The Cry of the Truth, 19b/22
Missed Perfection
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: NC-17 (Sexual activity)
Category: S, A, R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary: Scully shares the benefits of her improved mental health
with Mulder.

See part 01 for the disclaimer.

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.

Feedback would be most welcome at this point!


"Scully, this matter of trust between us....it has to extend beyond our
work, you know."

Now seated in the opposite corner of the couch, her knees drawn up to
her chest in a protective posture, Dana nodded her agreement, afraid
that if she spoke she would betray the insecurity that was burning
through her heart. It seemed that Mulder was content to continue
denying his desires. She wondered if it was easy for him because the
intensity of his feelings for her had waned to something more like their
old camaraderie, fraught with sexual innuendo but uncomplicated by
consummation.

He saw her fear, but pressed on. Dr. Locke had often reminded him
not to allow Scully's discomfort to be his excuse for not addressing
the issues that mattered.

"That one weekend we had, making love -- it seemed nonstop, didn't
it? The trust thing didn't come up, because I didn't realize how little
you *did* trust me. If I had, maybe I would've done things
differently."

"Differently? How?"

He sipped from his glass, eyeing her over the rim like a climber sizing
up a mountain.

"At the risk of sounding sexist, and hopelessly old-fashioned...I
would've courted you, to prove my intentions. I don't think you ever
believed, truly believed in your heart, that the sex was a step forward,
and not an end in itself. Maybe if I had pursued you in a more
conventional way, outside of your work, you would've seen more
clearly what I wanted from you."

"I'm not sure I let myself think about it that thoroughly," she admitted
disconsolately. Her eyes roamed around the room, instinctively
looking for an exit -- or just an easy change of topic -- until she spotted
her own glass on the coffee table. With deceptive languor, she took a
long drink. Buoyed with false courage, she able to face him again.
His spaniel's eyes were so saturated with emotion that she nearly
sputtered the wine she was swallowing. "What exactly *do* you want
from me, Mulder?"

The ten-million-dollar question. You may already be a winner, he
mused. Or not.

"Funny you should ask, Scully, because I've been doing a lot of
thinking on that very subject." He leaned a little closer to her, one arm
resting on the back of the couch as the other hand delicately held the
wine glass by its stem, balancing it on his thigh. "I want us to be
lovers. I want an exclusive commitment -- because as you know, I'm
a jealous bastard, and because for me, Scully, you're it. There will be
no other women for me."

"Anything else?" she ventured.

Mulder took a drink. He was warming to his subject, and he liked the
feeling.

"We tell our mothers. We consider getting married, later. And most
importantly...the truth. You tell me the truth about what's in your
heart -- not just what you think about my methodology and my
theories and my sources. And you will see, Dana Scully, that you can
trust me, because nothing in your heart will scare me off. It hasn't
yet, and it isn't going to."

Scully's legs uncoiled, and she crept forward until her hand met his on
the back of the couch. Their fingers steepled together, then
intertwined. Mulder's thumb tickled the sensitive center of her palm.

She cocked her head and squinted at him. Her hair piled on her
shoulder and the ends scratched her neck.

"You do realize what will happen if we tell my mother, don't you?"

He chuckled.

"Yeah, she'll start asking the priest to say fertility prayers for us, even
before we're married. What is it with her and grandchildren? Aren't
those two nephews enough?"

"Propagation of the faithful," Scully said, withdrawing her hand so
that she could slide both arms around his waist. "Keeps the Pope in
business."

"Scully."

She was caressing the mole on his cheek with the tip of her nose.

"*Do* you trust me?" he asked.

She looked up at him, her face impassive and alert, one eyebrow
slightly arched above the other.

"I have great faith in you, Mulder, and I am certain that that will
develop into the kind of trust you're talking about."

Mulder decided to accept that, because he knew it was the truth.

He brushed the back side of his fingers across her cheek, then clasped
the back of her neck in a firm grip. She waited until he pulled her
forward, ever so gently, and only then did she kiss him. It was a
quick, graceful press of lips to lips, followed by a somewhat reluctant
separation. She lingered, just a few centimeters from his mouth, and
waited. As her eyes flicked from his lips to his eyes, barely seeing,
but still able to sense his mood, she caught the warmth of a smile.

"What?"

"I'll tell you," he said. "First I would kiss you, like that, to remind
you that I love you. Then I would take your hand, and put it over my
heart to show you that you're in charge. My body is yours for the
taking. And I'd hope that you'd help me out of my clothes, then, and
kiss me some more, all over, especially in the places I know you
like..."

"What places would you be referring to?" she asked coyly.

"This place," he said, pointing to the spot where his outer right thigh
merged with his pelvis. Then his hand moved to his sternum, over the
area where the hair grew. "And here. You like it here, don't you."

"Mmm. Where else?"

"My back. That little indentation at the end of my spine. And my ass.
You like it, I know you do. You've been looking at it for years --
admit it."

"It's true, but that doesn't mean I want to kiss it," she said in a dry
whisper.

"We're the head and the tail of the same snake. Remember?"

"So you're saying that I'm the head and you're the tail? Is that
correct? Because I wouldn't want to misunderstand you, Mulder."

"That's correct." He looked down to see that she was popping each
metal button of the fly of his jeans through the little reinforced holes,
gradually loosening the fit that had become entirely too restrictive.
"Scully, if there's one thing I've learned from Dr. Locke, it's that the
best way to avoid misunderstanding is to be very explicit. To say
what you mean. To spell it out. In blatant detail, if necessary."

"Seven weeks is a long time," Scully said, pushing the hem of his
shirt up over his belly. "And in spite of everything, I've grown
hungry for you, Mulder. Ravenous, really."

"But what about the proverbial spring chicken?" he asked, his voice
cracking with laughter as she nibbled the rim of his navel.

"Well, you're hardly over the hill, Mulder," she said, sliding a warm
hand into his boxers and over his hip.

"No, no, I mean the chicken. The one in the kitchen. What about the
chicken?"

"What about it?" she asked without looking up. Her hair was
brushing his flank, tickling him as her hands cupped his ass and slid
his boxers and jeans down.

"Aren't we going to eat it!?!?" he squeaked as he hands smoothed over
his bare thighs.

She started to laugh, but stopped herself before the tension of the
moment was dissipated.

"Later, Mulder. We'll eat the chicken later. That is, if you think you
can wait...."

"I can wait. I can wait. Definitely. Uh-huh." He cupped her elbows
in his palms as she leaned straddled his lap, her wool trousers scratchy
on the tender skin of his engorged penis.  "Scully, wouldn't you like
to take some of that off? I could help you."

"No. I like the idea of you being naked, and me dressed. It makes me
feel powerful."

"Mmm. Powerful can be good. But..."

"But what, Mulder? Say what you mean. Spell it out. In blatant
detail, if necessary," she said in a low, sultry voice that he hardly
recognized.

"Take off your shirt, Scully," he said, reaching for the buttons of her
silk twill shirt. "I want to see you. It's been a long time, as you
said."

She sat back on his thighs and watched his fingers' journey. He
unfastened each button without so much as wrinkling her blouse, and
then gently pushed the silk off her shoulders until it caught in the
crook of her elbows. With delicate determination, he unbuttoned each
cuff and then, all barriers beaten, slid the garment off her arms and
kicked it to the floor.

She smiled at his expression of awe. He seemed pleased with the bra
she had bought that afternoon, with him in mind. It was black lace
over peach satin, with half-cups that presented her breasts like two
dishes of blancmange on a buffet table. With a brush of his index
finger, he nudged each strap from her shoulders. The sturdy
underwire was unaffected, however, and her breasts remained
buoyant. He tugged the lace away just enough to reveal a nipple, and
then rubbed the smooth surface of his fingernail between the tender
pink skin and the bra's satin lining.

Reflexively she rubbed herself against his thigh. When that did not
satisfy her, she shifted toward him again and pushed him down into
the cushions where earlier he had hidden from her. With his hands
still testing the texture and contour of her breasts, Dana crawled over
him and then pressed her lips to his. Mulder opened his mouth to
release a moan and admit her tongue. The taste of his fear still
lingered, slightly sour and acrid, along with the sting of toothpaste and
a hint of his three o'clock coffee. She licked the roof of his mouth,
then slid her tongue across his, all the while slowly and unconsciously
thrusting her pelvis toward his.

Mulder's bare legs soughed against her light wool trousers in
squirming anticipation. His right hand released her left breast and
skimmed down her torso to the warm juncture of her thighs, where the
trousers were already damp and wrinkled. He rubbed his knuckles
against the spot where the seams met, and she whimpered into his
mouth. But when he began to tug at her zipper, Dana withdrew her
hands from his shoulders and pulled herself away from him.

"No. Not now," she said, shaking her head. Her eyebrow lurched
into an attitude of regret. "Do you mind?"

Mulder shook his head, but his frown told of his confusion. His
hands circled her waist to steady her as she backed off the sofa and
onto her feet.

"Are you okay?" he asked breathlessly.

"Yeah. I just need to call the shots for a while."

She took a sip of her wine, and then another, for she found that the
sight of his cock, swollen and bobbing with his every breath, made
her suddenly very thirsty.

Mulder, his eyes drowsy and half-lidded with arousal, spread his arms
wide.

"I'm all yours, sweetheart. Be gentle with me."

She snickered at that, and then bent over to push the coffee table out of
the way. She took his hand and pulled him to his feet with strength
that she usually only displayed in the gym or in the field.

"Think you can stand?"

"Just prop me up, ma'am," he replied with a dopey grin.

She led him into the hallway that connected the living room to her
bedroom and study. Once there, she pressed him up against the wall
between two framed postcards: Picasso's "Portrait of Dora Maar,"
and Sargent's "Portrait of Madame X." Her hand shot out to slap off
the light switch that controlled the lamps in the living room. In the
semi-darkness, Mulder hummed in happy anticipation.

"I like it when you call the shots," he said in a sleepy voice.

"Are you sure?" she asked darkly, sliding down his body until she
was resting on her knees.

"No," he replied honestly.

She grunted at that, and began to inflame him even further by pressing
her nose into the nest of hair around the root of his cock. He smelled
good, like chlorine and detergent and the sea. Good. The hair tickled
her upper lip as she worked her way around his balls, prodding and
then circling them with her tongue. She kneaded his quadriceps as she
laved him, her hands as hungry to feel him as her mouth was to taste
him. And her heart...her heart wanted to devour him.

The shaft of his cock brushed against her cheekbone; she cupped it
between her palm and cheek and sighed contentedly as she nuzzled
him. Mulder's fingers lightly combed through her hair, guiding it
back from her eyes and pressing his cool fingers to her flushed brow.
Then, when he was still thinking about how soft her cheek was, he
found himself in the warm depth of her mouth, her ample lips closing
around him, her tongue pressing upward against him. Then her
tongue became a probe, firm and pointed, that sought out the most
sensitive spots along the way, up and down and around, making his
hip flexors turn to string cheese. His hands flattened against the wall,
and he gritted his teeth with the exquisite tension she was creating
within him. It certainly wasn't painful, what she was doing to
him....but it was a challenge, almost. Her tongue was telling him,
through his dumb cock, that at that moment pleasing him mattered
above everything else in the world. There was nothing behind and
nothing in front, only *there*. The two of them, in the little hallway,
humid and shivery, prudent and intelligent yet nearly blind with
devotion, overwrought with a grief that was giving way like an old,
poorly engineered dam to the flood of renewed love.

She stroked his ass, her nails lightly tickling his tender skin, and
pushed him, encouraging him to thrust to his satisfaction. Her throat
accommodated him well. Her lips tingled with the friction of in and
out. Her brown eyelashes fluttered against her cheek as she
swallowed a breath around him and saw, like a curtain descending
over her vision, a white expanse that flickered with arabesques of blue
and green, then pink, then red...the deep crimson red of her own
blood, splattered across Krychek's narrow chest...before she opened
his eyes and looked up at Mulder. She saw in his contorted face the
very emotions that smoked through her own heart at that moment:
regret, lust, anger, and big, scary love.

He managed a smile for her through the intense storm in his nervous
system. Concerned for her comfort, he limited himself to a few small,
sharp thrusts until the pressure of her hands and the movement of her
head assured him that she meant it. He pushed, felt her swallow, and
pushed again. His eyes opened and rolled down, just long enough to
see the flash of her orange hair against his papery white thighs, his
cock dark like wine in the midst of her pale face. He wanted her hand;
he grabbed her forearm, too tightly, and allowed his head to roll back
hard against the wall.

He lost his hold on her arm. His hands slapped against the wall, and
his hips glanced against the sheet rock on the downstroke of each of
his penultimate thrusts. Finally, his head cracked against the wall, and
he cried out in a voice nearly broken by the dry panting that had kept
him oxygenated for the quarter-of-an-hour lifetime he had passed in
the hallway.

