MY NOTES: No big secret--I'm a serious Mulderist. I gotta BIG
soft spot for the guy--he's so gorgeously confused. I just
wanted to nudge him around a bit in this one.
I think he got the hint.
Also, I realize I took some liberty with the timeline here.
Assume with me that the events of TOE and Tithonus occurred
right after one another for the sake of art, okay? I just have
a hard time coordinating the content of XF humor and drama
episodes in a dramatic fic sometimes.

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Sue!! Without whom 90% of this stuff
would never get written. Some writers have a muse...I have a Sue.
(How many more days now, sweetie?) Apply for one now!
Supplies are running low! And thanks to Michelle with the
sirens over there at XFFFA for providing some very good beta
notes!

DISCLAIMER: Okay, here we go. I don't own Mulder,
and for the most part, I keep his pants on in this fic. So
there should be no problems, right?
All regards to 1013, FOX, and such.
And, NO, I don't make money doing this--
just friends, *sniff*.

FEEDBACK: Come share your Mulderlove with me at
Terma99@aol.com
(My friends call me Sharon. Feedback=instant friend)
 
 

Paralysis

by Terma99
 

He stands on the groaning weather-roughened porch boards
waiting for someone to answer the door. His coat pulled tight
around his body, gloves shielding his hands, the wind blowing
snowflakes into his eyelashes and hair--he shivers. The short
walk from the car to the door of this worn Carolina farmhouse
has nearly turned his bones to ice. He huddles like a mole into
his scarf and raps on the centennial door knocker again, shifting
his feet.

"Hold on there." He hears a voice from deep inside, a
scratchy southern drawl that sounds like a sage of the bayou
rowing to the door. "I'm a comin'."

He hears a squeaking and a clank of a deadbolt and slowly the
corn and holly wreath sinks away from him as the door opens.
Mulder looks through the widening crack and sees nothing but
the dim interior, and for a moment wonders if he's confused the
address: hauntings, visions, abductions, possessions, it doesn't
really matter.

"Down here, son." The dried-up Southern belle speaks, and he
dips his head to her withered brown face and tangles of fragile
wire-gray hair. She is seated, the scuffed and dented chrome of
her wheelchair battling with the doorframe as she struggles to
open it.

"Sorry, let me get that," he coughs to clear his throat, stiff from
cold and hours of road behind him, and opens the screen so he
can slip in through the door as she wheels back to let him in.

"You're a tall one," she says with a wheezy chuckle. "Can't have
no hope of spotting me in a crowd."

He shuts the door and mildly echoes her friendly wrinkled smile.
"I'm really sorry about that...Ms.Whittier. I'm a little snowblind
from the drive."

"Annie," she corrects him. "You call me Annie and let me get you
over here to the stove where I've got some tea goin' to
warm yourself."

He nods appreciatively and shakes the snow from his hair
and shoulders and follows her worn wheel tracks across
the floorboards into the main room, dominated by a large
freestanding stove roasting with a blazing fire.

"Have yourself a seat and I'll fix you a cup," she says, taking a
clean teacup from a low-hanging rack and wheeling herself next
to the stove, sets a small strainer with dried herb across the lip
and pours from a cast-iron teapot steaming on the stovetop.
"Hope you like mint, just about all that'll grow this time of year,"
she says, finishing her pour, and tapping the droplets from the
mesh, sets it on a saucer to drain.

"That sounds fine," he says. Shrugging off his coat and gloves, he
sits down on the overstuffed vintage couch across from her, within
a crocheted web of afghans in mismatched colors. She offers him
the cup with a surprisingly steady hand and he accepts it graciously,
taking a sip, letting the infusion of fresh cut mint warm and
soothe his throat, ignoring the burn on his tongue as the hot
liquid falls and collects, radiating warmth low in his belly.

"Long trip?" she asks, folding her thin leathery hands in her lap,
covered by a layer of garish uneven afghan.

"'bout five hours," he nods, setting the nearly emptied cup on the
low table in front of him occupied by a menagerie of carved circus
animals. "Not too bad, some snow, of course."

"We've been gettin' a mild winter this year. Not too heavy, but
bitter cold," she says, drawing the blankets higher into her lap.

