NEW: Tonight I Was (1) R-rating
Brighid
Author: Brighid
Spoilers: Minor spoilers for Scully's saga in Season 4
Rating: R - it's a bit graphic in places
Category: A (& AU)
Keywords: Control Lost?
Summary: A late night call turns Mulder's world inside out.
Archive: Sure, but keep my name & let me know.
Constructive feedback greatly appreciated. Please. Please. Please.
Disclaimer: All things X-files belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox. This
is not for profit, but for love.
Author's note: Lee B. challenged people to write something where loss of
control was a bad thing for Scully, instead of the more accepted 'good
thing'. I doubt this is exactly what was wanted, but it's what came. This is
utterly AU.
Tonight I Was
by Brighid
The phone dispersed the uneasy fragments of his dreaming. It took forever to
find it under the clutter of magazines, videos and pizza boxes. It took even
longer to answer it, his co-ordination made soggy by sleep. He meant to say
hello but only managed an inarticulate noise.
"Mulder, it's me." He was wide-awake now, and utterly terrified. Her voice
was a small thread, a tenuous connection that pulled at him. Even dying, she
had never sounded this fragile.
He forced himself to sit upright, rubbing the graininess of sleep from his
eyes. 'Yeah, Scully. Whassup?"
A small sound, a convulsive sob echoed over the tinny channel. "Mulder, I
can't find my clothes, and there's blood… oh, god, Mulder, there's blood all
over me and I don't even know…." Another sob, wrenchingly weak, broke
through her whispers. "I don't know if it's mine or someone else's."
A thousand nightmare visions rose up behind his closed eyelids; he knew too
well the monsters of the world, had arrested a number of them. A soft
whimpering of his name pulled him back to the phone, away from useless
supposition. "S'okay, Scully," he muttered soothingly, reaching for gun and
keys and wallet and sending the table's clutter all over the floor in his
haste. "Just tell me where you are, okay, partner? I'll be there for you as
soon as I can, okay?"
He heard her moving, a staggering process around the unseen room. He winced
at the sound of flesh hitting wood, the tinkle of broken glass. "Mulder, I
don't know where I am, I'm all sticky, it hurts, god, Mulder, you have to
help me…."
He grabbed a battered parka off the rack as he went out the door. "C'mon,
Scully. Use all those detecting skills they taught you at Quantico, huh?
Soon as you tell me where you are I'll come and take care of things, okay?"
He took the stairs three at a time, unwilling to risk losing time to the lag
of the elevator.
"Okay, okay," the breathy, alien voice replied. "I'm looking, I'm looking,
I'm looking. I think I'm in a motel, Mulder." He tried to control the quick
intake of breath, hissed as the cold night air bit into his lungs. He began
to shake, but not from the cold. He followed her progress by the sound of
her movements. As they grew fainter, he realized she had set the phone down.
He heard a door open, then shut again. His car was already growling to
reluctant life when she returned to the phone.
"I'm at the Adderly Motel, room 123. Wherever that is? Mulder, there's blood
everywhere!" Her voice was querulous, tangential to the situation. "The
sheet is sticking to me. I want to go get clean, okay Mulder?"
"Nonono!" He pulled into the light traffic. "Look, I don't know where the
Adderly is, okay, Scully? And I don't want to hang up on you, so I need you
to look around for a phone book, all right? Motel rooms always have phone
books, so you've got to do this for me, okay?" He felt as if he were talking
to very slow child, and knew that any other time Scully would be tearing off
his head and spitting down his throat for it. The fact that she only managed
a distracted "Okay, Mulder." made him want to weep.
Again she drifted from the phone; he split his concentration between
tracking her progress through the room and the road before him. He had to
keep her occupied, preferably talking, so that she didn't do anything to
damage evidence. She had to stay out the shower so that when she was checked
over they could take the necessary samples if she'd been … if she'd been….
His mind froze on the word, and he was hard pressed not to gag in physical
response to the thought. He felt his throat close with tears. Shit, not
that, don't let it be that. Not Scully.
She was back at the phone, and she had an address for him. "That's great,
Scully. Traffic is really light, so I'll be there soon, okay? Now I need you
to start telling me what happened, so I can make sure things get taken care
of. Where did you go tonight?" He pushed his foot hard on the gas, half
hoping that a cop would flag him. He didn't want to go into this alone,
afraid that he couldn't be strong enough if his worst fears were realized.
"Ah, I went out," she whispered, her voice rough. "It's been so … hard,
lately, and I just wanted to get out for couple of hours." He heard her
pause, her breath harsh and irregular. "I thought music, just went to hear
the music. Had a drink, talked to this guy for a little while. He was nice.
