*
SEVERAL TRUTHS ARE REVEALED TO SCULLY AS SHE IS ON HER KNEES.
Several truths are revealed to Scully as she is on her knees.
Once, she was on her knees with a gun pressed to the back of her head, and all she could think was that the next day's paper would read: Two federal agents found dead, shot execution style. To her left, Mulder was still talking, always talking, and the nose of the gun felt cold, felt like just another implant, another fury on her body.
Mulder was arguing, furiously, the crazy motherfucker, spittle collecting on the side of his lips. She caught his profile in the corner of her eye and amused herself with the thought that he looked like a rabid dog at the moment, all movement and no beauty. He really was a crazy motherfucker sometimes and she didn't want to die execution style ("you don't"), she wanted to die in fluffy slippers surrounded by too many house plants and not enough food because no one visits, not since Mulder died execution style . . . fuck.
Fuck him.
Fuck her, on her knees, her hand behind her back and her breath caught in her throat. There were times when she was careless, when she let herself be careless. She gathered bruises in sensible places. Times like these, after he has almost died, or after she has, she worked through the paperwork, slowly, methodically, and then put her answering machine on before going to a bar and downing a half bottle of tequila and finding someone twice her size (who she could still take out in a second) to good and thoroughly fuck.
She used to be more careless, early on, before she became too tired to be anything but careful. She used to let men she barely knew bind her hands. Sometimes, in the old days, she would be blindfolded, before she started being blindfolded in real life too often for it to be about anything but death.
Occasionally, when things get really bad ("She killed herself, Mulder") she waits for the fallout to settle and finds herself on the way to that bar before she finally turns back, realising she's With Mulder Now. Whereas she can separate the two things, he rolls love and hate and lust and whatever the hell you call fingerprints pressed into skin into one big, magnificent package, given in pieces that are too big to swallow but too small to chew.
In the Really Bad Times, she'll be on her knees, taking him in her mouth, and he'll be holding her hair in a way that would have made her panic, in the old days, except that it's Mulder. And it's love. Or something close enough to it to make her want to do this, even though she's not sure she'll survive it all.
*
SCULLY GOES TO CHURCH
The second time she met Padgett was at a church (she's not sure when she became the type of person to refer to men by their last names). She met Padgett at a church and he was all limbs and intent, with his serious metal eyes and seriously metallic coffee. Later, she had sat, side by side with him on his bed. If Mulder was three seconds later, she probably would have kissed him. Probably would have fucked him. This man, who was all limbs and intent, nothing and everything like Mulder.
She sees shades of Mulder in everyone she meets now. Mulder-coloured glasses. She saw pieces of Mulder in Pfaster, she recognised compulsion when she saw it. She saw dangerous pieces of Mulder in Pfaster, and then Mulder in pieces because of Pfaster.
Mulder tried to absolve her, the egomaniac who thinks he can do the work that even God doesn't want.
She goes to church, hoping to find it was all about God and the Devil and nothing about Scully and Pfaster. She has an unspoken fear that the only thing working in Scully that day was Scully.
These windows with carefully coloured glass do not help. The light still refracts through, just disguised in beautifully variant shades.
*
SCULLY'S CLEANER QUITS
When she thinks she has her life back together, when she thinks that she's waited the requisite healing time, Scully goes back home. She listens to her answering machine tell her that her cleaning lady has quit. She hadn't thought about the mess, hadn't thought about the cleaner. Couldn't, maybe.
("No one can work under these conditions; I have glass in my hands, Miss Scully. There was so much blood, and I am sorry that this happened to you but I never said anything about cleaning up blood.")
She thinks that maybe people break down over little things. Not like your sister dying, or losing your child, or being thrown against a mirror, but having your cleaner quit because she had to clean up blood. She thinks maybe there are some things that are too much.
*
THE HEARING
Her father used to tell her that no one falls far enough that they should be absolved of that fall.
She's been here before, standing in front of these people. In all the times when she had the law on her side, when she had truth on her side, they had never looked at her with the compassion they do now. Heads tipped sympathetically to one side, words like ‘cleared', ‘absolved', ‘good faith' ringing through like death bells.
For a moment Scully almost wants a reprimand. She wants an absolute to be drawn for her, in neat writing with a red pen.
But then people move around her; Skinner shakes her hand. Mulder remains sitting, two rows behind them.
She is selfish; she knows they can't afford absolutes.
*
SHE NOTICES THAT MULDER TOUCHES HER MORE, NOW.
She notices that Mulder touches her more now. After Pfaster. She noticed when Mulder stood behind her in the office one day (any day) and breathed on the back of her neck. She noticed as he pushed her slowly to the wall, as he ran his hands up her legs, as he said "I'm sorry that we're the same now, Scully." She notices she prefers the times like this: back to him, skin rubbing raw against wall or fridge or garage door or skin itself.
She notices, as Mulder touches her, oh god, right there, that we break the ones we love, just so we can be there to help put them back together, again.
*
WHEN SCULLY IS GIVEN HER GUN BACK
When Scully is given her gun back, she goes to target practice.
because she hasn't been for weeks
because she doesn't want the last thing she hit to be living and breathing
because she is worried that she might not be able to pull the trigger
And then she's five for five with the target, dead center in the chest. She unclips the paper, laughing, almost hysterically laughing, in unfamiliar staccato laughter which sounds too close to gunfire. She's five for five with a target, two for two with Pfaster but never breaking even on anything, never even coming close.
She's a good shot, Scully, she's always been good at everything she's done.
And it's too much, and never, never enough.
** end **