From d-warshall@nwu.edu Sat Nov 02 15:41:42 1996 No, I am not Gil, I'm helping out for a while. I DID NOT WRITE THIS - I am helping the administrator for the x-files-fanfic mailing list and am posting this story for a subscriber. For information on the mailing list, go to http://mail.utep.edu/~trevizo/x-files. Please do not send comments for the author to me -- send them to (wshapard@concentric.net). *Please* try to find missing parts at the archives first, but if you're desperate, I can help. http://web.ukonline.co.uk/members/xfilesfanficarchive.d/contents.htm http://www.bns.com.au/alee/fiction.html http://www2.iwn.fi/x-files/ http://gossamer.simplenet.com/ http://www.nd.edu/~kenglish/XFilesArchive.html __________ / __ __ \ ( (__) (__) ) --------[[[---------]]]------------------------------------------------- A SEA OF TROUBLES by Wendy Shapard (wshapard@concentric.net) PG Classification: S, A, and mabe just a dash of MSR OKAY TO DISCUSS ON FIC TALK! (or privately, just so long as I know you're reading! ;-) ) Summery: After "Unruhe", Scully works through the emotional impact of trying to understand the mind of a killer with Mulder's help. Scully angst, with a bit of Mulder angst thrown in for good measure. Warnings: SPOILER FOR "UNRUHE" so I really wouldn't read this unless you've seen the ep! Not much MSR, so friendshippers shouldn't be too offended. Disclaimer: I write this story while worshiping at the lotus feet of Chris Carter, 1013, FOX, and all those other people who really own the characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so please don't sue me for expressing my love for "The X Files" this way. Other quotes are from Shakespeare's "Hamlet", which I can use all I want, and nobody can dispute my right to do so! :-) Reposting/Archiving: If you like it enough to distribute it further (and wouldn't that make me happy!), please do, just don't take my name off it, okay? A SEA OF TROUBLES by Wendy Shapard *** "Hey, Scully, that word "unruhe", "unrest". It's bothering me," Mulder drawled through the window of the jeep. "I mean what if he thought he was curing them somehow, saving them from damnation? From those things in the pictures, you know, called 'em the howlers?" "It's over, Mulder," she reminded him. Alice Brant, lying cold and dead in the field. Too late. Damn it, I was too late. "Well then that picture wouldn't be his fantasy; it would be his nightmare," he continued as if she hadn't spoken. "What the Hell does it matter?" she spoke more harshly this time, and he took notice, but didn't seem to understand. "Because I want to know," he shrugged. "I don't." She started the engine, and he acquiesced, getting into the car silently. *** Scully's Report "My captivity forced me to understand and even empathize with Jerry Schnauz. My survival depended on it. I see now the value of such insights. For, truly, to pursue monsters, we must understand them. We must venture into their minds. Only in doing so do we risk letting them venture into ours." *** Scully pulled her eyes back from the picture of her being pursued by 'the howlers', and hit the last few keys to save the file on her laptop. Then she leaned back with a weary sigh. She was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open, but she resisted her fatigue. She didn't want to close her eyes. If she closed her eyes, she knew what she would see: the elegant stiletto point coming closer and closer... There was a quiet knock at her door. Yeah?" she responded, already knowing who it was. She took off her reading glasses and left them on top of the photographs as she pushed her tired body out of the chair and headed for the door. "It's me," Mulder called back. She unlocked the door and left it open for him as she turned back to her chair. Mulder's eyes filled with concern as they followed her across the room. He saw the photographs on the table and suppressed a shudder. The one of Scully was on top of the pile. "So, I think all the loose ends should be tied up with the local PD," he began as he stepped into the dimly lit room and closed the door after him. He paused uncertainly, then added: "I thought you were going to get some rest." "Really?" she challenged dryly. "Okay, I *hoped* you'd get some rest," Mulder amended with a brief grin as he dropped into the chair opposite her. He reached across the table for the portable computer and spun it around so he could read the screen. "What have you been doing instead?" A frown creased his brow as he recognized what he was reading. "You were working on your report?" he asked in surprise, the concern deepening in his eyes. "Just the observational part," Scully prevaricated. "There's still the autopsy report on Alice Brant, and the..." "You didn't even try to rest, did you?" Mulder accused, interrupting her. "I didn't feel like it," Scully argued, but her defense was shattered when she had to hide a yawn behind one hand. Mulder's eyes saw right through her as he took her hand in his and stood, pulling her to her feet. "In that case, I guess it *is* a good thing that you got right to work on that report," he replied too congenially. "Why?" she asked with suspicion. "Because if your report is nearly