Title: Wild Things VIII:  There's Someone
Author: RocketMan >lebontrager@Harding.edu<
Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe is
intended. In this universe, however, CC would instantly disclaim any
ownership of them.
Content: MSR, SPOILER::::::The End:::::

PLEASE NOTE::::To understand this, you must have read Wild Things I-VII.


~~~~~
Wild Things VIII: There's Someone
~~~~~
There's Someone
~~~~~
"She had trusted many
But been unfamiliar with
Almost everyone but you
Well maybe I'm just thinking that the rooms are all on fire."
--'Rooms on Fire' Stevie Nicks

"Outside my door...the rain is falling
A cold, wild wind will come
Well there's someone for me...somewhere
But I still miss that one"
--'I Still Miss Someone' Stevie Nicks
~~~~~

I watch his eyes as the room disolves from view.

Watch the ever present ache swallow him whole this time.

I wish there is some magic word to make this vanish, to have us back at
his apartment, concerned only for a young boy with psychic ability.

Coming now to him, wanting to bury my face in his shirt, but staring out
at the blackened world from the relative safety of his muscled arm, I can
feel his horror.

He does not hold me, does not attempt to reach for me.

Please, Mulder, please. I need your touch, now more than ever.

He trembles and pushes my body from him, falling to his knees in the
destruction.

My eyes still plead with him to reaffirm our connection.

He stays mute, a deeply religious man crying for the loss of his god.

I can't stay here and watch him hurt, watch him hurt me, and not feel the
fear, not have the residual bitterness rise in me.

I step around him, brushing my fingers along the top of a charred desk,
coming away with blackened fingers and the smell of forever lost in my
nose.

I leave quickly.

I refuse to cry.

~~~~~

There is always the past to come sneaking up on one of us.

Always the suggestion of something more than what we've said. Maybe we
have kept secrets,  maybe our relationship isn't so honest, so truthful as
I thought.

I thought.

And while I don't suppose I could ever accuse him of outright lying, I
also couldn't accuse him of being entirely honest with me.

Little chickadee.

Is that how the Lone Gunmen are going to explain me away to the next green
agent that manages to wind up loving the most insensitive, the most
beautiful man on earth?

I should know that this is more real than anything either of us has ever
experienced, and I really did used to think that. . . things change,
despite all our promises.

I'm willing. . . I'd be thrilled to forgive him. I'd be ecstatic to have
him come to me and explain the woman lying in the hospital, and I'd take
him in my arms right then and let him cry into me.

Except he won't do that.

I'm here, Mulder. I'm here.

And that's always met with: I can handle this on my own.

Not that I don't do the same, just that I usually end up saying such
things about my health, not about my former lovers.

I'm not even angry with him, although a part of me says I really ought to
be.

I'm not angry, I'm sad.

I don't want us to come to this. A burned office and the memory of his
stoic refusal to let me in, to let me grieve right along with him.

Can't he see this isn't just him anymore?

The work is just as vital to me as it is to him; those files are as much a
part of me, now, as they have always been for him.

More so, with my heart being so caught up, entangled, in his own.

I can't let this happen. I can't let this be the end of us - not over her,
or over the X-Files.

Pulling myself from the couch and into the hall, all I can picture is his
face when I will come to him tonight.

It is a range of things -angry, sad, regretful, annoyed, loving.

All of those would be fine.

Any of those would be welcome.

I just couldn't deal with that blankness.

The unemotion that his eyes were drowning in, back at the ruins of our
life.

I shiver as I open the door.

Please, Mulder, I need you.

~~~~~

The wind is bitter across my cheeks, stinging where my tears have fallen
from my eyes, despite all my best attempts at keeping them in check.

The car sits forlornly on the street; my fingers are numb from the cold. 

I sit outside, propped against the entrance to his apartment complex,
shivering in the cold, wishing desparately for the strength to walk inside
and knock on his door.

But I can't. I just can't face him.

Not with the threat of his uncaring, not with the fear that he will turn
me away when I need him the most.

If I don't reach out, he can't refuse.

It begins to drizzle again and I hunker down into the partial shelter of
the doorway, closing my eyes to the wind, to the sharp tug of my soul
withering inside.

I can feel my stomach revolting, tossing from side to side in restless
fear and bitter disgust.

I hate my weakness, I hate that I can't go to the one man I want to love
more than anything.

Want.....

