From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:42:19 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Without Speaking, Confess by bravenewcentury
Source: direct

Reply To: bravenewcentury@gmx.com


TITLE: Without Speaking, Confess
AUTHOR: bravenewcentury
E-MAIL: bravenewcentury@gmx.com
DISTRIBUTION: Ephemeral, Gossamer, please ask 
for anywhere else
RATING: R
CATEGORIES: VRAH
KEYWORDS: Mulder/Scully romance
SPOILERS:  Millennium
SUMMARY: 'A body has a story to tell'


'Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of 
mine is the house.'



The palm is a map, it is an ocean plain of 
heights and trenches, it is history in creases 
of skin. She has a little scar the shape of a 
teardrop on the side of her thumb. He leans 
forward in the chair and traces her life line 
over and over, willing it to go on further, out 
beyond the boundaries of fate and skin into 
uncharted territory. She sleeps in haunted 
circles, mourning-black under her eyes, and the 
watching machines hum on.

He drinks watery hospital coffee in the small 
hours of the morning, and scrubs his tie in the 
drinking fountain when he spills it. Nothing is 
real; he wanders through fluorescent-lit 
hallways, the night pressing up against the 
windows like a wolf, and inside is all soft 
corners and slick plastic chairs. They hide the 
needle and the scalpel-point under pastel 
coloured blankets, they dress her in a cotton 
gown like anyone else and whether you live or 
die it's the same uncaring print, lines 
repeating and repeating and repeating. He 
presses his nose against the heel of her hand as 
if he can make something new.

Day comes in slow, wrenching red on the horizon, 
low and bloody warnings, and her hair fans out 
across the pillow like the dusk. He would put 
himself between her and a bullet; he wants to 
crawl under her skin and face the marksman 
there, too. Death is spinning towards her so 
slowly. Surely there is time. 

Her eyes flicker open and she smiles wryly at 
him, scuffing her hand through his uncombed 
hair, drawing lines of longitude and latitude in 
her wake.

"You look pretty rough, Mulder."

At this point perhaps he's supposed to make some 
comment on her own rather less than stylish 
appearance, but he doesn't have the words, so he 
only shrugs. She pats his head again.

"You should get some rest. I'll be-" she 
swallows the end of that sentence, and looks 
away. "You ought to sleep." He takes hold of her 
hand and runs his thumb over her knuckles; each 
one is a charm. 



There are wet footprints leading away from the 
motel pool, a little trail of dark impressions 
that fade into the shadows at the edges of the 
yellow sodium light. He tracks her into the 
moon-filled night, heel-to-toe, a faint smell of 
lemony shampoo and pepperoni pizza. Past a 
broken part of the fence she is sat on an old 
crate in a scrubby bit of nothing-land, looking 
up at the half-clouded sky.

"Hoping to see anything?" he asks, coming up 
behind her. She tilts her head right back to 
look at him upside-down.

"I heard Superman was doing a flyover," she says 
nonchalantly. She's traded in her trim black 
skirt for an old pair of jeans, the bottoms 
rolled up to her knees and speckled with damp 
splashes. Her shirt is open an extra button. He 
sits down on the ground beside her, wriggling to 
avoid a thistle.

"So, Scully... Superman versus Batman?"

She pokes him wetly in the calf with her big 
toe. "So generic, Mulder. Krypton versus 
Reticula?"

"Krypton was destroyed."

"Hypothetically then."

He pretends to study the ground in thought and 
watches her feet swinging back and forth, the 
shadows blue in the moonlight. "You know, 
Scully, reflexologists believe that by 
stimulating the foot, one can affect the health 
of anywhere else in the body- that you can 
increase mental activity by rubbing the right 
toe, or cure stomach pains by massaging the 
arch. That the foot is in itself a microcosm of 
the human body."

He doesn't need to see her face to know she's 
rolling her eyes. "And none of it has any basis 
in fact, Mulder, there have been dozens of 
studies on patients receiving reflexology 
treatments and none of them demonstrated any 
significant benefits except to the bank balances 
of a bunch of new age cranks."

"But it's an interesting concept, don't you 
think?" He lies back tentatively in the scrubby 
grass and props one foot up on the other knee. 
"That everything in us is interlinked. That when 
we walk, the ground we cross touches us, in a 
way." He looks up towards her but she's staring 
up at the drifting sky again, quiet. The moon 
has caught the tasselled edges of a cloud and it 
looks like white, silent fire, searing across 
the inkpool night. 

Slowly, something damp and cool presses itself 
against the sole of his foot, and he brings his 
gaze back down to earth in surprise. Her foot is 
resting gently against his, dwarfed by 
comparison, her toes just beneath his. She's 
still looking up at the sky, and the moon plays 
strange and changing shadows across her face.



