From: Suzanna Post Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 17:32:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: Shades of Green (1/1) Suzanna Post Title: Shades of Green (1/1) Author: Suzanna Post Email: neustrom@omni.cc.purdue.edu or lordmadhammer@hotmail.com Distribution: Gossamer, yes. Everyone else please ask first, just so I can know where the stories are getting archived. Classification: V, A Keywords: M/S DAL (deep abiding love) Rating: PG for disturbing imagery Spoilers: Season 6, sometime before Biogenesis Summary: During a child homicide case, Mulder and Scully have a conversation in color. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The landscape slides past the window, flat and green and unending. Vast acres of corn, now as tall as myself, stretch their proud stems towards an unrelenting midsummer sun. Interspersed between the shiny acres of corn are fields of soybeans, the leaves of their soft whitish undersides fluttering in the wind, giving the impression of a foaming green sea. Sometimes there are pastures dotted with a few cows. Occasionally there is untilled land full of maples and oaks and a few evergreens. But mostly it's just corn. Corn and corn and more corn. The view is lovely for about five minutes. Then it just gets boring. We're on our way to an interview, in the middle of another long drive in the middle of the Midwest. Indiana, to be exact. Mulder drives while I stare out the dust speckled window. I got tired of the radio hours ago, and now the silence seems almost a relief. Almost. I glance at Mulder. He's zoned out, paying just enough attention to the road to stay between the double yellow lines and the shoulder. There's a certain crinkle at the corners of his eyes and a set to his jaw that tells me his mind is busy working away on the details of this case. This particular type of case is my least favorite kind. I mean, every case has it's difficulties. From fungus to flukemen to Donny Pfaster, I've seen just about every way a person can die. But child homicide is different. The murder of a child is beyond gruesome, disturbing in a way that I can't explain. The scenario started out fairly routinely, if you can call any murder investigation routine. Occasionally, Mulder gets called in on a consult to VCS. Usually, it's only consulting work instead of service in a full investigative capacity. That's why I was a little surprised at the urgency I detected in Skinner's voice when he called us into the briefing. But after the briefing, I understood the urgency, and the need for us to work with VCS on this case. There had been four murders of middle class five-year-old Caucasian girls in the upper midwest during the last four months. The first was in Michigan, four months ago. Two months passed, and a similar murder rocked a small town in northern Illinois. Then another killing, a month after the previous. The latest occurred two weeks ago, this time in Attica, Indiana. At this point, the Special Agent in Charge called Mulder. The body was shipped to Quantico, and I did the autopsy. I placed the time of death just two weeks from the previous victim. It didn't take long for Mulder to confirm the conclusions of the team at VCS. An escalating serial killer was on the loose. Mulder and I dropped everything and flew to Indianapolis to coordinate with the local PD and the regional office. One week passed. There were no more killings. No more leads. All we had was one very exhausted Mulder and one very free killer. Today we're on our way to interview the parents of the latest victim. We've been to one of the crime scenes already. But Mulder wanted to see the most recent scene, to get a feel for the area, for the people and the house from which she was taken. Depressed, I close my eyes, seeing phantom colors dance against the blackness under my lids. My mind recalls the black and white photos of the crime scenes, so vivid that I can almost smell the blood. My eyes snap open and the green landscape comes into sharp focus, but the horrible desecration of innocence lingers in my mind. I can feel Mulder's eyes on me, but his gaze slides away just as I turn to meet it. There are several more minutes of silence. "What are you thinking?" he asks without looking at me, his voice gentle and soft. I wonder at the inflection in his tone, and the expression on my face that would warrant such tenderness. "Red," I surprise myself by saying. He nods, eyes still on the road. "Blood red?" "Yes," I reply, nodding my head a little. I massage my forehead, as if I can rub away the sick thoughts with my fingertips. "I hate red," he says with conviction. I know exactly what he means. Red is gunshot wounds and nosebleeds and death. "But red can be used in combination with other colors. It can make good colors. Red and blue make purple." He contemplates this for a moment. "Purple is a bruise. I don't like purple either." Blood is red. A bruise is purple. Red is hot, angry. Purple is dying and death. I stare out the window. I see a patch of yellow wildflowers, bright like sunshine against the tall green grass. "Yellow is nice." I tap my finger against the glass window, leaving as smudge as the flowers zoom by. Mulder's eyes track the flowers for a moment, then return to the road. "Yellow is clean, like sunshine," he says. I strain for the implication behind his words, but the hidden meaning slips past me as fast as the flowers by the roadside. Tiredly, I contemplate the hood of our rental car. The sunshine doesn't seem clean to me today. It seems dingy and weak in the ever present haze that results from days and days of no rain. It reflects off the hood and bounces through the bug-splattered windshield in a harsh white way that gives me a headache. "Sunshine is golden, not yellow," I assert, not sure of what I'm saying. "The sky is blue, and the sun is yellow," he continues, ignoring my last comment. "Together they make the fields grow green." Yellow and blue make green. Green is growing and growing means life. "Green is the color of life," I state with sudden conviction. Mulder cocks his head to one side, and taps the steering wheel with his right thumb. With his left elbow he leans against the door, thumb and forefinger splayed in a L-shape against his cheek. I have the strangest thought, that Mulder is blue, the color of the steely sky on a clear winter day. "But you're not green," he says, glancing at me out of the corner of his eyes. "No, I'm yellow." I can't believe I'm having this conversation. But it feels perfectly natural, as if Mulder and I have talked about colors a thousand times before. "Yellow like the sun," he says. I don't bother to remind him that the sun is golden, not yellow. "What color are you?" I ask. It's odd how he can say what I'm thinking even when I'm saying nothing. "Blue, I think." He nods to himself. "To you, I'm blue." I'm puzzled. "Then what are you to yourself?" "Blue, but not the same kind of blue that you see in me." Strangely, I think I know what he means. He sees himself as blue that is close to purple, bruised. But I see him as bright, brilliant sky blue. "Mulder, you're not just bruises and pain," I say, very gently. He snorts in derisive laughter, and there's a bitter edge to his voice that wasn't there a moment ago. "What else is there?" I think of the dead little girls, purple and bruised, red-brown flakes of blood peeling off their torn skin. I think of one dead girl, of Emily and a thousand sorrows. "There's green," I say, my eyes on the corn and trees and soybeans. His face softens at that comment. Yellow and blue make green. Green is growing and growth means life. Mulder shifts and switches hands on the steering wheel. He big hand covers mine, warm and comforting. I turn my hand palm up, lacing my fingers between his. "Green is the color of life," he says softly. Mulder is blue and I'm yellow. There would be no green without one or the other of us. I squeeze his hand and close my eyes, and instead of seeing black and white, I see all the glorious shades of green. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Feedback will be cherished at: neustrom@omni.cc.purdue.edu/~neustrom or lordmadhammer@hotmail.com All my fanfic can be found at: http://omni.cc.purdue.edu/~neustrom Notes: Thanks as always to Claudia and Susan for edits and ideas. I would never finish anything without you ladies! This idea has been in my head for months, and it was a relief to get it out onto paper. I rarely write vignettes, or anything other than MSR, and would love to know what everyone thinks.