LUMINARIES:  Nothing Burns (NC-17)
by Shirley Writnwoeft

Part 1 in a proposed series that will shed some light on hidden
moments within and between episodes.

Feedback to writnwoeft@yahoo.com

Okay to archive.  Okay to forward to ATXC.

Disclaimer:  Mulder, Scully and any other X-Files characters
belong to Chris Carter and 1013 Productions. 

This story is a token of esteem for a friend upon the occasion of
her graduation.  Special thanks to the kindred spirit who
graciously shared her gift for nomenclature.

Classification - VRA
Keywords - Mulder/Scully Romance
Spoilers - "Emily"

Summary:  If only Mulder and Scully hadn't been interrupted by a
ringing phone, their conversation on Bill's couch might have
taken a very different turn.

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It was quiet upstairs.  Everyone was in bed, snuggled beneath
cotton sheets and heirloom quilts, trying to relax even while
they breathed in the air of expectation that permeated the house.

She wished she could share in their joy.  She wished she could
fully express her love for her own child.  She wished she could
rail against those who had at once given her a miracle and taken
away her future.  

She wished she could feel . . . anything.

But when she searched for the emotions she knew she should be
feeling, those things she deserved to feel, she found nothing. 
She was numb.  Desensitized by all that had come before and all
that she had learned over the past few days.  Emotion cowered
away from every new blow, drew in upon itself until it virtually
disappeared.  

As she descended the stairs, Scully considered what to say to her
partner.  The man she most trusted, the man whose existence was
essentially defined by his search for truth, had lied to her.  Or
at the very least, had withheld certain truths.  To her it made
no difference.  The betrayal was the same.  And yet, anger eluded
her tonight.  She couldn't conjure up even that most primitive of
emotions. 

She found Mulder where she'd left him, sitting on the couch in
her brother's living room, fingering the small wooden figurines
of the nativity, lost in thought.  She didn't know why she felt
compelled to apologize for leaving him alone for so long, but
found herself making excuses for her absence.  "It takes two of
us just to get my sister-in-law into bed these days."  

He picked up the fragile thread of conversation, although she
knew he was hardly interested in the details of Tara's 
pregnancy. "When is she due?"

"Two weeks ago."  

She settled herself at the opposite end of the couch.  Close, but
not too close, to Mulder.  Using distance to further insulate
herself from whatever she might learn during the conversation to
come -- an inevitable conversation, but one neither of them was
quite prepared to initiate.  She couldn't look at him, nor he at
her.  Couldn't take a chance that their eyes might begin the
conversation they were desperately trying to delay.  And so she
focused on some point near her feet, he on the upholstery of the
sofa, while silence held reign between them for long, awkward
seconds. 

It was Scully who spoke first.  "Why didn't you tell me, Mulder?"
Asked without anger or accusation, of course.  She felt nothing,
so nothing was revealed in her tone.  

He looked . . . she wasn't quite certain how he looked.  Sad,
remorseful, compassionate.  So many emotions, right there,
painting his expression, shading the nuances of his silent
communication with her.  If she could have felt anything at all,
she might have felt envy.  

"I never expected this.  I thought I was protecting you."

She remembered how difficult it had been to tell him about her
infertility.  It was none of his business, really, but she had
felt compelled to share that information with him.  And all this
time, he had known.  He had *known* and never said a word.  A
spark of rage ignited in her gut.  She smothered it with cold,
clinical detachment. "Why would they do this to me?"   

"I only know that genetic experiments were being done.  That
children were being created."  

The implications of what he was telling her were unfathomable,
and she refused to contemplate what it could all mean to her
personally.  Logically, she realized that if someone had gone to
the trouble to create one child, they might have created others. 
Probably had created others.  The anger flickered within her
again.  "Children being created for whom?"  Certainly not for
her.  She was positive that the people behind this project hadn't
meant for her to discover Emily.  These children were being
created for someone, for some purpose, but they weren't being
created to fill a void in the life of the women from whom they
had been stolen in the first place.

