Here's my other completed entry for The Day After Tomorrow Fic Challenge (http://www.livejournal.com/users/anniesj/253657.html#cutid1). This one, btw, was EXTREMELY fun to write. ;) TITLE: Snow Blindness AUTHOR: Annie Sewell-Jennings EMAIL: anniesj@comcast.net FANDOM: The X-Files PAIRING: Mulder/Scully RATING: R Snow Blindness ***** Across the frozen tundra of what was once the seat of great power, the only sign of life is a man who is sometimes Fox Mulder. A lonely man, bundled up in layers of tattered, ill-fitting coats and scarves, crossing the blistering white landscape on a pair of cross- country skis, shoulders hunched over from the weight of his bags. The wind is angry today, riled up from the storms and maybe just an especially ornery disposition, and it spits handfuls of snow at the man as he tries to make his way across the ice and snow. He's a tired man, that's for certain, small and weary, and underneath the heavy layers of cloth, his skin's so pale and thin that you can almost see right through it. When placed in comparison to the vast space of white, he doesn't look like he's got a shot in hell of surviving. He's hungry. He's weak. He's sick and he's cold and he should really just lay down and put himself out of his own misery. But that's just first glance, and if you take another look, you'll see the smoke on the horizon. Just faint, dark smudges on the blinding white canvas, but Mulder sees it and it gives him a sudden surge of energy. He digs his poles into the snow with renewed determination, really works at moving rather than just painfully trudging along, and as he gets closer, he can see the dim silhouette of the spire that was once the Washington Monument on the horizon. It's been three months since he's seen her. He can barely wait three more minutes. The smoke is coming from a gray (but once was white) dome that used to be the U.S. Capitol building, and is now the only place he has for home. There are five other occupants there, a grab-bag of survivors who were too smart (or too stupid, depending on how you looked at it, but it's best to try and remain optimistic) to die out when the world froze. Briefly, Mulder lowers his scarf and sharply inhales; he can smell rabbit and potatoes. He can't remember the last time he ate. It's probably better that way. He thinks he can smell her, too, that fresh linen and almond scent that always clung to her skin and still remains even now, even after everything. It's funny, but on the lonely nights spent out on the ice, after his horse died and after the old man froze to death, the memory of what she smelled like was enough to sustain him. Just her smell. That was all he dared think about. The rest might've killed him. But now, Mulder can see the old molding and grand detail on the dome as he approaches, and there's that same old feeling that settles in the pit of his stomach and tells him he's home, fucking home, whatever the hell home is. It's an angry feeling, the knowledge that this building has been here for over two centuries and has been forgotten, abandoned, laid to waste and used for scavengers. Once upon a time, this building was a place where change happened. A place of power and justice, freedom and humanity. Now, it's just a tomb, a memorial, another body left to rot. There's a dark shape emerging from the tower. Impossible to tell who or what underneath all the layers of black wool and tattered ski jacket, but it's another survivor, and he finds that reassuring. It means that they're not all dead. It means that he's not alone, not completely, not yet. He's coming home to something, even if it's not ... But it is. Dana Scully is standing out in the snow, her black hood thrown away from her face, her copper hair tossed to the wind. She's small and pale and absolutely beautiful, and when Mulder sees her, he almost gives up right then and there. It's enough that he's seen her again. Enough to make him feel at peace. The ski poles fall from his hands, and he almost sinks to his knees as Scully moves to his side. Relief breaks across her face in the form of a smile, and even though her hands are covered in thick dark gloves, Mulder can feel the heat of her skin as it bleeds onto his cold flesh. She embraces him, slender and hot, and when she kisses him, everything is worth it. Smiling, Mulder pulls away from her, covers her winter-flushed cheek with his gloved hand. "Scully," he says happily, and she just smiles and kisses him again. ***** Scully makes him eat first, and then they make love by the fire. They do it slow and careful on top of the blankets while she gently strips him of all his wet clothes and runs her pale-raw hands over new scars and frostbitten patches of skin. When she pulls off his socks and sees the missing toe on his right foot, Scully looks so sad that Mulder wishes she hadn't seen it at all. But she's still the enigmatic Dr. Scully, even after all of this, and she doesn't comment. Just kisses the remaining toes and whispers I-love-you into his ankle. He burns for her, his furnace, his volcano, his fiery woman who kept him warm during impossible nights, and as soon as Mulder can get to her, his hands are all over her. Learning every curve all over again, like it's the first time, because every time is the last time for them and that makes him sad sometimes, but not today. No, today he has her, has her sitting in his lap while he rolls her breast in his hand and fucks her until Scully whispers his name in a way she never whispered it before. Desperation, it turns out, is the world's greatest aphrodisiac. "What happened to Mitch?" she asks softly, her cheek against his chest, her skin hot and feverish still from afterglow. Mulder swallows, closes his