Title: Used (1/1) Author: RocketMan >lebontrager@iname.com< Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe is intended. SPOILER:::Sein Und Zeit--missing scene =-=-=-= Used =-=-=-= --It was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion. The companion of his vigil had at a given moment made out, and she had then offered him the chance to baffle his doom. One's doom, however, was never baffled, and on the day she told him his own had come down, she had seen him but stupidly stare at the escape she offered him.-- --lines from "The Beast in the Jungle" Henry James-- =-=-=-= He was shivering in the bed, one arm tightly clenched around her waist, keeping her clutched to him out of desperation. Her head was lolled against the wall and she had fallen asleep sitting up, trying to watch over him as he fretted and sorrowed. She was asleep already, but he was not; he laid there and thought about the tape lining his mother's door and the empty bottle of sleeping pils and the oven door hanging open. Overkill. That was the first thing that had popped into his head when he saw her home, and it shamed him to know that was his thought, but he couldn't much take it back. He had asked Scully to do the autopsy and he realized now that was unfair of him. Unfair because she knew she wouldn't find anything different and knew he would resent her slightly for it. And he did. He resented her for it. He was a selfish egotist and he knew it. He knew it finally. With those soft words of hers, spoken in the darkness of his apartment, even as he hummed silently in his head to keep the words from entering him. Just to make him stop. His mother committed suicide to *make*him*stop* to simply put an end to a long life of suffering under such a tremendous load of guilt and suspicion. She had killed herself to put an end to it, knowing that he would otherwise scour the ends of the earth for any little girl abducted from her home. And Scully believed that, knew that and saw it, whereas he did not see it at all. That was the horrible crux of the matter. Scully had known completely that he was a selfish bastard, had known that he was no good and would bring her down with him, would waste her life being with him, and yet she had stayed and had allowed him his illusions. "Mulder?" Her voice was a whisper and he tightened his hand, letting her know he was awake. She turned and blushed slightly at the closeness of them, both in his bed but neither sleeping. She was just there, listening to his breath as he tried to forgive himself. "Mulder, are you going to be okay?" "Maybe," he sighed and pulled his hand away from the touch of her. No rights, he had no rights to her. Or perhaps he had all the rights to her, and that was why he was such a selfish, immature-- "Mulder, stop." He looked at her with a frown, trying to comprehend the clairvoyance of her. She was shaking her head and pulling his hand back to hers, linking their fingers so that his palm was warm against her belly. He liked the touch of her. She shifted a bit so that his eyes were level with her thigh, her elbow resting on the top of his head as she circled the tip of his ear with her free hand. She seemed to not recognize them in this place, and he knew the feeling. This was very different; he didn't know what this was really. "I know you love your mother, Mulder. . ." "Though you don't think she deserves it. . ." he addded, sighing against her touch. "I can't help thinking it. But I don't know anyone who deserves your kind of devotion, except maybe your sister. Perhaps not even her." Mulder shook his head and lifted up from her touch, frowning at her. "You more than deserve it, Scully." "No, Mulder, I don't. I've been very selfish. . .I take this for granted all the time." He shook his head, refusing to believe her, but still not sure what she was getting at. He'd already told her how much he owed her, that she owed him nothing, but she didn't seem to understand that. "Scully--" "I don't have the right to tell you to stop. This has been your life. This is your life--" Mulder laid his head back down on the pillow as she fell off into silence, her words resounding in his mind. There was something he ought to say to her, something so very important about it all, but it was not coming through to him. She was offering him something. "I feel like I'm waiting for some great. . .sign. Some clue as to what I should be doing, where I should go to find her. But I feel lost." Was that enough for her, did that explain it right? She needed to know how much this was a part of him, how much his life had been defined by this one event. To take it away, to simply stop-- "I still wish. . .I still wish I could give that to you, to help you find her. But I drew my line, Mudler. I drew it that day I woke up and didn't know I'd been on a bridge, ready to die in a horrible fire. And I can't. . . can't cross that line, professionally." Mulder tensed, feeling her breath ragged as she explained to