
as her eyes grew clouded and vague. Under the animal hotness of the blood,
she was terrifyingly cold.

He tore his gaze away from her helpless face, searching for something,
anything to anchor him in the whirling room. For a brief second he saw
Skinner moving towards them, his stone face crumbling, but it was all
dizzyingly kaleidoscope, and he couldn't find a focus. He swallowed hard and
returned his eyes to his fading partner.

She began to slip under the table; he surged forward and clasped her to him,
finding the anchor he had been seeking. She was fire and ice in his arms,
and both were searing him to the bone. He felt the faltering rhythm of her
heart against his chest, felt it trying to pump what wasn't there. He heard
a voice, wild and hoarse, screaming for an ambulance, and was only dimly
aware that it was his own.

*****************************************************************

In the day of their joining, he let himself grow easy. He let the raging
music inside go quiet, and listened instead to the words of the priestess as
she bound their wrists with the red cord, and made public what they had
always known: that they two were two halves of one heart. He tasted his
beloved's mouth once the words were said, and grew drunker than any wine
might have made him. He felt the song inside her, and answered it with the
harmony of his own love.

The serpent that lay unseen struck then, swift and terrible and totally
without mercy. She scarcely had time to cry out before she stiffened and
then fell, the poison throughout her body within three unsteady contractions
of her heart. A howl tore itself loose from his throat, and rent the air
with discordant misery. It took three men to pry him from her cooling body.

The wedding feast swiftly became a funerary rite. The priestess cleaned her
body, then re-dressed her in her wedding clothes. The same men who had
dragged him from his beloved now carried her with quiet reverence to her
funeral pyre. The priestess bent over her body, carefully laid a heavy penny
on each eye, then opened the marble mouth to lay a third under her silent
tongue, the price of the Ferryman. His gut knotted, pushed his gorge into
his throat.

The death chant rose up, and the priestess let the first flames lick the
kindling at the base of the pyre. For the second time that day he cried out,
a ragged, despairing noise. He broke away from the well-meaning arms that
held him, leaped over the low flames to climb onto the platform beside his
beloved. He touched the soft coils of her hair, the too-cold lips, the
shadowed valley between her breasts. A low groan escaped him, and he bent
his head over her to plunder her mouth with his own. He dove deep into her,
seeking some lingering heat, but it was chill as the underworld, and all he
could taste was the bitterness of copper. He took the coin from under her
tongue, the price of her passage. She would not go alone.

**************************************************************

She was sleeping now, curled and small like a child in a too-big bed. Mulder
held her bruised hand, careful of the I.V. line, and watched the flicker of
dreams beneath her paper-thin lids. He wanted to reach out, trace the blue
veins that stood out stark and terrible along the sweep of her closed eyes,
the hollows of her temples. He wanted to sit there forever and memorize the
intricate lapis-lazuli traceries that twined just under her fragile skin. He
let himself get lost in the contemplation.

The quiet hiss of the door startled him; he looked up to see Skinner
standing hesitantly in the doorway. Mulder made a shushing gesture with his
free hand, then gently extricated himself from Scully's sleeping clasp. He
waited a moment to be sure she was undisturbed, then joined Skinner in the
hallway.

"How is she?" the older man asked, gravel voice a little rougher, weary eyes
a little darker.

"She's dying." The naked words were too sudden, too sharp, and hung
painfully between them for a long time.

Skinner sighed, filling the awkward space, and pinched the bridge of his
nose viciously enough to bruise. "They're sure?" His voice held little hope
of the answer.

"Blood work says it's metastasized into her blood stream. It's all through
her body. The MRI found eighteen distinct masses in her body, including the
tumor she had before. She's refused any sort of radiation therapy or chemo,
and the doctors didn't even try to argue." Mulder's words were dull, dark
stones dropping into the well of silence between them.

"Well, shit," Skinner managed at last, giving up on his unsteady legs and
sinking onto the bench. "Shit," he repeated, softer, closing his eyes.