eyes. "Died. There was an avalanche. It's how I lost the toe." Scully drops her chin a little, acknowledgment without surprise. People nowadays have a funny way of grieving. "Maybe that's for the best," she says. "His wife is dead." Startled, Mulder looks down at her. "Kelly's gone?" "She died in childbirth." "And the baby?" Scully's eyes are hushed and tired. "Stillborn." A tired, aching sensation simmers and burns deep in the pit of Mulder's stomach like acid reflux but it sears right through to the soul and destroys everything in his path. He can see Kelly in his mind's eye, cornsilk hair and big round belly, and the way she'd once found the Library of Congress when she was still leaving the dome and had cried over the state of all those beautiful books and documents. He remembers the way that Mitch had placed his hand over his wife's swollen stomach and smiled at her, the hushed discussions of baby's names, and those tiny little knit booties ... "Ah, Christ," Mulder mutters, and Scully wraps her arms around him tighter, lays a kiss in the hollow of his throat. "I know." ***** There is supposed to be a point to survival. It's not supposed to be just an excuse, just something you do because you're too cowardly to roll over and accept inevitability. There's supposed to be hope in living. It's part of the burden and all of the beauty of being human. There's supposed to be something more than just instinct at work. There's supposed to be a point. While Mulder was out on the ice, there were times when he forgot what he was living for. An extreme form of snow blindness, when the ice ripped the eyes right out of his sockets and all he could see was nothing and all he could smell was winter. Winter fucking everywhere, and it hasn't thawed in over three years. "I didn't find anybody," he confesses to Scully in the middle of the night. She's standing at the stove making weak tea, her hair tied loosely at the nape of her neck, quiet blue eyes the exact color of the pilot light. "I figured as much," Scully says. "You would have brought them back with you." "There weren't even bones. It's as though the entire human race has been wiped out of existence, even out of memory. Like we never even lived in the first place." That's something that's been troubling Mulder, an eerie pinprick sensation stinging at the back of his neck. Only the tallest buildings now peek out of the frozen ice and tundra, vague intimations at society and civilization, and the human race isn't even a memory anymore. It's just a ghost that you can sometimes hear when the wind whips just right across the snow, and even then, it's such a pitiful scream that you think that maybe humanity isn't worthy of survival, after all. Scully sighs, and Mulder looks up to see her brushing errant strands of red out of her hair. It occurs to him that she's gotten older since he last saw her, that there are lines around her eyes that were not there three months ago, and there's the finest hint of weary silver marring her bright cinnamon hair. When she pours the tea into two mismatched ceramic mugs (Smithsonian mugs, good God, all those museums), the steam rises up and halos her face, makes her look like an angel too exhausted to ever fly. Gently, she passes him a cup and settles herself back down in their blankets, lets him gather her up in his arm while she sips warily at her hot tea. "I know what you mean," Scully says finally. "Towards the end of her pregnancy, Kelly just ... she just faded. All the wind went out of her. You were overdue, and the others had started talking, and I know it sounds crazy, but it was like ... it was like she knew." She pauses, takes a long sip of tea. "The baby had been dead for a couple of days before she gave birth. I just don't think she had anything else to live for." Mulder turns his head to look at her, and suddenly remembers her the way she used to be, long before the storm and the snow, even before the aliens and the pipe dreams. The first time he saw her, back in the basement, her tacky suit, her firm little handshake. Thinking about her this way is like looking at a ghost -- an apparition that might not ever have been there in the first place. He thinks of everything that lies beneath them, all their lives dead and buried. He thinks about the mysteries he'll never solve, the world that's been left behind, and wonders when he stopped being Fox Mulder and she ceased to be Dana Scully. They wear their names like old habits now, just afterthoughts, but they're not who they used to be. Mulder hasn't thought about his sister in ages. So what's the point? Why do they fight at all? Why bother with the excavations, the scavenging for food, the lovemaking or the kissing or the push-and-pull of surviving if you've got nothing to live for? Except that sometimes, he's still Fox Mulder. He's still the arrogant asshole who grew up in New England and lost his kid sister when he was twelve years old, and he's still the persistent motherfucker who annoyed the shit out of all his superiors, shouting at the wind and howling at the moon, dreaming the impossible bullshit dream. He's still that guy when he's with her. Slowly, Mulder lifts his thumb, touches the corner of her mouth, gives her a smile. "You know, Scully, I think I saw Bigfoot while I was out there." Her sharp bark of laughter is brilliant and bright, and Mulder briefly tastes summer in the middle of the snow. ***** AUTHOR'S NOTES: First of all, I absolutely *loved* writing this story. It was the first X-Files fic I've written in about four years, and I'd forgotten how much I loved playing with My First OTP. *g* Thank again, Miss Divine circe_tigana, for taking a look at this puppy. And again, THANKS FOR THE CRACK OMG YAY!