No, I do love him. There is no want in it. It just is. 

I do.

The brick is chilled, scraping my cheek as I shiver under my coat and the
wind bites through it. I want to fall back into the wall, to collapse into
the cold arms of unfeelingness, to have that numbness that Mulder carries
around so easily.

If only to keep away the fear that I have lost everything.

Not only the files, not only my work, but my life as well.

My love.

If it weren't for loving Mulder, I'd have tatters in my soul, a half
formed emotion with no direction and no understanding of all the wonderful
things that could be.

I don't want to lose that, not yet.

Everything goes away.

Everything dies.

Could his love for me have died so quickly?

The wind knocks into me suddenly and I tremble, pushing closer to the
entrance and trying to find the courage to stand up and walk up those
stairs and down the hall to his door.

Trying to find the strength to face certain rejection.

I can't do this.

I panic and stand quickly, turning, twisting, feet clumsy across the
slick, wet pavement, slipping into the cold air.

Falling into a warm, warm body.

I glance up, up, into dark eyes, churning with emotion, with genuine
feeling.

I can't look away from him.

"What are you doing out here, Scully?"

I want to cry in relief.

"Waiting for you," I say quickly, and find my footing.

He snakes an arm around me and takes my body into his, securing me under
his arm, tucked into his side.

Then, pulling me back into the relative warmth of the corridor, he makes
me face the fears I had been hiding out from.

"Where were you going?" I ask, rubbing my arms in a futile attempt to
regain circulation.

His eyes shift nervously and his answer is too quick, too practiced.

"To see you."

I sigh and close my eyes. Do I even dare call him on his obvious lie? Can
I face this right now?

"Mulder. . .no you weren't."

My eyes open to see his closed face, the resigned look of 'over' that
scares me more than the idea of him lying straight to my face.

He offers no explanation, no real reason, but he doesn't try to lie to me
either.

And suddenly, with the leftover warmth of his arm around me, and the chill
rooted deep into my veins, I can't do this anymore.

I can't do this.

I turn and push open the door, sliding back into the darkness of furious
clouds, and a freezing winter rain.

He does not follow me.

~~~~~

Sitting in my car, breathing through the tightness in my chest, I think of
other things.

I try to remember the way I felt when Emily laid dying, her small body
wrapped in disease and a monster that just didn't go away.

I try to remember the way I felt when Jack Willis told me he didn't love
me anymore, that it had never been like that, and my furious reprisal
afterwards.

I try to remember the ache in my soul when I came back to find my sister
dead, her life given up in my place.

None of this can compare to the emptiness within, now that I do not even
have Mulder.

It is far more bitter than the lost feeling I had when I took Mulder off
the Pusher case, far more wrenching than seeing him in that psych hospital
as he claimed to see big. . .bugs.

I cannot fathom going through this without him, but it seems he can.

I won't let him hurt me like this. I can't have allowed him so close, I
can't have been so stupid as to fall in love with a weak, pathetic man
again.

I can't have. . .I can't have let him in so close to me.

~~~~~

There is the couch, with memories all its own, and a silent television,
with daunting thoughts accompanying it.

Every piece of my self is found here, wined extricably with him.

I can see his eyes when I look at myself in the bathroom mirror, see the
way he had come up behind me, placed his hands on my shoulders and simply
watched.

I can see his smile as the dark TV sits on the stand, its black face a
paraody of the darkness within me.

I feel his hands as the shower caresses my skin, taste his lips as the
water trickles down my throat.

His hands as I get ready for bed, his feet when the sheets are cold, his
fingers when the sheet tickles my cheek, his arms when the comforter
embraces my body.

I ache for him.

Please, Mulder. I need you. So much is gone. So much has been taken from
us.

Please Mulder.

~~~~~

I wake crying at one o'clock, feeling wretched and cold.

My covers are on the floor and I'm shivering, watching the moon spill into
my room like an intruder.

The tears stop as I regain control, and I stand shakily, pushing my hurt
to the back, pushing my fear away.

I pull on jeans and a sweatshirt, forgetting a bra until I reach the door
and hesitating only a moment.

I sweep out of my apartment building and to the car, angry at my hurting
heart, confused that I could have let anyone get so close again.

~~~~~

The Hoover Building is dark, the guard on duty scrutinizes my picture ID
with a judgemental look, then allows me to walk to the elevators.

