From: XFBandit Date: 24 Apr 1998 04:30:19 GMT Subject: NEW: "A Posteriori" MSR SRA By XFBandit "A Posteriori" XFBandit Disclaimer: Not mine, never were, no money changed hands and no characters were harmed in the creation of this fanfic. Classification: MSR, SRA Rating: R (Actually, more of a PG-13, but...) Spoilers: Very light for Ice, Squeeze/Tooms, Paper Hearts, Herronvolk. Keywords: Mulder/Scully Romance Angst Feedback: (Eyore voice) "If it's not too much trouble..." Email: XFBandit@aol.com Dedication & Thanks : To Paula Graves, for the original idea, a beta read or two, some suggestions and corrections and her welcome presence in my life. Additional Thanks to Rachel Howard for some beta reading and suggestions. ================================ Dallas, Texas First National Bank Of Texas Time slows to a crawl. I can see the gun coming around, twin sawed-off barrels of death, coming through ninety degrees, heading towards Scully's head. If I concentrate, I can hear the tendons in the scumbag's finger tightening as he prepares to pull the trigger. Scully's eyes are wide, alert... Doomed. She knows it's the end. Her eyes find and track mine, zeroing in, focusing. Regret there. For what, I don't know. I can only answer that question for me. Once, a thousand years and at the same time two seconds ago, I would have had an answer to the question. <><> We were in Texas on a case. An odd little tease; elementary school children reporting sightings of a dead janitor in the school gym, a man who had committed suicide after being accused of molesting one of the students, only later to be cleared by the District Attorney of any wrongdoing. It was a nowhere case, something to fill time and get me and Scully out of the office for a few days. Until the Dallas SAC called Skinner and asked for our help. The local Bank Robbery Squad was understaffed and overworked, as usual. They were working three separate serial armed robbery cases, and had a lead on two of them. They didn't have enough bodies to cover both suspected targets, and needed two more Special Agent. As a courtesy, I'd checked in with the SAC upon arrival, and that was how Scully ended up staring down the barrel of a shotgun. <><> Time stops. My gun is too far away. And in a strange place. Dressed as I am, to blend in, my normal belt-holster would have given me away. I'm wearing a shoulder holster. Something I never do. My left hand moves to my jacket zipper without thinking, pulling the tab down, my right hand already digging for it. I find the grip of my SIG. My thumb finds the snap-break. The gun is in my hand. A quarter of a second has passed. The gun is coming out and out and out and out and I have to get it around in time and there's no time and I can see Scully wincing as she knows her time is almost over and the gun is almost there, another fraction of an inch and it's there. I fire. <><> Later, questions will be asked. They're the usual questions. Did I identify myself? Did I give the suspect a chance to surrender? Did I have any other choice but to put a bullet through his right eye? What were you thinking when you pulled the trigger? Right now, all that I care about is her. <><> Time resumes. I move towards her as things around us begin to speed up. She's covered in blood and other, gorier things. She moves towards me, her arms reaching. I accept her. Only a moment, and then she realizes where she is and who else is there. She pushes away, a hand automatically moving to brush her hair away from her face. The hand comes away bloody, gory. Horrified, she looks around. I grab her elbow and move towards the employee's restroom. We've already scoped the place out, thank God, so it's a short trip. I guard the door while she cleans herself, pinning the other members of the team with my eyes, daring them to say something, anything. They don't. They know better. Minutes (hours?) later she returns, freshened. There's still a small bit of blood behind her right ear. I wipe it off without saying anything. Her eyes flash a thank-you at me. At that point, things start to happen. The questions start coming. <><> Two days later: She took yesterday off. I would have, if I were her. I had to spend yesterday with the Dallas DA and the local OPR representatives. Hard questions, asked by hard-faced men using hard words. Just as I expected. The surveillance tape answers most of their questions. They don't like it, but they live with it. No one talks about commendations or awards. I don't need any. I have her. <><> The phone rings. "Mulder," I answer. "Hi, it's me," she answers. I say nothing, waiting. "Listen, I'm going to take a few days off and relax." "I think that's a good idea, Scully," I say. She continues as if she hasn't heard me. "I just need some... anyway, I'm not sure where I'm going to be or what I'm going to be doing, so if we...if I don't talk to you..." She trails off. She's telling me the last thing I want to hear. Leave me alone. "Sure," I say, trying for joviality and falling short. "Take some time. You earned it." "How did it go yesterday?" she asks. "As you'd expect." She pauses, and I think she's going