finished, then that means this case is practically closed, and I can almost do this." He wrapped his arms around her in a warm hug, and began to massage little circles into the tense muscles of her neck. "Mulder, there are so many qualifiers in that sentence, I can't even begin to argue against it's faulty logic!" she said with exasperation. "Exactly my plan," he said with a grin so bright it made her relax a bit and curl her arms around his waist. "Clever of me, hm?" "Eminently, so," she agreed with a ghost of a smile. "In that case, you'll give in and quit arguing with me, for the evening, at least," he suggested. "I suppose I can try," she agreed, relaxing a bit more. "But it's a hard habit to break..." "Like a few of your others," he said cryptically, and his face darkened as the laughter drained out of him. He raised his hands to capture and frame her face. "Come on, Scully, let me in." Scully's eyes widened as she realized she wasn't fooling him at all. All the feelings that had been stirred up by her confrontation with Schnauz were still there, just below the surface. And worse, Mulder was already inside her head. Damn it! He was so damn good at that, taking down her defenses, getting to the heart of her, and he got better at it every time. She felt the tears that had threatened earlier sting the backs of her eyes. But every time he slipped past her barricades, he gave her a part of his own soul in exchange. Suddenly his eyes were clear, too, and she could see the fresh pain in them. "You said: 'I see now the value of such insights.' Does that mean you didn't value it before?" he asked carefully. She knew what he was really asking: did she value him as a partner. "I never had to think about it before," she answered as honestly as she could. "After all, my partner is the best in the business when it comes to 'messing with their minds'. I guess you could say I never had to get my hands dirty. I could always leave it up to you. "But, even if I didn't want to listen at the time, what you told me about him, about Schnauz, it saved me, Mulder. You saved me, even before you broke through that door. I never would have been able to stall him for long enough if I hadn't... if you hadn't understood him, what he was doing." Mulder accepted her praise the only way he knew how, silently. He nodded, and seemed to weigh her words for a moment. "Come on," he said quietly. "Why don't we try to get some rest while we talk." And he encouraged her to lie down on the bed. When she was curled comfortably on her side, he surprised her by lying down behind her, rather than in her arms. She glanced a question over her shoulder at him as he snaked one arm around her and began to rub her back with the other hand. "I have the feeling it will be easier for you to tell me what specifically is bothering you if you aren't looking at me," Mulder answered her unspoken question and she lay back down again, "and I'm not enough of a Freudian to prefer one of those chairs to lying in bed with you." Scully wasn't sure she wanted to tell him everything that was bothering her, but she knew he'd only look harder if she tried to hide from him. Besides, it might help to tell him some of it. "He called me Freud, too," she said before she realized she was going to. "When?" Mulder asked, surprised. "When he had me in that chair... I started talking to him, trying to convince him that I didn't need to be 'saved', and he said that now *I* was talking like Sigmund Freud..." "Is that when he decided to.. speed things up?" Mulder asked tensely. "No," she reassured him. "I was able to plant enough doubt that he took the pictures of himself, to see if I was right, that the howlers were in his head, and not mine..." "You did a good job, Scully," Mulder whispered, ruthlessly pushing down the guilt that welled up inside of him as he pictured Scully, trapped in that chair, afraid for her life, trying to talk a madman out of his delusions. "No, I didn't," she whispered forlornly. "Why not?" Mulder pursued gently. "I didn't save Alice Brant, did I?" she began, bitterly. "You know you can't blame yourself for that. You were the one who found Schnauz. And in doing so, you saved countless other women who would have become his victims if he had remained unidentified. "Look," he continued, "I know this case really got to you on some very personal levels, and I just want to make sure that you're not dwelling too long on the 'what if's or the 'should have's." "Oh, you're one to talk!" she attacked with an ironic laugh. "Yes, I am one to talk," he said, his tone melancholy. Scully turned her head slightly to catch his words better. "You said you didn't want to listen to me, about Schnauz's motive, but I was no better. I was so focused on those photographs, I let him take you. I was there in that interrogation room when he first targeted you. I saw the look in his eyes when he said that you looked troubled, but I didn't listen to my own theory. I should have realized..." "Mulder," she stopped him with a hand on the arm that held her. "It wasn't your fault. It never has been, not this time, and not the times before." She felt him shiver and knew she had hit the mark. "You cannot be my