Crosses by Jesemie's Evil Twin jesemie@hotmail.com Disclaimers: Still not mine. Grrr. Category: V, A, M/S UST, Oddness Feedback: Yes, please. jesemie@hotmail.com Thanks: To Jill, Shari, and Liza, who, as usual, kept me from panicking. This story is sort of a quasi-flip-sequel to 'Lines'; 'Crosses' is certainly set in that universe. You should probably read 'Lines' first. ~~~ They are little gestures, gone by the time she notices them. His hand, reaching toward hers in the car or almost brushing a strand of hair back from her eyes, jerking away before he actually touches her. His obvious reluctance to stand very close to her, a newfound, insincere respect for her personal space. His forced casualness, nothing wrong, unrelaxed nonchalance. She wonders who he's more afraid of, her or himself. Either way, she is, as usual, at a loss for words to correct the situation. Work hasn't suffered particularly. She is unable to justify her worries, so she keeps them clutched in silence. She keeps telling herself he doesn't need to touch her anyway. Their physical contact has always been sporadic. It has always sprouted in uncomfortable times. And right now, he's fine. She's fine. Everyone is so fucking fine she grinds her teeth. He pauses sometimes, though, and she wonders what he hears, or doesn't hear. He pales and recovers in a span of seconds. When his gaze darts to her, she gives him tiny warm smiles and convinces herself she doesn't miss it, the feel of his skin grazing hers. Their eyes may reveal each secret, but they both know how pointless it is to dwell on words that can never be voiced. They cross rooms to meet each other as they always have, steady, sure, speaking only what is essential, professional. This at least is of some comfort to her. Everything else will wait. ~~~ The Indian summer humidity is a cataract, masking the city in sick yellow-gray smog. Skyscrapers glint along the edge of river like mirror shards. Scully squints and takes the Makers Street exit, following Fifth Avenue to the police station at Brownbend Lane. She can see a dozen specialty shops down the road, and a cathedral, its copper cross and bell-tower spiderwebbed with the ropes and scaffolding of a maintenance crew. As she and Mulder get out of the car, the bells begin to chime high noon. "If we have time later, I'd like to look around down there, poke through a few of the stores. If that's okay." It isn't her routine to act like a tourist, but it's been a long while since she browsed for nonsense items and silly gifts for her mother or nephews. "Okay," Mulder says very quietly. Scully looks over at him. He is watching the bells, faintly visible even from three blocks, rock and sway. He has a completely entranced expression, like he is certain he may be given all the answers to all the questions if only he can discern the correct meanings of the tones pealing out over the city, melodic clues only he can fully comprehend. She envies him, just a little, and not nearly so much as she fears for him. The unwinding is beginning, building in his uncharacteristic lack of movement and speech. She recognizes it now, knows it's been coming for days and she was too preoccupied with . . . whatever . . . to see it. She wants to grab him, rough-arm him back into the car, where they'll speed away from broken glass cities and chiming tintinnabulation and . . . and . . . He's already walking up the police station steps, and inside there is a mundane case and a lead and it will all be fine. Nothing to worry about. Scully climbs the stairs; Mulder holds the door open for her. They both look toward the river at the same time. She's not shocked to hear thunder crumble across it, somewhere behind the horizon. It was inevitable, she supposes. The sound reverberates under her skin, and she thinks it quavers too much for a sound still as far off as the thunder, until she comprehends his hand on her wrist. He releases it before she can react, breezing past her into the lobby. But he's fine. Absolutely fine. ~~~ Stuffy weather, wetter than the air conditioners can handle. Damp and tired, Scully tries to concentrate. Hold the breath. Let it go. Stable the hand. Come on. You're an expert, a perfectionist. The blade pierces smoothly. That's right, just drag the blade down, straight line, a little pressure, pull it down. Split it open, rotten fruit, down to bone. Body too long in the fierce filthy river, these weak ribs might crack in your grip. Remember the family barbecues with dad in his white apron at the grill. Big man with the charcoal and blood-smears on his white apron, and on the hot rack the chicken pieces with seared skin, cooked flesh the scent