From: Nynaeve Date: 8 Dec 1999 14:56:56 -0800 Subject: NEW: The Sadness of the World 2: The Death of Strangers (1/1) by Nynaeve From: "Nynaeve" TITLE: The Sadness of the World 2: The Death of Strangers AUTHOR: Nynaeve E-MAIL: scully@on-net.net RATING: G CATEGORY: V, post ep KEYWORDS: MSR SPOILERS: "Amor Fati" mostly SUMARY: fill in the blanks for Mulder's thoughts during the "new" hallway scene. DISCLAIMER: Chris Carter... yadda, yadda, yadda ... 1013 ... blah, blah, blah. Bottom line: not mine. DEDICATION: A and J as always, and this one to LM, too. As if hinting you all want new fic is ever pressure! FEEDBACK: Yup. Love it. Keep it all in little folders, specifically marked for each story. Respond to all of it too. DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Anywhere, just let me know please where it's going so I can visit. NOTES: This is the second in a cycle of stories based on "Amor Fati"; the first can be found at my web site, under Post Episode fiction. http://nynaevesedai.tripod.com/NynaeveSedai.html or e-mail me. The Sadness of the World 2: The Death of Strangers "Each clock tick consecrates the death of strangers..." ---Sylvia Plath, from "The Doom of Exiles" My hands are the upward sweep of a Valentine's heart around her face. Beneath my thumbs her cheeks are cool and soft as polished cotton. Her eyes brim with unfamiliar tears, uncertainty given form, liquefied. I have seen Scully cry before now. Moments, scattered like the age-darkened petals of dried roses, showered into our lives as if by an unseen hand, moments of grief, of terror, of pain even, have accosted her before this. In more than six years with her, I have seen her grieve, shedding quiet tears for a father, a voyager lost too soon, for a sister, surrogate to Scully's fate, for a daughter, unexplained mystery whose riddle brought no peace and little joy. I have held her to me in the aftermath of terror, tiny, fragile only in those fleeting moments when she sobbed out her fear and relief against my heart. Through all of these she has been bolstered not by my arms, for I am only the physical presence, but by her beliefs, her faith in the rational explanations of science. I have struggled for years to find the way inside her heart, to show her the place I've made in mine for her. It is only now, as she comes to me, that I begin to hope. These tears are new and they have the power to plunge her deeper into despair than the others combined. In this state she comes to me at last. Scientific reason has crumbled at her feat. She looks to me to gather the pieces, to offer her it back again, whole and complete. I can offer her only myself. I can offer only the continuing search, together. She tells me she no longer knows who to trust or what to believe. Trembling, she tells me Diana Fowley has been murdered. I take the news coldly. Like a child confessing a wrongdoing, Scully reminds me she never trusted Diana, yet she admits Diana is as responsible for saving me as she is herself. I take her into my arms and my thoughts whirl. Diana Fowley is ... dead. Once, in another life, years past in this one, that would have mattered. Now all that matters is that Dana Scully is in my arms, that she holds me as tightly as I hold her. "Scully," I think, "Scully, she didn't save me. You did. She walked out of there. She left me behind. You came for me. I can't remember a time you haven't, from our second case together. It is always you who hovers at my side, who pulls me away from the darkness and puts me back together. "I was like you once," I begin to tell her. I tell her about the other life I lived, about finding Sam, and about the fact it was all a lie. Into her ear, into her heart, I pour my words, my soul. She was the one who came for me, who told me the truth. In that other world, Diana was part of the lie. It was Scully, who is and who has been for so long now, the constant force in my life, the touchstone by which I ground myself, the measure by which I judge all other human beings. Her tears fall and I close my eyes. I remember Diana as I first knew her, eight years ago. Ambitious, self-assured, she lived a life unassailed by doubts. She was the only, until Scully, one who could ever keep me out of my own head; I thought she had led me to the heart I'd long neglected. When I found the X Files she supported my working on them, offered to join me. I thought it devotion and loyalty at the time. And then she was gone, pursuing loftier goals, taking straighter paths to the top. Scully never misjudged Diana Fowley. I did. When she came back I remembered the best parts of her and ignored the things I couldn't trust. Diana may have given Scully the means to save me, but who saved Diana from herself? I hush Scully gently and hold her to me more tightly. So Scully grieves for yet another senseless death and by her tears she consecrates the death of yet another stranger. Scully disengages herself from my overlong embrace. She looks into my eyes, searches for the words written on my soul, burned in the blood of my heart. I know what she sees there. I long to tell her, once more, but this isn't the time, not yet, not quite. She stands on tiptoes, bows my head in her hands, slightly, gently, and lays her lips on my brow. I think of all the times I've touched her, chaste and reserved, the times she has let me and the times she has turned from me. In all my memory, I can't recall a moment such as this. How long we stand, bound together by time, by experience, by love fathomless, I cannot guess. I feel her lips leave the thin flesh covering my skull. I look into her eyes again. I wait. The world has stopped, or we have stepped out of it. I am not breathing, nor is my heart beating. I feel neither hot, nor cold. The floor, once cool beneath my sock-clad feet, has spun away. I only know Scully is in front of me, that she is real in every way a person can be real. We still touch and the sensation of my skin against hers is the only one I register. She lifts her fingers to my face. Her fingers graze my cheeks and her thumbs come to rest against my lips. They are soft, save for the minor scrapes and cuts, now healing, she got in Africa, helping to excavate the ship, examining the artifacts pulled from its surface. The imprint of her thumbs is burned into my lips, a brand, invisible to all but us. With everything but words she has told me what I've longed to hear, the words I came back for. With everything but words she confesses her love, she tells me she is mine and I, hers. I burn with the joy of a man who has discovered all of that for which he has long searched. My truth is in front of me. I burn with her touch. I burn with her love. I burn, not with a lover's flame, but with that of ever-entwined souls. The worlds resumes its motion, or pulls us back in. I look at Scully and realize the woman I thought I knew so well, I didn't until this moment. Strangers we have been to one another, our deepest hearts hidden, protected even from each other. It is said you can never truly know another until you know yourself. I cannot know exactly what it is Scully has found of herself, but I know that, given another life, I still needed her. I found the answers I had sought and found no comfort in them; there is nothing without her. Now I long to pull her to me, once again, not for comfort, or reassurance, but to kiss her, to drink her in. My arms cry out for the chance to hold her, to lift her feet from the floor and bear her away with me. My lips crave the taste of hers, beg to learn the texture of her flesh, to whisper words of love, of passion, of eternity. My eyes fill with visions of her, cradled next to me, smiling lazily, as the sun drifts across our bodies, in a late afternoon haze. My ears imagine her voice, a whisper, a sigh, a gasp of surprise and delight. It is not time. This is only the beginning. With each clock tick we move forward. And each clock tick consecrates the death of strangers, for strangers we are no longer. END Nynaeve X Files Image Shrine: http://members.xoom.com/Nynaeve1723/ Nynaeve's FanFic: http://members.tripod.com/NynaeveSedai/NynaeveSedai.html