CONFLAGRATION (1/1)
By: Annie Sewell-Jennings (Auralissa@aol.com)

Disclaimer: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully don't belong to
me, but they are starting to review their contracts. Watch it
Chris -- They want sex or else they're signing on with
someone else. And I'm willing to dole out the big bangs.
<g> Mulder and Scully are property of Ten Thirteen
Productions, but I have plans to emancipate them.

Summary: Mulder struggles over his helplessness involving
his partner's slow death.

Category/Rating: VA/PG.

Keywords: Mulder/Scully UST.

Spoilers: US5, particularly for "Redux II" and "The Red
and Black".

Archiving: Do not archive to Gossamer. Do not post to
ATXC. Everywhere else, just send me a letter. I'm pretty
lenient.

Author's Notes are at the bottom

CONFLAGRATION

"Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my
faith forever."
--Elie Wiesel

	People talk of the dying as being captured within a
slow dance with Death. They clasp hands with the Reaper,
perform the steps, keep in time with the conducted music,
and gaze into their partner's eyes with the resignation and
growing acceptance, as well as the beginning attunement
with their devil. Perhaps there's a grain of truth in this, but
the dying rarely ever take the lead. They rarely ever get a
choice in their death. God rarely cuts in and spins the
victim away from certain demise, and when He does, the
phone call the morning after is destined to be incredible.
And they never, ever, can change the song once they begin
the last waltz.

	I've seen Dana Scully swept into this masquerade,
seen her flush the floor with the essence of her that is
dominant and impressive. She has consorted with Death,
seen his severity, and her dance was one that was gloriously
interrupted by some deity. But she was only placed in a
different scenario, one that is killing her not softly, but
savagely. Because it teases and it taunts. It steals and it
snatches in small bits and pieces, never letting her know if
she's safe or threatened. And I cannot do anything but
watch as she is flung around this surreal dance floor.

	Last night, I received a telephone call. It was not
late yet, and there was just a dotting and spotting of stars in
the sky. The moon was a sliver that winked. It's odd how
you don't take any of the conditions of the night into
account until crisis strikes, and then all details and all
intricacies flood the senses and stain the memory. It was
not an unusual beginning. "Mulder," I groaned, not wanting
to move from my comfortable position on the sofa.

	"Mulder? It's me." Her tone of voice didn't tell me
that there was anything wrong. Her calmness is admirable
upon reflection. "I... I don't know where I am. I don't
remember how I got here. I'm worried, Mulder."

	This was all of the conversation needed. Scully saw
an abundance of North Carolina license plates, and the
state mile markers indicated her location. When I drove to
her, I remember thinking that I would kill the bastard who
had taken her. I had vivid flashes of homicide, and each
was more inviting than the last. My gun was heavy and
mindful against my hip.

	The shock at seeing her on the side of the road was
staggering, and the car rolled and shook to a stop, so
numbing was her appearance. Her hair was wild and
untamed, as though she had run through a windstorm.
Scully had not been abducted or taken; she had driven
herself to this place. Her car was teetering in a ditch, smoke
seeping from the engine in a gyre. Her hands were pressed
to her forehead, clutching her temples as though massage
would coax the answers out. Her windshield was shattered
>from the impact of the accident, and bits of glass glittered
in her hair like crystal sequins.

	The eyes that usually provided me with answers
pleaded me with questions. Scully walked toward me,
dressed in nothing but a white tee-shirt and white cotton
panties, shivering in the brisk night and shaking. When she
latched onto me for warmth and for solidity, it was I who
was reeling. "My God, Scully, what happened?" I gasped,
and she just held onto me, burrowing into my leather jacket
and clinging. Scully's clung only when she was frightened,
deeply frightened, and she was afraid now. I was afraid
now.

	"I can't remember anything," she told me. "I don't
have any recollection of how..." She trailed off, and I
pulled her into my car. Her silence was starting to frighten
me more than her words and her appearance, for it was
obvious then that her realization was far more dangerous
than her ignorance.

	And during this time, I watched her sit next to me in
the passenger seat, watched her watching me make the 911
call and the report to the Bureau. The ambulance came and
checked her out. There were no wounds; she did not speak.
She just allowed herself to undergo the tedious checks, and
declined to check herself into a hospital. The car was
towed away, and we still sat on the shoulder of the road.
The blanket provided by the ambulance covered up her
bare body, and yet she seemed very unaware of the state of
undress that she was in. I didn't joke with her about her
nudity; she didn't need it.	