of cayenne and pineapple and lighter fluid. And you and Bill - probably Bill, the bully, like you were when no one was looking - after the meal, with your greasy fingers, tearing at the wishbone, each twisting a side, growling, ravenous for the larger snapped fragment. Make a wish, Scully. The scalpel does not feel proper in her hands this morning. It is too heavy, too large. Maneuvering her grip around it is like trying to autopsy using a letter opener. No matter. The man, the corpse, was identified by the police anyway; the tattoo scrawled over one bicep is a broken cross. Mark Bennett. A normal enough name for a fanatical religious wacko, as Mulder might label him. Mr. Bennett will not have an opportunity to convert any more heretics to his calling. Score a point for his equally fanatical ex-wife, who sobbed a confession on Mulder's shoulder yesterday in the police station as though he was her priest. "Mrs. Bennett says she dumped the body near the Falls, right before you get to the channel locks. They'll have to wait until tomorrow to search. The current is far too swift with the locks open." After Clara Bennett was escorted to her shiny new silver cell, Mulder had remained seated, turned away from Scully, in the rickety folding chair. His reflected expression in the streaked interrogation window was grimness mixed with a caffeine glaze, giving his eyes a fevered flush. "We should probably stay in town until the search is completed." Scully had nodded, placed her hand on his shoulder for balance as she looked over the file on the table. Mulder had squirmed out from under her then, as if wounded, mumbling about needing fresh air and would they be heading back to the motel soon? She had replied yes, fresh air, go get some fresh air, we'll drive to the motel shortly. It had bothered her, a slim hurt she tucked off, but the arresting officer wanted a word. Could she do the autopsy, whenever they located the body? Just to make sure Clara Bennett had really strangled her son of a bitch holy-roller husband with the cord on her curling iron? Scully would not have refused such an ordinary request, and the rest of the afternoon continued like rote. Today, the speculated markings are indeed there, crisscrossed at Mark Bennett's throat. Four days of river grit have not scrubbed the thin bruises away. Scully places the scalpel on the tray of shiny silver tools, thinking of the long bars of Clara Bennett's cage. No need for an autopsy, not really. She needs to be sure, though. Their good luck Mr. Bennett didn't wash any further down river. The cadaver is stitched back together in a few hours. The needle also feels awkward in her hands, like a fancy hatpin, like a wooden-handled ice pick. Go back to the motel, Scully. Share a can of diet soda with your partner and catch a few infomercials. She will admit she is exhausted. She dials Mulder's number on her cell phone. As it rings, she tosses a sheet over the body. The phone rings and rings, with not even a recorded message interrupting the shrill trilling. Something snaps in her chest, a spiked small something. Make a wish, make a wish. The drive to the motel is dangerously quick. But Mulder's door is locked, and when she picks the lock and charges inside, he is safe. Sleeping, just sleeping. The old bed sags a bit with his weight. His right foot pokes out from under the navy blue comforter and occasionally twitches. Scully stands in the doorway and watches the rise and fall of his chest. It takes every ounce of her strength not to go any further into the room. To not touch him. She fingers the chain around her neck instead, pricking her fingertips with the points of the tiny gold crucifix. Eventually, she steps into the hallway and closes the door behind her. In sleep, the scalpels, in a row, are leaden, and she lifts them each with such strength and reverence that when she pares into Mulder, she truly believes she is saving him, blessing him, again and again. ~~~ Then for three weeks it is good, really good. They laugh together, sprinting chuckles during rushed meals. The cases are dull, but who cares? Plenty of 'em, and they play well with all the local authorities and everyone sings their praises. Skinner almost smiles. Mulder still maintains a perfectly prudent distance, and they both happily pretend not to notice. When her phone rings that night, Scully is stepping out of the bathtub, soapy foam clinging to her ankles. She figures it's her mother, or a telemarketer wanting to know if she'd be willing to subscribe to a few periodicals on a trial basis. Her breath echoes back to her through the phone receiver for a moment before Langly's voice answers, and