"Now now now now now, Dana, now please..."

The two portraits spun off the wall, landing with separate, gratifying
thuds on the thick carpet. Mulder's knees, never his strong spot,
bowed out and he began to slide down the wall. Scully released him
just in time to avoid a major catastrophe, and guided him down to the
floor, where he sat heavily, legs sprawled on either side of her, head
drooping against her shoulder.

He gasped and sobbed and laughed brokenly as he tried to regain his
focus. It wasn't easy; stripes continued to unfurl across his line of
vision, reminiscent of all the snapping flags they had seen last
weekend at the veterans' rally on the Mall. He put a hand between
their faces and rubbed his eye; he had thought an eyelash had come
loose and was tormenting him, and then he realized that he was crying.

"Sc-Sculleee," he said, lifting his head from her shoulder.

She pushed his hair back from his glistening forehead, then wiped the
tears from his cheek with soft fingertips. But it was the smile that did
it. He felt all the splintered grief, frustration, pent-up lust, and
seemingly unrequited love spinning down into a dense mass of energy
in the place where his heart used to hurt.

"Oh, Mulder..."

"Fox?" he croaked.

"Fox...I love you. You're -- you're so beautiful, you know." It was
an uncharacteristically halting admission from Dana Scully. She
lurched forward and kissed him to reiterate. "You make me feel
miracles."

He threw his arms around her and pulled her clumsily to his chest,
holding her there in a pose from a classic movie poster -- classic for a
pantless movie, he naked ass reminded him -- while he returned her
kisses.

"Am I awake?" he mumbled against her cheek.

"Yeah. You're awake," she said, combing his hair with her fingers.
"How are you?"

He grinned lewdly.

"You tell me, Dr. Scully. How am I?"

"Delicious," she replied with an equally wicked smile.

He kissed her again, this time sweeping her mouth with his tongue,
hoping to catch a taste of himself. He was not disappointed. Salty
and slightly bitter, he knew it when he found it. Not so different from
the taste of Dana...which, he had determined all those weeks ago, was
nothing like the taste of oysters.

"I think I need to eat something," she said, struggling to her feet.

Mulder snickered at that, but stopped when he realized that he needed
her help if he ever hoped to walked again. He extended his arm, and
she caught his hand, lifting him with one strong pull. He came up tall
and dizzy next to her. The hallway seemed to tilt around them.

"Ahhh....I'll be there in a minute, sweetheart. Just let me get my brain
back...."

Mulder emerged from Scully's bathroom, having showered once again
and this time quite certain that he had put on deodorant, and wandered
naked down the infamous hallway to the living room. There he found
his boxers in a wad on the floor, and shook them out with a flourish
and a snap. He was stepping into them when he heard Dana's voice
coming from the kitchen.

He slipped into the dining room and resumed his seat at the table,
ostensibly waiting for his chicken. Here he could hear every word of
her conversation.

"I'm fine, Mom. Really. Better than fine, as a matter of fact."

Mulder grinned down at his empty white plate. This had to be one of
the best hours of his life.

Scully clattered some kitchen things as she talked.

"We should get together, Mom. You and me and Mulder. I'll
cook...he likes my cooking. Yeah. Well, thanks, Mom. I learned
from you, you know. Listen...Uh-huh. Mom? I have something to
tell you, and then I have to go."

Mulder rested his chin on the heel of his hand and sighed happily.
Ask, and apparently ye shall receive.

"Mom...you know how you're always wanting me to find a nice man
and settle down? Right. Well, I found someone. I love him, Mom,
and he loves me. A lot." Dana stopped clattering her pots and listened
for a moment. Then she laughed, a light, jubilant sound that made
Mulder's brows soar above his closed eyes. "No, Mom, it's not Nick
Barrett. Sorry."

Mulder could almost hear Margaret Scully's disappointment. He
decided that the time had come for him to make his presence known,
and headed into the kitchen.

When he appeared in the kitchen doorway, she straightened from her
slouch against the counter and smiled at him. Her hair was a tumble of
copper straw, and her lips -- those omnipotent lips -- were slightly
swollen and flushed to a dark mauve. She had shed her wool trousers
and stood, poking the chicken from time to time, wearing only black
lace panties and the black-and-peach bra. When she took the lid from
a low saucepan and showed him two dozen spears of blanched
asparagus, Mulder thought for a moment that he had entered a dream
of culinary pornography. He grabbed one of the spears and nibbled
on it as she continued to parry with Margaret.

"Listen, Mom. It's Mulder, all right? Fox Mulder...Yes. My crazy
partner, the one with the baggy suits..." She gave him an apologetic
look, but quickly realized that nothing could burst Mulder's bubble at
this point. "...Since January. That's precisely why I left Stuart,
Mom. I realized that I loved Mulder. He's -- he's turned out to be
wonderful...of course he's not Catholic, but who cares?...I know, I
know. Let me rephrase that: *I* don't care. I'm thirty-three years
old, Mom. I know what I'm doing...Mom. Mom. Listen to me. I
*love* him....That's right."

Mulder dropped his asparagus and reached for her. At some point, the
conversation with Margaret ended and the phone disappeared. He was
not concerned by these details, however.

"Thank you, Scully," he muttered into her hair.

"For what? You haven't even tasted it yet."

She was laughing softly, well aware of what he meant but needing to
diffuse to intensity of the moment. Resting her head against his chest,
she stroked his back with the reassuring touch that she had given him
many times over the years; now, however, they were both nearly
naked, and finally, neither was in pain.

"You have to be careful not to always give me what I want," he said
after a moment.

"There's little risk of that, Mulder."

End The Cry of the Truth 19b/22


The Cry of the Truth, 20/22
Tea and Antipathy
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: PG (Angst)
Category: S,A,R (Mulder/Scully)
Summary: Margaret Scully has her own opinions about her daughter's
recovery.

See part 01 for the disclaimer.

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.

Author's Note: For those of you who always think of Mrs. Scully as
the perfect mother...well, think again. It's incredibly difficult for me
to write a mother who is NOT Southern, so please bear with me as I
struggle to keep from turning Maggie into my own mom.

Margaret Scully turned and looked over her shoulder, hoping to catch
a glimpse of the contours of her backside in the three-way mirror. A
lock of dark hair slipped forward over one blue eye; she blew it away
impatiently. The slate-blue silk sheath dress skimmed over her hips
with enough evasion to preserve her modesty, but also with the slight
caress necessary to illuminate the fact that she was in remarkable shape
for a fifty-eight-year-old grandmother. She liked knowing that she
could go without a jacket and have no fear of what the dress revealed.
With the strand of pearls Bill had brought her from Hong Kong and
the sapphire-and-diamond earrings Dana had given her for her last
birthday, the dress would take on the modern matronly dignity that
Margaret fancied as her signature style.

Dana watched impassively from her perch on a velvet settee in the
corner of the spacious fitting room. She sipped from a diminutive cup
of cappuccino and tried to hide her distraction from Margaret.
Normally she would've invented some excuse to avoid dallying with
her mother in such a typically female pastime as shopping, but Mulder
had encouraged her to accept the invitation. So Dana had agreed to
meet Margaret at Vetements in Bethesda at mid-afternoon. Margaret
claimed she needed Dana's help her find something new to wear to her
fortieth high school reunion. Margaret was perfectly capable of
choosing her clothes without Dana; what she really wanted was the
truth about her daughter's new love affair.

"You like this one, then?" Margaret asked, continuing the charade as
she turned from the mirror to face her daughter.

"It's lovely, Mom. I may borrow it sometime," Dana replied.

"It'd swallow you, Dana, but thanks for saying so. All right, then, I'll
get the dress and the jacket and then we'll go for tea." Margaret sat on
the edge of the settee so that Dana could unzip the dress. Beneath the
blue silk, her back was as freckled and pale as her red-haired child's.
"Maybe I'll wear it when you let me take you and Fox to dinner."

"It'll be out of fashion by then," Dana muttered as the zipper reached
the bottom of its track.

"We'll see about that," said the mother, returning to the curtained-off
area of the fitting room.

Dana placed the cup of cappuccino on an overly dainty three-legged
table. She hated cappuccino. She hated shopping. She especially
hated this over-priced little shop where the sales staff looked askance
at her Nordstrom pantsuit and the lug-soled J. Crew boots that she had
worn to wade through the mud of the Potomac at a pre-dawn murder
scene. And her mother's sly meddling made her want a cigarette.

Before the call to the crime scene came, she had been sleeping
contentedly in the shelter of Mulder's embrace, dreaming not of her
abduction but of sailing the Chesapeake Bay with her love. They
spent most nights together in her bed, bodies curled together like
mated wolves. Mulder continued to wear his pajamas like a badge of
at least partial celibacy, allowing Scully to introduce any sexual contact
between the two of them. In the week since Mulder had told her the
truth about his distaste for oysters, she had revealed a few of her own
truths to him in the dark hours they spent whispering to each other in
her bed. And finally, last night, she had taken off the protective
mantle of her long, white nightgown and allowed him to wander her
body with his lips and hands. The relief he had hoped to bring her had
not come in the form he had been striving for. At the moment when
they had both expected her orgasm to dawn, she had instead broken
into gasping sobs and wept like a child in his arms.

Fidgeting on the stiff chaise, Dana tried to ease the ache in her lower
back. She had pushed the corpse out of the mud this morning without
waiting for the techs to help, and her back had been complaining ever
since. The body turned out to be the victim of a conventional robbery
and homicide. Mulder and Scully had been called in because of the
strange tattoos on the body, including several representations of
Reticulans. Scully snorted and walked away when she smelled the
stench of alcohol on the body. Mulder soon followed, and managed to
whisper a few tattoo jokes in her ear before the returned to the office.

"You're smiling," Margaret observed. She had emerged in her usual
trousers and silk blouse, and was shrugging into her pale blue
cashmere cardigan when Dana looked up at her. "You must be
thinking about Fox."

"Uh...I was. I was." Dana felt herself blushing. "Mom, I don't feel
all that comfortable talking about this yet. You're the first person,
besides the two of us, to know about it, and I --"

"I promise not to torment you too much, Dana. But you must allow
me a little maternal curiosity."

She draped an arm around her daughter's shoulders as they walked
through the cluttered, perfumed shop.

"You've lost weight, sweetheart. Doesn't Mulder let you eat?"

Dana moaned under her breath. This was not going to be the kind of
afternoon off that she looked forward to.

Over tea and scones at the Queen of Hearts, Dana answered Margaret's
questions.

"When did he finally tell you, darling?" Margaret stirred a cube of
sugar into her milky tea, her emerald-and-diamond ring winking in the
sunlight that filtered through the mullioned windows of the artificially
quaint little cafe. "I knew all along that he loved you, of course, but I
never thought he'd have the gumption to tell you."

"God, do they sell alcohol in this place?" Scully muttered.

Margaret pretended not to hear and put a tiny custard tart on Dana's
plate.

"Eat up, baby. You're far too thin. Are you getting enough red
meat?"

"I hardly ever eat red meat, Mom. Cancer, heart disease,
hypercholesterolemia..."

Dana gave up on her diatribe. Given her chosen profession, it would
be too easy for Margaret to point out the major holes in her argument.
She picked up the tart and took a bite out of it.

"I could see it all over his face, that day in the hospital when he came
to see you. Such love...I bet he never has that kind of warmth in his
face except when he looks at you." Margaret patted Dana's hand and
gave her a bright smile. "I'm so happy for you, Dana. That's the kind
of love I always hoped you'd find."

Dana swallowed the tart without tasting it. She saw the glimmer of
contentment in her mother's blue eyes, and was amazed to find she did
not feel the need to argue with her.  For once her mother was right.

"But what about Dad?" she said softly.

"What about him?" Margaret replied.

"He hated the idea of my working with Mulder. This would horrify
him."

Margaret took her half-moon spectacles from her pocket and slipped
them on just long enough to inspect the assortment of sweets and
savories on the tiered plates in the center of their table. She took a tiny
shaved-ham sandwich. Her glasses then disappeared once again.

"Your father could be entirely too narrow-minded at times," she said,
picking the olive-and-pimento garnish off the sandwich with her
French-manicured nails. "The way he treated Melissa is a good
example. I can only pray that they've resolved all that now. As for
your job...I think he might've come around, eventually. And if he
could've lived to see how happy Fox obviously makes you, darling,
well, then...that would've clinched it for him. He'd be talking of
cashing in bonds to pay for your wedding."

"Mulder does make me happy, Mom, but it's not always that easy,
you know. There's still a lot we disagree about. I doubt that will
change. I don't really *want* it to change."

