Changing Constellations
Author: Rihannsu
E-mail: maximana@yahoo.com
Website: http://www.oocities.org/maximana/
Classification: Vignette, Scully Angst, DS(R, sorta)
Rating: R for adult language and situations
Spoilers: general season 8
Archive: SHODDS, XFMU. Otherwise, ask and ye shall receive.
Feedback: Please.
Disclaimer: The characters of Doggett and Scully are property of 1013
productions. This particular arrangement of words is mine.
Summary: When did falling in love become the worst you could do to
another person?
Author's Note: A sequel to my story "Untouchable Face," but you don't
need to have read it. The title comes from a line in the song 'Untouchable
Face' by Ani DiFranco as does a line near the end of the story.
******
They have silent conversations over Mulder's shoulder. Behind
Skinner's back. Across the ten feet of empty air he has begun
putting between them. Soon, she thinks, they won't even need to make
eye contact. She will be able to aim a thought at his back and
know
by the way he cocks his head what his answer is.
Everything has changed, but they have the same conversations. Just
without words now.
'I'm fine.'
'No, you're not.'
'Neither are you.'
'Are you eating?'
'Have you been sleeping?'
'I don't sleep.' Of course he doesn't. She of all people
should
know that. Sleep is the first thing the X-files steals from you.
Before you lose your health and your family and your dreams, you lose
your ability to sleep.
She knows all too well. It starts with the phone calls.
Late in the
evening after you have already settled into bed. In the middle
of
the night dragging you painfully out of sleep. And then there
are
the nightmares that make you dread the act itself. She hasn't
slept
well in years, and her pregnancy has made it worse. She hates
her
bed. When she tries to rest, the soft mattress sends white hot
pain
through her overstressed lower back.
Since his return, Mulder has taken to sleeping on her couch and
interrupting her rare stretches of sleep with his nightmares.
She
misses her partner's bed with its firm mattress, warm flannel sheets,
and the gentle metronome of his heartbeat under her ear. Before
him,
she was never one to stay the whole night. She was always the
first
one to roll out of bed, to get dressed, to slip quietly out the front
door and back to her own life. All those years of keeping at
arm's
length friends and lovers and family alike, and now all she wants is
no space between her and one particular human being.
There is nothing she can do about it. She is not supposed to drive.
And she won't call him and ask him to come to her. For a woman
who
has always prided herself on her strength, she is in the weakest of
all possible positions. And even if she could do either, what
would
she say to the man sleeping on her couch?
The two of them have reached an uneasy truce. Left alone, they'll
bicker like brothers, but they'll get the job done.
Her mother had called them both to help move the Scully family crib
from her basement. It was old and solid oak, a monstrously heavy
relic from before furniture was designed to come apart. They
had
nearly hurt themselves getting it out of the truck and up the stairs
to her apartment. Mulder had paused in her doorway to ask her
where
to put the crib leaving most of the weight going downstairs for
Doggett to bear.
'Hey, jackass, less talking, more working,' he had said.
Mulder had actually laughed. It was the kind of thing men said
to
each other and didn't take offense at. They had overruled her
dithering and shoved it into the first open space.
But when she enters the equation, it turns ugly. Mulder gets
territorial. Doggett gets silent.
'Why do you let him push you around?'
'Why do you?'
Another silent conversation. Do they ever really speak anymore?
They are alike in that way. He understands the value of silence.
Conventional wisdom holds that a photograph is worth a thousand
words, and she thinks his glances are probably worth ten times that.
It's unnerving to her. She had grown use to Mulder's wandering
babble in the last seven years. Her partner was rarely ever quiet,
talking about cases, cracking jokes, telling her whatever thoughts
crossed his perpetually working mind. Drawing her into the case,
into his obsession, into his life with the power of his words.
She has miscalculated badly with these two men. It used to be
enough
to get up and go home. Physical space was enough to keep her
free.
But Mulder caught her with his words, and Doggett caught her
with
his eyes.
Captivity is not something she grasps easily. She has been a rogue
planet her entire adult life, spinning alone through the empty
darkness, only occasionally allowing herself to wander into another's
gravity. Older men, usually. Red giants and supernovas,
men with
power and authority. She's not attracted to either. Not
really.
Her interest was in the exhilaration of breaking free. Of pitting
her own strength against seemingly impossible forces. Of picking
her
own guiding stars and controlling her own forward momentum.