The airport is bland and faceless, footsteps and 
tannoy chimes and strange, nasal accents, and 
her bright, coppery hair is like a banner 
against the nauseous grey. She is also carrying 
a cup of coffee, which is almost as good.

"So we're stuck here another three hours?"

He nods and she sighs ruefully, passing him the 
coffee and twisting off the cap of a bottle of 
Ocean Spray. He wishes that cranberry juice 
wasn't the same colour as blood. She still looks 
fragile and too pale, as if she caught it off 
the snow.

"You know, I always used to want to visit 
Australia," she says, arranging herself neatly 
in the cookie-cutter airport chair, brushing a 
stray lock of hair back into its appointed 
place. He could take out a ruler and measure the 
precise four inches minimum of space she keeps 
around herself.

"I don't know that this really counts as a 
visit. We haven't even seen any kangaroos- 
though I guess some of those nurses were kind of 
funny looking."

He glances over at her but she doesn't even seem 
to have heard him, staring off into the middle 
distance and gripping her drink with both hands. 
He watches an elderly couple go past, a bald man 
in a wheelchair. Her head tips forwards, 
shielding herself in fox-red shadows.

"Scully?" He reaches out to touch her shoulder. 
She flinches then tries to pretend she didn't, 
rubbing at her arm and looking at him with a set 
smile.

"I'm fine, fine, just... thinking."

"Okay." He takes a sip of the still-scalding 
coffee, and watches out of the corner of his eye 
as she studies her fingernails intently. He is 
definitely not thinking about the dim lights of 
his hallway and her upturned face and his 
fingers tangled in the fire of her hair, things 
he should never have said, that he can't take 
back. 

All he's seen of Sydney is the inside of taxis 
and hospital corridors, waving his badge in 
peoples' faces and hoping that he didn't have to 
try and explain to anyone exactly what happened 
to his partner. He spent three days hovering 
like a moth at her bedside until she fixed him 
with something like her finest baleful glare and 
told him to take a damn shower. They have next 
to no luggage; he bought his sweater without 
checking the size and the hem is two inches 
above his belt. He is never buying honey ever, 
ever again. It's the only manner of revenge he 
can think of right now.

She sighs, low and soft, and his hands feel 
awkward and heavy in his lap, as if they've lost 
their purpose. She flickers at the edge of his 
vision. His coffee is getting cold.



Ice is blue; so is the sky and the sea and the 
tiny, fragile eggshell he found in the park on 
his morning run, but it's ice he's thinking of. 
Her focus is absolute, straight and steel-clad 
as the gleaming barrel of her Sig as she empties 
another clip into the printed chest of the 
target. Her hair is twisted awkwardly under the 
ear defenders.

He touches her shoulder gently as she lowers the 
gun and she turns, the reflected light across 
her goggles obscuring her eyes for a moment.  He 
tugs them off with a finger, and maybe it's a 
blue that isn't anything else, just her.

"Workin' out your hit list, G-Woman?"

She shrugs, pulling the ear defenders right off 
and taking out the clip. Her gaze flickers down 
to her abdomen. "I don't like getting shot."

"Neither does that guy," he says, jerking his 
head towards the little paper target that's 
skimming towards them. The upper torso is 
practically shredded, a wide hole pulled over 
the heart, and he touches the punctured left 
shoulder sympathetically. "I feel your pain, 
man."

Her eyes meet his with a cool, patented eyebrow 
raise. He passes the goggles back and forth 
between his hands. "So you want to go get some 
lunch?"

"It's only eleven thirty," she says, hanging the 
ear defenders back on their little peg. She 
takes the goggles from him and holds them back 
up to her face for a moment, peeping owl-like up 
at him. "Kersh won't be happy if we just leave 
all the paperwork-"

"Kersh is never happy, Scully, he's like the 
Grinch That Stole Everything." He makes a face 
that's clearly a decent impression of their AD 
because she snorts and looks away. "C'mon, I'll 
pay, and then we can go drink lemonade and 
heckle the skaters in Freedom Plaza."

"I don't know about you Mulder, but I actually 
did graduate junior high." Her eyes are still a 
cipher, but he's a quick study. He squeezes her 
shoulder and slides his hand down to the small 
of her back, leading her out of the firing 
range.

"I'll buy you some curly fries."

"With sweet chilli sauce?"

"You bet."

Her eyes meet his again and the smile there is a 
thaw, an equinox. "I guess the paperwork can 
wait."



"I think you'd better drive."

Her mouth quirks into a smile as she looks him 
up and down, lingering over his arm in its 
sling. "Damn, Mulder, that hadn't occurred to 
me." He attempts a shrug, winces at the pain, 
and she swats at him half-heartedly. "Oh just 
get in the car."