Mulder managed a small, mirthless smile. "That's about what I said," he
offered wryly. He sat down next to the A.D., and leaned back against the
wall. The silence closed over their heads.

After a time, a slow drumming penetrated the fog of Skinner's thoughts. He
lifted his gaze from the scuffed floor and began to search for the source,
only to find that it was Mulder, knocking his head back against the wall.
The mindless precision and utter blankness of it horrified Skinner; he
reached out and cradled the back of Mulder's skull in his broad, blunt hand.

"Stop it," he murmured, somehow both fierce and gentle. He felt Mulder
strain against him for a minute, then relax. A moment later he was rocked by
the violent tremor that moved through the younger man. With surprise, he
realized that Mulder was weeping, for once in his life totally silent.

Skinner slowly withdrew his hand, embarrassed, feeling as if he'd seen
Mulder naked. He turned his gaze away, letting it slide over notices and
institutional art, but was unable to focus on anything long enough to
distract him from the man who sat beside him, immersed in grief.

At last the trembling eased. Skinner started in surprise when Mulder surged
to his feet, moving as if to leave. "Where the hell do you think you're
going?" he demanded, A.D. voice and A.D. manner masking real concern.

Hazel eyes turned green glass. "Just because the devil's dead doesn't mean
there's nobody out there to make a deal with. I refuse to give up on her."
He stood stiff and taut, hands fisting unconsciously at his sides as he
stared down the older man.

Skinner regarded him steadily. "All right. Go see what you can do. I'll wait
with Scully, so she doesn't wake up alone."

Surprise, relief and gratitude flashed over Mulder's face in rapid
succession. "Thank-you, sir. Her mom should be here in a few hours. She was
out of state, visiting Scully's brother and the new baby. I talked to her
just after she'd booked her flight." Mulder hesitated, moved his mouth as if
to speak again, but nothing came out.

Skinner waved him off. "Go on, Mulder," he urged gently. "I'll keep her safe
until you return." He watched as the younger man turned on his heel and
strode to the elevators, silently wishing him luck. Something that might
have been a sigh slipped loose as he shrugged off his heavy trench, and went
to keep watch over his sleeping agent.

*****************************************************************

His lyre sang like a living thing beneath his hands. It spun out music,
liquid and living, and paved his way through the underworld. The Ferryman
himself turned back the proffered coin, the darkness in his endless eyes a
little softer. Everywhere the musician passed a calm rose up. The tormented
found peace, the damned found respite, and the lost found direction. Quiet
descended like a mantle, and hell itself was still.

He lost himself in the music. Every note, every chord was a memory of his
beloved: the timbre of her voice, the colour of her hair in moonlight, the
line of her back in the sunrise. He played her out and lost himself in the
remembering.

"Why are you here, flesh and blood?" The voice threaded into the music,
strong and shadowed, a bass rumble like an earthquake.

The man looked up to find an impossibly tall, unutterably dark man before
him. The music faded to a mere echo, but the stillness remained. "I've come
for the other half of my heart," he replied, and his words held the
resonance of his music.

The Lord of the Underworld's face was arrogant but not unkind. "This is not
your world, flesh and bone, and you have no rights here. The one you seek
belongs to me now, and I do not give up what is mine."

"Then keep me, because I cannot live with half a heart."

The Dark One shook his massive head and his eyes were deep with pity. "I
cannot give what is mine. I cannot take what is not." He laid a cold hand on
the mortal's shoulder. "Go home, nephew's son. Go back to flesh and blood
and bone."

The man looked into the crowd, saw a wistful face on the woman just behind
the Dark One. "Perhaps we can strike a bargain?" he offered, touching the
strings with delicate fingers. This time the winds of spring blew threw the
shadowed halls, and the wistfulness became longing. She reached out and put
a gentle hand on the Immortal's shoulder.

The Lord of the Underworld glanced from his Lady to the player. "I'm
listening," he rumbled. "Speak quickly, for I am not known for my patience."

