From: LookABloom Date: 22 Apr 1999 03:23:21 GMT Subject: NEW: Uninvited (1/1) - Milagro Post-Ep Title: Uninvited (1/1) Author: Bloom Rating: PG Category: M/S Something-Or-Other Spoilers: Milagro Archive: You can rip out my heart, yes, but let me know before you go displaying it all over the place. Summary: Post-Ep Navel-Gazing Disclaimer: Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief, all kill their inspiration and sing about the grief. Uninvited By Bloom "Like anyone would be, I am flattered by your fascination with me. Like any hot-blooded woman, I have simply wanted an object to crave. But you, you're not allowed, you're uninvited, an unfortunate slight." --- There have been times when Scully has thought of herself as little more than a character in a paperback world of mortal creation, the protagonist of a not-so-divine comedy, or tragedy, depending on what side of the bed she got up on that morning. It began in high school, with her first creative writing course, that she'd sometimes imagine herself in prose, describing to herself each step or action in careful, mental detail. During harder times of trauma or devasation, the text in her head would turn violet, magnifying mere anguish into a glorious, cathartic melodrama. Dana Scully, at one time in her life, had thought of being a writer. Of course, it wasn't a practical choice of career, so when Scully applied her adult analytical mind to teenage ideals, it fell by the wayside and made room for the more challenging field of medicine. There was no room for creativity in her chemistry papers, and an artistic eye was unnecessary in forensic pathology. The pen, though mightier than the sword, was no match for the temptation of science to a naturally logical mind. Eventually, though, her poetic side emerged in the only place it could, within the confines of a field report, or her journal entries, or even random notes to Mulder scrawled in haste as she fled the office on an errand. Mulder first noticed it in her thesis, a potentially-boring subject attacked with the typical vigor of a college senior, yet featuring a certain delicate artistic quality as well. It caught his attention, and he picked up on it in her field reports which he read, at night, after she'd left the office. One of the first cases they'd worked on together had resulted in a particularly intriguing Scully essay, and he'd asked her about it. "I was an English major, my freshman year," she'd said, dismissing his praise, quickly. "Reports are mind-numbing, Mulder, and I think you know that, given how often you tend to avoid them. I just try to keep it interesting for myself." She'd left before he could ask her any more questions. She knew what they would be. Had she written anything outside of work? Did she prefer fiction or poetry? Could he read it? She knew he'd minored in English Literature, and that he considered himself a decent enough writer. His reports were always done with the same clinical detachment she reserved for corpses, but occasionally, she would happen upon some phrase, some word, something inspired, that showed that same spark of artistic integrity that, Scully thought, set them both apart from their peers. That, and chasing aliens, kept them unique. She shifted in Mulder's chair, stifling a yawn and turning a partially-scorched page. Phillip Padgett had awakened in Scully a desire, not the desire he'd intended, but a desire to explore her own unique gift of personal expression. He'd had a gift in his writing, beyond the homicidal, and though his work was not particularly good by Scully's standards, it presented a very clear, very potent image of the creepy little man in Apartment 44. His writing, his descriptions of her, gave Scully a clearer picture of him, and what he wanted out of life, than of herself. And that troubled her. She did not particularly like architecture. She never abused her parking privilege. She worked out at home, preferring an Abba CD and aerobics to jogging, particularly in winter. And running after Mulder accounted for her calves. She didn't know the story of the Sacred Heart, she'd slept through most of her religion classes as a girl. And naturally trusting? Where on earth had that come from? The picture that Padgett had painted of her was flattering, but it was of a character, a woman he had invented in his mind, the woman he wanted to love. It was not Dana Scully. It was fiction. The hooded man in Mulder's apartment was not. So, she wondered, how could Padgett, a man who according to Mulder had such a gift for writing that his villain, the murderous psychic-surgeon, had come to life and run amok, not be able to