	And finally, the activity faded, and we were alone
together. There was my car on the side of this road in North
Carolina, and Scully sat with her hands folded, her eyes
downcast, and her face childlike. Never have I realized that
Dana Scully's face could regress in years until she was a
young girl, confused and upset at something she could not
possibly understand. It was not until we were in Virginia
when the silence was broken by her small, defeated voice.

	"It was the chip," she muttered, and I choked back a
sob. I haven't cried for so long, the tears have been
withheld for these months, and yet the moment that she
spoke of this return of danger, I found myself at an utter
loss for words. I was flooded with emotion.

	"How... How do you know?" I had given myself
>away at that moment with the wobble of my voice.

	"I can still feel it," she said.

	I had no reply to her then, and I just watched her sit
there, her hands so neat and tidy in the navy blanket, and
her face so vulnerable and yet composed. I shudder at the
thought of her emotions in that one moment, for she must
have been experiencing such a slew of contradictory
feelings and thoughts. The confusion that she had been
stricken with upon my arrival was faded slightly, but she
was still dazed about her means of transportation, her
reason for this journey, and what she had avoided thanks to
the beckon of the chip.

	The car ride back was held in our own privacy, both
of us wracking our brains for answers and reasoning to this
mystery. But we discovered it the moment that I walked her
through the door, covering her discreetly with my jacket
and my body. But the news didn't spare us our worries or
our fears. In Nag's Head, there had been a mass suicide.
Immolated bodies filled the television screen with a
starkness and a sadness that cannot be captured in film. I
had seen these shriveled, charred remains close up and with
panicked fear. Because I was expecting to see the corpse of
a small woman who somehow meant everything to me with
those hollow remains.

	It was a mass burning not too far down the road
>from where Dana Scully had stopped. She had left late, and
by the sheer grace of God and traffic, had not reached her
destination. At the same moment that four hundred men
and women greeted death in flaming robes, Scully's car
swerved off the road and left her disoriented, half naked,
and with no memory of where she was or how she had
gotten there.

	There were no survivors this time.	

	We knew that there was no doubt in the connection
between these gruesome murders and this microchip
inserted into the fine base of her neck, covered and
concealed by the silkier sweeps of red that covered the pale
skin. She had been beckoned, and had come. The call had
reached her, and Scully had obeyed. She had come to
where the signal led her, but a simple blessing of faith
prevented her from reaching her final destination.

	There were no survivors.

	She had been spared her life the last time, but
perhaps her cure was just as potent and deadly. These
women are spared nothing; they are given no prognosis and
no hope except for a swift and painless death. The men
who love them are given nothing but fear and desperation. I
recall someone once saying that the lives of the dying
belong not only to them but to the people who love them.
Inside, I feel as though a part of me slips and slides along
with her, being taken further and further away with each
passing night. And I can't take the notion of losing that
piece and in turn losing her. I can't hold to the belief or the
possibility that Dana Scully will leave me.

	She left me that night for a location that she could
not disclose herself, and a location that was delivered with
the detached voice of the newscaster as he described
carnage that she would have been a part of. I shudder at the
very suggestion of her being taken away from me by her
own conflicting impulses, at being summoned to an inferno
that will tear and lash at her until she is nothing but
blackened bones and steaming flesh.

	I had my first nightmare last night. It was the first
nightmare that I've had in a very long time. But it was too
damned close, too damned close. She was almost gone.

	Scully knew this. She saw the expression that
crossed my face when I saw the report, the flinch that I
couldn't cover up from her. It was just a moment, just a
flash of feeling, but I knew anyway that she would see me
and know my reaction. "I'm still here," she promised, and I
didn't know what to say to her. I couldn't tell her just how
close we had been to that beach, how many miles away
>from the fire we had been. I was afraid then, so afraid that
panic was setting in, because I had seen the atlas, made the
calculations, and knew that we were fourteen miles away
>from the lighthouse at which the abductees had gathered.

	Fourteen goddamn miles.