The man began to play, and spring blossomed in the darkness. Even the barren
tree where the damned souls twisted and turned burst into startling flower.
For the first time in all creation, death and life sat side by side without
sorrow or fear.

A small eternity passed and gradually the music ebbed, but the spring
remained. "If I can create life from death, milord, surely so can you?" he
challenged quietly.

The Dark One was lost in the radiance of his Lady's eyes. When at last he
spoke, his voice was rough with emotion. "Well, my little flesh and blood,
you have just earned yourself a chance."

******************************************************************

The e-mail account Krycek had slipped him three months ago was still active.
Mulder sent to it from the internet cafe, and then sipped at something
whipped and vaguely chocolate, checking periodically at his web-based
account for a response. It took three hours for the answer to come through,
an address and time. Mulder paid his bill off and was out of the door at a
run.

An hour later he was sitting in a greasy spoon as his second cup of
execrable coffee ate a hole through his nervous gut. He counted the cracks
in the worn table top, riffled the napkins, and tried desperately not to
remember the pallor of Scully's face as she had slipped under the briefing
table. A pile of ragged white napkins bore mute testament to his lack of
success.

"Christ, Mulder, when I suggested we meet here, I didn't think you'd be
stupid enough to actually drink the damned coffee," Krycek drawled mockingly
as he slid into the seat opposite the older man. He opened the menu. "The
fried chicken, however, is another matter." He waved the tired-looking
waitress over and ordered the fried chicken. With a shrewd glance at Mulder,
he went on to order a chicken sandwich on his behalf. When she had gone, he
turned his hectic green gaze on the FBI agent. "So, you called?"

Mulder just stared at him for a time. Christ, but Krycek was a chameleon. He
half thought he might be one of those shape-changers. The geeky freshman
look was long gone, as was the punk thug. Now he'd shed his coyote skin,
too, opting for something altogether sleeker and more wolf-like. He was in a
fucking suit, for chrissakes, one that actually fit. Only the black-gloved
hand and the wildness in his eyes reflected the Krycek he had known.

Krycek sighed, but didn't shift under the scrutiny. "Look, Mulder. We may
have helped each other bring the bastards down, but I know we still aren't
on each other's Christmas lists - or is that Chanukah for you? So why the
hell did you chase me down and want to meet?"

"Scully's dying." His voice was little more than a whisper, the words too
heavy for anything more.

Something stirred beneath Krycek's still-smooth face, then was gone. "That's
rough," he offered evenly, distantly.

Mulder felt a welling of rage as fierce as his earlier grief had been. He
wanted to lunge across the table and smash the other man's placid face in,
stain his hands with real blood to replace the ghost of Scully's
hemorrhaging. He wanted to beat the shit out of Krycek for old time's sake,
and feel alive again. "That's intolerable," he said instead, his voice
overly loud in the sleepy diner. "There's got to be a cure for it, damn you.
There was one before, don't tell me there isn't one now." His voice grew too
thick for words, and so he glared at the rogue agent instead.

Krycek stroked the leather of his glove with his good hand, but didn't evade
Mulder's eyes. "Not this time, Fox. It's not a deliberate thing this time.
It's simply a by-product. If you check around, you'll find that all women
who were abducted over the years are going through the same thing. It's a
side-effect of the treatment they underwent."

"I know that," Mulder ground out. "We've been through that. We got the
fucking cure for that. This is something different."

Krycek shook his dark head. "No, it isn't. The vaccine used to protect us
from the colonization acts as a trigger, and an accelerator. It's tied into
cell growth, to allow us to over-write the invaders genetic code, keep it
from taking us over. But in the victims who've already been messed with, it
just triggers the cancer again. What you got for her the last time would
have worked, most probably, for a long time, but it was really only a
temporary solution. The coding to develop cancer was still there. The
vaccine just sped up the process." His eyes were deep with pity, and Mulder
had to turn away from them.

"You're lying," he said, but it was reflexive rather than vehement.

