(no subject)
TITLE: Nightbirds
AUTHOR: Frey
GENRE: M/S friendship, minor UST, cancer-arc
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: Post-Elegy, Demons
SUMMARY: It was 1997. A time of dark, dark despair.
MULDER: Then you accept the possibility the belief in God is a lie?
SCULLY: I don't think about it, actually.
- Gethsemane 4X24
June 1997
- - - - - - - - -
It was far too hot for this time of the year, Scully thought. Her shirt and bra stuck uncomfortably to her back, and she tried to arrange herself more comfortably in her seat. Mulder glanced past her from behind the wheel, his eyes purple and vacant in the morning sun. She resented him, in his rolled shirtsleeves and rumpled slacks. The breeze from his open window rifled his hair, and she closed her eyesbriefly before cranking her own window as low as she could.
"Headache?" he asked, but she didn't answer.
- - - - - - - - -
"Mulder, we shouldn't be here," she told him their first night at the motel, but he just took her suitcase from her and started up the stairs.
"Mulder!"
"You didn't talk to the little girl," he called back. He sounded so weary that her chest constricted and she instantly regretted yelling at him. God, this was just too much. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was fight with him, but as she watched him disappear into his room, holding both of their bags to his hip and fumbling with the key, she couldn't choke down her anger.
She slammed the passenger door and looked up to where he'd disappeared into the dark doorway. He wasn't coming back. She hesitated for another moment, pressing her aching forehead to the cool metal surface of their rental.
When she got to the top of the stairs and crossed to the door, he was holding it open for her from the inside.
- - - - - - - - -
She barely sleeps at night, now, when they're on the road. When she wakes in the morning there is blood on the pillow, and she has to sit up quickly to clear her nasal passages. Mornings are difficult times, difficult to breathe, her face smeared with blood that tastes sour and hard like copper.
Scrubbing at herself in the mirror, she doesn't allow herself to cry.
- - - - - - - - -
Mulder feels like hitting things, all the time.
He feels like hitting Scully, too, but more than that he feels like cupping her face and tucking it under his chin - tucking her entire body into his own, the breadth of her mind and the astonishing flame of her spirit into his chest. If he can't even have her close enough now, he thinks, what is he going to do when she's dead?
Because they both know now that she's going to die. Mulder listens to her moving around in her adjoining room with her familiar step and bedtime habits, and can't believe she could ever be reduced to something as flat and exhausted as death.
- - - - - - - - -
Rathdrum, Idaho. Forty-five minutes east of Spokane, just across the state line. Touchdown in Washington at quarter to midnight meant they were three hours late for last-ditch check-in in Idaho, but Mulder had a way with middle-aged small-town women that Scully begrudged him, not least for its dependable results. The woman came sleepily to the screen door of the lobby, as Scully and Mulder stood on the creaking porch with their luggage, and five minutes later she waddled happily off back to bed, thoroughly charmed, if minus two room keys.
- - - - - - - - -
"She what?" Scully hovered in his doorway in the white, new light of morning as Mulder passed in and out of the bathroom with various objects in his mouth.
"She has a ghost, trapped in a bottle." He popped his toothbrush out and ran his tongue over his teeth, working up a spit. Actually, the ghost of her dead mother, sealed in a bottle by thirteen pages of an 18th century Irish Bible, but he'll save that for later.
"Go spit, Mulder," she said - but not quite in the tone she might use to tell him to go do something more explicit, so he was cheered. He washed his mouth over the sink and toweled his face dry. His tie hung over the door handle, and Scully handed it to him before he could ask. Their eyes met and she gave him a tight smile.
"Hey," he said more quietly, "if I didn't think this was the real deal I wouldn't drag you out here. You know that."
He searched her face for some acknowledgment, but she'd closed off again just as quickly as she opened to him. "Are you doing okay?"
"I'm fine."
He didn't press it this time - he'd stretched his luck as far as he dared that morning.
- - - - - - - - -
The house was quiet from the driveway. The sun had been up for hours and sat naked in the sky, branding Mulder's shirt collar to the back of his neck. He made his way across the wide expanse of mottled brown grass to the front door, but stopped for a moment in the spray of a lone sprinkler, letting it pearl water on his slacks and shoes. Nowhere, Idaho in summer is not really his idea of paradise.
Several yards behind the house, a tree sprouted unexpectedly out of packed earth. Sprinklers whirred, and water poured from the mouth of an abandoned hose, left twitching on its belly in the middle of the yard. The scene seemed oddly alive, lived-in yet momentarily abandoned, like a planet fallen suddenly out of orbit.
In Mulder's eyes, it was a secret world of inanimate objects and living water, where spirits might spring out at him from behind a swaying fern. Scully's tight expression, the memory of their conversation in the bathroom - all blinked out of focus in the face of such blatant transcendental contest.
