NEW: To The Bone by Brighid (1/2)
Brighid
Author: Brighid
Spoilers: Scully's Season 4 Story Arc
Rating: R for language and graphic imagery
Category: SA
Keywords:Sequel to Tonight I Was
Summary: Death would have been too easy. Mulder gets help, and sees things
through to their unnatural conclusion.
Warning: Violent, bloody, and someone gets staked.
Archive: Gossamer, yes; otherwise 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: One - the title is from Depeche Mode's "Stripped". Two - this
makes more sense if you've read "Tonight I Was". You can find it at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Styx/6608/poetry.html .Three- this is for
Kelley. I'm ALMOST done my share of the edits, I promise. This just had to
be finished because it leapt out and bit me on the tuchus.
To The Bone
by Brighid
I open my eyes slowly against the sanguine light of the neon sign, more than
a little surprised to find myself alive. Consciousness is a slow process,
giving me a chance to answer that little mystery: I'm not. Alive, that is.
No pulse, not to speak of. No breathing. No heat. Nothing.
Well, shit.
Memory is vague, at first, eluding me as I struggle to understand why I am
naked in a motel room bed, feeling like the fourth day of a three-day pass.
Everything hurts, at least in a vague, distant way, which seems more than a
little strange in light of the fact that I'm not goddamned breathing.
Gradually, the images blossoming like bruises, I remember. At first it is
only short, jumbled images, but as the minutes tick over I began to sort
them into place, creating a bigger, clearer picture.
I work my hands free of the binding sheets, touch my throat, find twin
punctures along the carotid. The merest brush of finger tips, and they flare
in remembered agony; the feel of her mouth on me sears white-hot along my
nerve-endings, burns me to ashes. She had been a dagger sliding into me; I
feel the wound only now, now that she has gone.
I want to attribute this half-life to mercy. I want it to be a gift, an
offering, anything other than what it really is. I remember her eyes in the
dark, round and silvered like a cat's, the feral gleam of gaze and smile.
There had been no human kindness there, barely anything human at all. This
isn't mercy.
It's payback.
I fight my way clear of the bed, struggle to my unsteady feet. My head
reverberates with the night sounds of the nearby highway, the hum of
sleeping bodies and the other, human noises of the motel. I realize with a
start that not only can I hear them, but I can smell them as well. Before I
even understand what I am doing, my tongue is out, testing the air, and
Christ, I can taste them, too. My gut knots fiercely at that, staggers me
with a pain that threatens to core me.
At a guess, it is hunger. I don't want to think about it, explore it. I'm
not ready for the answers that I half-suspect. Instead, I stand against the
pain and search the room and ensuite for something to wear. My clothes are
gone, the sheets hopelessly bloodstained, and she has apparently taken the
goddamned towels after cleaning herself off. The shower still carries her
scent. I press my face against the slick tiles and inhale her deeply,
feeling her curl her way down to my toes. The twin punctures on my throat
throb in memory.
I give up my search at last, returning to the bed. I wipe myself off with
one of the pillowcases, then sit back and reach for the phone. Thank God for
a near-eidetic memory; the man is unlisted. I dial his number with
still-shaky fingers, and wait impatiently as the phone rings.
"Skinner." The voice is brisk, no-nonsense despite the hour. I feel myself
relax imperceptibly, even as my mouth quirks at the thought of what he'll
say to this.
"Sir, it's me, Mulder. I'm sorry to wake you, but I need your help." I can
picture him pinching the bridge of his nose, knocking his glasses askew. Can
hear the frustration in the growling exhalation.
"Where the hell have you been, Mulder? Neither you nor Scully show up today,
and now you call me atů." there is a pause; I can hear the rustle as he
turns in bed to check a clock. " Midnight." Skinner sighs. "What do you
want, Mulder?"
Something dark and fierce stirs inside me, whispers what it really wants. I
bite back a laugh, knowing it will lead me into hysteria. "I need you to
come to room 123 of the Adderly Motel. You know where it is?"
Again the soft growl. "I know where it is," he acknowledges. "I'll be there
within the hour."
"And sir, I need you to bring me some clothes. Anything will do." The
laughter bubbles inside me again as he snorts.