she knows the bottom has fallen out, no going back, too late. She's getting used to driving without brakes, without thought. The roads are as blank as washed blackboards, and she is approximately two miles from the Gunmen's headquarters before she sees the clock on the dashboard, realizes it is ten o'clock at night, and she is driving unlined streets without headlights. At an old railroad crossing, her frightened breathing hides in the jarring movement of the car as she speeds over the abandoned train tracks. ~~~ Outside, against the shutters, wind lifts the limbs of trees, their leaves thrown out the way a child spreads her fingers when running through breeze. The low whistle is distracting. Byers clears his throat, and Scully's attention is regained. "It's your voice, Agent Scully," he repeats. "It's a recording of you." She blinks once. "I understand you think that's my voice, guys, but I'm telling you, I'm fine. Nothing happened to me tonight. I was not attacked or raped or injured in any way. I did not call Mulder. I was home all night by myself until Langly called me. And I don't see why the situation warrants me coming all the way over here to hear the recording." Of course she does. She bristles with the frequency of fear, though she wishes to ignore it. Her joints feel like water, like they're swollen, like she had stayed far too long in her bath. She does not know how to handle this situation. She has just been informed there is a woman with her voice screaming on a spool of tape. Mulder sits on the floor by a bedroom door, expressionless. He hasn't moved since she arrived. She doesn't ask why. Something fetid rolls in her stomach. His answering machine, sitting beside Frohike's computer, rewinds the cassette obediently, clicking off when finished. The Gunmen flinch, and their eyes dart away like sharp-cornered tricks of light. "We aren't saying that you called and left this message tonight. It's a _recording_ someone played, and it is your voice. Someone had this recording," Byers clarifies, his words taut. "Yeah, and now someone's sharing it," Frohike interjects. "What we don't know - what we're really worried about," Langly says, dropping his voice to a whisper, "is why Mulder came to us first, instead of going to your place or at least calling you. It's like he wanted verification, and once he got it, he just . . . stopped. Completely stopped." Verification. Which means it's true. Such a silly thing to steal, her voice. She looks up at Byers. He is bleached pale behind the scholarly rim of his reading glasses. She looks to Frohike, who picks at his vest. Langly stands with his back to her. He sighs and scratches his jaw. On the floor by a bedroom wall, Mulder sits. Scully crosses the room and lowers herself beside him. He stares straight ahead. She has no idea what to say or do next. When the Gunmen leave the room, Mulder writhes to his feet, but not before she sees him shudder. "Okay," Scully says finally, "let me hear the tape." She says it with her chin turned up a bit, defiant. It won't be her voice. It's a trap, maybe, or a terrible joke, but it is not her voice. It is not true. Mulder glances at her. She nods. He pushes play on the recorder and steps away from the table as the tape begins. He studies the floor around Byers' desk. Her metallic voice, antiseptic white, suffocates the space around them and corrodes in her ears. She hears herself yelling, like the words were being yanked from her rusty throat with wooden hooks. Her voice pleads and begs like a twisted-ankle bimbo in hardcore porn, like a snuff-film victim. Her voice gasps and gags with gore. Her voice is violence, deadly, jagged. A last weakened syllable is uttered before electronic silence: "Muld--" Later, perhaps she'll remember Mulder choking back a sob. But now, as it happens, the sound doesn't register. Scully unclenches her hands. If I speak now, she thinks, it will be nothing but a whimper. Appalling. If I speak now, it will surface, will come spilling out like swarms of wasps. If I remember, it will swallow us both. Mulder's shoulders tremble, but otherwise he does not move. Until she finds the strength to stand up, walk over to the table, and press the stop button, they sit without speaking and listen to the cassette reel wheeze with blank noise, like blood leaking from her body, like some perverted creation of breath. Whoever did this, they knew the damage it would do. They, ubiquitous, monstrous. He is trembling and she cannot touch him. This is how slowly they can kill, she thinks. This is how much they can hurt him. ~~~ In the bakery section of the small farm market, Scully shifts her basket's handle