capture the real Dana Scully just as well? Logically, Scully told herself, it was because he did not know her, not at all. Living in Mulder's building, following her around, it never gave him a high level of access to her mind. He deconstructed her actions to mean whatever it was he desired, but he could not discern what was going on beyond the 'impossibly blue eyes' or 'sunset hair'. Through his work, she had been let inside his head, but as she had told him, she could not return the gesture. She could not allow him the same courtesy. A knock at the office door startled her and she looked up from the toasted manuscript. "Come in." Mulder slipped through the door, closing it quietly. He smiled at her. "I didn't expect to find you down here," he said. "You're getting as bad as me." Scully shrugged. "You wouldn't know it, but this is my office, too." "I'd let you decorate, but I don't think Martha Stewart does alien-chasing, FBI basement-office chic." Mulder pulled up a chair. Scully smirked. "On the contrary, her home-furnishings come in many shades of green and gray." Mulder chuckled. "You're feeling better." He leaned across the desk and poked her in the chest, gently. "Everything's where it should be." Scully nodded, and swallowed hard. "I don't remember much of what happened last night," she said, quietly. "I was in shock." She stared at the burned papers before her. In truth, she remembered next to nothing. The events that had occured twelve hours ago left her with little more than a blood-soaked blouse, currently housed in the FBI's forensic lab, and a ghostly, lingering body memory of intense, searing pain. Mulder closed his eyes for a moment, nodding. "I kind of hoped you wouldn't remember, Scully." "Then there is no one to identify the killer." "There is no killer," he stated. "What? Mulder-" "I was down in the basement, and I had Padgett at gunpoint. He was about to burn his book." He tapped the pages, causing the blackened edges to crack and turn to ash. "All of a sudden I'm hearing shots fired over my head, and that's when I found you. Alone." "Did you think I was dead?" she asked, carefully. Mulder let out a long breath. "Actually, no. You looked... asleep. You were covered in blood, but you didn't look hurt." He chuckled. "You woke up and started crying, really hard." He paused, then added, softly. "I've never heard you cry like that." "I don't remember it at all." He eyed her. "You don't remember telling me about the hooded man?" "No." "You told me that when you put your shoes on, and went to the door to follow me, a man in a black hood forced you back into the apartment, threw you down and..." His voice trailed off into hesitation. "What, Mulder?" asked Scully. "What did I say?" He looked at her and swallowed. "You said he reached into your chest and tried to take your heart." Scully blinked. "I said that?" "From what I could make out, yes," he said. "You were still pretty worked up. I called 911 and left you with the medic when they got there." "That's when you found Padgett." "Yes. You could say the guy wore his heart on his sleeve, along with some arteries and several pints of blood." "Mulder-" "It was self-inflicted, Scully. The guy pulled his own heart out. They had to sedate one of the EMTs who couldn't deal." "Mulder, it's impossible to rip out your own heart." "Yeah," he laughed, sadly. "I usually let women handle that for me." Scully snorted and stared at the desktop. "Mulder, did you see this 'hooded man'?" "No. There wasn't anyone else in the apartment." He stood, suddenly, all but radiating frustration. "Mulder-" "There are five spent shell-casings in your gun, Scully. The neighbors reported hearing shots fired and a woman yelling in pain from the fourth floor. You were covered in blood without a cut or even a bruise, anywhere on your body." "Blood that may or may not be mine," she interrupted. "Unless you're independently wealthy and been to Switzerland recently, it's yours." He tossed the file folder he'd been carrying onto the desk. "That's what I came to tell you. The blood on you and on the floor was yours. There was no other blood found on the scene, Scully." Scully opened the file and quickly flipped through it. "Mulder, I shot him. If he was really trying to... pull my heart out, then I definitely hit him. At close range. How could there not be blood?" Mulder began to pace. "Padgett destroyed all but a few pages of his book," he said, pointing at the papers on his desk. "Perhaps when the story ceased to exist, it took the character with it?" "Mulder..." Scully paused. Only a moment ago, as she read the brilliant and maddeningly erroneous account