"What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Mulder?" he asks dryly, a
little despairingly. "I guess I'll find out soon enough, won't I?" With that
he hangs up. I return the handset to its cradle, sit myself on the least
filthy blanket, and wait. I probably should be figuring out some way of
explaining this to Skinner, but I'm too damn tired, too damned scared, and
it is all I can manage not to crawl the walls from the gnawing ache inside
me.
******************************
The door is unlocked when I reach it. Not totally unexpected, but with
Mulder, it always pays to be wary. I sling the duffel bag over my shoulder,
pull my gun out of my ankle holster and nudge the door open with my foot.
"You in there, Mulder?"
"In all my glory," comes the dry response.
I move in, gun still up, to find Mulder sitting bare-assed on the bed. I
holster my gun and go for the light switch. He winces, curls into himself,
as though the light hurts him. I switch it off quickly; I've seen enough,
anyway, for now. The bed under Mulder is an ugly red smear, and Mulder is
little better. Shit.
I move across the room, dropping the duffel. I reach out, touch his bare
flank, touch his bent head. "What the hell is going on, Mulder? How badly
are you hurt? Why the hell didn't you call an ambulance?" His skin is cold
and slick beneath my hands, like ice. At a guess, shock, but why? How?
He lifts his face from the cradle of his knees, and his eyes are strange in
the glow cast by the distant streetlights. They shine, silvery, like a
raccoon caught in headlights. "I wouldn't get too close to me, sir," he
says, his voice high and strained, and fuck, his nostrils flare and his lip
curls and he is all teeth. Something inside me snaps, panics. I flop back,
crab-walk back from him, scrambling and falling over the forgotten duffel.
"What the fuck happened here, Mulder?" There is comfort in the offense, in
attacking where I am weakest. Right now I feel so weak that my knees are
water.
"I think I ditched Scully once too often," he replies, his voice an odd mix
of dry ruefulness and strained tension. "Sir, this situation is seriously
beyond anything I've ever experienced before, and well, shit, I needed help.
Need help. Please."
If I had a calendar I think I would mark a red ring around the date. "How
about you start at the beginning, and then we go from there?" I sit up, then
stand up, and cross my arms across my chest. "This had better be good,
Mulder."
He looks at me, and the strange gleam fades from his eyes, leaves them dark
and sad. "Good is not the word for it, sir." He uncoils on the bed,
unconcerned by his nakedness, almost unaware of it, despite the damp chill
that pervades the room. "But I can promise you interesting."
*************************
I'll say this for Skinner, he listened all the way through without once
interrupting. When I was done, he simply shook his head and muttered
something he must have picked up in the Marines. "Well, do you believe me,
or are you going to put in me in five-point restraints?" I hazard after a
long, uneasy silence.
A muscle along his jaw twitches, jumps. I think I've been a one-man workout
plan for that muscle over the last few years. Every time I deal with the
man, his teeth grind down a little lower, the muscle twitches a little more.
"I believe you. Which probably means I should be in five-point restraints,
but I believe you." He sits down on the edge of the dresser he's been
leaning against. "Between that non-regulation hickey you're sporting, the
fact you've got more teeth than you had last time I saw you, and your
tendency to forget to fucking breathe when you're not talking, I've got to
accept that something is going on." He shakes his head, like a bear shaking
off bees. "How the hell do you manage this, Mulder? I mean, the conspiracy
shit was just sort of handed to you ů but this is just plain dumb luck. How
the hell do you manage it?"
"I think I must've fucked up big in my last life," I offer with a shrug.
"And now, after all that, back to the mundane. Please tell me you brought
clean underwear and a towel in that bag. I'm about ready to crawl out of my
skin."
Skinner bends down, grabs the duffel and lobs it to me. "Yeah. It's mostly
my gym kit, so there's a towel and sweats. Hope you can handle boxers. I
figured my briefs would end up around your knees."
"And isn't that an image for the poor bastard transcribing the surveillance
tapes," I say, letting my lip curl enough to show the joke, fighting it
going any further. I keep wanting to bare my teeth at him, make him cower
and tremble like he did when he first found me. I'm not entirely sure how
much of it is a result of my transformation, and how much is just some petty
desire to get back at him for all the times he's ripped me a new asshole in
that office of his. I don't think I want to find out; neither motivation is
very comforting. Instead, I dart into the bathroom and shut the door behind
me.