- - - - - - - - -
"Austin felt something pawing at him in his sleep, didn't you, bub?"
Austin looked up at his father from beneath unnaturally pale lashes and nodded. He wouldn't look directly at Scully, but she could feel his discomfort. Chucking Mulder lightly on the elbow, she moved her head toward the slight adolescent and nodded. "Hmm?" he asked.
"... And he woke his sister up, who sleeps across the hall, and asked her if she'd just been into his room -"
"You talk to him, I'm embarrassing him."
"The boy?" Mulder stepped forward.
"Yes. I'll ask Clarke if I can speak to the daughter."
They separated, Scully crouching next to a small figure in purple jeans, Mulder showing Austin the safety on his gun. Scully watched Mulder, Steven Clarke, and his son move slowly into the shade of the house, and squinted to make out Mulder's expression. It was polite but drawn, and she felt a lump in her throat. This house, she thought, this yard, this little girl all used to be happy. What else died when their mother did?
"Are you the police lady?" asked the little girl, getting up from her cross-legged position on the grass.
"I'm an agent of the FBI, Emma," said Scully kindly. "That's just like a police lady. My name is Dana."
"I have a mommy," Emma said solemnly, looking suddenly older than her six years. "She isn't gone."
Scully was perplexed, and thought that perhaps the little girl felt threatened. "No one's here to replace your mother, Emma. I'm sure you love her very much."
Emma smiled and pointed to the house, where Mulder had emerged carefully holding a darkly tinted bottle. Scully rose and stared at him from across the yard as her brain clicked into place, feeling more and more severe. He blinked at her apologetically. Damn you, Mulder, she thought. He could have told her before they drove out here in the heat to tell ghost stories to wounded children.
- - - - - - - - -
"Okay, so you don't think it's healthy for the kids." Mulder was uncomfortable, switching hands on the wheel and trying to remove his coat.
"Mulder, that child believes the ghost of her mother is living inside of a glass bottle. I don't see how you could determine that to be anything but unhealthy. It's profoundly injurious to her mental well-being, and could seriously damage her grieving process. This could affect her well into adulthood, Mulder!"
He stared at her after that, as if daring her to list the more pertinent ramifications of childhood delusion, but she refused to take bait.
"And it's hotter than hell out here, Mulder. I'm sick of this. Let's go back to the motel, and we'll call the local PD to tell them to round up some family psychologists." Her headache had returned in the afternoon, more penetrating and much stronger. Dropping her head back against the seat, she closed her eyes and gripped the bridge of her nose.
Mulder was silent all the way back, even up the stairs and into their separate rooms. She couldn't remember if he clicked his door shut because she left him in the hallway first, too tall for the low ceiling, towering above her with his dark smell and loose collar.
Scully's room was dim and smelled of sweat and ratty carpet. Her bed was rumpled and the pillows were still bloody from the morning, but she stripped them of their pillowcases and slumped facedown into them anyway. Shuddering into her pillow, she thought despairingly, I have returned from the dead to continue with you, which she will not.
There is no bridge between worlds; there is nowhere to return from, no place to stay, no time for rest.
She had always placed her trust in the sacrosanct and static intersection of the Cross, but now she can find no common ground at all, and God is not encountered but contrived.
She fought sleep and tears, but they were patient adversaries, willing to wait for her inevitable surrender.
- - - - - - - - -
She dreamt an old childhood fear, herself pinned out between cloudless blue above and a deeper stain below, the water widow black beneath her feet, stretching far beyond her sight. She swam straight out from the shore, and, familiarly, was unable to stop or turn around. She told herself not to look down again (knowing her legs would glint, distorted, in the water, above leagues and leagues of forgotten sea things and below that emptiness--) but somehow not seeing it was even worse.
Funny, when she was a child this nightmare had always been about her father. This is her falling dream, but Scully hasn't stepped off a cliff and jerked into wakefulness in years - now something remains even in her dreams that keeps her hanging on the rim of the sky, heart pulled taut between her twin fears: she will sink down into the dark after she drowns, and she will sink alone.
- - - - - - - - -
The sky outside was like deep water when she awakened, the night heat oppressive. The hum behind her eyes had intensified into a palpable throb - if she didn't get up soon she would vomit all over the hotel bedding, and something inside of Scully drew her up off the mattress and toward the bathroom. Even the mirror's reflection gave no light, so she jammed her hip into the corner of the counter before slipping to a crouch and then to her knees before the toilet. The ceramic lid made a sickening crack when she jerked it up against the tank, but Scully pressed it back as hard as she could and tried to fight down the pain and nausea.
