Title: Before the Cold 
Author: Tara Avery
Email: tamarie@interchange.ubc.ca
Rating: PG-13 (swearing)
Category: VA
Spoilers: occurs at some unknown time in the sixth year of their
partnership.  All the bad things that happen to Scully are probably referred
to at some point. :)  Oh and there's a Triangle reference.
Keywords: Scully POV, UST
Summary: Scully grieves at Mulder's side.
Archive: Go ahead, but I'd love to know where you put it :)
Disclaimer: The X-Files don't belong to me.  They belong to the Syndicate.
(Otherwise known as Chris Carter, 1013 and Fox.  And CSM.)

This is for Michelle, who made an incredible impact on my life not only as a
teacher, but as a friend.  Thank you for encouraging imagination and for
sharing your words.

Feedback:  Pleeease?

***
I move away from the crowded room
that sea of shallow faces masked in warm regret
they don't know how to feel, they don't know what is lost
	--Sarah McLachlan, "Lost"
***


Before the Cold 

Tara Avery


I have repeated this scene over and over in the past six years.  It is as
though I have unwittingly done something wrong each time I am in this
position and must repeat it until I can attain perfection.  Some strange
version of karma, maybe.  Some refining fire from Above to temper me into
strength.  I wonder if I am up to the challenge.  If I should fail this time
I wonder if I will be trapped forever in this endless cycle of injury and
recovery.  I play two different roles: the watcher and the wounded.  It is
always one or the other.  Mulder and I take turns.

This time Mulder is the wounded.  This time is worse than the others.  This
time I can't help feeling I have played some integral part in the severity
of his condition.

I feel myself smile bitterly.  I'm not fond of bitterness, but in this case
it is somehow appropriate.  Mulder is usually the one torn by guilt, he is
the poor bastard who can't stop feeling that everything that happens to me
is his fault.

Sometimes I almost believe that too.  And sometimes I think he just likes to
torture himself.  Perhaps we're not so different in that respect after all.

He is limp on the hospital bed, as limp as the white sheets, as limp as the
unwashed hair that falls across his forehead.  His eyelids are traced with
delicate blue lines and the only reason I know he is still alive is that
those eyelids are fluttering weakly in his sleep.  I am frightened to see
him so limp.

I remember sitting in a classroom and watching my English teacher tell us
about sorrow, about grief.  Even now, all these years later, faced by my own
sorrows, I remember her description.  I think it is something I will never
forget.  She was the kind of person you *can't* forget.

She stood in front of the blackboard, red hair falling in wild curls on her
shoulders, dressed in vibrant, soft fabrics that swirled around her as she
danced.  She liked to dance in front of the class.  She'd dance to explain a
poem, or just because.  I'd walk into the classroom and she'd be dancing as
though she were the only person in the world.  Perhaps in that moment she
was.  She liked to be unique.  I admired the fact that she didn't care what
anyone else thought of her.  Envied it even.

Faced by my Navy father and my would-be Navy brothers, living on a Navy
base, surrounded by rigidity and expectations, there was something
intangible and life-giving about this teacher with her poetry and dramatic
flair and love of life.  I could see in her something I wanted for myself.
Something I could claim if only I had the courage to reach out and grasp it.

I never did.  I can't, even now.

When I remember her I am reminded of Missy.  There was something mystical
the two of them shared.  Some belief that wrapped them up in a web of magic
and dreams.

Something Dana Scully would consider irrational, and something Fox Mulder
would adore.  If he were awake.  If he were not so close to the border
between life and death.

Death.  It is not something I care to think of, having been so close to it
myself, again and again.  I am sitting beside Death in this sterile,
impersonal hospital room.  I feel as though I am warding Him off, fighting
for Mulder's life because he is too weak to fight for himself.  Death
reminds me of sorrow, and the memory of my poster plastered high school
classroom and my gypsy-garbed English teacher.

I can't remember the context.  I can't remember the poem, or the book, or
the play we were studying.  I can't remember who it was that died.  An aunt?
A grandmother?  But she described it with such poignancy, such emotion, that
I can't ever forget it.

She looked small, drawn, hollow as she stood in front of that blackboard,
her skin Irish-pale under the fire of her curls.  And she told us that her
grief was cold.  When met with the news of death she was *so* cold she
thought she would never be warm again.  I could not imagine this bright,
fiery woman who stood before us, baring her heart, feeling so cold she
feared she would never again feel warmth.  You must be able to move on, I
thought then, you must be able to forget.  It must disappear after a time.