to the crook of her left arm. She is the picture of patience, waiting for the elderly man behind the counter to wrap the fresh loaf of pumpkin bread in oatmeal-colored paper torn off a large wall-mounted roll. Across the produce section, where plain cardboard flats are piled high with glossy apples, Scully can see Mulder milling around near the cases of cut flowers and potted houseplants. To a passerby, he might appear to be inspecting the greenery for splotches or trying to decide between the dozen cheery Gerber daisies and the birthday bouquet of hothouse orchids. Scully wonders what he's really studying. He doesn't fidget, merely observes. The scientist in her is almost impressed, a feeling which does nothing to dampen out the dread which is otherwise making her ill. The baker asks, "Ma'am, would you like me to ring up all your purchases at this counter? Not much traffic here this time of night." "Yes, please," Scully mumbles, lifting the basket of essentials over the short plexi-glass partition. She watches the old man go through a hypnotic routine of removing each item from the basket, holding it while he scans a mangy inventory list for the corresponding department code, tap a price into the cash register, and place everything in a large plastic sack. It takes forever, the baker getting hung up on the fresh vegetables, and the events of the last hour weave through Scully's mind. "Wait, you're not going to try and find out who called him?" Byers had asked. His tone had taken on a higher, tighter timbre, and Scully assumed the slight squeak of his words was evocative of how his voice had changed awkwardly in high school. "Haven't you tried determining that?" Scully responded, yanking her coat on and grabbing for her purse. Frohike blocked her hand. "We got zip. What a surprise." He paused, steeling himself. "Are you just going to leave him here?" "Is that what you think I'm doing? Ditching him?" "Aren't you?" Langly offered. "Where are you going in such a hurry?" A part of Scully's brain, the meticulous, mature, authoritarian portion, was aware she should have been offended the Gunmen would think she would leave her partner alone to cope with the phone call. Or during any crisis, for that matter, even if she had done it in the past. She should have been offended and defensive and angry. Instead, she felt sucker-punched, borderline delirious, inadequate. Whatever she would do to counter the phone call development would be wrong. A scientific, rational method would not be sufficient. But she was not leaving Mulder behind. "No," she said. "He's coming with me." "But you aren't goin' searching for . . . whoever, right?" Frohike said. Shrewd, Scully thought. How did he know that? She shook her head. "What would be the point? I won't put him through it; I won't put _myself_ through it." "Why would someone do this?" Byers pondered out loud. Scully shook her head again. "I don't know. Maybe it's a trigger for the, um, sounds." She didn't have another term for it, any term that would let Mulder retain his sanity in the equation. "But those never left completely anyway. So I don't know." She sighed. "Because they can. Because they know --" She stopped, not wanting to think about what they knew, about Mulder, or her, or what happened to her, or what happened to him because of it. "Where are we going?" Mulder asked flatly. He had resumed his position on the floor. The other three men all looked to Scully, expectant, concerned. She moved past them, crossing the cramped room of circuits and computer screen light to stand in front of her partner. She held a hand out to him and said, "We're going home, by detour." He did not take her hand, but did stand up as though he had no better option. They left together, and he had said nothing to her in forty-five minutes. He had slipped into her car, however, and seemed content to tag along, showing no sign of being bothered by their current situation. Which is late-night shopping in a small farm market somewhere between Annapolis and nowhere coupled with massive uneasiness. Scully pays for the two bags of food and carries them over to the floral cases. On a metal stand, a large pot of peace lilies perches, and she shivers. The large white concave blooms, often seen in funeral parlors and hospitals, remind her of cobra heads. "I was thinking the same thing," Mulder says. Scully swallows slowly. "What?" "They look poisonous, don't they, like they could strike you dead before you could even move away." Scully finds herself unable to reply. The sacks in her arms grow horribly heavy. She stumbles, and loses her grip on the larger bag. Mulder catches it easily and says, with