She retched in cycles, feeling release melt through her after each one met its peak. When she heard creaks and thumps from outside the bathroom door she closed her eyes in a mixture of shame and relief.
Some memory of the fearful long water spaces from her dream remained as she stared down into the toilet bowl. In the day, Scully only allowed herself to think about how Mulder was selfish, and how Mulder was stubborn, but she was too tired and lonely to be dishonest with herself at this hour. He was, after all, the only person in Idaho who knew her name.
- - - - - - - - -
Mulder's feet hit the floor and he winced; he'd forgotten he left the greasy pizza box by the side of the bed. Wiping the soles of his feet across the threadbare carpet, he hesitated and considered how he was dressed.
He fell asleep in just his boxers, in the stifling heat of the early evening, watching some sitcom that left an empty feeling in his stomach. He was probably less than fragrant, but the sounds from her bathroom had started up again. He prioritized.
Her room was unlocked; he slipped in and tried to make out the door to her bathroom in the sudden darkness. He knew it had to be against the wall dividing their rooms.
Another noise, soft gulping, somewhere in front of him to the right.
"Scully?" he attempted. "Are you okay?"
Silence. What if she - ? An image of her - choking, collapsed over the toilet seat, her face pale, blood pooling on the floor and streaking trails into the bowl, scarlet and ivory -
He found the doorframe and slid his hands down to the knob. To his relief the door was not locked. The distant flare of a streetlight outside barely illuminated the jut of the sink and Scully's body hunched over on the toilet.
"Scully," he breathed out. They drew towards each other in the dark, Scully listing over from her position on the floor. He knelt and pulled back her hair with both hands. Several strands were tacky with saliva and stuck to the corners of her mouth. She hitched a moan, doubling up again, but it was just a dry heave, and gagging in front of him seemed to unlace the last of her composure. His arms around her shoulders, he pulled her back against his chest. The smell of her vomit was bitter like guilt.
- - - - - - - - -
"It's okay, you're okay," he'd whispered, after he'd hoisted her up by the armpits. She didn't seem to take that so well, and had struggled with him briefly before he let her stand by herself.
"Jesus, Mulder, I'm not an invalid," she'd hissed, her throat clogged. But she'd sagged limply at his side, and he'd kept his arm wrapped firmly around her back.
She was sleep-muddled, encumbered by the sudden disquieting allure of his bare chest, and what she thought was certain to be the solid warmth of his sternum. She was thinking of the thrum of his heart in the hospital after Penny died, the scent of his sweaters in his suitcases in fall. She knew she was probably dangerously close to losing her equanimity.
The sheets and coverlet of her bed were a mottled red, he discovered in the bronze halo of her bedside lamp, and she slumped down onto the mattress before he switched the light back off and seized her again.
"Where are we going?" Scully asked. She felt almost frightened.
"My room," he replied, supporting half her weight, "the bed's dry."
- - - - - - - - -
In Mulder's room the TV still glowed blue and white on his bedspread, and dappled his skin with eerie light as he folded the coverlet back and stripped the sheet off. "Too hot for the comforter," he said softly, then disappeared into his bathroom. "Getcha washcloth."
Scully sat on top of the desk, feeling safe and at ease, the way she felt as a child in the middle of the night with the stomach flu. She wasn't sure why the nausea came - it wasn't a regular symptom - but even now if she thought about her headache and the blood and the heat her stomach clenched in residual fear. She closed her eyes until the air cooled and evened out before her.
Crisp fabric whirled and snapped around her ears, and she startled, opening her eyes. Scully could only see white, luminescent in the half-light from the television set, the folds of the sheet as they dropped down about her shoulders - and finally Mulder's well-known smile, the space between them strangely intimate.
He wrapped her in the sheet and half dragged her toward his bed, where he'd pulled the bedspread up again to the headboard. They lay on top of the covers, Mulder contriving to share his pillow with her so he could press his damp washcloth from the bathroom over her forehead and eyes.
Like a little girl, she slipped back into an untroubled sleep, body slack against his own. So this is what a sick Scully is like, he thought, feeling broad and protective. He stared at the faint freckles on her nose and fell asleep to dream his familiar dream, the one where Samantha disappeared into the light of the door and never came back.
- - - - - - - -
Before, she'd rarely allowed her mind to replay their rare touches. On stakeouts, in the dark belly of a Ford, he would crack jokes and sunflower seeds, poke her in the ribs, lean in too close, and she ignored it, but she is different now.
At first, after her diagnosis, she was proud to find that she hadn't changed. She didn't feel a new jolt of love or lust; flowers didn't look any brighter or sharper. The clerk at the deli on Front Street was still annoying. These were things she admired about herself - in future years, she would say to her mother or Charlie, No, my perspective didn't change when I had my cancer. I was the same Dana Scully. And she would think, Cancer can invade my body, but it can't change me.