to say "Thank you." She doesn't. "I'll talk to you later," she says, and hangs up. <><> Later, on my couch: Having this kind of mind is a hassle sometimes. On a case, it's a good thing, a gift. I can remember facts and figures with the accuracy and speed of a computer. But now, when I want to forget and all I can do is remember, it's a curse. An evil curse. I can see the scene in my mind. It's not the gun that bothers me. It's not, so much, the fact that Scully could have died that's eating at my soul. It's the look on her face when I moved towards her. Grateful that I was there. Hating that she was glad. Hating me for making her feel that way. And now, knowing why she's taking the time off. Not to recover from the incident. To recover from what happened after it. To recover from needing me so visibly, letting me know she needed me. I hate this. Why won't she let me...be who I am? Why must we always play by her rules? I close my eyes, remembering all the times we've been close. Tooms. Pfaster. In the Arctic circle. Modell. Canada. And every time, just as I think she's going to let me in, just as I think she'll allow us to... Be. ...she pulls away. Building the walls, fortifying her resolve. Pushing me away. I'm not Mr. Sensitive. I can be an asshole. But I can be there for her. I've proved that. Is she afraid that if she lets me in I'll leave her? Maybe. Or maybe she's afraid of needing anyone. Especially me. I reach for the phone. No answer. I call her mother. She knows. She always knows. I make up a lie about paperwork and forms that need to be signed and official procedure and some artificial time constraint. I get the address. <><> She's in a rental in the Virginia horse country. She'd made the plans before she called me, left the instant she'd hung up. Locking herself away. I wonder what ritual she goes through during these times? Does she sit on the couch and stare at the crackling fire and convince herself how hard she is, how strong? I've met titanium with more flexibility. I've known weaker steel. I knock. <><> She answers after a minute, her face giving every single emotion away. But only to someone who knows her. Only to me. "How did you find me?" she asks. I say nothing. "My mother," she concludes. "I told her a story about paperwork," I say, hoping to defuse the anger. I know that Maggie won't hold it against me. We've been through too much, she and I. Scully steps back, opening the door. "You might as well come in," she says, resignation painting her words. I enter, and look around. Glad that she's alone. And then I see it, on the table next to the couch. The watch. Jack's watch. I didn't make the connection until that moment. In the back of my mind I knew about the Willis case. It was one of our firsts. But I'd forgotten to remember about Willis. I close my eyes, hating myself. The last time gunfire had erupted in a bank with Scully in attendance, her ex-lover had died. That explained a lot. I know Scully better than she thinks. She thinks she goes on, that she gets over things and moves ahead. I know better. I know that deep inside that heart that's big enough for her family and my own endless need, live wounds that take forever to heal. That's part of her problem, I think -- she doesn't know how to find closure. She thinks that time will heal all. It doesn't. I've had twenty-three years to prove that. I hear the door close behind me. "And to what do I owe the honor of this visit?" she asks. I turn and watch her moving into the small kitchen. She's boiling water. No doubt for tea. I move towards her. Her back is to me. I move close, my hands landing on either side of her, trapping her against the counter. I hear her gasp. "I'm not going anywhere," I whisper. "Not tonight, not ever." She doesn't answer me, waiting. For what? An undying declaration of love? I've already said it. A thousand times in a thousand different ways. "Do you know why Jack and I...?" she asks. "Got together? Or broke up?" I ask. She continues as if I hadn't answered. "After I got out of the Academy, I stayed at Quantico. Teaching. I was so angry. I wanted a field assignment. I had no right to be teaching. I had graduated medical school, taken the pathology boards and was waiting to hear the results. I had no business teaching anyone anything." I can see it coming but I let it happen anyway. "Jack...spoke to the assignments section." It's evil to hate a dead man, but I feel it happening anyway. She turned to me, her eyes dragging themselves up my body. Her hands are on my biceps, gently squeezing. "I didn't know until after he died." I want to ask how she found out, but I don't. "I did some checking. Found something out." Her voice was turning bitter, and I knew again what was coming. "He had a female partner," I say. "Before he met you. And it ended badly." She nods, no longer amazed that I figure things out. "Remember Addie Grissom?" she asks. I do. Female agent, San Francisco. Working with the INS on an immigration scam case. The Chinese Tongs killed her, cut her tongue out. Left her as a message that they were playing for real now. "That was some bad business," I