Margaret leaned forward and gave Dana a sparkling, conspiratorial
smile.

"Of course you don't, baby! You must have something to argue about
in order to have the pleasure of making up! How do think I came to
cherish your father's absurd temper? The payoff was incredible, if
you know what I mean."

Dana covered her face with her hands, desperate to avoid the knowing
wink Margaret flashed at her. She shook her head like a child and
whimpered into her palms.

"I really don't want to know that much, Mom."

"You're thirty-three years old, Dana! Do you really persist in the
belief that Bill and I had sex exactly four times -- once for each child?
I'm a good Catholic, but not *that* good, for heaven's sake."
Margaret sat back in her chair and chuckled, a marvelous, full-throated
sound that made Dana peer through her fingers just for the pleasure of
seeing her mother's pretty face light up with joy. "Your father
certainly wasn't perfect. He could be bull-headed to the point of being
dim at times. You may not realize this, honey, but he wasn't exactly
handsome, either. Not even when he was young and had hair."

"Oh, Mom," Dana moaned.

"My point is that in *spite* of his flaws, for me he had a certain
magical quality that I still can't really describe. And I think -- I hope --
I was like that for him." Margaret paused to nibble on her sandwich
and take a sip of tea. She dabbed daintily at the corners of her mouth
with a lacy napkin before continuing. "From my years of careful
observation, I can safely say that Fox has the same magic for you.
That's the most you can ask for, Dana. That's what makes it possible
to get through the bad times intact. Better than intact, really.
Stronger. More in love. How else could the two of you stayed
together as long as you already have?"

Dana held her cup in her palms and brought it slowly to her lips. She
took a long breath of the steam rising up from the tea, hoping that it
would somehow ease the pounding ache behind her brow. Her eyes
flickered shut for a moment, and she pictured Mulder as he had been
last night, grave and dark-eyed in his passion to please her.

"Dana, you're bleeding!"

"Wha--" Scully put down her cup in time to catch a fat red drop before
it landed on the pristine white table cloth. "Do you have any
Kleenex?"

Margaret struggled to keep her hands in her lap as Dana pressed the
tissue to her nose. The urge to attend to her child was almost
overwhelming; the fact that her child was a physician made absolutely
no difference to her maternal instincts.

"Did you get hit in the head, honey?" she asked in a deceptively calm
voice.

"No -- well, not lately, at least. A couple of weeks ago..." Dana took
the tissue away from her nose and found that the bleeding had already
stopped. She sniffed carefully and took a sip of tea. "I think I've
developed some allergic rhinitis. Nothing to worry about. I just need
some antihistamines -- is my face a mess?"

Given that tiny opening to assuage her parental needs, Margaret took a
fresh tissue, dipped a corner of it in her water glass, and proceeded to
dab the thin streaks of blood away from the rim of Dana's nostril.

Dana sat compliantly, remembering how her tenderly mother had cared
for her after the abduction. After she had been discharged from the
hospital, when she was still too weak to undertake many of the
mundane tasks of daily life by herself, Margaret had bathed Dana for
the first time in nearly thirty years. She must've seen the scars then,
Dana mused as she dried the tip of her nose with yet another tissue.
And the nightmares...

"Mom, I...I know Melissa told you about..."

What the hell am I doing, Dana asked herself even as she felt her eyes
prickling with tears.

Margaret poured more tea in her cup and then focused on adding milk
and sugar. She was intent on not scaring Dana off of the subject.

Dana swallowed a lump in her throat and pressed on.

"Melissa told you about what happened to me when they took me,
didn't she?"

Her mother simply nodded. She had expected this ever since Dana
had told her about her affair with Stuart Novak.

"I guess I want to tell you that Mulder has been...Mulder is being very
supportive...he pushed me to talk to someone about it," Dana said, her
voice thready with emotion as she watched her mother struggle with
her own set of emotions. "And that's really helped me, Mom. A lot."

Margaret finally stared at her daughter. Perhaps her expectations were
not quite spot-on after all.

"Talk to -- you mean a shrink?"

"A psychologist," she corrected her.

"But what about Father McCue?" she asked, trying to temper her
indignance.

Dana's shoulders slumped. She bowed her head over her tea and
sighed.

"Well, for one thing, Mom, he's a man."

"He's not a man, he's a priest!"

Dana almost smiled at that. But instead she folded her napkin loosely
and placed it on the table, a signal that she was thinking of leaving.

"Look, it's hard enough for me to trust *anyone* with this, Mom. It's
a battle at times to even acknowledge that it happened. If --"

"But you trust Fox Mulder before you trust you own family?"
Margaret's voice had grown deeper and tighter. The tendons in her
slender neck stood taut and her eyes were watery with tears. "I don't
understand you, Dana. Even before he told you that he loved you --
and don't misunderstand me, I'm very happy for you -- you always
put him first. He and his belief in psychology or little green men or
whatever it is that he believes cannot give you what Father McCue can
give you."

Dana's mask slid into place. Her eyebrow arched inquisitively, and if
this gesture irritated Mulder at times, it almost always infuriated her
mother, who saw it as her daughter's expression of her intellectual
superiority over her superstitious mother.

"Absolution, Dana. Forgiveness. That's what will heal you of this
horrible sin."

"Sin? You make it sound like it's my fault I was raped, Mom," Dana
said with icy restraint.

"In my generation we were taught the female always shares some of
the responsibility for rape," Margaret said in a stage whisper.

Dana glared at her mother with a cold furor that she usually reserved
for Mulder.

"I was held against my will for three months. Drugged. Restrained.
Subjected to experimental procedures. And raped, repeatedly and
brutally, when I had no hope of defending myself." Dana hid her
shaking hands under the table. This was more difficult that refusing to
answer the Congressional committee's accusations. "What exactly is
my share of responsibility for that?"

Margaret squeezed the bridge of her nose between her thumb and
forefinger and sighed irritably.

"Sometimes I think you purposely twist my words, Dana."

Dana bit her lip to keep herself from replying. It was as if she were in
high school again, dying for approval from her mother even as she
rebelled against her. But now the stakes were much, much higher.

"That's not what I meant, Dana. Not at all. You know as well as I do
that you need to go to confession. To begin to heal, to *really* heal,
you need absolution. You need forgiveness." Margaret's voice
faltered and then returned. "Fox -- Fox can't give you those things,
Dana."

Dana found herself fingering the cross she wore in a contemplative,
unconscious gesture that was her habit. Now her hand pulled away as
if stung by the heat of it.

She clasped her mother's hand and leaned over to kiss her cheek.

"Mulder has given me something --" Dana wanted to say that what he
had given her was more important than the absolution that Margaret
valued, but decided not to inflame the conflict further. "Indirectly,
he's helped me get to the point where I can forgive *myself* for what
happened, Mom. And that's really important to me. I feel so much
better than I have in years."

"I'm glad of that, at least," Margaret said, trying to smile.

"I'll try to see Father McCue when I get back," Dana said, squeezing
her mother's hand. "Maybe I'll call him for a game of tennis. See if
his game's improved any."

Margaret chuckled tearfully. She wiped the traces of tears from under
her eyes -- using only her fingertips so as not to disturb her mascara --
and nodded.

"When you get back? Where are you going this time?"

"Actually, I need to leave --" Dana glanced down at her watch. "I
should've left half an hour ago. I'm taking the shuttle up to New York
to meet Mulder. He got a call from one of his contacts this
morning...we're going to follow that up and hopefully go out to
Greenwich to see his mother when we're done."

They said their good-byes and planned to meet again as soon as
Dana's schedule permitted it. Margaret did not reopen the subject of
Dana's seeing Father McCue. As she watched her daughter walk
away, she knew that the chances of Dana doing anything more than
playing tennis with the priest were slim at best. So Margaret once
again committed herself to praying for intervention. Her greatest hope
was that someday soon Dana would encounter something -- anything -
- that would make her believe once again.

End The Cry of the Truth 20/22




The Cry of the Truth, 21/22
A Genius for Survival

Author's Note: Please forgive the artistic license taken with the small
details of the geography of Battery Park and nautical terminology.
Thanks to everyone who has written and nudged me to post the next
chapter. Everyone had great suggestions!


Scully bought an overpriced Snapple from the souvlaki cart in Battery
Park and paid an extra quarter for a straw. She had eaten only a few
bites with Margaret at the twee tea room in Bethesda, and although she
was hungry, she was afraid to eat after the turbulent flight that had just
brought her from Washington National to LaGuardia. Six years of
nearly perpetual travel had done nothing to improve her tolerance for
flying.

She strolled along the embankment, gazing out at the magnificent
statue in the harbor and sipping her tea. Cargo ships passed on their
way out to sea, accompanied by persistent tug boats. A couple of
supply ships from the naval base at Sandy Hook glided across the
horizon. Brazen gulls swooped across Dana's path, scavenging bits
of trash left by the day's multitude of tourists.

Normally the sight of so many ships would've spurred memories of
her father, but today Dana was preoccupied by more recent matters.
She thought of Mulder, his coral-mauve lower lip moist from her
kisses, his eyes dark and glimmering, shoulders smooth and tan under
her small hands. Something fluttered in her lower abdomen at the
memory. And then she remembered her conversation with Margaret,
and the smile faded.

Forgiveness. Absolution. She understood the concepts behind the
words, certainly. And she knew her mother was not one to speak in
metaphors.  But Dana found it hard to believe that Margaret really
blamed her for being raped. Margaret had said "sometimes I think you
purposely twist my words." Dana just wasn't sure how to straighten
them out again.

Words from a song she had once known floated back to her: "Pray,
and your sins are hooked upon the sky." Her prayers were rare and
troubled now. At times Dana had felt that every breath she took was
like a prayer for one more, and then another, and then another, until all
the breaths added up to one more day that she had survived in a
dangerous job in a lonely life.  But then Stuart helped her see that all
the days could be linked together to form something more. And with
Mulder, she had very nearly had that mysterious something, until she
remembered that she did not deserve it.

Her father would have snorted to disgust if he had known that his
Starbuck had even for one moment entertained any feelings of
unworthiness. Dana was glad, at least in part, that he was dead and
did not have to know what she had become over the course of the four
years since her abduction. Her attempts to suppress all the misery that
the rapes spawned in her had been an emulation of Ahab's famous stiff
upper lip. It was only recently that Dana had admitted to herself that
while his stoicism might've helped him weather the rough seas of his
life, it had nearly destroyed what little peace she had found for herself.

She envied her parents their seemingly air-tight faith in the ancient
creeds they had lived by. As she drew the last drops of tea through the
straw with a satisfyingly noisy slurp, it occurred to Dana that at the
ripe old age of thirty-three she had, at last, begun to rely on her own
code. It was the code of self-reliance, heavily revised in the past
month or so thanks to the influence of Mulder and Delia Forrest and
Dr. Burnett and Dr. Locke and even poor Ed Jerse.

Dana knew that her mother was right about one thing, at least. She
needed absolution, all right. She needed it from herself, first and
foremost. She needed, once and for all, to accept that there had been
nothing within the realm of her possibility that she could have done to
stop Alex Krychek from raping her repeatedly. As for
forgiveness...well, forgiveness is something for me to bestow freely,
Dana told herself. And at the moment, that would be expecting too
much.

The wind was whipping in off the river, tossing her hair madly,
fluttering the hem of her jacket, and plastering her trousers to her legs
as she walked. She pitched her bottle in a recycling bin and headed
back toward the ferry dock.

Silhouetted against the vivid persimmon and pink sunset, Mulder's
dark trenchcoat billowed out from his body like a pair of black wings.
He, too, had been observing the marine traffic in the harbor. He
turned slowly to face her and gave her a smile that made her belly
flutter again in that delicious rhythm that she had come to associate
with him.

"I was watching you, you know," he said, shoving his hands in his
coat pockets to keep himself from embracing her.

"Oh? See anything you like?"

She stood about a foot from him, arms crossed, squinting into the
setting sun.

Mulder nodded enthusiastically and leaned across the space to speak in
her ear.

"Yeah." His voice was low and raspy. "Oh, yeah."

Dana forced herself to redirect her thoughts. She stepped back a
couple of inches before addressing the matter that had brought them to
New York.

"What did your contact have to say?" she asked, grabbing a chunk of
hair that the wind was flipping across her forehead.

Mulder dipped his head slightly toward his shoulder, then peered
down at his black wingtips and her black boots. He felt guilty for
even speaking to Marita on the phone, although Scully had told him in
no uncertain terms that she did not expect him to refuse Marita's offers
of information just because they had once had a brief, and purely
sexual, affair.

"She had a message to convey," he said.

"From?"