I turn the shower as hot as it will go, and don't feel anything at all. Not
hot, not cold; there isn't anything. I can feel the weak pressure of the
shower spray, can feel the grit and stink of my humanity slide off me, but
it is distant, muffled. It terrifies me, unmans me. I start to cry, to try
and weep out the strange disconnectedness that pervades me, but all that
will come are these dry, choking noises; it feels like the ultimate loss,
that I have no tears to cry.
That hurts most of all, that I finally feel. My body surges and heaves and
cannot weep. I howl at that, drive my fist into the tiling, began to pummel
myself into the wall as if that can somehow provide the catharsis my stolen
tears cannot. I want to feel my body bruise and break, want to be able to
mark my loss somehow. Once again it is nothing but distant sensation. My
throat opens up, and a torrent of grief and rage lets loose.
***************
The sudden howl over the hiss of the shower startles me, makes me reach for
my gun. I haven't heard anything like that in over 20 years, outside of
nightmares. Shit.
I run into the steam-fogged bathroom, find him pummeling his body against
the old, yellow tiles of the shower. His face is like that cliched tragedy
mask, all gaping mouth and dark, endless eyes. For the second time that
night a chill walks through me, strips me. This time, it feels like pity.
I reach into the shower, swearing as the water scalds along my arms and
back. I hook his flailing body, pull him against me and out of the shower.
He continues to thrash, slender body alternately slamming into me and
arching out from me, a bizarre push and pull between us like a magnetic
charge. Somehow I manage to turn him around despite the manic strength of
him, manage to cage him against my ribs with arms that twenty years of
weight training have seemingly prepared for this.
All of sudden he is soft and pliant against me, the borrowed heat of the
shower leaching away and leaving him slick and cold in my embrace. The water
pools around us, soaks into my pants as I slide to the floor and brace
myself against the pressboard vanity. I try to mutter soothing things to
him, try to comfort him, despite the strangeness of his chill, silent body.
I feel his face settle into the hollow of my neck, brush against the warm
pulse of my carotid. His mouth opens softly, surrounding it, and I feel his
tongue dart out, soft and snake-fast. I think what startles me most is the
warmth of it, the animal heat that is missing from the rest of him. It is as
if all the life has concentrated in him, narrowed to this one, small point,
where his body joins to another's. My breath hitches in my chest; I find
myself hovering between the desire to shove him away and pull him closer
still.
*********************
He is warm and solid and utterly real beneath me, and I want nothing more
than to dive into him, swallow him whole. He tastes good, the heat and salt
and tang of him the only real sensation I've known since I woke to this
half-life; the pulse of his blood echoes through me, gives me an answering
pulse that I feel in my belly, my balls, by toes. I feel his breath catch
and shiver in his body, feel the pulse drive up, but his arms don't waver,
he doesn't flinch under me, and that soothes the wildness inside, just a
little. No one has ever held me like this before. No one.
I let my tongue drift up, press the throbbing length of his artery, then
pull back slightly. "Would it offend you, sir, if I said that I wanted you
in the worst way?"
A short, sharp bark of laughter convulses the body beneath mine. "Don't
bother, Mulder. I'm still not signing off on your last expense account." His
voice is deep and gruff and threaded with wry amusement.
I pull back further, away from the temptation of his warm, human flesh.
"Thank-you." His eyes are dark and deep behind the glint of his glasses, and
I see the flash of understanding. Skinner has never been a stupid man.
"You're welcome," he says, shifting to rise to his feet. I stand first, tug
him effortlessly up. He is surprised for a moment, than shakes his head
ruefully. "I see the days of me getting you in a headlock are long gone," he
says at last. He hands me the towel I'd laid out on the counter, watches
incuriously as I dry off. "So what do we do now?"
"Find Scully," I answer, shimmying into the boxers he hands me, laughing
slightly as they hang on my spare hips. "Kill Scully."
His eyes shut, and that muscle jumps yet again. "You're sure that's the only
choice?" He asks the question because he must, because it has to be asked.
My very existence is all the answer he needs.
I nod anyway. "And once she's dead, you have to kill me," I reply, pulling
the sweat top over my head and heading back into the bedroom. I can hear the
sharp sound of his inhalation, feel the shock as my word sink in. He doesn't
argue, but I sense he is putting one together in that A.D. head of his. I
can sense him thinking, 'but you're not like her' and I know, in what used
to be my heart, that it is more accurate to say I'm not like her, yet.
I can still taste him, and the darkness inside wants more.
***************
End Part One