sad contrition, "I only heard you right then because I wanted to. Sorry." "It's okay," Scully replies, the words programmed, a touch desperate. "No. It's not," he says, and Scully does not know whether to turn completely hysterical or simply be grateful one of them still has the presence of mind to tell the truth. They drive for two elongated hours, the dark roads twisted, braided under a thick midnight sky. When the rain starts, Scully speeds up, against better judgement. Beneath the car wheels, water skims and slicks and sounds like the hiss of snakes, like fangs piercing ankles and venom flooding through her veins. She drives until the streets are silent again, until she sees they glow an innocuous bronze with the taper candle of headlights, until she finds her way home. Mulder leads her into her bedroom and closes the door. She shuts the shades, climbs onto the bed, and pushes her face into a pillow. The serpents rest, scrolled in the small of her back, sleeping with their lidless eyes open. ~~~ A dim thumping awakens her. She bolts from her bedroom without fully understanding why, at four a.m., she should be so panicked by noises in the kitchen. The kitchen, she discovers, is empty. The couch is crowded. Mulder's right foot bangs lightly against her coffee table. Scully closes her hand around his ankle, buffering the dream movement. He stays asleep. Scully curls into a chair by the fireplace and waits. ~~~ The gunshot is a crack of lightning jolting her from sleep. The living room is the same deep cold gray of the morning sky. Rain triturates leaves against the wet windowpanes, and Mulder is missing. Scully creeps through her own apartment, feeling like an intruder. She finds Mulder in the bedroom, or, rather, she finds his ankles and feet. She does not stay long enough to see the rest. The blood had seeped into the hallway, and her escape into the bathroom is marked by verdigris footprints on her clean carpet. The unrelenting white tile is ice under her hands. She needs to wash her feet, get them clean, can't go running through the house with muddy feet. The backyards of her childhood are brimming with mud puddles, her toes cool in the squish of clay and silt. Mother laughing, laughing, all the kids grinning, holding up their mud pies for the blue ribbon from the judge. Slipping on the tile, bone hitting with a gunshot crack. Mulder. Oh god. Didn't tell him, he didn't know, I never said, never said, he could hear everything but he couldn't hear this, couldn't have, I never said, oh my god, I never told him, he didn't know. And then another room of incessant white tile, and trays of sparkling sharp tools. The long silver scalpels melting, flattening into sheets, spines she's stretched on, spikes between the bones in her hands. Lashing bruises, and hands in latex prying her apart, as though she were made of stiff taffy. Tearing her open, and her screams resonate back to her, distorted through mono speakers, through phone lines and memory. He lifts her off the floor - before she can formulate the reality that he won't hurt her, that he isn't a ghost - and cradles her, leaning against the wall, until the white drains from her mind. ~~~ "Mulder?" she suggests, entirely unsure he'll actually answer, that he's actually there to answer. "Hmm?" "Are you okay?" Seems like the proper thing to ask, considering, but she hates that her voice sounds so small. "I'm okay," he says, and she believes him because he has not lied to her in the longest time, maybe ever even. Well, he has, she thinks, but she's willing to overlook it for a while. "Thank you," he says. "But you don't have to." She sighs and rubs her eyes. "You didn't . . . " but she really can't say it, not now. "No," he says, shifting her in his arms, drawing her up more closely. "What do you remember, Scully?" "Couldn't you hear it?" "I could hear pieces of it, but I don't know that what I heard wasn't just what I remembered from the tape." Fear in those words, for many reasons. She has no doubt fear has rescued them both, though. "The sounds are gone." "For how long?" she asks, fighting fright. He doesn't answer. "I don't remember much. The, um, feeling I was going to die, mostly." There is a curious ache in her chest, spreading through her limbs. "The details are sort of fuzzy." There must be more to say on the subject, but her mind won't let her focus on words. All sensation has crept into her palm, where Mulder is touching her, tracing her, memorizing where she is unlike anyone else, infusing heat as the lines of her hands cross under his fingertips. I love you, she thinks in a whisper. "I know," Mulder says softly, "I know." ~~~ An end.