Coffee II
Colors
By RocketMan

=====
Summary: This is not something I can really rate, but maybe R, since she
remembers but nothing explicit. Anyway, I know I said I wasn't going to
have a sequel, but I woke up this morning and it was at my fingers so I
had to.
=====

I am still in bed, half asleep and reading "The Portrait of the Artist
As A Young Man" when the phone jangles too loudly for my headache and I
groan as the phone suddenly seems miles away and James Joyce disappears
with it.

I yank it up but the machine is getting it already and as I say hello
loudly over it I realize the person has hung up. I let the reciever
clunk back down.

I really don't want to think about anything, but now that I've been
pulled from Joyce's book, I can feel everything coming back and I start
shaking softly. Maybe that was Mulder on the phone and he wants to see
me, but I don't think that's such a good idea since what happened.

It would be easier to talk to him on the phone than face to face where I
can see the lips that haunt my dreams and the eyes that stared off into
nothing as he came inside of me.

I shiver, shake, quake, tremble. I have learned all the new words for
being so frightened that your muscles are beyond control and your arms
and legs don't respond even when you press your hands against your
thighs. It reminds me of a song the choir performed at Mass one morning
when I was in third grade that made me cry so hard I had to leave. It
went: 'Sometimes, it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Where you
there when they crucified my Lord?'

At the three trembles I could feel it shaking right into me and then the
part about being killed made the tears erupt into fountains and it was
the last time I cried in a long, long time. It felt to me that it was
all my fault.

It is the same now, except my body trembles and my heart cries but I
cannot or maybe will not, because the tears stay up in my eyes and
harden in my head and make me feel miserable.

I wish I could, but I won't. Not over Mulder, over something I wanted in
the first place.

I have been on sick leave for all of this week and I will go back in a
few days with the tears still clamped in me and the knowledge and
experience of three more books. I read "Breakfast At Tiffanys" when I
got home, easily slipping into the familiar story and forgetting my own.
And then a short story my mother's cousin had written about living on a
farm and really it was boring, but at that point I didn't care so much.
Now "Portrait" with its stream of consciousness that confuses at first
and then soothes into the willingness of childhood, even as the little
boy grows up.

Now though, the book is boring me and I can't make it connect to
anything and so I think more and more of Mulder and his childishness.

His eyes as they stared off and then his eyes as they begged for
forgiveness and then what I imagine his eyes will be when I come in for
work again.

I fall back onto the pillow, my mind trying to block out the feel of his
warm body pressing or his hands traveling and somehow, I feel sleep
approach.

<--I just want to talk to you Scully. Just talk. Okay?
--Okay. What?
--I just want to talk.
--What are you doing Mulder? That's not talking.
--It is in a way. (softly) Come here.
--No . .o . . o. This- this isn't what-
--Just let me talk to you.
--(firmly) No, Mulder.
--Talk to me.
--Our coffee will get lukewarm . . .
--Scully . . .

and then grabbing and on the couch and his eyes looking right into me
once and a whisper

--I'm sorry . . .

and then nothing but eternal pain that would strike into my soul as he
struck into my body . . . a tiny line of bites down the right jawline
that left a streak of blood . . . a chin knocking hard into my cheek and
stars exploding . . . more red and red and red was close to hate and not
love . . .>

"Scully?"

I open my eyes from more memories, more nightmares, and see his eyes
staring right into me as if I am the first and last woman Mulder has
ever seen.

I shiver again, my body's rebellion, and touch his hand softly. He has
to make it better, to make the bad stuff go away, because I can't do it
alone.

"Scully, I called and there was no answer." he says softly.

<Scully, talk to me.>

I clench my teeth together and squeeze my eyes shut and sit up, letting
him unbend from his awkward position. He doesn't touch me anymore.

I need him too. He has to get rid of the memories of bad touching and
that can only be done if I have new memories.

"I answered. The machine caught it before I could."

I can feel him nodding and then he laughs.

"Why are your eyes closed?"

I open them and smile. "Forgot I had shut them."

He looks confused but happy I am smiling. "Your eye looks a lot better.
Not puffy anymore and only has a little yellow tinge."

I reach up carefully to touch it and it doesn't hurt now, only throbs
and wakes me up in the night sometimes. "It feels better. It feels
yellow."

"Can something feel yellow?"

"Sure. I feel orange. And the room feels yellow, healing."

"What does orange feeling mean?"

"In the middle. Good and bad sometimes."

Yellow and red make orange.

"How do I feel?"

"I don't know . . . sometimes purple."

He tilts his head and shakes it back and forth like he cannot believe
the kind of conversation we are having.

<Talk to me Scully.>

"What's purple?"

I shake my head. I really don't want to think about it because it makes
me ache and feel red and red isn't love.

"Your eyes are brown coffee and that reminds me of strength, feeling
strong and in control."

"Your eyes are blue and to me that's strong and in control." he answers,
letting the purple slide by quickly:  but it's like looking over a
stained carpet; you'll always see it.

"Blue is love." I answer. Red is not love and not really hate but more
like betrayal and I guess that has to do with the scarlet letter and
everything it implies. Red is unfaithfulness and not love. Mulder was
red and blue off and on that night he followed Eddie Van Blundht's
advice.

Making him purple.

"Blue is love? Yeah, I can see that too. Love is strong though, but not
in control."

"Brown, like coffee brown eyes, is solid and familiar and comfortable
and the earth and things that give people life."

Mulder stares at me and then shakingly traces the line of angry red
scabs across my jaw: then touches my bandaged shoulder and it twinges
because of the purple bruises there.

Then he shuts my eyes and rubs his fingertip along my lids.

"Do you feel blue with me and your eyes closed like this?"

Truth or consequences?

"No."

I am shaking, and trembling, trembling, trembling. He was there when I
was crucified.

"Do you still feel orange?"

"No."

"What do you feel?"

"Purple." Confused, loved, hated, hating, loving, frightened, joyful . . .

I feel his body shift slightly and it seems as if he suddenly understands
what I mean.

"So what is red?"

Yes, he definitely understands.

I open my eyes. I have to see him when I say this:  I have to know if he
can heal me, take me down off his cross.

"Have you read the 'Scarlet Letter'?"

"Hawthorne? Yeah."

"That's red."

I watch his mind click back to that book and the pride of Hester even
when she was scorned for not telling who it was that she'd committed
adultery with, and the shame and guilt of Reverend Dimmesdale for not
admitting to what he had done and all the love mixed in with it.

Shame and pride and love and faithfulness all rolled into one book about
a long ago time and long ago people.

"Is it purple too?" he asks me.

"Somewhat. Red is not love and it is not hate either."

"I understand. Is it better if I tell you that I don't want this to be
purple ever again?"

"No."

He smiles suddenly and laughs. "This is the most honest and open you've
been with me ever, I think."

I shrink away from his laughing because to me, it is still purple and
very close to being red again.

"Well, am I still coffee brown?"

I smile a little. I realize we have to laugh and forget for a few
minutes so that it can heal. "Yes, still coffee brown."

"Then that's all I can ask right now."

"What am I to you?" I say, asking before I realize I could be getting
myself into serious trouble.

His face pulls away a bit and the tongue that my dreams remember so well
snakes across his bottom lip.

I am unconsciously mirroring him.

"Well, to me, you're blue. Brilliant and bright blue."


end 
adios
RM