From: Dreamshpr@aol.com
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 15:54:44 EDT
Subject: NEW: Spark (1 of 1) by Dreamshaper
Source: xff


TITLE: Spark
AUTHOR: Dreamshaper
FEEDBACK: Gratefully recieved by dreamshpr@aol.com
ARCHIVING: Go right ahead. Just ask first if we haven't talked, blahblah you 
know how it goes. ;)
RATING: PG13
CATEGORY: MSR, superfluff
SPOILERS: Sprinkled liberally ;) Triangle, this and that
SUMMARY: Brands, dreams, nightmares, and pedestals ;) 
DISCLAIMER: They'll be mine again after October 31st, but till then I'll let 
CC work with 'em. 
NOTES: Just another random moment--one I needed after Tikkun Olam. Sweet, 
simple, and enjoyable. For me, anyway. I can only hope you like it ;) Go 
read, and tell me when you're done!
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When he slipped his hand around to the back of her neck, the tiny scar there 
burned his skin like a brand. He shuddered lightly, cold chilling his spine 
though the room was warm, and he had finally dried out long ago. But the 
distance in her eyes, the way she neither moved into nor moved away from the 
touch of his hand...apprehension had its own familiar paths in his body. He 
wanted to take his hand away. He wanted to move away from her, to slink away 
into his own dark home and leave her to the rain outside the window. But 
loyalty, and love, were stronger than reluctance and kept him close to her.

After all, the roads were a mess, a storm raged beyond the glass, and he 
could practically feel the flight building in her. There was an uneasy 
suspicion in his heart that if he left her side, if he released her from the 
very light touch of his hand, she would wander out into the night. And if she 
did, he would never see her again, would never find her.

So he suffered the scorching brand of her skin, and he waited for her to 
speak.

"You know, Mulder, I don't dream too often." Her voice was matter-of-fact 
when she did break the thunder and light filled silence between them, and it 
startled him. He shook his head, not knowing where that had come from or 
where it was going.

"Isn't it my job to throw random comments into the mix?" He murmured the 
words absently, with a small twist of his lips, not taking well to the feel 
of the air between them. But she went on as if she hadn't heard him, which, 
he acknowledged to himself, she might not have. Her mind was miles away.

"I used to, when I was younger. Kept a...a dream diary, a journal, when I was 
in college. They were all...normal. Typical, if vivid. But sometime--a couple 
years ago, I started dreaming less." 

He waited, expecting more. But the silence fell again and the eyes that had 
so briefly been focused on his in the glass were looking back out into the 
storm. So he sighed and followed the track of her eyes.

There was nothing illuminating, nothing mesmerizing beyond the rain lashed 
window. Only tossing tree tops that were vague black outlines against a 
blacker sky. So he imagined that her eyes were seeing something his couldn't, 
and wondered what it could be.

Her body tensed more under his hand, and he pressed his palm firmly to the 
small, burning scar, passing his fingers up to rub into her hairline. Mulder 
tilted his head, canting his eyes to watch the short, straight strands of her 
hair glide over the blunt tips of his fingers. And he watched her shoulders 
rise and fall on a long, silent sigh.

"What do you dream about, Mulder?" She asked quietly, and he found his eyes 
drawn back to the glass, to her reflection and the image of her eyes, grey 
with her imaginings. He contemplated a dozen facile answers, humorous, less 
than truthful, and he discarded them all. 

Her eyes weren't asking for humor, or levity, or even just an easy answer. 
They were looking for a real truth, and he had it to give to her.

"I dream," he started carefully, "about a lot of things. The past, sometimes. 
The present. The ordinary. The fantasy." A wry, quirking smile slid across 
his face and he watched it in the mirrored surface of the window. "A lot of 
fantasy."

She didn't return the smile, only nodded almost imperceptibly. But at least, 
he thought with something less than gleaming hope, she wasn't lost in her own 
world for the moment.

"I dream about who I would have been if my life had taken different paths. 
Who Samantha would be. Who you would be."

That was the most difficult, he thought as her eyes slid away from his again. 
Who Scully would be. Samantha...she had been gone so long, and while the 
search for the Truth that would eventually lead him to her was the foundation 
of his life...she was more memory than reality.

Scully was all reality. 

She was, after all, the one who had been there for the best and worst moments 
of his search, the one who *caused* most of them. She was the center of 
everything. 
At times...Scully *was* everything.

He wondered if she knew that.

She couldn't. If she did, there would be no need for this...this aching he 
was being allowed to feel in her.
That he wanted to draw from her--even if he had to take it into himself, 
despair like a poison seeping from her veins into his. 