Mulder takes a visual tour of her small single level home as
she prepares herself a cup. Dark wooden floors and wall paneling
box them in the tiny two-room farmhouse. The walls are hung
with antiques of distressed whittled pine and sculpted wire,
low-hung pictures of amateur painted warm weather landscapes
and seas, an old South Carolina flag, a framed document, a coat
rack, a flyswatter. Tabloid newspapers are piled neatly in a
deep basket near the window. A fat lazy cat who hasn't so much
as raised its head since his arrival snoozes soundly in a faded
pink paisley chair to the left of the stove.

Her kitchen nook near the front door is choked with remnants
of handmade Americana, scripture lettered across a painted
meadow of daffodils, an Uncle Sam, an apple-faced grandmother
doll holding a tray of clay cookies, a basket of brown colored eggs.
Her home is eclectic, cluttered, but clean. He accepts another cup
of tea--taking his time to sip this one slowly over his aching tongue.

"You missin' someone," she says, and he looks up from his
teacup where she catches him in a cataract-glazed stare.

He laughs under his breath, "I'm sorry? I don't..."

"You missin' someone. Don't pretend like you don't know
what Annie's talkin' about, she knows."

He shakes his head as a bemused smile crosses his face. He
doesn't want to offend her. "I'm not following you..."

"You can't tell me no good lookin' man drives 'cross two states
the eve of St. Valentines to talk to an old woman 'bout her
visions. Annie's flattered, but she's no fool. You're out here 'cause
you couldn't stand to stay where you was."

He stares at the arrangement of little wooden animals marching
single-file across her table top, refusing to let the smile he is far
from feeling drop the veil he has been wearing for weeks.

"Don't take a psychic to see you about to lose something you
care about very much."

He blinks and glances nervously toward the wood flaring in the
stove. Dragging his lower lip through his teeth slowly, he falters for
a reply, his voice is tired and uneasy. "I'm here to ask you about
your visions--your dreams, the people you see. That's why you
contacted me, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but I can tell that story to the papers if I want. Make me
some good money, too. I asked you here 'cause I wanted to talk to
you."

He squints and shifts awkwardly, noticing for the first time the
marching animals have no eyes. Tophats, coats and tails, but no eyes.

"You want to ask Annie what she sees?"

He hesitates, drawing a breath. After a moment he nods faintly.

The old woman sits back and closes her eyes, wrinkles deepening
in her face as she concentrates. "Annie’s seen a young woman
holding a clear bag with a little knit hat in it--kind you fit on a
baby-child's head. This woman doesn't want to be there in that
room holdin' that little hat."

An unwelcomed chill runs up his back. Roanoke--he can't help
but think. He had found her in the courthouse holding an
evidence bag, the horror of the long day exhausting her to the
bone. But this can't be what she means. He presses his fingers to
the corners of his eyes--he's tired and doesn't want to think
about this today. Not for awhile. He came here so he wouldn't
have to.

"She's a pretty young thing, small, hard to see, like me."

For a sickening moment he wonders if this woman is setting him
up--someone hired by *them* to get under his skin and goad him
to spill some fatal secret. Then he looks down at her frail
atrophied legs motionless under the blanket, and up at the
simple comforts that surround this woman in wood, cotton, iron
and old china and he feels shame.

"You want to tell me why she's sad?"

He swallows heavily and leans back into the couch, laying his
arm across the back, turning his head in profile to watch the snow
as it begins to fall heavier outside. Dimly, he realizes he's beginning
to get warm.

"We got all night and I ain't gonna be telling anyone 'bout you.
What do I care, nice young man wants to pretend he don't got no
one to talk to..."

"She can't have children," he says flatly, into the silence that
follows, amazed at the tension he feels begin to unlock in his
chest at these words. What did it matter really, there'll only be
more nights like this to pass in one manner or another.

"No babies?" she old woman says.

He runs his hand through his hair, his eyes still to the window
and shakes his head.

"I know something about that pain," she says sadly. "Maybe
that's why I see her. Maybe she want me to see her."

Mulder turns to her, his mouth half open in question. "What are
you saying. That's why you see her? You've seen her before?"

The woman nods her wiry head. "Yeah, but I don't know who she is.
I never know who they is--they just come on in my head, keep
Annie up all night."

"What have you seen?" he asks with uncertainty.