him. "What do you mean?" "I don't understand what you're trying to tell me anymore, Mulder. These kidnapped children are not linked to you sister, your mother's death. . . is not a plot hatched by Them. . .and I can't folow you there. Not on so little facts, not on this job." He breathed in again, knowing he had to or else collapse, and closed his eyes, feeling abandoned but yet, comforted. Her hand was still creating circles of quiet on his skin, seeping into his nerves and traveling throughout his body until he was relaxed again. She had not abandoned him. But she had said she couldn't follow him, professionally. Was there a difference between her job and him? He didn't see that--Scully was his job, was an integral part of his life. She was also more. "Mulder, I think your mother's right--you have to stop." He opened his eyes and looked up at her, eyebrows quirking into a quick frown that disappeared as lightly as it had come. She was chewing on her lower lip and watching him, her chin lowered, her eyes expressive. But not expressing enough. What was it she was driving at? He knew there was something else behind her words, knew she would never say it outright. What was he supposed to be getting here? He could never stop looking for his sister. It was his life--and she knew that. "I can't, Scully. She's my sister." She only gazed at him, as if knowing that he could never stop anyway, not even for her. But she did not turn from him and she did not stop her soft caress--she did not even close her eyes. There was something indefinable in them, something impenetrable and absolute. She was giving in to something and nodding at him. "Then I'll be here, Mulder." He nodded back and his eyes were confused at her behavior, her words. He lifted up and kissed her wrist, so overwhelmed with it that he almost let himself taste her. But this was Scully; he could not ask that from her-- not after everything he had taken from her. Her hand turned and her palm touched his cheek. "I'm here," she said again and he lowered his head to the pillow, overcome with exhaustion. "G'night, Scully." =-=-=-= --The escape would have been to love her; then, then he would have lived. She had lived--who could say now with what passion?--since she had loved him for himself; whereas, he had never thought of her (ah, how it hugely glared at him!) but in the chill of his egotism and the light of her use.-- --lines from "The Beast in the Jungle" Henry James-- =-=-=-= Scully watched him sleep even far after he had fallen into the deepness of sorrowed dreams. He moved very smally, as if afraid to knock her out of the bed and she sadly appreciated it. His hand was linked through hers still, the other arm curled under his pillow. She traced the designs of former dreams across his cheeks and lips and forehead, sighing to herself and within herself, not remembering, not letting herself forget. He smiled gently with her touch, or frowned uneasily, and she wanted to cry for him. For him or for herself. Perhaps she was grieved for herself, because she knew she could not possibly love Mulder the way he needed it, and she could not change him and keep him the Mulder she loved. If he had agreed to stop, to settle with her, it would not have been him and he would have resented her and she would have longed for the old Mulder. He was doomed to be a Seeker, a searcher, a waiter. Waiting for what, she did not really know, but waiting for some awful suffering fate that would shake him to the very roots of his faith and change his entire beliefs. And until that clue, that sister came, he would be waiting. She would wait with him. She prayed he never came to understand just all he had given up. The suffering, the horrible foundation-shaking event was not that his sister was taken, or that she would come back, or that she was dead, but that he had missed out on life. He had not lived at all. He had waited and not gotten involved and not felt anything. He was filled with passion. And he was not at all. He chased after little girls that were most likely dead; he questioned God and man for the ills in society; he felt things terribly. He did not live though. He had no family, no love, no God, no anchor to keep him from drifting. Except her, perhaps. And he did not even really realize just how much he was missing out on by staying on the other side of her line. Scully shifted on the bed, then but her lip and settled down, laying beside him to watch his eyes as he dreamed. Just in case he had a nightmare, or couldn't bear to be alone, she would stay here. She reached out a hand and brushed her fingertips along his lips. If he would only let her love him, if he would only admit that this was love, or could be, it would be so. . .so much more. "So much more," she whispered and blinked back the tears that were framing her eyelashes. His mouth moved beneath her fingers, almost a kiss, and she leaned forward to press her lips to his. "I'll be here." =-=-=-= end adios RM