He listened, y'know?" Shame curled through him at the little-girl lost
quality of her voice, and the guilty tone to her admission. ~He~ listened…
something Mulder didn't do very well. Or very often. Shitshitshit.
"So he was listening. Do you remember his name, Scully?" He forced himself
to keep his tone light, conversational.
He heard her that odd hitch to her breathing again, and movement as if she
were pacing. "Uh, he was short, and dark, and he had brown eyes, and he paid
for my second drink… I can't remember, Mulder. Why can't I remember?" Her
voice rose, shrilled in his ears. "Goddamnit, Mulder, it's all over me, I
stink. It's too sticky to rub off, oh god, Mulder, hurry up, please. Just
hurry, okay?"
His foot dropped down harder on the gas. "I'm hurrying, Scully. Just hang
on, partner. I'm coming for you."
She sighed, a feathery sound. "You're coming for me," she repeated. "I'm
still naked, Mulder."
Mulder closed his eyes briefly against oncoming headlights, and made a thick
noise that could have been a laugh or a sob. "Then I'm definitely going to
hurry, Scully."
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The hotel wasn't a fleabag, as he'd half expected. Instead, it was a sort of
mom and pop operation, the kind families with small kids used. Room 123 was
at the end, near the Coke machine. When he reached it the door was open.
"Don't turn on the light."
He started at the voice, small and paper-thin. The walkway lights cast a
hazy illumination in the room, giving indistinct edges to the shadows. She
had huddled on the floor by the bed, its thin quilt swathed about her. "I
couldn't wear the sheet anymore. It was too sticky."
Mulder's gut clenched at the sight of her. He knew, rationally, that he had
almost a foot on Scully, that she was actually dainty by most people's
standards. Sheer force of personality had always managed to counteract that
somehow. In the five years that they had worked together, she had never been
small.
Until now.
He crouched down in front of her, moving slowly in the darkness of the room.
With careful deliberateness he slid the quilt from her shoulders, trying to
guess at the damage it hid. She didn't move to stop him, but she didn't
raise her head to meet his eyes.
Her skin glared white in the diffused light, except where it was smeared
darkly. He reached out, recoiled slightly at the cool tackiness of drying
blood. "Oh Scully," he whispered, his voice broken glass and sandpaper. The
quilt slipped further, unheeded. He traced gentle fingers over her, looking
for fractured bones, swelling and bruises. Every time she flinched he
started back as well, terrified of snapping the slender filament that kept
her anchored to him, to reality.
He laid a soft hand around the back of her head, feeling the sweep of bone
beneath the plaster of her sweaty hair. "Scully, were you … were you…."
Again the word wouldn't come, couldn't come.
He felt the slow shudder move through her, the sudden intake of breath. "It
hurts," she said softly, childishly.
He sat there, on old carpet, hearing the whir of the Coke machine and the
hum of distant cars, and bit at his lip until he tasted blood. He would not
cry, he would not fall on his partner and cry for all the things that had
been taken away. He felt her hand on the back of his neck. "Will you look,
please?" Before he could protest, refuse, she slid her legs away from her
torso and apart, surrounding him. She was hideous, sprawled and nude,
stripped to the bone of everything that was Scully. Mulder's heart broke.
"Scully, no, it's not..." he started, but her grip tightened on his skull,
forced him to look down at the juncture of her thighs.
White skin, a tangle of red curls, and more blood than had any right to be
there. The slopes of her thighs were gory, still slick as blood had mixed
with fear-sweat. Unwillingly, he reached out, touched the mess. His fingers
found them even as his eyes did: twin punctures just below where thigh
joined hip. Her soft sigh startled him.
"Scully, what the hell…?" His voice trailed off as he realized she was
looking at him now. Her eyes were not empty, as he had feared they would be.
They shone in the faint light from the outside floods, luminous as cats'
eyes, and her cupid's bow mouth was stretched in a bone-white smile.
"You always told me I should be more open to extreme possibilities," she
said, her grip on his neck gone iron, her legs wrapping around him with
inhuman strength. "Tonight, I was."
He felt the blowtorch heat of her mouth at his throat, and then he felt
nothing at all.
************************************************************************
The End
Dana1muldr
Holy $hit!
I was not expecting that! Not even after the puncture remark, altho i supected
their cause.
Hmm, is this going to be it? Was any of what Scully told him on the phone
truth?? I guess my only concern is that, even turned, i am unconvinced she
could just toss their 5 years away in an instant and dig in. I coulf have
left the tale happy with her final words and title, "Tonight I was" Great job
on the angst!
heather
alt.tv.x-files.creative