The woman rolls her eyes back and closes them, working her lips
as if she's rummaging through a cluttered attic to find on old
mismatched shoe.

"I see her now sitting just like you do on a couch near a big gold
fire--she's got her head back, sleepin', her hair all fire on a blue
pillow and she's holdin' somethin' under her arm, under the
blanket. A small thing--book maybe, cradlin' it." The woman
finishes, opening her eyes. "Don't look like she's got much to
do tonight either."

He shakes his head to comprehend the message in this image,
rubbing his chin a bit nervously. "You're telling me you see her
now, that this is what she's doing right now?"

"I think so. Seems right to me. She just laying there her eyes
closed, but I see now she's not sleeping, just pretending--
you want to tell me who she is?"

He leans forward, rubbing the chill out of his hands, wondering if
he wants to keep this line of questioning open or let the matter
drop, thank her for the tea and leave quickly. He thumps his foot,
considering, but his instinctive curiosity remains more active
than her sleepy housepet's.

"I think...I think you're telling me that you see my partner."

"Hmm, your partner is it? Like crime-solving partner, or you
kids just got a new fancy name for sweetheart I don't know
about way out here."

A hollow laugh resonates deep in his chest despite himself. If
she heard him say sweetheart she'd probably slug him. Again.

"FBI partner. And before you ask, we're not involved."

"But you've got a connection." It's a statement she seems to
already understand.

"I guess you could say that."

"She got a sweetheart? I already know you don't got no one,
your sorry butt out here with Annie."

"No. She's not involved with anyone..." his eyes skitter back to
the window, the strain of conversation is beginning to make
him uncomfortable.

"Then what's the problem?"

He opens and closes his palms briefly, looking her honestly in the
eye to halt this game he's in no humor to play. "No problem."

The old woman hunches over and for a shocked moment
Mulder thinks she's about to expire, but the hitch in her
middle seems to be only the forerunner of her dry raspy
laughter--one of those old-fashioned "hee hee" kinds of laughter
he thought only came from characters in movies. She
presently recovers from this jolly interlude and with a
wheezy breath continues, shaking her head, amused.
 

"You all the same. You all sit here and you stare Annie in the
face like there nothin' going on. Everything just fine, just
like Christmas--all fine."

Mulder eases at her accordion grin and reminds himself of where
he is--an old farm with an old woman. No reason to hoist a defense.
He's been mistaken for worse.

"Goin' on thirty years now I see these people," she continues.
"Some of them old, some young. Some rich, some poor. Some
weak, some strong. It don't matter--they all the same. They
all wanting somethin'. I see these people when they lonely,
scared, when they feel real bad--when they feel the pain."

"Who are they?"

She shrugs her bony shoulders. "Just plain ol' folks."

"Do you know them?"

"Sometime passin' I start to know them, sometime I feel a
name, sometime I see their home. Sometime I call 'em,
sometime I can't find them at all, sometime I don't want to."

"You contact the people you see in your visions." he
clarifies, resuming his investigation.

"If I can pick up that ol' phone and reach 'em. My legs ain't
much good for walkin' you know."

"What do you say to them when you find them?"

She smiles a crooked gap-toothed grin. "Well, I ask them over
for tea."

Mulder eyes his tea cup with a wary grin.

"'course, most think I'm just someone wantin' money or some
nutty ol' woman off her wig. Most jus' hang up, but I try again.
I try if I think it will do some good. Weren't too hard getting you
out here, seems you got a shine for this kind of thing."

His smile turns bittersweet, "I guess you could say that."

"You live here alone?" he asks, after a comfortable silence
settles between them, his hand gesturing to the small space
around them.

"Mostly," she says, "but I'm not alone, I got my nephew here,
Roger." She points a bony finger at the crude portrait of a
young black man hanging framed between the windows behind
him. "He come at night and help get me in the bed. He's a good
boy. My sister's boy. He keeps after the chickens. I got plenty of
eggs. Good eggs--I'll send you off with some."

"Thanks," he answers, eyeing the brownish collection on the
kitchen counter top.

"You know why I called you to come out here, don't you?"

"For tea and eggs?"

She wrinkles her lips and shakes her head like she's correcting
a small child. For some reason her sterness effects him, and he
looks at his shoes, feeling an urge to be honest with himself for
the first time in weeks.