observe. Her fingers tighten on my biceps. "He thought he needed to protect me, Mulder. That I was so delicate, so precious that I couldn't be in the field, couldn't be one of the gang. "When I finally got transferred to the field, I thought it was because...because I had some kind of name for myself teaching. I know now why they did it. They didn't think I'd be a good field agent. They thought I'd..." She doesn't finish. She doesn't need to. "But I showed them, didn't I?" she asks, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "Yes," I whisper, leaning close, kissing her forehead. "You did." "I'm a >good< agent," she insists. Not to me. To herself. "The best," I murmur. Her right hand lifts from my left bicep and, fingers clenched, hits me softly in the breastbone a second later. "Don't humor me," she says. "You do the same thing sometimes." I have no answer for this. She's right. But not for the same reasons. "You, have this effect," I say softly, "on the people in your life. When you were sick...I went to Skinner and asked him to arrange a meeting with the Smoker. I..." "Shh," she says, a finger moving to my lips. "You don't-" "Let me finish. I asked for a meeting. To make an arrangement. I was willing to give everything up. All of it." She closes her eyes, sighing, thinking that the reason that I'm telling her this, the reason I did this, is because I love her. "But Skinner refused," I continue. "He told me it was making a deal with the devil." "Skinner was right." I ignore this. "Skinner made the deal anyway." Her eyes flash to mine again. "Not about me," I quickly say. "Him. He...made a deal for himself. I don't know what the terms were." "Why are you telling me this?" "Do you think Skinner is in love with you?" She shakes her head. "So why did he do it? Because he thinks you're weak? I doubt it. Skinner respects the hell out of you. Just as I do. And in his way, just as Jack did." She shakes her head. "Jack didn't-" Now it's my turn to place my fingers across her lips. I've never done this before and I'm amazed at the silky warmth of them against my skin. "Maybe," I say softly, "he thought you had better things in your future. It wasn't time for you to be a field agent." Her anger is palpable. "I never asked-" "No one said you did. No one thinks that about you. It's just..." I look for a way to explain this to her, the way these people in her life... (these men) ...tend to decide things for her without her consent or knowledge. It feels condescending, even to me. I drop my hand and step back, already missing her warmth. "Scully...I came her to ask you to let me in." "In where?" I reach out and touch her chest, directly between her breasts, over her heart. "Here." "Oh, Mulder," she says, and the late-night-TV-watcher in me hears Mary Tyler Moore wailing to Dick Van Dyke. "Oh, Rob!" "You are already in here," she says, tapping my hand with hers. "Don't you know? Don't you know that's why I'm up here? To get you out of my heart?" Shocked, I retreat. I had never considered this. Never, in a million years. Either part of it. First, that I would be in her heart. That in and of itself is amazing. More painful is the realization that she doesn't want me there. I reach for my coat. "I'm sorry," I say softly. "I..." Words fail me. My stomach twists, turns, dives and swoops. I feel an amazing lethargy of depression wash over me. "I'll go." "Mulder...wait." I stop, hoping. "Every time...every time I come up here it's for the same reason. Something happens, a case, a shootout, a confrontation -- something. Something that reminds me how much I need you. How much I depend on you. How much strength I draw from you. And every time I come here to purge myself of the feelings that threaten to overwhelm me, feelings that if...if I admitted them to myself, to you, to anyone, feelings that would break us up. "But I can't. I can't get rid of them. Not then, not now. Not ever." I turn back to her. "But you don't want those feelings." "I don't want what those feelings will do to us, Mulder." I step towards her. "What will denying these feelings do to us?" I demand. "Allow me to survive," she whispers. I turn to leave. It's too much. It hurts too much. Her hand on my arms freezes me in my tracks. Slowly, she turns me to face her. "But I discovered something, Mulder. Hating something like this...hating something like this is like hating a person for their color of their eyes; it changes nothing. The fact still exists that I have these feelings, that we have these feelings." She raises on her toes, her mouth lush and inviting. She kisses me. Time stops. <><> That first kiss is like a drug. An amazingly powerful drug that I am instantly addicted to. In a heartbeat I know the rush that a crackhead feels the moment they take that first toke. Every neuron in my brain fires seemingly at once and I'm awash in a sea of sensations: The feel of her lips against mine, tentative and questioning at first and a moment later firm and demanding as she senses my desire. The feel of her fingers on my arm, the nails lightly scratching my skin. The taste of her breath in my mouth. The softness