For a time, she would be content orbiting these stars, stocking up on
warmth and affection and human comfort before breaking away and
continuing along the intentionally lonely path of her life. And
she
always moved on. Except from Mulder. She is still in his
orbit.
Still desperately attracted to the light and heat of his
personality. His gravity is impossibly strong, and she wonders
how
she will ever escape it. If she wanted to, and she still doesn't
know if she wants to.
Even those months without him, she was following the lingering trace
of that gravity. Once it would have been so easy to spin into
another's orbit. It has been her habit, her style, and it has
served
her well.
It should have been easy. But the moment is years past.
Time and
again, she has been presented with perfect opportunities to move on,
to pick a new star, to seek her own path. Years worth of reasons,
years worth of excuses in the form of words and deeds she would never
have accepted from another person. Had anyone asked her advice
on a
similar situation she would have laughed at their idiocy, at their
weakness. But this time, she has lingered too long, and all the
old
rules no longer apply. She is still strong; she could wrench
herself
free from this. But she knows what it will cost her. And
she has
not yet resigned herself to that loss. She has had years of practice
at losing Mulder, but she still can't accept it.
She can't accept losing him, but she knows she will. Eight years
of
reprieves haven't deluded her that it will happen.
And what of the other man who shares this awful path? Without
her
ever knowing, probably from the moment they met, she and Doggett
began orbiting each other. A distant elliptical movement drawing
close for a short time then drifting apart and back again.
He is no white hot star capturing her, stopping her forward momentum,
warming her and threatening to burn her alive in the same instant.
He is another lonely planet wandering his way through space.
He has
been pulled into her orbit, and she into is. They have been a
mismatched pair of perfectly complimentary twins as they've followed
the lingering heat of their lost star.
But now she has pulled him into Mulder's orbit, into his obsession
with this alliance. And of all the unforgivable sins she has
committed in her life, it is surely this one that will damn her.
She wonders how long this strange gravity will hold them together.
She can not imagine another person following her. And no matter
how
desperately she fights his loss, she can not even imagine following
Mulder for seven more years. Not for any more years.
But this gravity is not a quest. It is a true orbit, a path without
end or beginning, a perpetual circle as they move in unarticulated
accord. Looking for hope and truth, and following the star whose
gravity now tugs at them both.
She wants to know who used to be the bright and shining light that
lit his world. His wife. Monica Reyes. Someone else
entirely. A
part of her hates that she'll never be that for him. She wants
to be
the sun in someone's sky. Wishes briefly that he could be hers.
"'Lo," she's not aware she's picked up the phone until his rusty
voices answers on the first ring.
"Were you sleeping?"
"No."
"It's late."
"I don't sleep much." He used to sleep. He would sleep when
she
slept, secure in the knowledge that she was safe, that he was within
easy reach should she need him. She's taken that security from
him.
"You should see a doctor. There are prescriptions . . ."
"I don't need them." He doesn't. He needs her. At
least she wants
to think that. There is something uncomplicated about what
he
needs. He wants truth and justice and all the fine ideals that
Mulder has always sought, but all he really needs is to know that the
people he cares about are safe. In any other time and place,
it
would be the easiest of things. But in the strange corner of
the
universe that the X-files inhabits, it is as elusive as starlight.
"John . . ." She's taken to calling him that. It's what
his friends
call him. Monica and Danny. Skinner, even. He's stopped
using her
name all together. He gave up calling her Agent Scully when she
crawled into his bed. He stopped calling her Dana when she crawled
out of it. Now, he simply looks at her and speaks without
identifying his words. She doesn't know if that implies greater
intimacy or less.
"They don't make a difference, do they?"
"No," she says softly. "They don't."
They are silent for a long moment.
"I hate my bed."
"So do I. Want to trade?"
"Yes, no, . . . I want . . ."
"What do you want?"
"What I can't have."
His silence is almost a tangible bond stretching across the Potomac
and through the suburban hills connecting them through miles of dark
skies.
"Do you ever think about stars?" She asks.
"Stars?"
"Stars, suns. Do you ever wonder what it must be like to be the
center of something? What it would be like without their light
and
warmth?"