"You brought me here to tell me that my partner..." he finds it
more difficult to voice than he thought, "...hurts."

"I don't get visions of happy folk, that for sure," she answers, but
it isn't a joke.

"And probably to make me admit that it's because of me. Yes,
I already know that. I've always known that."

"You so sure of all that?"

His fingers lace together as he leans forward across his knees. "Yes."

"So you take on the burden of this woman's life and that's how
you leave it?"

He shakes his head, confused. "I don't follow. She's...she's been
in your head, your dreams, visions, since when? How long?"

The old woman rubs her lip, thinking. "'bout when she find
that baby-child hat. Yeah, that about it."

"Nothing before then?"

She shakes her head slightly. "No."

His jaw sets and he fastens his eyes on the rise and fall of
sleeping cat fur. Why that case? It was horrible for her certainly,
but so many things had come before...and after.

"She's gonna leave you, you know."

He leans back again, redraping his arm along the couch, letting
the fall of snow blur in a bleak hazel stare, bracing himself as
the truth is laid out for him. His voice is soft and distant when
he acknowledges it.

"I know."

"You runnin' out of time."

"I know," he says more softly.

"But you not gonna do nuthin' about it, that it?"

He bends his arm, letting his knuckles graze across his lips. "It's
her life, her decision."

"And this decision don't make no difference to you?"

His eyes find the cobwebs tangled in the rafters blowing gently
in the convection of the stovepipe. He is almost inaudible when
he answers, "It makes all the difference...it changes
everything...everything will change."

"And are you gonna change, too?"

A weak smile crosses his face and he shakes his head.

"No, I changed...years ago."

"Maybe you should ask her to stay."

He narrows his eyes--something he has rehearsed to say falls
dead in his throat and instead he struggles, "I can't."

"Why, for sweet heaven's name?"

"There are things that have happened to her, that continue to
happen to her. Things that have happened because of me, my
work, and I've done everything to stop them, but they *won't*
stop. They won't stop until she stops--until she leaves."

"So you think it's these *things* that make her sad?"

Mulder closes and opens his eyes, straining to keep his voice low,
"Of course."

"Then why you suppose it took her all these years to walk away
if she been sufferin' so long? We all suffer. I suffer. You suffer--it
all about being alive--no matter what shape it takes. Why you
think she leaving you now?"

"I don't know. She's tired? She's angry? She's never made it clear
to me."

"I get it that you two don't talk. Don't ever like to show too much
of yourselves."

He shakes his head again, the light is dying outside and the heat
of the room has warmed him through to the center, softening
his senses. He could almost sleep right here as he leans his head
in his palm. In sleep he could leave all this behind, he could shut
it all off and escape the dull ache deep in his chest. He would, if
it weren't for the dreams.

*Don't ever like to show too much of yourselves,* he echoes in
his head. But they *had*--so suddenly, so unexpectedly. She
had faltered on her words as they stood in her hotel room going
over the exhumation notes on their case in Roanoke--his arm
had gone around her to comfort her in a way he hadn't dared
in many months and instead of pulling back and hiding herself
she had moved to him, her arms reaching tightly around him.
He held her, his hand brushing her hair whispering nonsense
words of comfort in her ear while she cried softly against him,
telling her he was sorry, sorry for so many things. When she had
quieted, he raised her face to kiss her gently anywhere,
somewhere on her face, but he met her mouth instead and his
lips froze against hers longer then he had ever intended, his
heart furiously pounding as her arms slid up and around his
neck and they began to move against one another--lips, and
hands and hips--such an easy dance.

He forgot himself in moments, moving slowly with her to the
bed where soon, naked and inflamed they sank one into the
other becoming lost together in a long resurrected dream. They
made love slowly through the night sighing, laughing, even crying
a little, but saying almost nothing as they tried to fuse body to
body in a fashion that would never leave them separated or
alone again. He was sure he wept with happiness, love, and relief
as he whispered her name, falling into the blue of her desire-flared
eyes. Entwined and awashed in pleasure so keen, he was certain
nothing would ever make him regret anything in
his life ever again.

But these were thoughts of a foolish man. Nothing in his life ever
came that easy. And then, before they could fully assimilate
the experience, she was gone--taken from him and put into
the hands of a pitiful amateur whose pride and ambition
nearly robbed him of her life and his with a single misfired bullet.