Mulder's spread fingers crept lightly down from her hairline, seeking out her 
strong pulse. And for a second Scully allowed the touch to continue, let him 
count the steady beats. But even in this new, uncharacteristic mood she was 
in, Scully was not a woman comfortable with such invasions of her space. A 
simple shift away, a quick shift, and she was gone.

He let her go, frowning as he fought back the urge to capture her again. The 
flight was still there, her muscles were still tensed for it. It was bringing 
an increased tension to his own muscles--but not in preparation for sudden 
flight. More in expectation of the chase he would *have* to give.

But for the moment, she was still close enough that a chase would not be 
necessary, and he could sense that she would be more inclined to talk if she 
was not reminded who she was talking *to*. So Mulder buried the 
protective--possessive--instincts, and tried to remember how to speak.

"So what do you dream about, Scully?" He whispered the words, voice almost 
harsh to his ears despite its low tones--the air between them amplified the 
sound, the emotion behind it. It sounded like a demand, a rough plea...

Which it was, but he thought he'd have been able to hide that fact.

Scully's gaze was locked again on something just beyond the horizon, giving 
the impression that she hadn't heard him, anymore than she heard the thunder 
that shook the floor beneath their feet. She didn't answer, and Mulder wasn't 
surprised, though a part of him...hurt...in the silence that followed.
  
And he was compelled to break it. 

"Come on now, Scully, I gave you the answer you were looking for, didn't I? 
Why not 'fess up, tell me what you dream about?" Thinking quickly, trying to 
find the words that would break her silence, pull her back from whatever 
precipice she was forcing herself to hover on, he allowed himself to prattle 
on. He murmured cajoling nonsense in hopes of drawing her out...

Until it hit him. The question he hadn't even thought to ask--hadn't *wanted* 
to ask. And he was certain its answer was the spark behind this whole 
conversation.

Mulder eased his suddenly exhausted body into the chair that sat before the 
window, rested his elbows on his knees and linked his long fingers. Frowning 
down at his palms, still feeling the brand of her scar, he wondered if he 
should ask her. If she would answer. And if she did...how would he survive it?

But would she survive if he didn't?

And it was such a simple, almost innocuous question...

"Scully--what are your nightmares about?"  

For a second, he wondered if she had heard. Scully didn't move, didn't even 
seem to breath, and he held his breath with her--or at least he thought he 
did. It was possible, Mulder thought wildly, that he hadn't asked, that Time 
had simply paused for a moment, to catch its own breath after another 
dizzying whirl with Earth.

But then she released the air caught in her lungs with a soundless huff of 
laughter. 

"My life provides quite enough fodder, don't you think?"

More vague than he had expected, but almost as hurtful, Mulder thought as he 
rubbed his branded hand over his aching heart. 

"Parts of it. Parts of everyone's' life is food for bad dreams, Scully."

"But not all those nightmares are also memories. Not all those nightmares are 
about abductions, medical rapes, chips, cancer, and dead children."

"No," Mulder agreed, rising to stand beside her again, arms crossed over his 
chest. "Maybe you're the only one to dream those things. To remember them. 
But some people dream about things that are worse than that, Scully, and you 
know that as well as I do."

Scully whirled, facing him for the first time since he had left her alone in 
this dim room to watch the storm beyond it. And for a second he thought she 
was going to punch him, make him take back the words and tell her she had the 
worst nightmares imaginable...

But then her shoulders straightened and her chin came up, and a portion of 
the dizzying darkness fell from her. And he watched the sudden transformation 
with relief. It was far better to have her eyes sizzle with anger than spark 
with remembered tragedies. Better still to have her eyes gleam with 
reflowering strength.

"Are your nightmares worse, Mulder?" She asked, voice like ice, and he 
reevaluated her mood. Strength, yes, but it just masked the anger freezing 
underneath--anger he was amazed he'd missed. 

It had cleared the fog from the electric blue of her eyes, after all, chipped 
it away in an instant. And while he knew well that he tended to be oblivious, 
and could have missed such a sign under normal circumstances...these were 
nothing approaching normal. 

He frowned, dropped his arms to his sides, and shifted to lean just slightly 
more into her space. "I don't have nightmares about myself, Scully, so no 
they're not worse. But I have nightmares for your sake, and my sister's, and 
my mother's, and they're not pretty either."

The anger drained from her eyes, truly gone this time, but he didn't move 
away, didn't ease his frown. The mood might be slipping away, but it had 
existed and torn them both apart. He wasn't going to just let it go when she 
came out of it, not without understanding...

If it was something that could be understood, anyway.

Scully seemed to sense the question. It wouldn't have surprised him if he had 
not only broadcast it in his eyes and his body language but straight through 
into her mind as well. Sometimes their particular brand of communication 
seemed strong enough to be all but telepathic, at other times he wondered if 
there was any other explanation for it. 