The ferry that transported tourists from the park to the Statue of
Liberty and then to Ellis Island and back to the park at every hour was
scudding into place at the dock. It groaned and clanked and belched
diesel fumes before coming to a stop and discharging a load of tourists
down the gangplank. Roughly a third of them were wearing green
foam Statue of Liberty crowns on their heads. Mulder shook his head
at the sight.

"Now that's a fashion faux pas if ever I saw one," he declared.

Scully set her mouth in as grim a line as she could manage.

"Mulder? Who's the message from?"

A dreadheaded busker, in his last performance of the day, played a
passable version of "Under the Boardwalk" on a battered white cello
for the departing crowd. Mulder squinted at him, wondering how he
could sit on that spindly camp stool all day. Then his eyes wandered
from the mellow old brick roundhouse that had been an armory to a
pushcart pretzel vendor, and then to the long green benches that
overlooked the river. The plane trees that would shade the
embankment come summer were just beginning to put forth tender
new leaves. Their graceful silver-barked branches shuddered in the
wind and created a crisp sussuration that was rarely heard in the park,
superseded by the more intense noises of the city and the harbor that
bordered the park on either side.

Finally, Mulder allowed Dana to see the deep furrows in his forehead,
his brows drawn together in consternation, and a slight downturn of
his broad mouth. It was the bad news look.

He took a breath and released it through lips pursed in resignation to
the words he had to utter.

"It's Krychek. He wants to meet with us, on the last ferry of the day.
It's leaving in about a minute."

It came like a slap in the face, a stinging, resounding call to meet the
truth head-on.

"He wants to meet us?" she said calmly. "What about?"

"He told Marita that he has some information about the black cancer
that we encountered in Tunguska," Mulder said in a voice that
conveyed neither belief nor doubt. "Apparently he latched onto Marita
after she got us those diplomatic visas."

"How do you know he's not baiting a trap?" she asked, checking the
tab on her holster.

Mulder shrugged.

"Maybe we should expect the worst from him. But to go to all this
trouble...if he wanted us dead, there are easier ways, y'know."

Scully watched the seaman who was manning the gangplank drop the
butt of his cigarette to the surface of the embankment and grind it out
under the toe of his boot.

"Looks like we'd better go," she said.

As they boarded the ferry, Scully noted that it was kept in perfect
shipshape. The walls and decks were freshly painted, lines coiled
precisely, hardware polished until it shone. The lifeboats were
carefully rigged and fire extinguishers, mounted every ten feet or so,
bore tags indicating their recent inspection. In the enclosed cabins,
orange life vests decorated the walls like chairs in a Shaker house.

Mulder led her to the topmost cabin, a room walled on all sides by
windows and furnished with oak benches bolted to the deck in widely-
spaced rows. He followed Scully in and closed the glass door behind
them.

The ferry lurched into motion, and Mulder stumbled against her. She
caught him with a strong grip that always surprised him, no matter
how many times he felt it. For a brief moment he reflected on what it
was like to fall asleep in her arms, and to feel them wrapped around
his hips, her head resting against his pelvis, her hair soft against his
skin.

And as soon as he was able to drag his eyes away from the fascinating
auburn universe that was the crown of her head, Mulder saw the pale,
angular face of Alex Krychek, and everything went cold inside him.

"A little waltz?" Krychek cooed, referring to the awkward partial
embrace in which Scully had steadied Mulder. He allowed the door to
slam shut behind him as he ambled into the cabin. "I have to say that
you two do make a sweet couple. Maybe I could interest you in a
threesome? Hmm?"

Mulder lunged, grabbed him by the collar of his battered leather jacket,
and hissed nearly unintelligible curses at him. Krychek looked at him
as if he had lost his mind.

"Scully, get him off me, for God's sake," he cried indignantly,
pushing Mulder away with an ease that surprised both men.

Scully closed a hand over Mulder's elbow, as much to reassure herself
as to still his assault.

Krychek recovered his relaxed smile quickly. In an impressive display
of dexterity, he used his prosthetic hand to reach into the pocket of his
coat, bring out a pack of Gitanes, and light up without faltering once.
Scully read his performance as a message to them that he was as
dangerous as ever, prosthesis or not.

"What do you want, Krychek?" she asked coolly.

"Oh, let's have a little sit-down and talk about it," he said, stretching
his legs out on one of the benches, his back resting against the
windows that, at least for the moment, framed a perfect view of the
lower Manhattan skyline.

Mulder sat on the bench behind his, Scully on the bench in front.
Krychek smiled sweetly at each of them.

"Dana, you've lost weight," he said, nodding in her direction. "And
that outfit -- very butch. I bet Fox here likes that on you, hmm? Am I
right, Fox?"

Krychek puckered his lips and blew a puff of smoke Mulder's way.

Scully cast a stern glance at her partner, commanding him to control
his temper. The answering flash of Mulder's eyes promised that he
would try, if only for her sake.

"You wanted to talk to us?" she said evenly.

"Been a while, hasn't it. I wanted to show you my new arm. It's the
latest and greatest in peg technology. Cool, huh."

To demonstrate, he again brought the cigarette to his lips with the
prosthetic hand. The synthetic skin was a little too even in pigment to
be completely believable. A smattering of fine dark fibers that
simulated hair and smooth, tan nail beds without nails made it almost a
parody of a natural human hand.

"You know, Mulder, you're lucky you got away with both your arms,
you little stinker," he continued in a eerily jovial tone. "You always
did have more than your share of dumb luck, though."

Krychek exhaled two perfect jets of smoke through his nostrils, and
then cut a cool glance toward Scully.

"Not like Scully here," he added. "She's had a lot of shit happen to
her."

Scully was sickened by the same general sense of dread she had felt
every time she had seen Krychek since her abduction. Her head swam
with a disorderly flood of feelings and memories punctuated by the
usual commands: watch, concentrate, analyze, prepare, plan, protect,
act. Above all, survive.

The cabin door clattered open and a family of tourists straggled into the
cabin. Twin girls, their blonde curls in pigtails, sat next to Mulder
while their parents and younger brother took a bench across the aisle.

"Marla, Darla, leave that man alone!" commanded their mother.

The girls studied Mulder's glowering face for a moment, then
obediently went to sit with the rest of the family.

Scully rose and jerked her head in the direction of the door. The two
men followed her out onto the deck and around the corner to the
portside ladder. With deceptive leisure, Scully rested an arm on the
railing and squinted at the statue looming on the horizon.

"Smaller than I expected," she muttered.

"Yeah," Krychek said with a smirk. "Liberty's not all it's cracked up
to be."

Mulder unholstered his weapon, but held it within the folds of his coat
where Krychek could see it but the family on the other side of the
cabin windows could not.

"Spit it out, ratfuck," Mulder said. "We've got better things to do than
pass the time of day with your ass."

Krychek's brows twitched. A ghost of a smile flitted across his
handsome face.

"In your dreams, Mulder," he murmured, closing his lips around the
cigarette.

"That's it!"

Mulder slammed him face-first against the railing and held him there
with one hand on his collar and the other pressing the barrel of his gun
into his spine.

"I'm sick of the sight of your stupid face --"

"Mulder --" Scully interjected.

"You deserve to drown like the rat that you are, you --"

"Fuck you," Krychek grunted as he pushed off from the railing and
hurled himself at Mulder.

The men scrambled in a blur of black-coated aggression. Scully had
drawn her weapon and was shouting for Krychek to freeze until she
realized that it was at least as essential that she stop Mulder.

"Goddammit, Mulder, don't kick his fucking *head* in!" she cried.

As she watched, they toppled to the deck and wrestled and writhed
together until Mulder was able to kick Krychek away. Krychek slid
on the seat of his jeans, arm and legs flailing for purchase, but to no
avail -- he bounced off the taut canvas panel beneath the rail and
cracked his head on one of the ubiquitous fire extinguishers.

Mulder was on his feet in an instant, and nearly trampled Scully in an
effort to get to Krychek.

"Mulder, don't make me shoot you again," she bellowed.

Panting like an angry dog, Mulder glanced at the weapon in her hands
and then at the expression in her face. Her cheeks were pink from the
wind and her eyes glinted with righteous anger. He recognized in her
the adrenaline rush that came to both of them at times like this, but
there was definitely something else mixed with it.

He nodded once, and straightened his coat on his shoulders.

"Get up," he said to Krychek.

Krychek grasped the railing with his prosthetic hand and pulled
himself to his feet. He crouched, wheezing and glaring at them.

"We're listening, Krychek," Scully said flatly.

Krychek took another gasping breath, rose to his full height, and just
as he appeared to be on the verge of speech, drew back his non-
prosthetic fist and struck Mulder squarely in the gut, sending him head
over heels down the ladder.

Scully barely overmastered the instantaneous urge to clatter down the
ladder after Mulder and examine him for injuries. Instead, she relied
on her professional instincts, which told her to shove the barrel of the
Sig into Krychek's ribs and force him to lean over the railing, arms
spread and hands gripping the metal edge. Krychek watched her over
his shoulder as she craned her neck to try to get of glimpse of Mulder.

"Mulder? You okay?" she called, widening her stance as the ferry
lurched and dipped.

"Yeah." His voice was thin with pain. "You?"

"We're fine," she replied, scowling at Krychek.

He gave a nervous little smile, and just then the ferry shuddered and
dipped, causing him to cling desperately to the railing.

Scully moved from behind him to his side with no difficulty, thanks to
a childhood spent by the sea. She continued to level the Sig at him
while struggling to ignore, for the moment, the ugly memories that his
cool gaze stirred in her.

"You know something about the black cancer?" she asked. "Does
Mulder have it?"

Krychek managed another elegantly brittle smile.

"I doubt it," he said with a shrug. "But you might."

Scully's eyes narrowed against the wind, which had grown knife-like
in its intensity as the sun sank low into the river behind her. Her
russet hair fluttered like a banner in the gust.

"What makes you say that?"

"The other women," Krychek said, raising his voice so that he could
be heard over the wind and the whir of the diesel engines.

For a moment, Scully almost imagined that she saw concern, or
perhaps regret, in his face. But then she told herself that he was
incapable of it, and adjusted her grip on her weapon.

"Don't waste my time," she said, her throat burning with an acrid,
amorphous sensation that swelled up from her chest like a bad case of
indigestion.

"You may not have any time to waste, Scully," he said. "Nearly all
the other women who were there with you have died of cancer. I think
they may've given it to you too."

Her brows pulled together, forming little creases in the center of her
forehead. Coming from him, these words were so absurd that they
almost pleased her. She needed something nebulous to shred with the
teeth of her analytical mind, and here it was.

"Even if it were true, why would you warn me, Krychek?"

"Why do you think, Scully?" he retorted, his eyes shimmering with a
chill that seemed to be directed inwardly, rather than toward her.

Below, Mulder had managed to limp back to the foot of the stairs.
Nothing was broken, although he had a rude lump on the back of his
head and a tear in the back of his coat. His left ankle had been twisted
in the fall, and now protested when he tried to put his weight on it.
The ache of various blows to his back and upper arms acquired on the
way down the ladder sang in the background of his brain. But the
loudest voice in his head was the one that told him that the time had
come for him to redeem himself as Scully's avenger.

As he was about to drag himself back to the deck above, Mulder
looked up the ladder and saw Scully's black boots and the fluttering
legs of her trousers positioned opposite Krychek's boots and jeans.
Mulder climbed a couple of steps and contorted his long body so that
he could get a look at Krychek's face, just beyond Scully's right arm.
The wind carried their words away, but Krychek's pained expression
and agitated gesturing told Mulder that Scully was giving him an
earful.

The river tossed the ferry hard to the stern, and Mulder heard the
nervous squeals of the little girls in the cabin above. A crewman in a
green Department of the Interior windbreaker came skidding around
the corner and was ready to sprint up the ladder until he encountered
Mulder, who was again on his ass, this time knocked over by the force
of the weather.

Mulder flashed his badge and asked the crewman to ascend the
sternside ladder and escort the family to the lower deck, beyond the
range of stray fire. The crewman studied Mulder's badge for what
seemed an eternity, until Mulder sighed irritably, rolled his eyes, and
asked him again.

Muttering under his breath, the crewman headed toward the other
ladder, leaving Mulder to pull himself into a low crouch in which he
continued his slow journey toward Scully and Krychek.

"....I should kill you for what you did to me," Scully was saying.
"For what you did to Mulder."

"You've remembered."

"I always remembered your part in it," she said. "Tell me the rest.
What did the doctors do to me? What were those tests?"

Krychek shook his head, almost mournfully.

"I honestly don't know."

"Bullshit!" She gripped the gun with both hands now, her right arm
having grown weary. "Tell me the truth, Krychek. That's all I want.
You tell me the truth and you walk off this ferry at Ellis Island, a free
man."

He smiled and exhaled a little snort of laughter.