"What would be the point?" Krycek said gently, perhaps a little sadly.
"Scully's a bitch in high heels, and there's no love lost between us, but
I've nothing to gain from her dying. If I had a cure for you, I might even
have given it to you for free. I'm feeling expansive these days. Business
has been good." He shifted, showing off the manicure on his true hand. "But
there isn't one." He saw the mulish light in Mulder's eyes and sighed. "Do
yourself a favor, okay? Don't spend her last few days chasing after
something that doesn't exist. If you have to dig, let your geek Gunmen and
pet A.D. do it. Spend some time saying good-bye. You might hate yourself a
little less later on if you do."

He stood, took out his wallet and threw an impressive set of bills on the
table. "That'll cover our order, and some flowers for Scully. Just don't
tell her who they're from. She might get violent." He smiled darkly, then
scowled. "Shit, I hate it when you look like that," he muttered. He strode
over and stared into the older man's eyes, as if memorizing all the shades
and striations. For the second time he kissed Mulder, hard and grim and
nowhere near his cheek. He whispered something, this time in English, and it
sounded suspiciously like "I'm sorry". A heartbeat later he was halfway
across the room. "Don't ever call me again," he cautioned, his voice raspy
and low, his face oddly tight.

Mulder blinked, and Krycek was gone.

He rested his head against the cold table, and didn't weep at all.

*******************************************************************

He strode the narrow path out, shoulders weary from the strain, his fingers
slipping over the notes as the calluses gave way to bloody blisters.
Sometimes he thought he could hear her behind him, but other times he was
terrified by the silence. Still, he had to keep walking, keep playing. He
couldn't give in to the terror that coiled inside his bowels. He couldn't
look back and reassure himself that his love was indeed following behind. He
had to have faith in her.

She had, after all, always had faith in him.

*******************************************************************

The hospital bed was angled slightly upwards, allowing Scully to see the
room and the many displays of love left by family and friends. For the most
part, her eyes were closed, but sometimes they would open and he could see
the small smile of recognition, a comforting from these tokens.

She looked gossamer thin now, three weeks after her collapse. She'd been
unable to eat anything solid for almost a week, and the weight had just
seemed to slip off of her small frame. Between the elegant angles of her
too-prominent bones and the fierce red of her hair, she looked decidedly fey
against the white hospital sheets. Only the bruises marred her otherworldly
air, dark ugly splotches caused by the I.V.s the handling by the doctors,
even by banging her hand against the bed railing at night.

Mulder tried not to see the bruises.  Instead, he focused on the book he was
reading to Scully, to pass the hour her mother and Bill were away.  It was a
Horatio Hornblower novel, of all things. Skinner had been reading it to her
earlier, and she had asked him to finish it off since it was almost at the
end. He went gamely through the slightly overblown prose, wondering where in
the hell Skinner had gotten the book. Maybe he'd figured since Ahab Scully
had been a nautical man, then Starbuck Scully would appreciate it, find
security in it. It just left Mulder faintly seasick.

"I saw them," she said suddenly, her voice tired but still wholly Scully.
"That night, when all those little - men ran by. I saw them. And they were
not human."

Mulder blinked rapidly, accessing his memory, then frowning in puzzlement as
he did. "That was years ago, Scully. What does it matter now?"

He found her impossibly blue eyes bright upon his face. "When at all, if not
now?" she answered gravely. "I lied to you, Mulder. It shames me now,
especially after all that's happened. I was afraid, I was stubborn, and I
lied to you. And I'm sorry."

He reached out, took her hand lightly, mindful of her fragility. "It doesn't
matter, Scully. It doesn't matter at all. In the end, you were there when I
needed you, you didn't give up, you didn't go away. That's what matters."
His voice was steady, but his hand shook over hers like he'd been come over
with a palsy.

"I'm leaving you now," she said faintly, regretfully. "I'm sorry for that,
too."

Mulder pulled her hand up to his cheek, stroked it over the rough stubble.
"So am I." He exhaled noisily and set her hand back on the bed. "Now, do you
want me to finish this miserable excuse for a novel, or should I pull out
the magazine I brought and read you the letters' section?" He managed a
convincing leer.