of her own personality at the hand of Padgett, she had lamented his ability to be as accurate with her as he had, apparently, been with his murderous villain. How could she discount Mulder's theory when it supported her own? "That's complete fiction." She heard the words coming out of her mouth, and the negative tone sounded suddenly foreign to her. Mulder stared her down. "Interesting choice of words, Scully," he said, evenly. Neither of them spoke, for a moment. Scully looked down at Padgett's manuscript and read a few lines. Mulder watched her. "How much have you read?" he asked, finally. "Just a few pages," she replied. "There's enough left of the murder of that teenage boy to prove that Padgett masterminded the whole thing." "Mulder, you're contradicting yourself. If this hooded man is one of Padgett's character, and he did indeed kill those people and attack me, then Padgett didn't mastermind it. He only imagined it." It explained so much. Why had she gone into that church, that she had never been to before? He'd imagined it. Why had she gone to his apartment? He'd imagined it. Why had she stayed when every pore in her body screamed at her to go? He'd imagined it. It was all in the book, the chapter where she made love to the strange, everything that had happened had led up to that point. It was calculated, it was almost like reading a play. She hadn't acted as herself because she hadn't been in control, completely. The Dana Scully of Padgett's creation fought with the Dana Scully of existence, she fought to come to life, for him. Yet he'd been mistaken about too much, and the mistake he'd made, the real Dana Scully, would never have allowed herself to be played like a marionette across his bed. She would have left. She would have. Mulder stared at her. "If he only imagined it, Scully, he had the power to stop it. He could have burned that manuscript after the first murder. He could have done it after we arrested him. He kept writing, he didn't do anything to stop it." A chill traveled down her back, and she stared at her partner. "You said he was about to burn the book when you caught him." "Yes, and?" "How did it end, Mulder?" He didn't answer. "Did Padgett tell you how the book ends? Slowly, he nodded. "Did it end with my dying?" A long silence. "Yes." Scully put her face in her hands. The room was quiet, for a long time, until she felt his hand on her shoulder, softly kneading. "No," she said, without looking up. "This was all just product of his own overactive, melodramatic imagination. Nothing about me in that book was even remotely true." As she spoke, something happened to Mulder. HIs hand stilled, and Scully looked up, eyes weary. He stood just a little less straight, his eyes just a little less open, and his breathing just a little more uneven. "Are you alright, Mulder?" His hand left her shoulder and he tapped the papers again. "You should finish reading. There are a lot of interesting things in there that aren't true." Eyeing him warily, she picked up the pages, carefully, and shuffled through them. More description of her allegedly physical beauty. More prose lovingly crafted from her slender hips, her alabaster neck, her delicate ankles. She frowned at the flowery text, then at Mulder, who she imagined was quite amused by Padgett's worship of her. She wondered how many comments directed toward her "pert, heaving breasts" she would have to endure until the novelty wore off. She scanned page after page, until she came to the last one. At first it seemed more of the same, more unrealistic introspection, more of the Fabio-worthy romance novel pap she once read as a blushing Catholic school girl. It wasn't until the bottom of the page, only moments before she would have chucked the whole pile into the trash can, when she found what it was Mulder wanted her to see. "Oh my God." --It was with a simple gesture, her tiny palm against his firm and sturdy forearm, that the stranger knew. He knew that Special Agent Dana Scully could not return his gesture, she could not give in to whatever curiousity she may have held for him, she could not allow him to take her heart, for she could not share it. Someone else had beat the stranger to the possession of her heart, had already reached in and claimed it, sharing its passion, setting it afire with the burning of his own. As the stranger watched her dainty, deliberate hand touch and grip the tanned flesh of her partner's arm, he knew. Agent Scully was already in love, with her partner, Fox Mulder.