It was the perfect plan, except that she was wrong. Instead, she didn't get better, and her doctors kept urging her to stop working cases, and she started turning off the TV when the commercials with glowing middle-aged women came on. Survivors. Her plan would have worked if she had any future years to live.
Mulder became a problem. Mulder remembered her birthday and drilled a hole in his cranium. His eyes are dark and careful and all lit with green when he watches the night sky. He throws himself headlong against the pavement when he runs - and she's caught him enough times to know how heavily he falls.
- - - - - - - - -
Showered, dressed, tie cinched tight. In the mirror he looks older.
He called the sheriff's office early this morning with a recommendation for family counseling. "The Clarkes have been through a lot," said Deputy Hines. "I'm sorry you came out here for nothing. What on earth brought you, anyway, Agent Mulder? Doesn't seem like federal business."
"Personal interest," he said easily. Scully would have tried to explain - Mulder is happy to leave mystery in his wake.
He stuffed his razor and bar of soap into a worn pocket on his duffel, and heard Scully's steps in the outer room.
"Well," came her voice, as she tossed her bag onto his bedspread with a underwhelming fwump. "We can drive five hours to Seattle and leave tonight, no layovers, or be in Spokane in the morning and catch a 6:40 to O'Hare or a 6:00 to Denver." Mulder grimaced at his reflection. "Check-out is at noon."
He came to the bathroom doorway, tired. They hadn't spoken about what happened last night, and he suspected they never would. Just another moment in their four years together that seemed too real to reflect on, too dangerous to address. There's no way of knowing what he'll regret in another five months or five years, and it is painful to contemplate what Scully might. To stop himself from staring, and struck by a sudden idea, he spoke.
"We could drive back."
She didn't understand him at first. "Drive back to which one? Seattle or Spokane?"
"No, I mean - drive back across America."
The phrase has a ring that means more than "back home." America - the new and old land where they made their own tracks, the place that they'd seen together from airplanes and rentals. Scully pictured the corn fields and concrete with more reluctance than nostalia, but neither did she relish the thought of eight hours on a plane.
Mulder had left a drip of shaving cream on his collar. She stared at it and then up at his face, noticing the length of his sideburns, how they shadowed the nervous clench of his jaw. When had he grown them? They made him look older, more defined, no longer the boyish, incorrigible man she’d met five years ago. For the first time she realized, with bitter clarity, how her own problems, and her own prickly, uncompromising influence, had taken their toll on his spirit. She’d grown him up, to someone sad and angry and still lonely.
"Skinner would kill us," she said at last.
He looked relieved at her mild tone, something dawning in his eyes. "What's he gonna do, fire us?"
"He'll make us pay for gas."
The decision was already made; they tried not to smile at each other, and Mulder, still holding his duffel, swivelled his hips, feeling the King.
- - - - - - - - -
It was, if possible, even hotter than the day before, and the trunk smelled so pungent (years ago she had loved the new-car smell) that she shut her bag inside with an ardent thwack. Mulder seemed to share her mood, his sunglasses in place, his Mr Smooth more jaunty than grave.
He cracked open a Diet Coke, sucked up the fizzy overflow and spat it out onto the pavement. It practically evaporated in front of him. "Let's go?"
That night they were in North Dakota.
- - - - - - - - -
The car was running. The light hummed golden inside the windows, where Mulder waited. Ten yards out she was standing in grass up to her knees, letting herself really look at the sky.
It unbent, unfolded, unwound the night to stretch over the dead defeated earth and cool tree spirits. It covered Dana Scully and Fox Mulder, too; their paired-up memory, whatever it was they felt and thought.
The night was like being dipped in water. Cool and weightless, it doused her skin and every hair. Surrounded, she felt the complexity of her mind and heart, like the deep-knitted flesh in the morgue she'd always loved to break down out of its interdependence. She'd been unstitching life for years without knowing it - even relishing her singularity and control.
The kick of the engine broke into her thoughts, reminding her of Mulder, and their shared hollow beneath the stars. His voice carried over the grass, and she went.
The road was quiet under them, but filled the car with the faraway rushing sound Scully would always associate with a childhood spent in cars with her mother. How could she let that memory die with her? How too could she relinquish this new memory, Mulder's quiet presence at the wheel, letting her sleep in the comfort of his wakefulness? What kind of love meant losing? She fought sleep and fought it, but in the end Mulder's shadow spread to the bittersweet blackwash of night, and she slipped away as he kept vigil.
- - - - - - - - -
the end.
A/N: I wrote this on and off for two and a half years. If only I had more to show for it!
The title comes from the (very haunting) Ryan Adams song of the same name.
In memory of my Mom (1958 - 2003)