Over the rooftops of the city fireworks are 
blooming in celestial colours against the starry 
night. A pair of college students lurch 
drunkenly past on a bicycle, the skinny boy 
perched on the handlebars waving madly at them, 
mouthing 'Happy New Year'. He turns his head to 
watch them pass, but his eyes seem to get stuck 
on her. She's smiling distractedly at the road 
ahead, and as he watches her tongue runs quickly 
around the corner of her mouth. The painkillers 
are making him lightheaded.

She pulls up in front of his building and gives 
him her best I-am-a-medical-doctor once-over. 
"I'll walk you up; they gave you some pretty 
powerful stuff at the hospital, I don't want you 
collapsing in the hallway." That's her job. She 
touches her lips with a fingertip as she turns 
off the engine, almost unconsciously. 

The ground just outside the car door is wobbling 
a little, but she slips an arm around his waist 
and he rests his good one around her shoulders, 
and they make it up to the door. In the hallway 
someone has drizzled silly string all over the 
mailboxes, and there's sounds of whooping and 
thumping, rhythmic music coming from one of the 
ground floor apartments. She nudges her head 
against his shoulder.

"And you thought chasing zombies was fun."

She's still smiling, her eyes skipping almost 
wistfully across his face, and he thinks that 
there were things that were much more fun than 
the zombies. The quiet of the elevator curls 
around them. She's already got her keys out of 
her purse when they reach his apartment and she 
opens the door without hesitation. He feels a 
little bit ashamed of the lone, dirty sock that 
set up house on the kitchen counter last week, 
and the congealing pizza on the coffee table. 
She walks him into the bedroom and they sit down 
on the edge of the unmade bed. He touches her 
cheek with his good hand, and she moves her head 
slightly so his thumb brushes the edge of her 
lips.

"Thank you Scully. For saving my ass yet again."

"Everyone needs a hobby." She tilts her head to 
one side, contemplating. He really ought to stop 
looking at her mouth. He doesn't want to. Her 
tongue slips out again, only for a moment, and 
she looks away from him as she stands. "I'll 
come by tomorrow morning to change your 
bandages. Try not to fall over or anything."

Then suddenly her hand is at the back of his 
head and she's kissing him again, her mouth all 
fierce warmth, and he leans in to her, his hand 
grasping at her shoulder, her side. They break 
apart and he makes a small sound against her 
lips. Their foreheads are pressed together, 
noses touching. 

He thinks there's probably something terribly 
suave and seductive that he could say right now, 
the right way to ask her to stay, but he's bone 
tired and his arm is throbbing and his head is 
spinning from the painkillers, amongst other 
things. She brushes her lips against his cheek 
like a promise as she lets him go.

"I'll see you tomorrow Mulder."



It is not so much, he thinks, that you hear 
another person's heart beating as you feel it. 
Her shoulder is sticky with sweat but he's not 
sure he has the energy to move anywhere else, or 
the inclination to for that matter. Her pulse is 
throbbing against his cheek, and he echoes the 
rhythm against the flat of her stomach with his 
hand.

She makes a small contented sound in the back of 
her throat and murmurs, "But soft, what light 
through yonder window breaks."

The only light currently breaking through his 
bedroom window is the dull orange of the 
streetlamps, nudging at the edges of the blinds, 
and he dutifully reports this back to her. She 
laughs. "Iambic pentameter, Mulder. It's the 
same rhythm as a heart beating."

"Yes," he agrees, vaguely remembering a stoned 
conversation with a Theology student who had 
lived on the same staircase his first year at 
Oxford. He's not sure that John Donne really was 
tapping into the great divine music of the 
universe, but maybe there's something in it. He 
yawns. "So is this regular pillow talk for you 
Scully?"

Her fingers are making a careful survey of the 
nape of his neck. "What?"

"Shakespeare. Poetry. Long words." He doesn't 
feel particularly capable of the latter himself.

"Do you like it?" There's a note of caution in 
her voice, her fingers fluttering behind the 
curve of his ear. They have created a strange 
thing, delicate and many-chambered. He nods 
against her shoulder.

"Mmm. You have a sexy brain."

"Just my brain?"

"It's well accompanied." He presses an 
appreciative kiss to her clavicle. She strokes 
his hair the wrong way, pulling it into 
haphazard spikes.

"I like your brain too." Sometimes it feels like 
they're both talking about something that's not 
quite the same thing that they are talking 
about, but he's not sure he can decipher it 
right now. Her skin smells like a warm afternoon 
in Fall.

"Plus it's quieter than before. I bet the 
neighbours are thinking 'who the hell uses last 
names when they're-'"

"Mulder!" He lifts his eyes to her face and 
she's laughing, and he feels warmth blossom in 
his chest, something unfolding in the sunlight. 
Her heartbeat is an ocean in his ear, rising and 
falling, as inexorable as the tides. He splays 
his fingers across her stomach like a delta.




'The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes 
without speaking confess the secrets of the 
heart.'
- St Jerome