From: annette_20_2000 Date: 12 Jul 2002 05:23:21 -0700 Subject: [all-xf] Restless II: The Betrayal by Annette Gisby NC-17 Source: atxc TITLE: Restless II: The Betrayal AUTHOR: Annette Gisby EMAIL: annette.gisby@which.net RATING: NC-17 SUMMARY: Just who is betraying who? CONTENT WARNING: This is a very dark story. Mulder hurts Scully in every way possible, including sexually. THE BETRAYAL The photos are grey and grainy with a green glow, as if they'd been taken through a night vision camera. They probably have. There's enough to see. Too much to see. I don't want to see anymore. I want to pretend I'd never seen them, but it's too late for that. They're imprinted on my brain now, like my own private horror movie, stuck on a never-ending loop. I don't want to believe what my eyes are seeing. How could she do this? How could she do this to *me*? I crumple up the photos and grip them in my hand. I can't seem to let go of them, as if I need the photos to make me see the truth of it. The truth. All my life I've been searching for it, but until now it had eluded me, like water trickling through my fingers. Now I've found the truth and I don't want it. I realise I've never wanted it, I only wanted to chase it, I never wanted to catch it. Butterflies are pretty when you see them fluttering and flying, you catch one, it dies. Death is the truth. The truth is ugly. I don't want to see the truth in these photos. The photos that someone wanted me to see. Wanted it bad enough that they had these photos couriered over to my apartment in the middle of the night. No return address, but it doesn't matter. The photos tell me everything I need to know. Scully has betrayed me. I feel sick and shaky, like I've got 'flu or something. I've got some- thing all right, and no medicine on earth will be able to cure me. I've been up all night, I can't face going into work. To see her. To see her smug grin. Does she laugh about it? With him? Is it all one big joke to them? Was she just pretending all along? I can't believe I've been so stupid. I fell for her, that was probably the idea. Her abduction? Was that just some scenario so that I'd be more likely to trust her when she came back? It worked, didn't it? That was when I really started to trust Dana Scully. I should have stuck to my first instincts. She was a spy, and not just that. She and the cigarette smoking man are much more than employer and employee. The two of them buck naked in the photo are proof enough of that. There is no question of what they were doing. The photos may have been grainy, but the details are clear enough. I can't believe she'd let him touch her. There is a grimace on her face, from the angle of the photo I can't tell whether or not it's from pleasure or pain. My mind insists it's pleasure, but my heart has other ideas. Maybe he forced her? It makes me want to puke. Then it makes me angry. The bitch, how dare she do this to me? After all I've been through, she goes off and plays happy families with him! I laugh bitterly, the 'ice queen'. I've heard them call her that at work. If they could see these photos, she'd have a new reputation and one not much better. I want to confront her with the photos, but then what? She denies it? With the proof there in front of her? Or maybe worse, she admits it? Admits to enjoy being with him? Admits that she has been a spy for THEM all along and I was so gullible I fell for it? I pace the apartment like a beast in a cage. I don't know what to do. I don't need to do anything, the choice is taken out of my hands by the incessant ringing of the doorbell. I know it's her, but I refuse to open the door. Come to gloat, have you Scully? Come to show me how wrong I've been about you? The knocking gets louder, more insistent, and after a while she uses her key, the key I gave her. I'm a fool. She looks shocked when she sees me standing there. "Mulder? Are you okay? Why didn't you open the door?" "I didn't want to." "Mulder? What's wrong?" She looks scared now, her eyes darting around the apartment as though she might find some answer there, when all along she knows the answer. SHE is what's wrong, she's been wrong all along. "Are you a screamer, Scully?" "What?" Her face has paled, although a few red blotches still remain. Has she been with him tonight? Has she come here after she's been with him? After she's been fucking him? I imagine I can still smell him on her. "Do you scream his name when you come? Are you a screamer?" It's me who's screaming now and I throw the crumpled pictures at her, her face turns to horror and then she nods, a nod of resignation. "So you know," she says quietly and I want to shake her, to make her recant those words. I want her to deny it, I don't want it to be true. Something is crushing my chest and I can hardly breathe. Then I get angry. Terribly angry, so angry that I want to hit out at something, someone. She's so small, I knock her to the floor with one blow of my fist. Her nose is bleeding, but she does nothing to stop the flow, just lays there, a blank look on her face. My fist is covered in her blood. I hit Scully. I don't think it's quite sunk in yet. She moves, slowly, gingerly, as if I've hurt more than just her nose. I have the urge to hit her again, hit her over and over until she just stops moving, maybe then I can get rid of this ache in my chest. She gets up and heads towards the door, her hands shaking as she turns the handle. Bit I get there before her and grab her wrist, hard. She looks terrified of me and I'm suddenly aware that I am painfully, throbbingly aroused. Because I've hurt her, because I've made her afraid of me. Did you know that, Scully, did you know I got off on pain? "You're not going anywhere, Scully," I say softly. "Not until you've given me what you've given him." "Mulder, don't do this. Let me go," she pleads with me, her eyes widening in the realisation that I am so much bigger than her, so much stronger than her. I yank her head backwards to expose her neck and I lean down to kiss it, talking to her at the same time. "Did he do this, Scully? Did he kiss you here? Did you like it? Did you tell him what you liked?" I feel her tears dripping onto my head, and her mumbled sobs of, "Please, Mulder. Stop this. This isn't you. It isn't you." She says it over and over again, as if by repeating it she might make it true. But I can't seem to stop. I don't stop until she's lying bleeding and broken on the floor and I'm horrified at what I've done. Her skirt is torn and bloody and I feel sick. She moves her head to look at me. I don't see hate in her eyes, only pity and resignation, as if she had expected this from me. "I did it for you," she says quietly and I realise what must have happened. He threatened her with my death, and Scully, rather than come to me and risk my life, saved me with her body. Scully hadn't betrayed me. I force myself to look at her bruised and battered body and see the truth of it. Scully isn't the betrayer. I am. THE END Feedback appreciated at annette.gisby@which.net