	I swallowed again, and she saw this. Her hand was
warm on my shoulder, and she stroked my collarbone
through the fabric of my jacket, and I hissed back tears.
"Do you still hear it now, Scully?" I whispered. Her jerky
nod hurt, and she stared at me with blatant and obvious
distress. "What does it sound like?"

	She wavered, stumbled. I didn't move to catch her.
"Cicadas," she whispered back.

	Cicadas...

	She didn't go home right away, and I let her sleep
on my sofa. She lies there now, her eyes closed and her
breathing regular. The sun has just risen, and the blinds are
open just enough for the brighter golds and reds of morning
to splash her pale features and striking hair. I discover now
that I enjoy the way that her hair contrasts with the
darkness of my sofa. Softly, her breath puffs out, and I'm
close enough to her to just hear her breathe. I want to touch
her ribcage and place my hand on her stomach, just to feel
my palm rise and fall with the evidence of her life, but
know that I cannot. I want to feel the breath against my
cheek, and I want to taste her exhaling into my mouth.
Circumstance and fear force me to settle for just listening,
being near enough to experience that one sense.

	And it is all my fault that this is happening. This
was my great answer to solving her descent into cancer and
death, and this was my great epiphany and truth. Seeing her
fear escalate to a level more high-pitched and despairing
than before, I wonder which answer is better. Never
knowing which night will be the final summoning, or
knowing how many days is left with a stunning exaction. I
don't want to choose. I don't want to have to know. I don't
want this.

	Scully sleeps, and the sun rises further, and
suddenly, her face strikes crimson like a match. Gasping, I
retract, suddenly slammed with the image of her face on
fire, streaking with the heat and burn of flame, steaming
with smoke and sizzling as she screams and she screams...

	Shuddering, I huddle in the corner of the room,
away from her composed figure that is no longer a wraith
etched in the vermilion and amber lights of pyre, but is
merely a softly sleeping woman that has somehow come to
be a figure that dances on a very thin wire. I can't dance
with her, and I wish with all of my might that I could. It
would all be easier if I could meet her on that line of flame
and summoning, where I could fight the siren with her
instead of watching her do battle alone. I can't help her, and
I can't save her. I feel as though I have failed her not only
as a partner, but as a friend. As someone who loves her.

	Everyone aches for the dying, but they'll never ache
as much as I do. Because I have struck the match that
began all of this when I brought her my cure.

	I muffle the crying into my arms. It's silent, though I
want to scream it. I want to burn and dance with the fire. I
want to be able to cut in and sweep her away from all of
this. Immolation through combustion, expiation by means
of pyrotechnics. And because I cannot, I have to stand by
and watch her go. I can only hold on to her for so long
before the distance is closed, and those meager fourteen
miles are trailed by ashes and embers.

	Damned if I will lose her before I have to. Damned
if I will stand by and do nothing. Damned if I will watch
the one person who ever set my soul on fire be sacrificed to
the burning. Damned if I will lose her now.

	Damned if I will fail.

	Scully stirs in her sleep, and her hair twists like
flaming gossamer. Her hair writhes like the blazing bodies
that had tried to initiate Scully into their collective. That
long coil of sanguineous silk spills like the blood of her
fellow abductees. Like her blood almost did tonight.

	I don't want to touch it for fear of being burned.

	Scully sleeps, and I watch her from my crumpled
position. For a moment, we both burn, and my tears are
searing and hot as they smolder down my cheeks.
Incinerate me, I plea, because I'm nothing but soot without
her. The pendulum swings between one embodiment of
death and another, and it strakes the sky with steam as it
rocks. We live with another time bomb, and the explosion
will light a flame. No matter which decision we choose, we
lose. Remove the chip, and Dana Scully fades into
charcoal. Allow it to remain, and she is thrust into
phlogiston. Either way, we will burn.

	There are no survivors.

	I live my life in conflagration now, and she is
dancing with a devil on fire. And our spark is nothing more
than a circular piece of shrapnel buried beneath her
carmine hair.

	She was only fourteen miles away.

(end of story)

Author's Note: This was the shortest thing that I have ever
written, and that says a lot considering that I've written
epics before. But this was a thought that I wanted to
explore, because only a few people have explored the
downside to Dana Scully's "cure", and it's something that I
believe should be discussed more on the show, as it's highly
intriguing.

Dedication: For Kristin, for being everything that I never
thought a friend could possibly be.