"But how could we possibly trust each other to that bargain, Scully?
What's to stop me from lying to you, or keep you from shooting me in
the back?"

Scully winced at the pain behind her eyes. Questions burned outward
from her brain, and seemed to press on her face from within. Would it
stop hurting if I squeezed the trigger, ever so gently, and if, in a split
second, I watched him fall hard to the deck, his left ventricle punctured
by a perfectly placed entrance wound, his blood pouring crimson and
steamy at my feet?

Krychek was waiting for an answer to his question.

"I can only speak for myself," she said after an interminable ten
seconds' consideration. "I will not shoot you."

Krychek's brow knit in confusion.

"Why not?"

The corner of her mouth twitched infinitesimally. She lowered her
weapon.

"Because I'm Scully," she said.

In a swirling conjunction of currents on the windward side of the
island, the ferry slammed into a wave the size of a small house. The
impact knocked Scully face down on the deck. When she looked up
again, Krychek was gone.

Mulder came up behind her as she struggled to her feet.

"Are you all right?" he asked, grabbing her by the waist.

"Where'd he go?"

"The edge," Mulder shouted into the wind.

Scully leaned over the metal rail and saw that Krychek had managed to
catch the lip of the deck with both hands. His legs swung out from his
body, buffeted by the wind and the motion of the ferry.

Mulder dug a pocket knife out of his coat pocket and quickly opened
the blade. He knelt on the deck and with two swift cuts opened the
three-foot-high canvas panel that constituted a safety barrier. Leaning
through the hole, he wrapped his hand around Krychek's artificial
forearm.

Scully dropped to her belly and reached between the deck and the lower
railing, straining to reach Krychek's shoulder.

"Can't hold on," Krychek hissed, the grip of his natural hand slipping
finger by finger.

"Take my hand," Mulder said, his feet kicking blindly against the deck as
he struggled to find anything that might serve as an anchor to his legs.
"Scully. Hold onto me."

She straddled his legs and wrapped her arms around his waist in a position
that might have been quite thrilling for Mulder had they been in a more
comfortable environment.

Krychek looked over his shoulder at the churning water and then back at
Mulder, who was now offering his other hand. His eyes widened when
Scully's face came into view from behind Mulder's head, and for a
moment, it seemed that they were a two-headed beast.

"You were right, Mulder," he panted.

As Mulder was about to pull him up, Krychek began tugging at the
ligatures that bound the prosthetic arm to his shoulder.

"Right about what?" Mulder bellowed, struggling to be heard over in the
wind and the waves.

"She's not afraid!"

Scully's eyes met Krychek's, and then she was distracted by the glint of
titanium hardware beneath the flap of his leather jacket.

"What the hell are you doing?" she screamed.

"I'd rather take my chances with the river than with the two of you," he
shouted back, tugging the last strap free. With a flick of two fastenings
over his shoulder, the arm was released, and he fell away from them, the
arm spinning after him.

Scully opened her mouth to call after him, but the wind took her voice
away. She saw him hit the water. He splashed and was subsumed,
and then his slick, dark head appeared among the white waves. He
floated away from them, never looking back, a creature with a genius
for survival.

End The Cry of the Truth, 21/22



The Cry of the Truth, 22a/22c
Here and Now

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.

*Author's Note: Here I am. At the end. Not sure what to say. First,
I should apologize for dragging this out so painfully. Thank you for
being patient with me, and for nudging me along. During the time it's
taken me to write this story, I've bought my first house, celebrated my
first wedding anniversary, started taking an experimental drug for my
multiple sclerosis, helped my husband publish three books and start a
new job, sprained my ankle, made a few new friends and lost an old
one as well...that's about it. I knew when I started it that it wouldn't
be an open-and-shut case like the plot of "The Actor." Nonetheless,
I'm a little surprised by how the plot meandered and then - I hope -
looped back around to meet my original purpose, which was 1) to
show the different ways that women might react to rape at various
stages of recovery, 2) to explain why Scully behaved so
uncharacteristically in "Never Again," 3) to give yall an MSR sequel to
"The Actor," and 4) to portray Mulder as an emotionally capable man.
I don't plan a sequel to this story. It feels complete to me. In the
words of David Bowie, "I'm happy, hope you're happy too."

   .....fashionable madmen raise
   Their pedantic boring cry:
   Every farthing of the cost.
   All the dreaded cards foretell.
   Shall be paid, but from this night
   Not a whisper, not a thought.
   Not a kiss nor look be lost.

                W.H. Auden, "Lullaby"


Delia tugged at the hem of her skirt and crossed her ankles in an
attempt to appear lady-like and demure. She had been sitting in
Arlington County court for six days, listening to police officers,
physicians, FBI agents, forensic scientists, and her fellow
archaeologists discuss her rape. A sullen jury seemed to half-dose
through the testimony, occasionally squinting at her as if she were a
gorilla in the National Zoo. The male jurors perked up a bit when
Special Agent Dana Scully took the stand as an expert witness in the
forensic applications of DNA analysis. She too wore a suit with a
skirt that came just to the top of her knees, but unlike Delia, she
seemed to be utterly at east within the confines of the garment.

The courtroom bore the smell of paper dust and layer upon layer of
disinfectant floor wax. Fluorescent lights buzzed and blinked
overhead, distracting Delia from the droning voice of the judge as he
prepared the court to hear the jury foreman read the verdict. Delia
swayed slightly on her feet when she and the rest of the court stood to
listen to the verdict. The foreman shuffled his index cards and fiddled
with his glasses as the judge recited her last set of instructions. Bored
and restless, Delia peeked at the handful of assembled spectators. She
did not acknowledge her parents, who glowered on the back row,
waiting to cart her off their rambling brick home in Middleburg and
sequester her with a private psychiatric nurse. Her smile appeared
only when she made eye contact with Fox Mulder, who twitched his
brow faintly as he touched his partner's elbow. Dana then followed
his gaze to Delia's face. Transfixed by the hypnotic, somber serenity
of Dana's expression, the cool blue eyes and long, soft lashes beneath
perfectly arched auburn brows, Delia felt as if she had left her body
and floated above the room. She could see Mulder's hand, warm and
supportive, hovering at the center of Dana's lower back. A few rows
up, in front of the courtroom, she saw her Richard Brunty, her former
student and the alleged rapist, dressed in orange, his wrists and ankles
shackled. His attorney, a tall blonde woman with a disconcerting lisp,
whispered instructions in his ear. On the other side of the aisle, the
assistant district attorney stood with his hands linked behind his back,
secretly twirling a pencil through his fingers like a majorette in a grim
parade.

And then Delia saw herself, tall and unusually dignified in the Ann
Taylor suit she'd bought eight years ago to wear to her graduate school
admission interview. She had braided her hair and tucked the tail
under the braid; her glasses enforced her scholarly air. She knew,
however, even as she listened to the foreman stumble over his words,
that her future in academia was over. She had already been branded a
hysteric by her advisor and fellow doctoral candidates. They could
summon the political correctness to tolerate a rape survivor among
their ranks, maybe even ignore the fact of her rape should Delia set the
example of denial. But a victim of spectral rape was not only a victim,
she was a madwoman who could not be trusted with the mantle of the
university. Delia had already decided not to embarrass them by going
back to her excavation site at Arlington or to her lab in Charlottesville.

The judge lowered her gavel and court was dismissed. Following a
rumble of footsteps and explosion of chatter, and the assistant DA
reached across the railing to shake her hand. Delia nodded numbly
and uttered some words of thanks. She sighed as she pivoted around
on her heels. Now came the hard part. "Just forget about me, Mama,
Daddy. I'm cleaning out my trust and setting out to find a new place
for myself in the world. I can't lie about what happened to me, and
you can't handle the truth. So...'bye."

Her parents were making their way up the aisle. Her mother dabbed at
her eyes with a linen handkerchief. Her father's mouth was pressed
into a line so stern that Delia marveled at how he could possibly have
ever kissed anyone, much less planted the seed to make a child.

Scully and Mulder reached Delia first. Delia immediately noticed that
Mulder was standing within inches of his partner, only a whisper
away from holding her hand and perhaps kissing her cheek. It
would've been sweet, she thought, if he hadn't looked so worried and
Dana hadn't looked so tired.

"Are you pleased?" Mulder asked, shaking Delia's hand.

Delia shrugged and began to pick the pins out of her hair. She
dropped them on the floor as she removed them, one by one, and the
unraveled the braid that had restrained her hair throughout the
proceedings.

"To tell you the truth, I feel sorry for Ricky. If he did rape me, well
then he did it through the Psychic Friends Network, or something,
because he sure as hell wasn't with me that night. I stand by my
story, as they say in 'Perry Mason.' You may be the only two people
in the world who believe me."

Dana licked her lips and gave Mulder a cautionary look.

"What are you going to do now?" Dana asked, her voice low but
nonetheless audible over the cacophony in the courtroom.

"Join the circus?" Delia smiled and reached for Dana's hand. "How
are you, Agent Scully? You look...well, you really look stunning.
Weary, but stunning."

Delia saw Mulder's hand flutter to Scully's lower back again. His
even hazel gaze remained fixed on Dana as she formulated an answer.

Dana mirrored Delia's shrug.

"I'm doing surprisingly well. My partner has been..." She glanced
up at Mulder. He was unconsciously flexing the muscle at the hinge
of his jaw as he blinked down at her. "...Very helpful. You...I..."

"You didn't talk about it, did you, until after you met me," Delia
stated. She nodded sympathetically. "That's what I thought. When
did it happen to you, Agent Scully?"

"About four years ago," Dana replied, after a moment's hesitation.

"I hope I have as much to show for myself in four years as you do
now," Delia said, flashing her hazel eyes toward Mulder's face.

"Delia, I..." Dana reached in the shallow besom pocket of her taupe
jacket and pulled out a glinting object about the size of a dime. "I
have something for you. I picked this up yesterday while we were in
New York on a case. It reminded me of you. I-I hope it brings you
luck, in whatever comes next."

Delia blushed under her freckles as she peered at the little gift in her
hand.

"Thanks. I --"

But Mulder and Scully were already gone, moving as one, there hands
now joined and swinging slightly with the cadence of their walk.

"Who were those people, Adelia?" Delia's father asked.

Her parents had taken Mulder and Scully's places before her.

Delia glanced up at them and then back down at the medallion that
Dana had given her. It was a small, golden octagon, bearing a
depiction of the Statue of Liberty and the word "libertas" in a crescent
beneath the figure.

"They're the FBI agents who helped me."

"And what is that, pray tell? Some sort of evidence?" her mother
asked, sniffing into her hanky.

Delia held the medallion between her thumb and forefinger so that the
scintillating lights of the courtroom reflected off the lady's crown. She
peered at it as she would any artifact unearthed after a long search.

"This is a badge of courage."

XXXXXXXXXX

"Do you think Delia's crazy?" Mulder asked when they were settled at
Scully's kitchen table. Dinner was over, and they were lingering over
their wine.

"I agree with the court-appointed psychiatrist, that she's suffering
from post-traumatic stress disorder. But crazy? Well, whatever that
means...No."

Mulder nodded without looking at her. He was staring the single
white camellia blossom that floated in a shallow crystal bowl in the
center of the table.

Dana watched him for a while. After their return from New York late
last night, he had gone home to his own apartment, leaving her to an
exhausted sleep punctuated by the aches and pains she had acquired
during their struggle to save Krychek from the river. They had met at
the office early in the morning before heading over to the courthouse in
Arlington. Mulder had been fearful of what effect testifying at
Brunty's trial might have on Scully. He'd even suggested that another
Bureau forensics specialist could take her place as an expert witness.
She silenced him with a stern look, but at least twice during the day in
court her small hand had reached furtively for his. It thrilled him to
know that she needed him.

"Mulder?" she said softly, reaching again for his hand.

"Mmm," he muttered, watching her fingers stroke his knuckles.

"What're you thinking about?"

He flipped his hand over and closed his fingers around hers, then
brought her hand to his lips. Her fingers were cool and smelled faintly
of the shallots and lemon zest she had used to make the vinaigrette for
their salad. His eyes closed for a moment as he kissed her fingertips.

"Do you feel free now, Scully?" he asked.

She frowned slightly, puzzling over the intensely concerned look in
his eyes.

"Of Krychek, you mean? Not completely, I suppose...but I feel much
less burdened by the memories than I did."

Mulder took a sip of water from the glass that had sat untouched
throughout dinner.

"What did he say to you, Scully, while I was lying on my ass at the
bottom of the stairs?"

"Some crap about the tests that were done on me. That they're in
some way similar to what was done to you in Tunguska. I think he
was playing another of his mind games, Mulder. Revenge for the
arm. You know how he is."

"More wine?" he asked, holding the bottle.