keeper. You can't foresee every danger, plan for every contingency, and you can't be at my side every moment. You couldn't have changed what happened." She felt him nod slowly against her shoulder, but knew he hadn't let go of the guilt, yet. Probably never would. "And you couldn't have saved Alice Brant, Scully," he reminded her. "I know, Mulder. I think that's what hurts the most," she lamented. "To think of him doing that to her, to think of doing that to a healthy, normal, beautiful brain..." She closed her eyes and saw awl coming closer, felt the cool steel in her hand... "I didn't want to listen to you because I didn't want to understand something like that, Mulder. I didn't want to make the incomprehensible comprehensible," she apologized. "But, you had to," Mulder pursued. "You said in your report that your survival depended on it. So what happened?" "I couldn't keep him out," Scully breathed. "Out of where?" Close, so very close. Mulder held his breath. "Out of my head." "What makes you say that he got into your head?" Mulder asked, remembering the chill he had gotten from the last line of her report. "Because he started to make sense." "That's good, Scully. It means you were getting into *his* head, where you could change his thinking." "No, Mulder!" she said, getting agitated. "I'm not talking about being able to interpret his delusional state and turn it to my advantage, I talking about he started to make *sense*!" "Tell me," he said softly. "I told him that I didn't need to be saved, and he said that I was wrong, that every one did, especially me. He said... he said that the howlers lived here," she said, reaching around to touch the center of his forehead with one finger. "And that all of my good thoughts couldn't wish them away. And as hard as I was trying to convince him that he was wrong, that there were no howlers... on another level I was thinking that in a way he was right. We all have unrest. We all have to have some way of chasing away the howlers when they get too close... And it all made sense. It made so much sense that for a moment... for a moment I thought..." "For a moment you thought: what if he's right? Wouldn't it be worth it to make all the doubts and all the fears and all the dark memories go away," he whispered in her ear. She was so shocked to hear him voice her thoughts, she nearly jumped out of his arms, but he held her tight, and continued speaking into her ear. "The thought flickered through your mind, and for a heartbeat it took center stage. 'To take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.' Now, this random thought took on added significance because you were dealing with someone who could not distinguish between thought and action, but this doesn't mean that you have to punish yourself for one perfectly normal thought. '...and by a sleep to say we end all the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to...' Think about it all you want; you'd be abnormal if you didn't think about it occasionally, after all you've been through, after all *we've* been through... Just don't go planning any trips to the undiscovered country without me, okay?" She twisted around in his arms to stare at him in shock. He saw the amazement in her eyes and understanding seeped into his. "You did think of me," he stated quietly. "When?" Scully took an uncertain breath. "It was when I asked him about his sister, about what had really happened to her to bring on her suicide. And I couldn't help thinking, as insane as his methods were, how much he must have loved his sister, to want to get rid of her howlers forever, that way... "And part of me wished I could... that I could chase yours away so easily..." She couldn't shake the feeling that she was making a horrible confession, but Mulder only smiled at her words, stroking the side of her cheek with a loving hand. "You do, Dana," he whispered. "You can't kill the howlers. No one can, because they're a part of each of us. But you do chase them away, and give me something else to listen to." His sweet words cut through her hesitancy and brought a smile to her lips. "We make quite a pair, don't we?" she observed. "After four years we still argue about what leads to follow, and what questions to ask, and what to believe in, and yet, somehow..." "It all keeps working itself out," he agreed. "Somewhere, in between all the doubts..." "It all keeps working itself out." She smiled wearily and closed her eyes as he hugged her closer to him. Behind her eyes, she saw his smile. The End What did you think? %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% FREE SPEECH IS OUT THERE! X-phile for Free Speeh on the Net Fight the Conspiracy! (Mulder would!) ---------------------------------------------- "Fear of chaos cannot justify unwarranted censorship of free speech." Vice President Al Gore ---------------------------------------------- "Not with a whimper, but a bang." Mulder, "Pusher" ---------------------------------------------- "Nothing happens in contradiction to Nature; Only in contradiction with what we know of it. So that's a place to start. That's where the hope is." Scully, "Herrenvolk" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%