From: Nynaeve Date: 22 Jun 2000 23:06:58 -0700 Subject: NEW: Time Cures Hearts of Tenderness (1/1) by Nynaeve TITLE: Time Cures Hearts of Tenderness (1/1) AUTHOR: Nynaeve E-MAIL: scully@on-net.net RATING: PG-13 CATEGORY: post-ep, vignette KEYWORDS: MSR, angst, Scully POV SPOILERS: various tiny ones for series; SUMMARY: post-Requiem, not one mention of the "b" word. Short and fairly romantic. DISCLAIMER: Chris Carter... yadda, yadda, yadda ... 1013 ... blah, blah, blah. Bottom line: not mine. 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. Spookys - feel free to archive. DEDICATION: To the usual, A and J. Time Cures Hearts of Tenderness 'Time cures hearts of tenderness and now I can let her go' ---Thomas Hardy, "Wessex Heights" OREGON The world tilts, the angle obverse, transected by the light and dark of the shapes in front of me. Trees blur, march haphazardly just outside the line of my vision. I fall and lie still, mind cognizant of small details only. The rough pressure of pine needles from the forest floor grazes my cheek; the cool North Pacific air wanders aimlessly along my face. Mulder is at my side, gathering me up, holding me gently. Yet his embrace is assured, confident. He is all solicitous concern, murmuring softly. "Mulder, why is this happening?" My voice is barely more than the breath I exhale. My eyes close. I want to keep them open, but I can't. No matter how I try, concentrate, they flutter shut of their own accord, making dim the world around me. I still hear his voice, soft, with a tenderness I could never have imagined even if I'd tried. He is warm and real, firm and stable, as the planet seems to twitch slightly on its axis. We've been here before, of course we have, but I know at the same time, everything around me is new, unforeseen. Last night we replayed a scene from the prologue of our partnership, from the rehearsal of our friendship, from a time when I didn't love him and he didn't love me and neither one of us wanted to feel this way about the other. Lying in his bed, his arms wrapped tightly around me, his chin resting against me, his breathing, his words dressing my skin in gooseflesh, I thought I could see myself all those years ago. If I closed my eyes just enough, not so tightly as to shut our all the images around me, just blue them, I believed I could see her, could see the people we used to be. 'Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?' Every little girl can parrot those words, shriek with playful glee as we pretend to menace an invisible Snow White. We grow up with those words embedded in our minds, weaving themselves into the image we carry of ourselves. Foolishly, we wait for the mirror to answer us, even if we won't admit it to anyone, least of all ourselves; we hope to hear that one particular answer. Mirrors lie. Without words, with nothing more than our faces to answer us, still they lie each and every time we gaze into one. So subtle are their machinations we never notice time sneaking up on us, not from behind, but from the side, hiding briefly every time we show signs of greater awareness. Then one morning we look in a mirror and realize years have passed and the face we think hasn't changed, except for maybe a few wrinkles, maybe a scar (at least we *know* where that came from), that face isn't the one we think we saw yesterday. Time transforms us without our knowledge and with only the barest hint of our permission and mirrors are time's complicit accessories. I am not at all the same person who rushed headlong into Mulder's room that first night of our partnership. That girl lacked polish and sophistication. She wore her hair in an unfashionable, but serviceable ponytail. She dressed far more casually. Her eyes sparkled with enthusiasm and faith in the work she did. Her face glowed with confidence and her unshaken belief in the power of all-knowing science put pale roses on those rounded cheeks of hers. More people in her life called her 'Dana' than 'Scully' and those people mattered more. That girl was untested, easily provoked, easily brought to grief, tender in her heart. Mulder held me and I knew he too is changed. Did he ever envision this? Did the man, who quietly, without mocking words or laughter, sunk to his knees and examined my back, did he have any inkling how far that moment would lead us? That night his fingers trailed across my skin and I was too fearful to feel anything but their texture as they felt, probed cautiously. The gathering magic, the electric intensity would take far longer to manifest itself. Last night he shifted gently, his fingers brushed my arm and I was weak, consumed by a heat I had come close to forgetting. His voice was low, pleading with me to go home, telling me the price has been to high, the personal cost too great. I wanted to tell him that whatever the cost had been, it had cost both of us. And whatever it cost me, the price had been worth it for I had him. "Mulder," I almost whispered, "the only thing I've lost is my tenderness." I didn't. I was too tired, too dizzy, too hot and full of wanting to explain myself. I told myself I'd tell him later. His hand grazed my face, tickling the line of my cheekbone. I wondered, the thought blossoming like fire in my brain and dying out as rapidly as if tamped down by an unseen hand, if this would ever end, if there would come a time when his touch did not cause me to abandon pretext of rational thought, when the lightest pressure of his skin against mine did not make me more than half crazed with fierce desire. For years he had touched me in friendship, in reassurance, in comfort, in protectiveness and for a long time those touches had made my stomach flutter, had sent chills along my spine and down into my knees. For years I had managed to avoid the deepest meanings of those touches, to shy from the magic like an accomplished debtor dodging a crafty bill collector. Then we had turned a corner and everything behind us vanished. Like the face in the mirror, I woke up morning and saw in dumbstruck amazement that nothing had been what I had thought it was. Not for a very long time. But years of denial, of hiding from what I unwillingly sensed was living within us, served us both well, enabling us to maintain an outward sense of professionalism and decorum. In any public setting we were able to behave like the adults we are. In the privacy of our lives away from the Bureau, it is another matter. Hands tangle. Lips crush, bruise, whisper