You don't ever forget.  Father, sister, daughter, dead, and you never
forget.  I know that now.  I know it with an intimacy I wish I didn't
possess.

And I know now, after years of medical school, that it is shock and not
grief that makes someone feel cold upon hearing of a loved one's death.  But
all the medical terminology in the world can't ward away the chill of
knowing someone close to you has died... or *is* dying.

In that moment you are alone in the universe, no matter how many people
surround you, and you are *cold*.

I am alone at Mulder's bedside.  He hasn't moved anything except his eyelids
for hours and, I suppose, neither have I.  We are the only people in the
universe, I think.  We are all that matters.  And I *am* cold.

This hospital, of course, has the same regulated, unwavering temperature of
every other hospital I've ever visited... something on the verge of chill,
but not quite cool enough to complain to hospital staff.  Not too hot, not
too cold... they like to cover their bases, stopping complaints before they
are registered.

Although aware of the temperature around me, I am *very* cold.  Mulder's
skin feels impossibly warm when I reach out to gently touch his forehead,
but I know it is only the coolness of my own fingers and not a raging fever
in him.  He is hardly breathing; the rise and fall of his chest is achingly
shallow.  I want to pour my life into him; I want to forgive myself for what
I've done by healing him.  I would like to reach out and capture the spark
that returned my English teacher to life after the endless, endless cold.

I would like to be able to cry, at least.  To feel *something* other than
this unbearable cold.

***

"Scully!"  He screams, raggedly, like someone who is dying.

I turn to find his voice with adrenaline distorting my movements, my sense
of reality.  Everything is moving either too fast or too slow.  Mulder's
voice echoes unnaturally amidst the rafters and hollow boxes.  I am
surrounded by darkness and I can't find my partner.

"Get down, for God's sake, Scully!"

I drop because he tells me to.  I scan the area for danger.  I am doing my
job.  Methodical, mechanical.

And then I fail.

"Where *are* you, Mulder?"  My voice reaches the pitch I hate; the pitch
that means I am no longer in control.  I need to watch his back.  Suspect
Armed and Dangerous.  Suspect Armed and Dangerous.  Do Not Attempt to Face
Alone.  "MULDER!?"

Shot.

Shot.

Shot.

Shot.

I feel the first two bullets skim the air above my head... the air where my
chest was residing only a moment before.  I push myself flat into the floor
and continue my fruitless visual search for Mulder.  The second two shots
have to be his.  I'm *supposed* to be watching his fucking back.  I'm his
fucking partner, after all.

The sound of a fifth shot shocks me for a moment, because it has the
undeniable quality of having hit human flesh.  There are two more identical
shots, with the same fleshy impact.  I hear a grunt, a groan of pain.

I have heard that groan before.

"Mulder?!  Are you down?"

He doesn't answer.

This is a bad sign.

I feel my stomach rise into my throat and this, too, is unacceptable.  I
want to scream.  I want to shoot.  I want to give in to my rage and kill the
fucking bastards who downed my partner.

I want Mulder to be okay.

Backup always arrives too late.

I remember yelling, "There's an agent down!" when the backup team entered.
I was crying, blinded by tears, hoarse with grief.  That was before the
cold.  I think it was the last time I felt any emotion at all.

***

I look down at him as though from a great distance.  Detached, analytical,
critical, I have retreated into Dana Katherine Scully, MD.  I look at him as
though he is on my operating table.

Except I am a pathologist, and my operating table is an autopsy table in the
morgue.

I can't bear to think of him dead.

I can't bear to think at all.

***

They all have the same face these men and women in suits, facing me at the
long, long table in OPR.

They have no fucking idea.

I am cold, detached, a surgeon's knife.  I am precise.  I outline all the
details.  I tell them bluntly that I was not doing my job.  They try and put
the blame on Mulder.  "Why did he enter before you?  Why didn't he wait?
Why?  Why?"

Because I said I was behind him.  He went in thinking I was covering his
back.  Because I was slow.  Because I didn't know what I was doing.  Because
I doubted him.  Because I didn't think there was anyone inside the building.
Because I thought Mulder was wrong.

Because *I* was wrong.

They all have the same face, shallow, transparent, marked with the same
meaningless regret and sympathy they show to everyone.  They have no idea.
They have no fucking idea, and I can't feel enough to try and make them
understand.

After all these years I know that *they* will never understand.