The ping of the doors wakens me from my drugged like state and I slip into
the stale air of the car, managing not to feel for these brief moments.

There is just the lights as we descend to the basement level, the chrome
of shiny paneling behind me, the coldness of my heart as it plunges along
with the elevator.

With a resoluteness born of a job completed, the elevator stops and opens
with a cheery ding that sounds rather like the tone of the death knell in
'For Whom the Bell Tolls' that one of my high schools put on for the fall
play.

I step out and slip quietly down the corridor, down the stairs that reach
further into the bowels of the basement, stairs and tile that I know blind
because of my long days and wonderful years spent here.

This has been home, and never has Mulder made me feel out of place in its
depths.

Except tonight.

It is silent and cold to me, the walls echoing his stony refusal to gain
me access, the burnt smell of life and flesh lacing the air with a kind of
gut-sick feeling that almost makes me run back to the elevator.

I wait at the door, staring dumbly at the charred remains of his office,
surprised to find that somewhere in me, I had thought it was all a dream.

The place looks awful. 

Dead. 

Finally, the word comes to me. Dead.

This is the X-Files, and so, this is us.

Our fate is tied to these files, our love founded in them, and therefore,
our destruction.

I hesitantly step inside, realizing a second thing that makes me just as
sick as seeing the leftovers of our lives.

I call this his office. Even now, it is his.

I shake, feeling my knees slipping in their joints, wanting to throw up.

It's all his. It's never been mine. 

And he thinks that too.

These files, this life I shared with him, it all meant absolutely nothing,
not to him, and now, I see, not to me.

I choke on the horror of such a thought and kneel in the ash, trailing my
fingers through it, staining my jeans as I crumple there.

I can't do this anymore.

If the X-Files miraculously are resurrected, I don't think I'll be back.

I can't have my life tied to something and someone who does not matter to
me, not really matter deep down.

I feel bitter as I think this. 

Sure, right.

Mulder does matter, that's the problem, stupid. He just doesn't think you
think it matters, or he doesn't want you to matter, or maybe, you really
don't matter.

I am the X-Files personified, I see that now.

With the office burned, he has lost his connection to me, lost his excuse
to love me.

How pitiful for him, how painful for me.

When my fingers come away with soot and tears, I realize I am crying, and
that I can't stop now.

I lay my head down on the desk and weep, silent soft tears that steal down
my cheeks and mix with the ashes of my life.

~~~~~

I come awake at the touch, breath hitching and eyes wide.

Blinking away the soot and sleep, I see Mulder.

He is staring at me.

"Scully?"

A hand comes from nowhere and touches my cheek, rubbing hard at the
blackness there and coming away dirty.

I pull my face from his hand and rub at my skin, managing to merely smear
it around more, rather than clean it.

"Scully, stop."

I say nothing; I don't trust my voice. Not after crying over him, over
this.

I drag my T-shirt over my face and struggle to keep back the sobs that
threaten again.

I can't do this, not now. No crying in front of him, not for this.

His hands touch my face and I want to melt, to just fall into him, but I
don't.

I've always been the strong one, and he's never needed me anyway.

I can't need him now. Not after this.

Moving from him, I head for the door, taking deep breaths to give me
courage.

It is hard to walk away from him, even after it all.

"Scully, why were you here?"

I stop, dismayed, horrified, saddened.

Turning, my teared up eyes find his, and I feel myself trembling.

"This was my life too, Mulder."

He says nothing, but the shock on his face tells me everything.

He never thought it was.

~~~~~

For some reason, I can't let this go.

I can't let him go.

I am sitting on the floor by his apartment door, waiting for him, not
thinking I have the right to walk into his life anymore, and wondering if
I ever really did.

The smell of someone's dinner assaults me and my stomach growls; I flinch.

Hunching forward slightly, I rest my chin on my knees, playing with the
dust bunnies swirling on the floor.

I feel his steps before anything else, then his pant legs come into view,
his body slowing as he sees me.

Suddenly I am in his crushing embrace.

"I thought you were gone," he whispers.

I squeeze my eyes shut. "I am."

He freezes, pulls back from me.

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know why I'm here. To understand maybe."

"Understand what?"

His face is so bewildered that, for a moment, I think I have gotten it
wrong.

But a crack comes shining through his innocence.

"I'm not the one that's gone, Mulder. You are."

He sighs and stands, pulling me up with him.