Scully turned her head minutely to get a better look at him. "The letters,
by all means. It'll be fun seeing if you can blush."

Mulder surprised himself with a belly laugh, deep and utterly genuine.
Scully's laughter joined with his, providing a harmony. They were still
chuckling, the magazine spread out on the bed beside Scully and Mulder
blushing bright red, when Margaret Scully arrived half an hour later.

*********************************************************************

He slipped and slid on the wet stones that made his path across the River
Lethe. He could see the gates ahead, but his faltering progress made him
despair of ever reaching them. His hands were raw and bloody, and what music
he made jangled and wept but did not sing. He could hear his drumming pulse,
and the rush of the water, and the discordant noise of his own playing, but
he couldn't hear her at all, and he stumbled and fell and rose again still
playing, still struggling.

At long last the river was forded, and he paused to catch his breath on the
bank. The utter stillness behind him tore at him, and he knew with a sudden
rage he'd been deceived, that he had suffered and mourned and cut his hands
until the music itself had bled from his body, but all for nothing. The Dark
One had lied, his beloved was gone and there was no use making for the gates
because he was dead already.

He threw the lyre down in disgust, and spun about to shout his betrayal to
the Lord of the Underworld. All protest died unspoken on his lips and rage
shifted to bleak despair as he saw his beloved hovering between one step and
the next. For an endless moment she hung there, poised over the rocks and
rushing water, her fair hair a curtain around her gamine face. Her eyes
locked with his, and her mouth made a shocked 'o' as she began to fade into
nothing, melting down into the rushing waters.

He roared his protest and lunged, grasping nothing but air as he tumbled
from the bank into the water. She was gone, this time beyond any bargain he
could make. The icy water froze him to the marrow, giving relief to his
ravaged hands, but denying him the balm of forgetfulness. He would remember,
forever, the look of her as he lost her for the last time.

He wept until there were no tears left, and still it was not enough.

*********************************************************************

Mulder heard the high cry of the heart monitor's alarm when she coded, and
for a minute he thought his own heart had stopped. He dropped the small bag
of sunflower seeds he'd just bought from the vending machine, and raced to
her room but didn't try to enter. He simply waited and watched as her mother
was firmly pushed out and the team set about trying to stabilize her. A
strange calm settled over him, and he observed in detachment as they tried
to normalize her readings, tried to keep her from going over the edge into
the void.

They failed. The alarm changed pitch, became the nasal whine of a flatline.
The team stood back, and he could see the odd mixture of acceptance and
denial in their bodies. To give up was anathema to them, to let death win a
personal slight. But Scully had very firmly reminded them, time and time
again, of her DNR order. They had to respect that, had to understand what
they would have been resuscitating her to had they managed to trick her body
into a few more hours of life. He watched quietly as they removed all the
machines from her, and listened as the attending physician named the hour of
her death.

After a time, the doctor motioned them in to say good-bye. Mrs. Scully wept
quietly, kissing her daughter's face and hands, smoothing back hair
disordered by the doctor's last fight against the cancer. Mulder just stood
by the doorway in silence, unable to find any words at all.

Margaret Scully looked up at him and saw a blankness far more terrifying
than the smoothness of death. "Come and say good-bye, Fox," she said gently,
holding out her hand. Mulder crossed the room, his movements a little jerky,
as though he were not the one in control of his body.

For a moment he simply stared down at her, trying to see Scully and not
seeing anything. At last he sighed, and traced the blue lines along her
temples and over her eyes, slowly pressing down on the papery lids, as
though weighting them. He sighed again, and for the first time ever kissed
her on her mouth, marveling at the warmth that lingered there. He caught a
hint of copper in the taste, and it startled him so much that he pulled
away.

Margaret Scully watched him straighten very slowly, and turn and walk out of
the room, his spine ramrod-straight. He most carefully did not look back.

******************************************************************
End