"We're not talking about astronomy." He sounds suddenly tired
in
that moment. Tired and impossibly old. How many lifetimes
worth of
pain has he endured in just a few years? More than anyone should
have to bear, she thinks, but he does it without complaint. How
many
more has she added, and how can he possibly forgive her for that?
"No."
"I'm no one's star," he says quietly.
"Neither am I."
"You can't have a solar system without a star."
"Somewhere there must be one," she says.
He doesn't reply. What would he say? He is not a scientist.
The
cold logic of chemical reactions and the movements of atoms hold no
interest for him, and the black vastness of space is not his home.
He is as earthbound as any ancient oak.
"Promise me you'll sleep," she says.
"No."
He doesn't deny her things. She doesn't understand why he's
started. "Why?"
"I won't make a promise I can't keep."
"John . . ."
"Don't ask me to lie to you. I won't do that. Don't ask
me to
pretend this is all right. I won't do that either. Whatever
else
you want, you can have but don't ask me for either of those things."
For him it's practically a soliloquy, and she wants to draw this
conversation out until he asks her for something else. She wants
him
to ask her to be with him. Wants him to ask her to stay with
him.
Please, she thinks, ask me to love you.
But he says nothing, and she is not surprised. It's what she would
have done. She listens to the whisper of his breath in the silence.
With every exhale she feels him slipping farther from her, a tide
washing out to sea, the lonely planet spinning its way to the apogee
of this strange orbit. She feels the tug of gravity in the pit
of
her stomach as he tries to break away from this merciless movement.
She closes her eyes and refuses to answer that pull. Following
is
not an option, but neither is letting go. Break me, she thinks.
Shatter me. He's strong enough to do it. Of all the men
she has
known, he is the only one who could evade her gravity. Break
me, she
commands. He sighs a silent resignation, and his path arcs toward
her again. Is this love, she wonders, refusing to let go and
refusing to hurt? Can you call it love if you won't talk about
it?
"I'd fix this if I could," she says.
"I knew what I was getting into," he says after a pause.
"You deserve better," she says without thinking.
"Yeah, yeah, I do."
She wants to laugh at his frankness or maybe to cry. They're
starting to feel the same. She reaches out for comfort, but all
she
finds is the harsh edge of his breath.
"Did you want something?" He asks anger coloring his tone. The
second time she's ever heard it in his voice. His anger is fiercer
than any supernova, and it ignites her own. No longer lonely plants,
they have become a binary star.
"You," she says harshly. "I want you." She is letting years
worth
of anger flow. Years of resentment, of loneliness, of pride.
She is
forcing them all out in three little words. Not the right words.
"You have me," he says with bitter resignation. It's the same
tone
you use when you say 'I have cancer' to someone you love.
"I'm sorry . . ."
"Don't apologize to me," he snaps. "I didn't ask you for anything,
and I don't want anything." And this is the tone for saying:
'Fuck
you for existing in the first place. I love you, but fuck you.'
Yes, fuck you, Dana, she tells herself. Fuck you for all the things
you've done. What happened to 'first, do no harm,' Dana?
When did
falling in love become the worst you could do to another person?
She feels her own anger peak and dissipate in the space between
heartbeats and hears his wash away on a guilty breath.
They were right before; they are not meant to be stars. They are
the
quiet practicality of facts and numbers and due process. They
are
planets meant to quietly nourish, fallow fields waiting for the
warmth and brilliance of sunlight. They are destined to remain
constant and unyielding, fixed in orbit about a star hurtling its way
through space.
And this foolish attachment is their penance for daring to think they
could be stars.
"I won't leave you," he says suddenly, the words coming to her almost
unwillingly. "I won't leave you alone."
"I know."
It's his turn to promise to fix this broken orbit, but he doesn't.
He doesn't make promises he can't keep.
"It's the best I can offer," he says, and his tone is full of self-
loathing at finding a flaw in his ability to care for her.
"It's the best offer I've ever had," she says honestly.
She ends the call as thoughtlessly as she placed it. When she
becomes aware of the absence of his voice in her ear, the loss is
like a physical pain. But across the dark and empty city, she
feels
his presence, the steady pull of his gravity, and the tight bonds
that will never break apart.
Strange how his gravity feels not like captivity but freedom.
******
Note: The line "Fuck you for existing in the first place," is the one
from the song. All hail Ani's greatness and brilliance.
maximana@yahoo.com |