"For whom, for what, I don't know."  

Mulder couldn't answer her question.  Only the nameless, faceless
men responsible for her abduction knew the reasons why, and she
knew that any answers they would give would sicken her.  Perhaps
it was better not knowing.  

Now, she was left with nothing.  Nothing except a daughter who
had called another woman "mommy," a family whose sidelong glances
spoke of pity and disbelief, and a partner who, in an attempt to
shelter her, had undermined the very trust that was the hallmark
of their relationship.  

A furious inferno consumed her, swept across the dried remains of
her soul and flamed behind her eyes.  Even Mulder saw the change.

"Scully, are you all right?"

No.  No.  She wasn't all right.  She wasn't even remotely all
right.  And there wasn't a damned thing anyone could do about 
it.  Mulder's tender concern, as sincere as it was, wasn't going
to recover what had been stolen from her.  

The fire burned from her fingertips as she clawed at the cushions
of the couch.  She wanted to tear the fabric.  To destroy it like
she had been destroyed.  To rip it apart, thread by thread.  But
the heavy material held fast.

Not content to accept defeat, she turned and swept the nativity
scene off the table with one violent swing of her arm.  The
little wooden figures fell noiselessly to the carpet.  Cushioned. 
Unbroken.  

Nothing shattered.

She needed to hear something break.  

Before Mulder could stop her, she lunged for the tree and
snatched a fragile, silver glass ornament from a low branch. 
Only the tiniest shred of self-preservation instinct kept her
from crushing the glass in her fist and letting the broken shards
bury themselves in her flesh.  Instead she drew her arm back,
readying herself to fling the delicate ornament against the wall.

A strong hand seized her wrist and halted her angry motion.  She
tried to wrench free of Mulder's grip, but he held on and reached
around with his free hand to pull the ornament from her fingers. 
"Stop it, Scully."  Even now, his tone was soft, sorrowful. 
Sympathetic.  

His sympathy and gentleness would soothe her savage rage, would
douse the first real emotion she'd felt in days.  She couldn't
allow that. And so she struck out again.  This time at Mulder.

Mulder was right behind her, leaning against her, still gripping
her wrist in his right hand while his left arm stretched out
toward the tree to replace the rescued ornament.  An instant
later, in the fraction of time it took for her slam her elbow
into his stomach, he was sprawled back against the couch,
groaning in pain.  

The ornament, forgotten now, laid on the carpet and reflected the
scene as Scully scrambled to her feet.  Mulder tripped her as she
tried to flee, and captured her as she fell.  She flailed against
him, but he managed to drag her up on to the couch and pin her
beneath him.  He held her arms above her head in a
none-too-gentle grasp, and tangled her legs in his own to keep
her immobile.

At last she was still except for her panting breaths, but her
anger still boiled and now it had found a target in Mulder.  "Let
me go." Her voice held a venomous warning.

He ignored the threat and actually had the audacity to smile at
her -- a caricature of a smile really.  "And if I don't?"  

She renewed her struggle, wanting nothing more than to rip that
contrived smile off his face with her fingernails.  He held fast
for long second or minutes or hours, she wasn't sure, until the
last of the fight drained out of her.  She relaxed and his hold
loosened, but he didn't let go and remained atop her, pressed
intimately against her.

"Feel better now?"  He wasn't being sarcastic.  He knew why she
had reacted the way she had.  He understood.  For a second she
was jealous.  She wanted to hoard all the anger in the world for
herself and not share it.  But Mulder knew about injustice and
had suffered through loss after heart-rending loss, each new,
undeserved pain heaped upon old wounds.  

Her anger died away as quickly as it had taken hold.

Nothing took its place.  "I don't feel anything now."  

"What do you want to feel?"  

His words caressed her in a way she didn't expect.  "Anything.  I
feel dead."

His face, which had been hovering just above hers, moved closer. 
It was just the slightest of touches, his lips to her cheek, but
the contact scorched her skin.  "You feel alive to me, Scully." 
Again he kissed her.  The same spot.  The same heat.  

