Questions II
By RocketMan

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Disclaimer: M&S are prop. of CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe intended.
"Mysterious Ways" is a Kim Hill song.
Notes: This is turning into a series. It will be a short little glimpse
of Mulder and Scully after one of their more harrowing investigations
(which ones aren't harrowing!) and a sort of aftermath of the whole
thing.
You get to try and figure out which ep!! No, kidding. This is
Post-Firewalker.

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"Questions fall like showers of endless rain into oceans of the
unexplained. Someday, it all will be made known."
--"Mysterious Ways" Kim Hill
=======================

The rooms were white.

The beds had white blankets and white pillows and the odd attempt to
personalize things hadn't changed the dazzling whiteness.

It made her nervous; he saw this clearly on her face and in the way she
sat stiffly beside him, neither noticing him nor ignoring him.

At night, she worried that she would wake up and be leached of color
from being in the room for so long.

Third week of isolation, of decontamination. These were the words spoken
aloud to her and him and these were the words she had come to revile,
like the taste of steamed broccoli on her tongue, gagging.

He slipped a hand around her and pushed her forward, wishing she
wouldn't act so weird. Her irrational behavior was probably the reason
why they had been there so long. He wanted to tell her to stop sitting
and staring, like a catatonic vegetable, but he figured he'd be met with
a blank stare.

Instead, he sought to the refuge of memories, slipping away from the
metal hands that worked his muscles, that kept him physically fit in
their bubble. These precious twenty minutes of nothingness allowed him
to forget the white walls and the white eyes and her white face.

He remembered:

slipping on the sweat of the volcano as it trembled up steam, the way it
had seeped right into his marrow and made him slow, even as his heart
beat extra fast to make him run to her:

the utter darkness of the lab, the frozen silence that made him all too
wary of the dark, having to slow down so that he would not be caught off
guard, yet wanting, needing to run in after her:

yelling her name, blanking out in the sheer desperation pulling down in
him, moving forward only because some inner voice told him to:

her voice:

clear as angel whispers into a mortal's ear:

weary as a pilgrim in foreign land, thirsting not for water, but for
spiritual cleansing.

He could see her in his mind as the exercises went on monotonously. Her
panting, her chest rising, falling, heaving, head tilted back, lips open
and wide and red, one arm raised and locked, her body slumped as if in a
victorious kind of defeat.

He had gone to her, had unlcoked her from the cuffs, had wanted to touch
her so badly, wanted to make sure she was indeed "still here." She
simply regained her strength, maybe, hopefully, from his presence, and
went back to the job.

The metal hands released him and he went back into the bright white room
and there was Scully, looking just as lost and alone as before.

He took her hand.

Had she managed to escape the spores? What if she hadn't and her
despondency was the onset of the parasites attack?

He shivered.

It had been three weeks.

Surely.....

"Mulder....."

He glanced to her with a kind of half look that told her he was off on
tangents, floating freely into nothingness.

"Mulder, that parasite . . . it was strange."

"No kidding."

"It wasn't carbon-based."

"It was extra-terrestrial."

"No, just strange. I thought things went into certain places, but now
nothing does anymore. And this white . . . whiteness all around . . .
it's making a lot of things not fit into place."

He frowned and led her to one of the long, couch-like beds and sat down
next to her, needing the touch of her to help him remain grounded.

"What's not fitting?"

"My missing time."

A hell of a lot more than nine minutes this time. 

"This is familiar."

He glanced sharply to her, mind busy recalling other testimonies in
other cities of other woman who claimed to be abductees.

"This white room is familair?"

"Yes. And not because of any of the other contamination procedures we've
been in--like those bugs that attacked after nightfall."--a shiver
here--"But because I remember it and I'm not supposed to be having these
memories. This wasn't supposed to happen to me."

He wanted, needed, to touch her again, but as before, looking was all he
could hold out to her.

This thing between them was close and hot and furious and it was fueled
by strength and some kind of connection that went beyond any paranormal
phenomenon he'd ever read about. It also didn't need more fuel.

She sighed, as if she needed more than his eyes that time.

"Are you saying that you remember a white room from the time you were
gone?"

He choked on the 'gone' and had a hard time forcing it out of his lips
and into her ears. She simply watched him before nodding one last time.

He could tell this was not the end.

"Are you okay with that?" he said softly.

She shook her head and he was surprised to see tears slipping down her
face.

His arms were around her and pulling her in and feeding their fire
before he even knew he was working his muscles.

"It's too white," she said into his shoulder.

He nodded as if he could ever hope to understand, and let her stay right
where she was, safe for the moment from the intensity of the white room.

Safe from the monsters out there.

She gasped in breath and clutched his white shift.

"Why me, Mulder? Why did it have to be me?" she whispered and it was the
harsh, pathetic cry of a child abandoned to the dark by someone she had
once loved.

They were questions he had no answers to, even though he wished he did.
Luck or chance or fate or The Powers That Be were not comforting things,
and neither was his own admission of guilt. She didn't want
explanations, she wanted it to be gone.

Gone.

He wanted her to promise she'd still be there.

Silent, death-like, she stayed wrapped in him, smelling the disinfectant
of his shift, the Vaseline smell of his hands, the base and animal
pheremones of his body.

It gave some comfort; it harbored some relief.

She fell asleep.

He looked up, then back down.

It was just too white to face.

Just too white.


end
adios
RM