He sat and slept by her side in the hospital, torn apart with
remorse and rage, as she waxed and waned and finally broke
through into consciousness--his delicate and dented
phoenix once again rising. And when her eyes finally opened
they were older, cold and distant--without a single flint of the
blaze he had lit in her not even a month ago, from a single
surreal night of fantasy realized that they would never
mention again. He sometimes wondered if it had ever
really happened at all, just another cruel joke of the
subconscious that tortured him with interpretive replays.

"You love this woman?"

He nods slowly.

"She love you?"

A long pause. Just the sound of his breath in his ears and the
crackle of fire. His eyes close.

"I don't know."

"You asked her?"

"...no..."

"You tell this woman you love her?"

Not really, not in a way that she would listen. A shake of his head.

"You don't think when she's gone that won't be the one thing
you'll be the most sorry about?"

He freezes at this thought, but the answer is simple. "I have
nothing to offer her."

The old woman resurrects her belly cackle, and despite his
grim audience, enjoys it for a bit. She ends the session with a
loud cough, reaching for her tea cup. She sips from it clearing
her throat, waving him off as he leans forward to assist her.

"Oh, that ol' story again," she coughs, regaining her voice. "As long
as you think you no good to be loved, you can't see it no matter
how hard it slaps you 'side the head."

His eyes find hers again, attempting to bring understanding to her.

"Everything that's bad in her life has come from me."

"I imagine a good deal of what's good has come from you, too. I
may be no good for dancin' but I *see* this woman. I think you
see her too--you just don't like to look too hard."

His voice rises starts like a hunted deer, "If you didn't know
her name or who she was, how did you know how to find me?"

The woman meets him strong and calm with a face that has
known more trials and pains than he will ever understand.

"Oftentimes when that sweet woman feel the loneliest is when
she with you."

He sits frozen and silent, the blink of his unfocused gray eyes
the only movement she can see to tell he is living. Hard to see
someone so full of life so afraid of it, she thinks. Suddenly his
mouth forms an odd smile and he clasps his hands and rises,
throwing his coat up and over his shoulder and moves away
from her, as if walking from this old farmhouse will take back
the words she has said, that he has said--as if he can walk
away from himself, his life, stumbling away like blind wood.
He hesitates three steps from the door, his back to her, and she
can see him falter, see the weight he has carried across the snow
and empty highways to this place beginning to pull him over like
timber cut off from its roots. His coat slides to the floor.

"I can't do this..." he stammers, reaching for the rough pine of
the wall to steady himself as his head lowers and his empty
arm settles on his hip.

"I can't separate from her. I can't. Don't ask me to."

The old woman is silent.

"She's *everything,* can you understand that? Do you know
what that's like? To know with absolute clarity you have
ruined everything in your life that is good?"

There is no reply. She is not the one being addressed.

His eyes are liquid as he turns around, unshed tears of
frustration and exhaustion threatening to take over his
beautiful face. He waits, silently demanding an answer
although his question is poorly directed.

The woman pulls at the tangled misswoven yarn of her afghan
--a loop loosens as another tightens, holding the shape as crude
as it may be whole.

"Who says you should separate? Who says you can? Way I see it
you the two biggest fools I ever saw, standing there like you both
got no legs when everything you want in the world just a step away."

His eyes close and the moisture that has collected in his lashes
fall. He stands as his thoughts gather and ungather and he
breathes slowly through it. A moment later, he passes a hand
over his face and bends with heavy limbs to pick up and slip on
his coat.

"You don't know us," he says in parting, and turns, opening the
door, pressing out into the blowing icy wind and darkness.
 

##########

In the night, alone in her bed, the howling of the wind and an
unwelcome draft rouses the old woman as she struggles to pull
the coverings up to her chin. Her eyes are closed and behind
them she sees the small young woman again, lying asleep in front
of the fireplace long gone cold. Suddenly the pretty young woman
wakes, as the small object she has held hidden with her all night
under the blanket begins to ring.
 
 
 

######################################
Okay, too sappy? Should I stick to SMUT?
Was there Mulder woe enough?
Come share the Mulderlove at:
Terma99@aol.com

Those of you feeling cheated by the relatively calm smut
in this should go to:
www.oocities.org/hotsprings/8334/fic.html