"No, I've had enough."

He corked the bottle and took another long drink of his water. It was
only then that Dana realized that he was nervous.

"Mulderrrr," she intoned. "What is it?"

"Fox," he murmured. "You're supposed to call me Fox."

"Only when...oh. Ohhh."

He gave her a sheepish smile as she rose from her chair and came
around the corner of the table to stand before him. She raked her
fingers through his hair and then cupped the base of his skull between
her hands. He looked up at her, eager but trying desperately not to
rush her.

"Talk," she said, smiling gently.

"I want to make love to you so badly that I think I may explode.
Boom. Just like that. I want to marry you and make you pregnant and
take care of you and our child and make sure that nothing, nothing like
this ever happens to you again." He gulped a breath and continued. "I
want to call you a million different embarrassing pet names and hold
you like a baby.  I want you to need me so badly, Dana, so -- so -- ah
shit. This is stuff I'm never going to have. It's not me. But I want it
anyway. I want it with you."

She cradled his head against her chest, stroking his hair and planting
kisses along the part.

"You've kept this bottled up inside for a while now, haven't you," she
observed.

He nodded against her, panting slightly with the relief of having
expelled the pressure within his heart.

"I can't lie and tell you what you want to hear," she said.

He looked up at her then, his eyes narrowed in anticipation of the pain
he was certain she was about to inflict.

Dana smiled and bent to kiss him. He remained frozen, trying to
gauge the situation.

"You can have some of what you want now, and some of it later.
Some of it maybe never. I don't know." She pressed her lips
together, summoning the determination to make him understand. "I do
need you. Every day I need you. Don't ever doubt that."

"But what do I do now, Dana?"

She stroked his neck with a feathery touch. Then, slowly and
deliberately, she put her lips next to his ear so that she could whisper,
ever so softly, the answer to his question.

"The dishes."

End The Cry of the Truth, 22a/22c


The Cry of the Truth, 22b/22c
Here and Now


Mulder poured detergent into the little cup in the dishwasher door,
snapped it shut, and flipped the dial. He was rewarded with a low
mechanical rumble.

"Man, I gotta get me one of those," he muttered to himself.

He turned out the lights on his way out of the kitchen.

"Hey Scully, I have a..."

The living room was dark, and she was gone. For a moment, he
wondered if he had just awakened from a dream in which he and
Scully became lovers, were divided by the harsh aftermath of her
abduction, and then were reunited by the force of their enduring love.

"Nahhh," he muttered, shaking his head.

Her laptop was still open on the coffee table. Sitting on the edge of the
couch, Mulder touched the space bar to awaken the computer. Dana
had left her addendum to their original report on Delia Forrest's rape
open for him to read.

"Comparative DNA analysis of the semen sample collected from
Richard Brunty revealed a 94.9% match with the semen obtained from
Delia Forrest's body following the rape. In light of this information,
Mr. Brunty was convicted. His sentence is pending.

While Miss Forrest, his former instructor and supervisor, does not
refute the hard evidence in the case, she continues to believe that her
rapist was somehow able to make himself invisible to her during the
crime. Following her examination by a court-appointed psychiatrist, a
diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, level 3.1.9, was made.
Miss Forrest's reaction to the outcome of the case was equivocal.

Against her parents' wishes, Miss Forrest has refused to be
hospitalized for treatment of her PTSD."

Mulder closed the document and shut down the computer. He wanted
no more mention of work tonight, or for the rest of the weekend.
Unless a Reticulan tapped him on the shoulder and offered him a beer,
Dana Scully was to be the center of his attention for the next forty-
eight hours.

He had to find her first, however.

He left the couch and set out into the darkness, stumbling over his
shoes where they lay on the hardwood near the front door. His feet
made the transition to the carpeted floor of the hallway, and he knew
he was on the right track. As he rounded the corner, he saw a soft
light flickering under the bedroom door, and immediately knew that it
was not paranormal in origin.

Tentatively he pushed the door, and stood his ground as it moved
away from him. Then, clasping the door frame, Mulder leaned into
the room and took a look around.

Immediately to his right, he saw that the tiger-maple four-posted bed
was dressed in its usual simple white cotton uniform; the down
comforter and top sheet had been furled back to reveal the smooth
bottom sheet and four firm pillows. The white draperies had been
closed snugly to hide the shuttered windows set in the wall on the far
side of the bed. A glare on the glass obscured the framed picture that
he knew, from previous visits to this room, was a museum print of
Manet's "Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe." On the wall opposite the bed
were the French doors that led to the tiny balcony above Rock Creek
Park. They, too, were closely draped, giving the room an air of
sequestration.

Wrapped in her persimmon silk robe, Dana stood before the plain
antique dresser, brushing her hair by the light of a dozen candles of
varying sizes gathered on a footed tray before the mirror.

"Hey," he said, finally taking a step toward her.

Their eyes met in the mirror. The smile on her face was seraphic,
nearly stunning Mulder into silence.

"Read the addendum," he managed to say. "Perfect, as always"

"Well, not always, Mulder," Dana said, turning and looping her arms
around his waist. "But I accept the compliment nonetheless."

Mulder kissed her forehead, lingering there to breathe in the scent of
her clove-and-tangerine shampoo.

"You already had a shower?"

"I *can* bathe myself, you know," she said gently. "And besides,
Mulder, it's hard for me to shave my legs with you in the shower."

"I could help," he said, a whine of protest creeping into his voice.

She snorted at that.

"I think I can handle it," she said. Her hands migrated from his waist
to his chest, and came to rest over each pectoral muscle. She looked
up at him with a sober, assessing gaze. "Seriously, Mulder, you're
almost paternal at times. Bathing me, brushing my hair, as if I were
your little girl."

Mulder shrugged. He felt as if the rug was about to be pulled out from
under him, and he had no idea what lay beneath.

"Just trying to find non-sexual ways of touching you," he replied.
"That was Dr. Locke's recommendation. I figured we were pushing
the envelope the other night, when I -- when we --"

"Mulder, in all the years I've known you, there's never been a touch
between us that *wasn't* sexual. And you know it," she said,
smoothing her fingers down the placket of his shirt. She pursed her
lips and peered at her hands for a moment, collecting her thoughts.
"You've done very well. You really have. You've let me set the
limits, and...well, that's been a very effective way of making me feel
safe again. But I'm better now, Mulder. Especially after seeing
Krychek again....That didn't come out exactly the way I expected, but
there was *some* resolution. Of a sort."

"Of a sort," Mulder echoed. "But it's only been a day, Scully. You
need time to absorb what happened before we try anything else."

"No. No, I don't think so." Dana plucked at one of his shirt buttons,
her mouth set in a determined line that ended with a faint smirk. "Last
night, Mulder, when we finally got home, I really wanted you to stay.
But we were both so tired, and thinking about Delia's hearing...."

He touched a finger to her chin so that she would look at him. Her
eyes were communicative, glittering and beautifully shaped without the
enhancement of even a trace of makeup. She smiled, showing her even
white teeth and just a peek of healthy pink gums.

"So what are you telling me, Dana?" he asked in a voice that was so
intimate, so low, that she wondered if he had suddenly been rendered
telepathic. Her sternum seemed to reverberate like a tuning fork in
response to it. She felt the faint vibrations all through her upper chest
and neck, over her breasts, and between her legs. It made her want to
grind her pelvis against him.

"Thank you for being so patient," she whispered, rising up on her toes
to kiss his chin. "But *my* patience as run out."

The hair on the back of his neck bristled as a jolt of arousal shot down
his spine. He closed his eyes and paused to commit the moment to
memory. In the momentary darkness, he found his senses alerted to
the spicy scent of the candles, the dry rasp of silk under his palms, and
the smooth shifting of her shoulder blades as she lifted her arms to
touch him. One small, strong hand slid over his shoulder and came to
rest on his collar; the other caressed his cheek, bringing a delightful
flutter to that spot within his neck, just under his ear, that stung like
mad whenever he sucked on sourballs as a kid. He grinned; where
some women might bring to mind cream puffs, Scully made him think
of sourballs.

When she kissed him, however, his grin faded and his sense memory
spit out the acrid candy in favor of her complex taste of almonds,
vanilla, and a hint of cinnamon toothpaste. Her tongue moved with
measured control across the roof of his mouth, then languidly stroked
his inner cheek before moving on to investigate the smooth slope
under his tongue.

Mulder held her head between his hands as if her mouth were the cup
of salvation. As he drank in her warmth, his fingers pressed through
the thickness of her hair, each padded fingertip massaging tiny circles
into her scalp. His thumbs stroked the arc behind each ear where her
glasses sometimes gave her a headache. And then, after another deep,
thorough kiss, he released her mouth. With a sigh, she allowed her
head to loll back into the waiting cradle of his palms.

Mulder swallowed hard and marveled at the sight of her lips,
glistening with their combined moisture, nearly pornographic in their
inflamed state. His cock was reminding him of how it felt to be
surrounded by those lips, caressed by that tongue, sucked into that
long, pale throat.

"God, Scully," he muttered.

She opened her eyes so that she could see to unfasten the buttons of
his shirt. Her fingers felt thick and slow as she wrestled with the tiny
buttons. The roar of her own circulation was like a windstorm in her
ears. The exigency of her need to combine herself with him silenced
all language, and she was close to hyperventilating when he gently
closed his hands around her wrists to end her struggle.

Mulder was as rooted and still as a mountain. When he smiled at her,
his wide-set brows drooped a bit and his already generous nose
broadened. Three furrows formed across his forehead, partially
hidden by the parenthetical droop of his bangs. His usually mournful
eyes, dark olive gray in the candlelight, sparkled.

Dana was coming back to herself. Her heart rate slowed and she was
no longer gulping oxygen. As he kissed her fingers, she reminded
herself that this was the safest place on earth. Here, in her bedroom,
surrounded by familiar, beloved objects, she was comfortable. No
one could hurt her here. It was not necessary to rush through the
motions of sex with him in order to silence the fear she felt. The
memories of Krychek no longer frightened her...well, almost; between
her visits with Dr. Locke and the choices she had made on the ferry,
she had for the most part dispatched with them. But without that set of
fears, another resurfaced. While she desperately wanted the absolute
intimacy of intertwining herself with Mulder, she remained wary of the
implications of such a union. What if he took more from her than she
was prepared to give? What if he absorbed her, once and for all?
What if she lost the boundaries of herself in him?

He continued to smile at her, blinking like a placid cat.

Dana finally made a small pouting sound of frustration and confusion.
At that, Mulder chuckled, released her hands, and walked away.

She gaped at him, closing her mouth only when he stopped with his
hand on the door know.

"Where are you going, Mulder?"

He glanced at her coyly through the screen of his eyelashes.

"Just closing the door," he replied in the low monotone that revealed
nothing.

"Oh," she said softly.

He leaned against the door and, never taking his eyes off her, finished
unbuttoning his shirt.

Dana did not notice the slight tremor in his hand as he unfastened the
buttons at his cuffs.

"I need you to do something for me, Scully," he said in his half-sultry,
half-squeaky voice.

Scully's own voice cracked over her reply.

"You do?"

Dropping the shirt as he moved, Mulder returned to where she stood in
the middle of the room, his footsteps absorbed by the plush ivory
carpet. The candles flickered in response to his movement. For the
time being, all was quiet around them.

His hands hitched on his waist, Mulder looked her over, his face
implacable as he studied her auburn hair, wavier than usual, her
lovely, pale face, the strong tendons of her neck, her small, almost
bony shoulders holding up the robe like a mannequin. Her breasts
rose and subsided with each breath; without the slight swelling that
buoyed them at other times during her menstrual cycle, they rode a
little lower than usual on her chest. This made them somehow even
more appealing to Mulder, reminding him that she was capable of
sustaining life and, perhaps not coincidentally, arousing in him the
urge to make her pregnant. And then came the sigmoid curve of her
waist and hips, the tapering columns of her legs, her slim ankles and
well-formed feet. Each of these elements spoke to her beauty, but
were not, in and of themselves, enough to make him love her.

He looked into her eyes, gray-green without the blue tint of her
contacts, and saw there the burning spirit that had shown him the way
through many a dark hour. There was her razor-sharp intelligence, of
course. And her courage in the face of danger. But now Mulder could
see a vulnerability that had been hidden so carefully, for such a long,
long time, that it had taken a near-fatal date with the incinerator in Ed
Jerse's apartment building for it to surface.

She had hurt him deeply then. Mulder had deduced that she had been
trying to force him into revealing his own unreliability so that she
could know, once and for all, that she was right to deny his love.
Instead of proving her right, however, he had overcome every obstacle
in his path and kept coming back for more. And now, as he watched
her watching him, Mulder saw the realization coming over her like a
shaft of warm sunlight. He loved her, for better or worse. Now she
believed it.