And for once I don't give a good God damn what they do to me.

***

I have made the hospital a second home.  I wander down halls that are
swollen with misery and I try to find myself.  Some days I spend hours in
Maternity  And I think of Emily.  I think of everything I felt for that tiny
child with her giant eyes and I still can't cry.  I look at cancer patients
wasted away to practically nothing, bald and haunted but my tears remain
blocked.  All my tears dried up the moment I saw Mulder sprawled on the
floor of that darkness-stained building in a rapidly expanding pool of his
own blood.

I had never seen that much of Mulder's blood.  I wanted to gather it up and
pour it back into him, but I couldn't.

That was when the cold hit.  I crumpled next to him, cradled him before the
paramedics whisked him away, and I thought 'this is what she meant.  This is
that cold.'

I don't go to work.  I don't even know if I have a work to return to.  I
turned my cell off and I don't check my messages.

There is a part of me that watches and wonders what I've become.

As soon as I enter the hospital one of the candy stripers I dimly recognize
runs up and addresses me with equal parts deference and fear.

"Dr. Scully?"

I think about that name for a minute before turning to face the speaker.
"Yes?"

"Umm.. it's Mr. Mulder, ma'am.  He's regained consciousness.  A few hours
ago.  They tried to call, I think, but..."

There is a shock of emotion which jolts through my body and I immediately
start forward.  They told me a few days ago that there was very little hope
of him regaining consciousness.  They told me there was very little hope,
period.

"My phone was unplugged."  I should have thought of that earlier.

He is facing me when I enter the room.  He is drawn and grey, looking rough
and horrible and beautiful.

"Scully, hey."  His voice is rough, too; hoarse with disuse.  He coughs a
little.  "Long time no see."

"You're supposed to be dead," I say, and I am so cold.

"I love you, too."

I say nothing.  I expected to gain my emotion back.  But instead I say
nothing.

"No, Scully, you're supposed to say something about not losing my sense of
humor.  Or 'oh brother'.  I believe that's the favorite response after any
statement of mine involving love."

My mouth forms a tiny 'o'.  This is not real.  This is one of the Goddamned
nightmares that have plagued me since the first moment I saw Mulder in the
hospital bed, dying so slowly.  I press the heels of my hands into my eye
sockets until the pressure makes my entire head hurt.

"Fuck you, Mulder."

This apparently takes him aback, and for good reason.  It shocks me, too.

"Or you could say that," he says gently and for an instant I hate him.  I
hate him because he can forgive me so easily.

"I didn't cover you, Mulder.  I lost you in the dark."

"Hardly your fault... I tore off without you."

"No!  I refuse to let you take the blame.  I was supposed to be watching
your back.  I was supposed to... was supposed..."  The tears start then,
terrible and messy and cathartic.  They are weeks of tears all stored up.
They are indomitable-Scully-crumbling tears.  I move to Mulder's bed side
and take his hand.  "I am so sorry.  I am so sorry.  I am so sorry."

He strokes my hand weakly and says nothing.

I love him for not making a smart-ass comment or arguing with me.

"We'll get through it, Scully," he says after my tears have quieted and I am
beginning to feel like a real person again.  A live person.  "We always
have.  Watcher and wounded, right?  We... you know we're stronger than
this."

"I'm sorry, Mulder."

"Me too, Scully."

"I am so glad you woke up."

"So am I.  Although any time the nurse wants to come in with morphine or
Demerol or Tylenol I'd be happier."

"I'll get it for you."

"Thanks."

I turn away from the bed and I can hear the smile in his voice as he says,
"Hey, Scully?"

"Yes?"

"You love me, right?"

"Yeah, Mulder."  I muster the warmest smile I can and offer it to him
gently.  I'm glad to feel anything.  "When you're not trying to be
unbearably witty."

He grins back, lopsided and sweet.  It is the most beautiful thing I've seen
since before the cold.  Maybe even longer than that.

I think I know now how my beautiful English teacher with her fiery soul got
her warmth back.  There is something in his smile that makes me feel like
crying again... with joy this time, with relief.  With life.

***

One Ending

Author's Note and Plea for Feedback:  Depressed!Scully strikes again... :)
Please, please send feedback to tamarie@interchange.ubc.ca
All feedback will be met with a dance of joy and a heartfelt response...
honest! :) <---would a face like that lie to you? :)Thank you in advance!

Tara Avery

"Cowards die many times before their deaths -- the valiant never taste of
death but once." ~Shakespeare