-- She looked up. Mulder stood by the filing cabinets, nibbling at a fingernail. He stared at the wall, at nothing, waiting for her to say something. "Mulder..." She pushed the papers aside a little too hard, wrinkling them. "I know," was all he said. Scully stared at the desk blotter. 'Lonliness is a choice.' Her own words resonated in her head, along with Padgett's pronouncment at the prison. 'Agent Scully is already in love.' When he'd said that, she'd been initially confused, though later it had come to her, that he had probably jumped to a conclusion as he had before, taking something very insignificant and turning into a sweeping declaration. If her legs are svelte, she must jog. If she has a government-exempt sticker on her car, she must park anywhere she wants at all times. If she touches her partner, she must be in love with him. It was too ridiculous to acknowledge, yet too disturbing to dismiss. Padgett's monologue in the church had been frightening, not because of its accuracy but by the absolute tone of delivery. He wasn't asking her if his observations were correct, he was telling her. He knew. He was utterly convinced of his assumptions. Scully knew he had created his own, private version of her for himself, but she wondered all the same - was this the impression she gave to people? Did people look at her and wonder about the cross around her neck, her fondness for mid-length skirts, her heels and the height they over-compensated for? It was that high-school self-conciousness taking over again, the sense that everyone is watching you, and everyone has their own story for you. Padgett's had been the only one she had ever knowingly lived. She looked at Mulder, who had yet to say anything more. He was peering into the filing cabinet,feigning disinterest when she knew he was all but aching to know what she thought of the passage. Or was he? How could she ever have faith in her perception of people again? She had been curious about Padgett, but she had dismissed him as merely a writer, not a creator of alternate reality. Perhaps Mulder didn't care at all. His body language suggested as much, so why would she assume that he wanted to know what she thought? Because she knew him as well as she knew herself. She cleared her throat. "Mulder, Padgett was a writer. Writers observe, they take something that the rest of us either don't notice or take for granted, and they turn it into something interesting, and often inaccurate. Some do it just to sell books, others do it for the sake of art, and others, like Padgett, I think, do it because they have to get something out of them, something so big that they can't bear it anymore, they have to unload. All artists do that." Mulder did not look up. "What did Padgett observe that made him write about a man who takes people's hearts?" Scully shook her head. "I don't know, Mulder. I'm not a resident of his head. We may never know. He said that he was lonely, but I don't think that was really the worst of his problems. I think he was... desperate." "For what?" He finally looked at her. "For someone to love him? How very Hallmark." She looked at the pages, absently touching the corner of one. "I think this story of his began innocently enough, but it became all-consuming. When your art becomes your life, the two can easily start to imitate one another. It's kind of like work, really." "Is work your life, Scully?" She sighed. "It seems like it, sometimes. Yes, work is my life. For a long time, it was just part of it. Now, it's sort of taken over, and that was my own choice, to let it. As often has it attempted to take my life, it rules it, and I like that, most of the time. I love my work, Mulder, just as much as you do. And Padgett loved his art." "What am I, Scully?" Mulder asked, evenly. She studied him. "What do you mean?" "What am I, in the grand scheme of your life? Just a part of work?" "Well... yes, Mulder." She stood, stretched, and walked over to him, placing a hand on his arm. "You're my partner." He looked at her hand, placing his own over it, a simple gesture times two. "So, are you in love, Scully? Or was that just another one of Padgett's inaccuracies?" Scully paused in thought, for a moment, then gave him a quick smile. "Actually, that one wasn't so far off." She squeezed his arm. "I love my work." She gently pulled her hand out from under his and quietly left the office. Mulder stared where the pressure of her fingers had left little patches of warmth on his skin. He chuckled, to himself. "Imagine that." (End) -- Author's notes: A few things to mention: the disclaimer is a verse from U2's 'The Fly' and the title and opening quote is from Alanis Morrisette's 'Uninvited'. Flames damn you to writer's block. Feedback gives you the cojones to write really good smut.