She was cold and craved the warmth.

"Mulder?"

His response was a breathless whisper in her ear. "Yes?"

"Make me feel alive."

With his mouth on hers, he breathed into her his passion. 
Infusing her blood with it until it poured through her veins,
ceaseless and hot.  So good.  She wanted more.

He was no longer holding her beneath him -- she was content to
stay -- and his hands busied themselves in other pursuits as they
traced over her face, slid down her arms, roamed over her belly,
slipped beneath her jacket and closed over her breasts.

Like a moth drawn to flame, she greedily sought out the heat. 
She let her legs drift apart, and felt him settle between her
thighs.  His hardness pushed against her.  She pushed back, until
they established a pulsing, sexual rhythm.  

But when she reached for the buttons of his shirt, he took her
hands in his and drew them away.  "Scully, we can't.  Not here."

"Yes.  Here.  I need this."  She pulled a hand free and slid it
down his back, over his ass, and pressed him against her as she
arched up off the couch to grind her hips against his.  When her
other hand returned to his shirt buttons, he didn't stop her.

The multi-colored lights from the Christmas tree painted their
bodies as they undressed each other.  Her pale, bare skin turned
warm and golden, the muscles of his chest and arms outlined with
sweet color and dim shadow.  

This was dangerous.  Her family was asleep right above this very
room, and yet she didn't hold back her moans when Mulder's mouth
found her breast and his teeth tugged at her nipple.  She didn't
stop herself from chanting his name when he slid his fingers
inside her, previewing for her what she knew was only moments
away.

This was wrong.  Their partnership would be irrevocably changed
by what they were doing.  And yet she didn't stop. Couldn't stop. 
She found him with her hand and stroked him, reveling in his
answering moans.  

His fingers left her, and his cock found her.  Mulder sank into
her slowly, and then withdrew almost entirely before returning. 
He was loving her with a reverence that shocked her.  His eyes
held a look of surprise, as if he didn't quite believe what was
happening.  The purity of the love he was expressing to her with
his eyes and body frightened her.  He was taking this beyond
where she had meant it to go.  

He was supposed to fuck the feeling back into her.  This was
something more.  

Too much more.  

She looked away, watching instead in the mirrored reflection of
the ornament beneath them on the floor.  This was safer.  The
images were just distorted enough that the faces weren't clear. 
She could see the beautiful body of a man pleasuring a
mysterious, anonymous woman.  

Distantly, she felt her own pleasure build.

In the reflection she saw the woman clutching at the man. 
Begging him for more.  Faster.  Harder.  And he met her every
request.  

Her ears registered her own voice making those demands, but it
seemed to come from somewhere far away, as if she were
overhearing lovers in another room.  

The fire of orgasm consumed her and for a while she was lost. 
She shut her eyes and the lovers in the reflection disappeared. 
Sensation began to register again, slowly.  The warm, heavy feel
of Mulder's sated body pressing her into the cushions of the
sofa. The soft touch of his lips as he placed worshipful kisses
along her neck, and across her face.  The words, uttered so
softly against her ear that she would have ignored them, if only
he hadn't repeated them.  "I love you."

The ringing phone saved her from having to respond.  She slid out
from beneath him and pulled on her pants and blouse, buttoning
and zipping as she made her way across the room to the phone. 
She reached for it, but turned first to look at him.  

His disappointment was a palpable thing.  Clearly, he expected
her to say something.  Hoped that she still burned with the same
fire that had ignited between them just a few minutes before.

More than anything, she wished she could give him what he needed,
but she had been consumed by the flames until there was nothing
left.  She would have cried for the loss, for his pain, except
the numbness had returned.

There was cold ash where the fire had been.  

Nothing burns forever.

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The End

Coming Soon:  LUMINARIES:  Embers

I'd really appreciate your feedback on this story.  Write to me
at writnwoeft@yahoo.com