"The hall's not the place for this," he says by explanation, and drags me
inside.

Neither of us can sit down.

"Scully. . ."

"What was this to you, Mulder? Was . . .this. . .just an extension of the
X-Files? A way to immerse yourself completely in your selfish quest?"

"Why was, Scully. Why the past tense?"

I feel tense, wound up under his eyes. "Because you've put it there,
Mulder. Because I reached out to you and you left me."

He stretches his neck and sags down on the arm of the couch. "I've done
that before, why is now different?"

I blink hard. I know this somewhere in me.

And the answer is hard to admit, something I don't want to say to him.

But I have to let him know what. . .what this meant to me. Above
everything, he will know that I loved him. Love him.

"I needed you, Mulder. And you left me. The one time. . .one time I
reached out to you first, and you left me."

I turn away from him, struggling to keep my face nuetral.

But saying this has unstopped the true, real me.

I know something now, that I had been dancing over before.

I'm not sad that he never told me about his partner, and I really do
understand his numbness when I reached out to hold him.

This has all been about my own insecurity, the idea that maybe this could
all fall apart some day.

"I'm sorry," he says, but wisely stays away from me.

I feel my breaths like lead weights in my lungs.

I was being selfish.

This wasn't about him, it was about me.

In a moment of pure, blind trust, I reached out to him, reached out to
have him pick me up, ignoring the strength he needed and asking for
something he could not give me.

And I saw his failure to help me as something entirely different. I saw it
as the death of us, as the destruction of our relationship.

How could I be so . . . messed up? To have put such a cruel twist to his
non response, to force myself to believe he didn't love me, all from the
sad little attempt of mine to trust him.

His hand falls to my waist and slowly, his thumb rubs across my skin.

"I'm here now, Scully. If you can trust me again, I'm here."

I want to sob and say I'm sorry, that this was all my messed up head
rationalizing the lack of response I got, not as his own pain, but as his
refusal to love me.

I guess he thinks I'm hurt by him, because he slips in close to me and
kisses my neck softly.

"Let me make it up to you, Scully. I didn't --"

I turn in his arms, pushing my body into him, silencing his words with the
force of my embrace.

I can't let him feel guilty for this, not when I've hurt him so much more
by playing the victim in this, the abused.

"It's my fault, Mulder, my fault. I shouldn't have asked that from you.
Your life was burned to ashes and I was being selfish and acting --"

He places his finger to my lips and shakes his head, a simple smile
lighting his face.

"No. You had every right to ask it from me. You're mine, Scully, and you
had every right to get from me the strength I always get from you. I
always think to myself that if I could just have the chance to be strong
for you, that you'd realize how much I love you. And I messed up the first
chance you gave me."

I think I'm going to break down, right here, in his eyes.

"How about a second chance?" I whisper and close my eyes.

His arms tighten around me, pushing my head to his chest.

For a long, agonizing moment, I'm frozen, unable to to feel.

And then the tears cascade down my face in unrelenting waves of sorrow and
healing.

As he holds me, strong and comforting, I can almost smell the fire burned
office, the remnants of another life, and the soot of a dying woman.

From those ashes, we have moved to another level of us, another state of
love and life.

I laugh suddenly, and he pulls back, wiping the tears with his thumbs.

"Feel better?"

I nod and smile, then lean forward and kiss him.

He closes his eyes and then sighs. "Diana came off the vent, Scully. I
went to see her."

I must have tensed because he slips his hands to my shoulders and rubs
them, digging his fingers into my skin.

I close my eyes. "Then she's going to be all right?"

He nods and brushes a feather light kiss across my forehead.

"Are you going to be all right?" he says.

Surprised, I look up to him.

"No matter what you were to each other, Mulder, I have you now. Forever.
And, besides," I say, smirking at him. "I'm a doctor."

He smiles and catches me up into his arms again, laughing with relief.

"You're a mess, Scully." 

I poke his stomach and hiss, "It's all your fault, you know."

"I can deal with that." His eyes glance deep into me and then he frowns,
skimming his hands down my face.

"You might want to wash all this soot off your face, Scully. You look like
a wild animal."

I remember crying in the remains of our office, face buried in the ash.

"Well, wild or not, this is how I am. Take it or leave it."

My words are a kind of challenge and he sees them for that.

"I'll take you. Anyday, Scully."

~~~~~

end 
adios
RM