of her hair in my hands, on my fingers. It takes us two seconds, forever, to realize where this is going. We stagger into the bedroom, stripping each other. We fall to the bed. Neither one of us has said a word. We don't need to. We've said so many words, she and I, and under each one, in between every single one, left both unsaid and spoken are those three little words that mean so little and so much. I. Love. You. So there is no needs for words now. Or foreplay. The last five years have been foreplay enough for anyone. Part of me is amazed that we've waited this long, yet another is almost ashamed that we've finally succumbed. I get over that. Finally, I think, as she nestles her body against mine, soft where I'm hard, moist where I'm dry, taking where I'm giving. Finally I know what it is like to lose myself with her. Not inside her, not yet. With her. As one. I'm no virgin. Neither is she. And as sure as I know my own name, I know that neither of us has ever experienced this. It's beyond sex, beyond making love. Beyond two people. Scully may not have put it into words inside her own mind, but I must believe that she knows those vital parts of my own fractured soul she keeps within herself. Coming to her like this, I find those missing parts of myself within her eyes. Scully moves this way and that, aligning and adjusting, and then captures me. With a sigh of release she envelops me. Sitting up, her full weight on me, she opens her eyes and smiles down at me. She's so proud, this woman. I have imagined this moment countless times. All of those imagined memories combined cannot touch the reality. I instruct myself not to compare her to other woman I have been with in this way, and in one certain sense that is not a problem. I have never been with a woman the way I am with Scully at this moment. But in another way, a totally male way, my body cannot help but remember previous sensations and emotions. Other times, I felt like I was borrowing something, an ethereal, sexual cup of sugar. Taking something that was not entirely offered, giving little if anything in return. Not so, now. I am not taking, I am giving. And so is she. I touch her secret places, places I have wondered about. They are more soft and more sweet than I could have ever imagined. Is there anything that could be as silky as the skin on the inside of her right thigh? She sighs, and the music of it would make the songbirds in the trees hang their heads in shame. Her nails are on my abdomen, carving fire trails on my skin, moving higher. Her touch is possessive, greedy and exciting. I had imagined that the first time would be hungry and fierce, that the force of denial finally satisfied would consume us totally, thrusting us headlong towards the inevitable. Instead it is beyond slow; it is languid. She closes her eyes and leans her head back and I imagine the tickle she feels high on her back from the tendrils of her hair washing gently against her skin. Her throat is bared to me and my hand reaches for it, my thumb pressing in the notch. It is my own possession of her, this touch, and her head tips forward again, eyes opening slowly, a curtain going up on a play whose lines have been written since the moment she stepped into my office. Faster now. She bites her lip, convulsing around me. It is exquisite. It is more than I imagined, more than I could hope for, more than I could expect. More than any man has a right to expect. For a moment, I am sad. Sad that I will never find the words to tell her. That I will never find the words to tell her why I am so pathetically grateful to be the one she has chosen to share herself with in this way. That I will know for the rest of my life and whatever is beyond what it is like to feel her body against mine in this most ancient of dances, that I will memorize the sound of her breathing as she nears release, that nothing will ever replace in my mind the image of her passion-streaked face as she whispers, "I love you." No words could ever sound as sweet. Or, that I will never have the ability to convey my honor at her trust. Scully has let me inside. Inside her body yes, and inside her heart, moreso. But inside her soul, inside her defenses, inside the very core of who she is and who she shows the world every day. Her carefully constructed picture of Special Agent Dana Scully crumbles around us on the bed as she lets me inside further than anyone has ever been. I know this. It blesses me like a benediction. I lift myself and kiss one softly freckled breast. "Oh, oh my," she whispers, fingers tangling in my hair, urging me closer. Inside this woman's life, inside her heart, inside her soul, I find salvation and redemption. In her gaze I see her love of me, and I hope she sees the same in mine. "I love you," I whisper. And it is true. I do. <><> FINI Feeeeeeeeeeeeeedback me, Seymour! NOTE: The title is a legal term that roughly translates to "From the effect to the cause," a method of reasoning that starts with observations and attempts to discover general principals from them. --- XFBandit (Edward "Red" Burke) XFBandit@aol.com What a cat do on it's day off?