apology and endearment. Eyes flash. Mouths open in the exclamation of an ecstasy that is only partly physical. Bodies touch, mate in an almost primeval need, seal themselves together. Hearts beat rapidly. Lungs gasp for air. Minds flood with the recognition that this is everything that is, all that was ever meant to be. Souls burn into one single flame. All the things I believed at twenty, doubted at twenty-eight, and gave up on at thirty-five have turned out to be true, though I have learned the words aren't enough. I believe there is a design to that. If one person could ever explain to another what this is like, the description would be enough. It is the search that motivates us, the hope that all the poets were right after all. And when you find it, it has the power to transform the deepest part of you. True love, soul mates - the oldest clich in the world. The most true, as well. As he nuzzled his face into my neck, murmured sounds of concern, blended with a certain contentment, I knew the coldness which had come over me had been banished. I felt him settle against me, contented in that moment in time, in our corner of the world. I brought his hand, the one nearest my face to my mouth. I kissed his palm softly. He sighed and my skin seemed quilted in patterns of hot and cold. I drew one of his slender fingers into my mouth. He gasped, inhaling what little oxygen floated between us. He held me more tightly and I had no doubts his mind was exactly where mine was. My tongue played over his finger until he groaned. I stopped. "Scully," he whispered. "You weren't feeling well?" "I feel better," I assured him, smiling as his hand caressed my face again. "Are you sure?" he insisted. I nodded, brushing my cheek into the cup of his hand. ******************************************************************** WASHINGTON D.C. FIND TIME STAMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't think. I've tried, but the neurons in my brain don't want to fire properly. I suppose I am lucky that neither Langly, nor Frohike, nor Byers will take "I'm fine" for an answer. In a life filled with surprises these last eight years, I never know who or what has been the biggest surprise. Sometimes though I am quite convinced it is the friendships I've developed with that odd trio and the devotion they've shown me that most often leaves me awestruck when I have time to think about it at all. My mind plays images, scattered at random across the field of my mind's eye. Some are things I long to forget, other I know I must always remember. Some I cannot bear even to think of losing hold of and these are the most elusive, the images already fading. Mulder, the night I woke him up after the events with Daniel Waterston. I see again his sleepy face, the concern in his eyes giving way to startled amazement. I feel the texture of his hand against mine as we sat, talking for a very long time. I see the moonlight breaking in, softly, gently, as if afraid to disturb us. I imagine its silvery coolness spilling over me, replaced by the heat of his fingers undressing me, slowly, tenderly, watching me the whole time, waiting for me to say the word I never did. I had stopped myself from being with him for the last time. That first time surprised me. That after all the time we'd fought against this, the rationalizations I'd made in my head, the visions I'd had of how it would happen one day in some remote future it happened then stunned me. It was a gift I didn't know how to receive at first. When we had made love and he slept, I went home, confused, frightened, lonely. His appearance at my door before work didn't surprise me. The fact nothing had changed, except the shattering of the boundaries we'd unknowingly set, did. I expected it to take so much more emotional work and yet it was perfect. I realized, listening to him that morning, watching him drink a cup of coffee, I didn't feel awkward, didn't wonder if Mulder was judging me, if he was planning to end it now he'd gotten what he wanted. I realized it wasn't a 'morning after' at all, just another 'morning of'. Now I wonder how to go on exactly. I will. I have every reason to, but I wonder how many times my mind will slip back to that night in Oregon. If I had not gone to him, had not stayed ... it isn't enough. I want it to be, but it isn't. It was the last time and I'm a hell of a lot more surprised by that than by anything else. I should have known. Skinner has gone. He stood for a while watching me through the glass, thinking I didn't notice him, thinking I was lost in my own world. I was, but years of working X File cases has taught me no matter where my mind may wander to keep part of it in the world around me. I stand up. They're letting me go home soon. I walk to the bathroom and peer in the mirror there. Will it tell me the truth? Will it show me anything different? "Mirror, Mirror on the wall," I recite softly. I look, long and hard, I study my reflection. More lines cross my face now. Sadly, more worry lines than laugh lines. My eyes seem a deeper blue somehow, as though the innocent eyes that looked out on my world before Fox Mulder entered it have been flooded by deep waters. These are eyes that keep their secrets now. My hair is different. Gone is the serviceable look of the near-rookie agent, given way to a killer cut in the latest style, though I'm not always certain I like it. Yet the biggest change is one no one can see and maybe not even Mulder could guess at. 'Time cures hearts of tenderness' wrote Thomas Hardy and it has cured me of mine. That girl in Oregon, on that first long-ago case, was soft and tender, easily bruised, easily led. The woman in Oregon, on that most recent case, is not. I'm glad it's gone, replaced by a strength once only hinted at and a love, unforeseen, unwished for, unending. Time cures hearts of tenderness, Mulder. I never got to explain that to you. I will once I've gotten you back. END NOTES: It's a bit uneven - I apologize. I felt, given the amount of time I've been working on this I needed to finish it before going back to work on my WIP. Oddly enough there may be a sequel at some point. Then, I think three post-Requiem pieces will be quite enough. Nynaeve Temple of X http://members.xoom.com/Nynaeve1723/ "My true fans appreciate and respect that I won't discuss certain things," she adds. "The ones who want to dig into my life and make me uncomfortable are *not* my true fans." Sarah Michelle Gellar