"I don't know what brought this on, Mulder. I'm not usually 
so...self-pitying."

"That's my job." He murmured the words under his breath but she caught them, 
twisted her lips into a facsimile of a smile. 

"Yeah. It is. And mine is to pull you out of it, if I can. Figure out what 
caused it."

The hands Mulder had dropped to his sides rose, gripping firmly onto her 
upper arms, using that grip to pull her just a little closer. "And usually 
you're very good at it," he told her as he pretended not to notice her sudden 
stillness. "Very good at hiding what's going on in you. I don't understand 
what happened here."

The stillness absorbed them both for a moment, as Scully debated how much 
honesty was warranted. As Mulder wondered how much he would have to pull from 
her. 

She shrugged faintly when the decision was made, and curled one corner of her 
mouth. "Do you get tired of feeling guilty, Mulder? Feeling responsible, 
feeling the weight of the world?"

He nodded, caught by the look in her eye, as distant as it had been when she 
was staring out the window and contemplating her regrets--but clearer. Less 
pained.

She continued with his nod as acknowledgment. "I do too, Mulder. And usually 
I...for the sake of our friendship, our partnership, I try to keep it to 
myself." She shrugged again, as much as she could with the grip of his hands 
on her. 

"What do you mean, 'for the sake of our friendship'?" Mulder asked slowly, 
tasting the words like a bitter syrup in his mouth.

"It's the way we work, Mulder. You do the regretting--openly, at least--and I 
do the denying. That way, you can keep me on the pedestal you have for me, 
and I can pretend I'm stronger than I am."

Her eyes were completely open, but Mulder was as lost as he would have been 
had they been hiding things from him--perhaps more so. This confession from 
her was *not* what he had expected. "You're the strongest person I know, 
Scully." The words came slowly--each one had to be just right. As there had 
been all along, something was boiling under the surface that was just barely 
hinted at, and impossibly important. "And strength isn't bravado, it can't be 
faked. It can only be forged. Reshaped, restructured, but not forced."

She was shaking her head, a small mocking smile on her lips. "And pedestals, 
Mulder?"

"What about them?"

"What would happen if I fell off mine?"  

"I might have put you on one, a long time ago, Scully. But you crushed it to 
splinters beneath one of those insanely high-heeled boots you wear."

He wasn't lying, he told himself as her eyes searched his for reassurance, 
for any betrayal. She was in no danger of falling off her pedestal, she had 
kept her balance there through many things. Doing something he'd desperately 
wanted her to do for years--express even just a small portion of the things 
that were twisted around inside her--wasn't going to send her crashing to 
earth.

She must have accepted his words. Tension faded from the air between them, 
her eyes were even bluer. 

But the something that had sparked underneath despair, under anger and under 
uncertainty--it flared, and caught. And it was like revisiting a moment from 
long ago...the kind of moment that changed lives forever.

Their gazes, careful still, locked as the grip of his hands changed, gentled. 
Slid, until one hand was carefully settling back over the place that had 
burned it long minutes before, and the other was braced in the small of her 
back, over a mark that had branded her eons before. The sign of her reclaimed 
self-possession, a flight he hadn't been there to stop--that he probably 
wouldn't have been able to. That he was glad, in a way, he *hadn't* stopped.

And when their mingled breathing had eased into a gentle pattern and her 
still tense muscles had relaxed just a bit, he took the chance she offered, 
and lowered his lips to hers.

She tasted like the dreams he'd had, he realized. Like the version of her 
he'd met on an 'abandoned' liner. And thoughts of brands and nightmares and 
the storm that still raged beyond her window faded beneath the warmth of her 
lips, and the easy, tentative touch of her hands on the muscles of his back.

The kiss ended with a sigh and his forehead on hers, his smile into eyes that 
held no hint of grey. No hint of the despair that had rippled through her, 
and sent chills through him. The tingle in his palm, the one that cupped her 
neck, went straight to his heart with heat, not ice.

"Is that something you dreamed about?" She asked in a hushed voice, soft like 
he'd only heard it when he was hurting but with even richer undertones.

He allowed his own voice to match it--feeling great relief at being able to. 
"Yeah--is it something you've had nightmares about?" 

She considered just long enough to make him wonder, then rolled her forehead 
under his with an almost imperceptible smile. She was still smiling when his 
lips settled back over hers, when his hands tightened over her, and when the 
moment drew itself out to an eternity.



                        END
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I'm glad you made it this far ;) Send me feedback, make my confusion headache 
disappear completely, and I'll commend you for the courage it took to get 
through my fluffy little overdose!

Dreamshaper
dreamshpr@aol.com