Scully blinked, her eyes suddenly moist.

"You were going to ask me..."

Mulder gave a low-wattage smile and nodded.

"Promise me, sweetheart, that you'll let me know if you get scared?"

A slow smile began to form, first in one corner of her mouth, then in
her eyes, and soon her entire face was illuminated by the grace that had
dawned over her heart.

"I promise," she said, giving him her hand.

He nibbled delicately on the soft pad of muscle beneath her thumb
before sliding his lips over the smooth skin, over the nail, and then
taking the entire first digit of her thumb into his mouth. His tongue
darted across the sensitive fingertip, flicked under the nail, then twirled
around and around until she laughed softly.

"Tickles," she whispered.

"Good," he said, guiding her hand to his waist as he slid his arms
around her. "Hearing you laugh makes me feel like anything is
possible."

"Is it so rare?"

"Mmm. Pretty rare," he replied, and bent to kiss her lips.

She smiled against his mouth and then began to pull his undershirt up
over his belly. Stepping back slightly, she used both hands to push it
up, then released it for him to pull over his head. Her hands were
quick and precise in their work. Preoccupied by watching her cleavage
under the low vee of her robe, Mulder was a little surprised to
suddenly find himself naked, with her hand confidently stroking his
half-erect cock.

His hand closed over hers and stopped the stroking.

"There are times, Scully, when it is better to receive than to give," he
said, stepping toward the bed as he offered her his hand. "And this is
one of those times."

"But Mulllll-der," she whined, taking his hand.

He laughed at the pout that shadowed her pretty face.

"Come on, Scully. Later for that."

He clambered over the mattress to recline against the bank of pillows.
Crossing his ankles under the comforter and grinning wildly, he
crooked his forefinger by way of an invitation.

"Over here, partner," he said.

Dana hesitated, one knee resting on the bed's edge, her finger plucking
absently at her lower lip.

"A little closer, if you don't mind," he prodded.

As she crawled across the bed to join him, her robe began to open.
She paused on her knees to tug at the knot in the belt. Her hair, nearly
the same color as her robe, obscured her face as she frowned down at
the strip of silk. Mulder could only watch, enchanted, as she picked at
the knot. Finally it gave way and she was able to tug the tails of the
sash free. Without so much as a glimmer of self-consciousness, she
shrugged out of the robe and then twisted at the waist to yank the
bottom of it from under her lower legs. Naked at last, she tossed the
robe toward the end of the bed and then resumed her journey toward
him. Her crawling reminded him of a lioness prowling the dry plains
of Africa. The gentle, pendulous swaying of her breasts, however,
reminded him of nothing more than his need to capture them in his
hands and fasten his mouth around the nipples, first one and then the
other, until the earth spun backwards and time rolled back and he was
once again an unmarred infant seeking primal succor.

It took him a moment to remember words. When she slid under the
fluffy comforter and into his arms, the surprising coolness of her skin
against his hip and chest brought him back to reality long enough to
enable him to form a sentence, albeit a short one.

"Tell me what you're thinking about," he rasped.

Dana knew it was a question he was bound to ask, not so much
because he had been trained in psychology but because he loved her.
And for that reason he deserved an honest answer.

"I'm afraid it won't go well, and you'll get frustrated and give up."

Crystal clear, he mused, his forehead crinkling and his mouth gaping
in wonder. No polite denial. No "Mulder I'm fine." Just the
undiluted truth.

"Wow," he uttered.

"What?"

Mulder propped himself on an elbow and peered at her as if she had
just pronounced the answer to world hunger, the secret to painless
weight loss, and a cure for cancer all at once.

She rested on her side, one arm tucked under her head, the sheets
tucked under her arms.

"Scully..." he began.

Oh my God, Dana thought, her heart twisting in on itself. He thinks
I've just given him permission to leave.

"Dana." He tried again. "You told me the truth, just now. About how
you feel. About what you're afraid of. That's -- that's amazing..."

As she listened and watched and finally came to understand his
wonder, the fingers of her right hand had spread wide over his left
breast. When he was finished, and his eyes had gone drowsy with
emotion, her hand smoothed up his chest and around his neck to pull
him close. She rolled onto her back, taking him with her.

The hunger she had been trying to yoke for two months was rife, and
Mulder now seemed to share it. They both sighed and panted and
grunted as they tried to touch each other everywhere at once. Their
teeth clacked together and they laughed madly. Mulder's hand
scampered over her belly, inadvertently tickling her, and when she
reflexively drew her legs up toward her abdomen, her knee caught him
in the solar plexus. Through his laughter, he moaned in pain, but did
not protest as she massaged the site of the injury. When her hand
moved lower to coax his cock back into a state of readiness, Mulder
forgot everything that had ever hurt him.

End The Cry of the Truth, 22b/22c


The Cry of the Truth, 22c/22c
Here and Now


The frenzy gave way to the paced intensity that had characterized their
entire partnership.

Mulder pumped slowly into her fist as he pulled himself up onto his
elbows and knees. His hands enclosed her breasts and gently shifted
them toward the center of her chest so that he could alternate nipples
more rapidly. At first he sucked each one, his cheeks hollowed by the
vacuum he was creating. Then, by accident, the sharp edge of his
bottom incisors scraped the underside of one erect nipple while his
tongue dabbed at the surface of it, and she screeched in delight. He
repeated this action on the second nipple, but somehow the effect was
not the same. "Go back, go back" she panted, and he did, returning to
the breast where he had begun while plucking at the other nipple with
his fingers.

Across the room, the candles gutted in a draft that had somehow
managed to creep around the draperies, casting on the wall wild
shadows of Mulder's spiky, disheveled hair and the bridge of his back
as it arched and flexed.

Dana was nearly weeping with emotional overload, her nerves raw
from their recent experiences in the outside world as well as from the
potent, private stimulus he was offering her now. Without realizing it,
she whimpered pitiably.

Mulder released her nipple with a slippery pop. He threw her a
somber look through the dark fringe of his lashes, gave the other
nipple was friendly lick, and then shifted upward to kiss her.

"You okay?" he asked in his gravelly monotone.

"Mmm," she gulped, her eyes a little wild.

"Breathe, sweetheart," he cooed, combing her hair back from her
forehead.

She inhaled slowly, and then laughed on the exhale. I'm trying too
hard, she told herself. I want this too badly. I need him too --

"I need you, Mulder," she said out loud.

"I know," he said, his palm warm against her cheek. "You've got
me."

His eyes slid shut and his mouth dropped open when she shifted her
grip from his cock to his balls, cupping them cautiously and then
grazing them against each other like dice.

"You've definitely got me," he muttered, eyes still hooded.

"I love you, Mulder," she said.

Mulder did not need to open his eyes to know that she was smiling.
He could hear it in her voice, and he could feel it in her hands as she
continued to jostle and stroke him with a touch as light as a dream.

"Scullleeee," he moaned. "Stttahhhppp..."

She rested her arms on the pillow above her head, knowing that she
had to get her hands away from him in order to truly stop.

"Fox," she said, suddenly a trifle shy.

He opened one eye and glared at her with it. Then he remembered that
he'd told her to call him Fox at times like this, and opened the other
eye.

The expression on her face was so soft, so open to him, that with her
arms draped around her head, her hair curling into copper arabesques
against the pillowcase, lips parted and moist, and eyes wide with
anticipation, he had to kiss her again to let her know that he would
honor her trust.

"Today, after the verdict..." She paused, uncertain of her words.
"You were unusually, um, reticent. You were worried about me,
weren't you."

Mulder sat back on his haunches and slowly pulled the covers away
from her body.

"Yeah. I wanted to yank you out of there as soon as they'd finished
your testimony."

"But you didn't."

"I didn't." His brows twitched with approval as the sheets slipped
away and revealed her narrow waist, the tiny dome of her belly, the
flared hips, and the thick patch of dark hair that hid his target. "It was
something you had to do. Not just being an expert witness, but
talking to Delia, giving her the medal...Still, I wasn't sure of what
effect it'd had on you until just now."

"You took a risk by coming in here with sex on your mind," she
observed mildly.

Mulder shrugged.

"I told myself: nothing can be as scary as telling you that I loved you
in the first place."

She wriggled atop the mattress, repositioning herself so that he was
between her legs. Mulder bowed his head and gave her a shy smile
before reaching down to touch the underside of her knee.

"You seemed pretty brazen at the time," Dana said.

She tucked her knee inward to nudge his thigh. Her gaze was
simmering and a little drowsy, and one brow arched softly in
anticipation of his response. She licked her lips and grazed her lower
lip with her upper incisors.

Joints popping like firecrackers, Mulder moved onto his knees. His
quadriceps stood out in high relief, ropy and lean beneath the
sprinkling of dark hair and pale olive skin. A puckered scar on his
inner thigh, just south of the general proximity of his testes, marked a
bullet wound that had nearly cost him his reproductive future. When
he saw Dana's eyes stray to the scar, and then to his cock, he felt
himself again growing turgid and warm.

"If I was brazen then, it was only because I thought I had nothing to
lose. I never expected you to love me back, not like this. I was pretty
sure you would laugh at me, and then go jump in bed with Stuart. So
what was there to be scared of?"

"Mulder --"

"Fox?" he said, uncertain.

She closed her eyes and nodded.

"Fox, my love, I never once laughed at the idea of your loving me.
Never."

Mulder made his move. He bent forward to kiss her belly under the
arc where diaphragm meets sternum. Like a whisper, he dragged his
lips lightly over the near-invisible hair there. She shuddered under
him, and he smiled.

"Are you scared of me now?" she asked, her voice more girlish than
usual.

He looked up. Her eyes were still closed. Brown lashes swept her
high cheekbones. Her nostrils flared slightly with each breath. Her
jaw was set in a firm line, as if she were steeling herself either for bad
news or a wild ride.

"Sometimes," he answered, zigzagging his index finger from her navel
to the lower hairline.

She took a deep breath that made her chest rise and fall in a creamy
wave. Mulder watched in wonder as her aerolae and nipples drew
tighter and darker in response to the delicate touch of his hand on her
abdomen.

"Now?" she asked.

Mulder exhaled a little chuckle and spread his hands over her tummy.

"Now...now I'm afraid of losing you, of disappointing you, of
hurting you." He shrugged with his face, tossing up his brows and
twisting his mouth in a wry smile. "Just the usual stuff."

Her eyes slid half-way open then, and she gave him a desultory smile
that told him that in spite of his fears, he held the world in his hands at
that moment. Mulder's stomach fluttered.

He covered her breasts with his hands before sliding down to lie on
his stomach and rubbing his chin against her pubic bone. The hair
rustled against the stubble of his beard. She moved slightly, getting
comfortable by tucking a small pillow under her neck.

This is the sweetest pussy in the history of Woman, he thought as he
combed the hair back. He wanted to tell her, but he was afraid to use
that word. The other words, clinical or otherwise, lacked
the...affection...he wanted to convey. She never used the word
herself.

"Something bothering you?" she asked dryly.

Mulder blushed when he realized that he had been staring.

"No no no of course not no."

"You're babbling," she observed with a masterful arch of her brow.

"No I'm not," he babbled.

She heaved a sigh of exasperation and rolled her eyes heavenward.

"Dammit, Mulder, I thought we had resolved this matter of trust and --
ahhh."

Her head came to rest on the pillow. Her eyes fluttered shut. She
heard him make a humming sigh of satisfaction in the back of his
throat, and smiled.  She tried to help him, tried to think sexy thoughts
about the two of them, tried to remember fantasies she had conjured
about him back when they only touched each other accidentally. She
tried, but all that really came to her mind was the fact that her chest
was cold and her lower back was beginning to ache.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mulder saw her forehead knitting with the
effort of concentration, and stopped what he was doing. He rested his
head on her abdomen for a moment before crawling back up the bed so
that they were face to face.

"Sweetheart," he murmured, lightly kissing her nose. "Stop
thinking."

"I don't think I can," she said, a tearful hitch in her voice.

"Stop trying," he said. "Kiss me. Taste how gorgeous you are."

Her hands came to rest on his arms.

"But it worked before," she protested. "Everything worked before."

Mulder shook his head to disagree, and then thought the better of it.

"Do you want..." he began.

She closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing as Mulder
formulated his question.

"Do you want me to stop, sweetheart?" he whispered, desperately
hoping that she did not.

"No. No, I don't want you to stop," she said clearly. She lowered a
forearm across her eyes and huffed out an irritable sigh. "I want all
these thoughts to stop. They're not scary. They're just...there."

Mulder's gaze wandered to the ceiling as he pondered his options.
Soon a smile crept across his face. He licked his lips and leaned over
to whisper in her ear.

"If you have to think about something, Dana, think about this." His
tongue flicked over the cartilaginous ridges of her ear, and she
shivered. "I love you. I love all of you. And at this moment, I
particularly love your sweet pussy." He nibbled on her ear lobe, then
licked the soft spot just behind it. "It's so good that I want eat myself
into oblivion, like a kid in a chocolate factory."

As he spoke, she had grown very still beneath him. Now she lifted
her arm from over her eyes and peeked at him, the telltale twitching of
her brow just visible under the crook of her inner elbow.

"That good, huh?"

Mulder nodded emphatically.

"Oh, yeah," he replied.

Dana's arms left her head then and twined around his neck. She licked
his lips neatly, and lured by the taste that she found there, held his
head in place between her hands so that she could slide her own
tongue over his, then across the roof of his mouth.

Mulder rolled onto his side and returned her kisses as his fingers
probed the soft, serrate lips, finding them sleek and slippery with the
fluid that was like a crystal-clear honey. Two fingers slid into her
channel and gently pressed upward while curling back toward his
palm, as if he were beckoning her orgasm to come out and play.

Eventually her moaning and his murmuring replaced their kissing.
Mulder continued the summoning gesture while using the tip of his
thumb and the flat surface of his thumbnail to stimulate her clitoris. As
he watched, the frustration that had haunted her face just a moment ago
changed to concentration, then intense pleasure, then a soaring
tenderness punctuated by a high-pitched, whispery wail. He
beckoned, and she came.

Mulder quickly got to his knees and bent over her still-thrusting pelvis.
He pulled her thighs probably farther apart than necessary, but he was
feeling greedy and wanted no impediments to his satisfaction. Her
damp hair grazed the tip of his nose as he thrust his tongue into her
vault. The bristles on his chin rubbed rudely against her, but he felt
her grinding herself against them anyway. He swallowed noisily and
then began to suck in earnest on whatever struck his fancy: the rim of
her opening, the outer lips, the inner lips, the pale, smooth skin of her
upper thigh, the rosy-pink hood that even now hid her clitoris from
him.

Because she had grown quiet at a time when he wanted her moaning,
Mulder gave up his sucking and began licking lavishly, from her
perineum to the ridge of her pubic bone. When his tongue crossed her
clitoris, she whimpered. With only a few more passes, she was
coming again, her thighs trembling around his face, her pelvis
shuddering.

"Mulder," she cried in a whispery voice. "Mulder, enough. Please, I
just want you inside me."

He grinned against her thigh, and then planted a loud kiss on the plane
where her leg merged with her torso.

"I must be the luckiest man in the solar system," he said as he knelt
between her legs.

"Oh? What makes you so sure?" she asked drunkenly.

"You do, sweetheart. You make me sure of so many things."

He reached for a spare pillow to prop under her bottom. She tilted her
pelvis up and then reached for his cock with blind hands. Her eyes,
lids at half-mast, were dark with the expansion of her pupils. As
Mulder lowered himself over her, he wondered whether the past few
days had taken a greater toll on her than she had admitted. Perhaps he
should just let her sleep. In the morning --

Suddenly he was inside of her. She had pulled him forward just
enough to scoop her pelvis upward and capture his cock in the opening
made soft and pliant by his earlier attentions.

"Hey Mulder," she said, her voice suddenly clear again.

He pushed into her, gently but deliberately, until he reached the sweet
spot at the end of her channel. He paused there to look down at her
and to savor the fact that this time was already better than the last,
because this time she trusted him all the way.

"Yeah, Scully?"

"You really want to get married?"

He grinned and ducked his head down to kiss her once more before
thrusting again.

"Don't tease," he said, growing a bit breathless as he began to feel,
once and for all, the bottom dropping out of his carefully constructed
solitude.

"Can you..." She grunted as she tried to tilt her pelvis even further
toward the ceiling. "I want you deeper, now."

He stopped and gulped down a few breaths. Then, he eased out of her
and sat on his knees like a man about to make a prayer of supplication.

"Come up here, then," he said, reaching for her. "And turn around."

She thought a moment, and then rolled over onto her belly. Slowly,
carefully, she rose up on her knees, her arms flailing slightly for
balance as the mattress dipped with his movements. His fingers
stroked the backs of her thighs and calves, encouraging her to separate
her knees a bit more so that he could get closer. Soon his arms were
wrapped around her waist, one hand was cupping a breast as the other
massaged her belly.

"Feels good," she mumbled, leaning back against him and resting her
head on his shoulder.

He kissed her cheek -- a long, lingering kiss that allowed him to relish
the texture of her skin and the delicate bone beneath it.

"Ahhh," he moaned, nuzzling her hair. "I love you, Dana."

"I know you do," she assured him, half turning so that she could see
his face.

His hair was wild, bangs dangling over his brow and a cowlick
shooting out behind one ear. His eyes had narrowed to sleepy slits.
His lips, moist and swollen, twitched into a little smile. And Dana
noted, for the first time, a faint sprinkling of freckles across his nose
and cheekbones.

She uttered a tender moue of the variety usually reserved for puppies
and babies.

Oh, to have a bright little boy with that face, she mused.

The novelty of the thought shocked her into blushing. Mulder,
attributing the spread of pink over her cheeks and neck to intense
arousal, continued his inflammatory caresses.

His cock was warm and sticky against her skin. Pressing back with
her pelvis, Dana quickly surmised that although the sensation of being
held from behind was supremely comforting, the difference in their
heights would make this position good for nothing but a sweet
embrace. So, slowly so as not to throw him off balance, she bent
forward and reached for the pillows nested at the head of the bed.

Her back was creamy-pale beneath the amber freckles that adorned her
shoulders and faded into a faint vee that marked the cut of her girlhood
swimsuits. Mulder's hand smoothed over a bruise over her left hip,
about the size of a plum, that had resulted from the tumble she'd taken
on the ferry the day before. Then his fingers strayed to the tattoo. He
couldn't make it disappear, he told himself, but he could do something
about the feelings that had inspired it.

When she was settled against a tuffet of pillows, he leaned over to kiss
the mark. She hummed a single, sonorous note of thanks and reached
back to catch his hand in hers.

Mulder hated to break the mood of the moment, but he knew he had to
speak.

"Dana, this'd probably feel great, but I don't want to remind you
of...uh..."

"I'm all right," she said gently. "I promised I'd let you know, and I
will, okay?"

She wiggled her fingers from his grasp and then took his cock in her
hand. Again, she guided him forward until the head was bobbing
against her entrance.

With deliberate slowness, he moved into her, and found the journey
amazingly smooth and slick. His hands skated over the Botticellian
curves of her back and hips before settling at her waist. She shifted
slightly toward him, and Mulder moaned. The fit was heavenly. He
had visited the dark warmth of her before, and had loved every
millisecond of it, but this...this was different. She felt tight and
accommodating at once. Warm and strong and eager, she thrust back
again, cueing Mulder to take up the game.

Still holding her by the waist, he began to stroke into her, his rhythm
moderate but intense.

"Does that feel good, baby?" he asked in a sultry voice that no one but
Dana had ever heard him use.

"Better than good," she replied, spreading her arms around the
collected pillows.

She felt like she was floating on a cloud of crisp white cotton with an
angel on her back.

"Good," Mulder muttered, his brow furrowing in concentration.
"Wonderful..."

As he slid deeply into her, over and over and deliciously over again,
the rigid corona of his cock stroked some concatenation of nerve
endings that might have been unique to Dana, or not....she did not
care to recall the anatomical facts of the matter. The first year of med
school was as far away as Venus at that moment, after all. What was
important to Dana there and then was the humming, buzzing waves
that skittered up and down the tiny lanes and winding roads and major
highways of her nervous system. The waves whispered and sang to
her -- or was that Mulder's voice?

"Finally...got something...right," Mulder murmured,
closing his eyes against the soft light that served only to distract his
senses from the focus of his existence: those few inches of flesh where
their bodies met in a temporal imitation of the mental exercises they
had been perfecting over the years.

For six years she had observed the evolving phenomenon of his
intensely passionate faith not only in things unknown or unknowable
but also, to her surprise, in her. How that faith had developed into the
kind of love that allowed them to merge their bodies and spirits into the
joyous union that was upon them now would remain a mystery to
them both. So be it.

His thighs stinging and his balls tightening, Mulder stopped his frantic
rhythm. He pulled out of her with grunt, and then, with gentle, warm
hands, rubbed her back until she rolled over.

"Are you all right?" she asked in a hoarse voice.

He smiled and nodded. When he had caught his breath, he moved
between her knees again. This time, he reached back and found her
ankles. Carefully he brought her legs up, and up higher still, until her
small, pale feet flanked his face. He rubbed his cheek against one
instep, and delivered a kiss to her heel.

"I want to see your face," he explained. "Do you mind?"

"Of course not," she said in an indulgent tone that made him smile.

His hands closed around her thighs and pulled her toward him until
her legs, resting against his chest, were nearly perpendicular to the
mattress. Dana lifted her pelvis slightly, and he tucked his torso a bit,
and with a sigh he was deep within her again.

She reflected, as she watched him, that he had never been a man of
mercurial moods. He was pretty consistently pleasant, if a little
depressed, most of the time. But in these moments, these few
moments when they were free of their respective demons, safe with
each other, with few barriers other than their own skin, he seemed to
be suffused with a joy that had the cool, dappled quality of early
spring sunlight filtering through the branches of a willow. It did not
surprise her that some necessary distance existed between them even
now. Had they been younger, and less scarred by their lives, perhaps
they might have achieved that seamless merging that sometimes occurs
between lovers. What little distance remained between them was
easily bridged, greatly respected, and served to remind them both of
how far they had come to get this close to their mutual truth.

Dana felt that what Mulder had given her in the past few months had
been more than the culmination of their struggle to build an intimate
partnership. His loyalty to her had withstood the force of his jealousy
and her heartbreak. He had given her the commitment of a lifetime,
one that he had proven himself capable of sustaining. She had known
for some time that she wanted to be loved by him. It was only now,
however, that she realized that she also wanted to love him back with
everything, good and not so good, that made her what she was. And
that, she would learn soon enough, was all Mulder really expected
from her.

"Please, Mulder," she said, her voice rich with emotion. "Please
now."

"Please what, baby?" he panted.

"Come for me. I want...I need to see it happen."

He swallowed, trying to find some moisture for his parched throat so
that he could speak.

"But what about you?"

"I've got everything I need...now," she said with a luminous smile
that went straight through his optic nerves, pinged off the back of his
brain, and then shot through his heart before setting off the alarms
housed in his scrotum.

He exhaled a little laugh that ended in a soft cry of exquisite freedom.

Dana watched raptly the darkening cloud that overcame his familiar
face, changing it almost beyond recognition as the layers of delay and
discipline peeled back, some easily, some roughly, until he was
exposed at his core, suddenly purified by the heat of her. He was
again the essential Fox, untainted by loss and disappointment. I've
got my girl, he sang in his brain, who could ask for anything more...

Fast and short came his strokes, bumping his pelvic bone hard against
her clitoris until the stubborn little pink hood that covered it finally
gave up the ghost and allowed the friction to combine with the
crackling-hot synaptic connections that said joy and completion and
acceptance and baby, he called me baby....

"Here," he cried. "Now."

She too cried out her delight like a child on a roller coaster, and then let
out an oof and a laugh when he fell hard against her, pushing her more
deeply into the soft cloud that surrounded them.

Ten minutes of laughter and languid talk, and then they began to argue
companionably about who should get out of bed and extinguish the
candles. Finally Dana assented that she was probably more able to
walk, and stumbled across the room to her dresser. She held back her
hair as she bent to blow out the candles, and out of the corner of her
eye, caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Suddenly she was
transported back to a birthday -- she was six, seven, eight? and was it
Charleston, or Guam that year? -- and making a wish before blowing
out the candles on her cake. Did I wish to grow up and fall in love,
she wondered. Did I? Or did I just wish for chocolate pudding and
less homework? With the flames illuminating her face, she closed her
eyes and saw the smiles her sister, brothers, and parents as they
encouraged her. "Make a wish, make a wish Dana -- but don't tell
anybody or it won't come true."

Back in the present, Dana heard the beautiful sound of Mulder's
contented murmuring as he stretched his spent body and curled up
amid the pillows.

She took a deep breath.

She wished.

End The Cry of the Truth, 22c/22c


*Thanks to Becky R, Becky D, Tzutzane, Gail Light, MustangSally,
Nessie, Karen, Kris, Lynn, Marsha, Monica, and Dawson (for
chapter 21, although he probably has no idea that he helped). And
special thanks to Dani, who has made a beautiful home for my work at
http://www.wolfe.net/~dani/aiirv.html.