TITLE: Sleep-Paralysis AUTHOR: Vehemently (vehemently@yahoo.com) SPOILERS: The Red and the Black RATING: PG-13 SUMMARY: The awful things of sleeping and waking. NOTES: This is my first posted fanfic (Premiere on the web here on XAPen!); consider it a rehearsal for a larger work I don't quite dare post yet. I am looking for a steady beta, so if you liked this enough to tell me what's wrong with it, have a few whiles on your hands, and don't mind my sense of humor... please send me mail. We're probably related. MORE NOTES: Thanks to Jane St. Clair for her graciousness. DISCLAIMER: Characers and situations discussed herein belong to Chris Carter / 1013 and are used without permission or intent to profit. * * * * * * * Sleep-Paralysis by Vehemently * * * * * * * I can tell I'm dreaming, but that doesn't make it any better. I'm back in the gulag, my lips chapped and my fingertips raw. I'm back in the gulag and things go even worse than in my memory. I cower in a dark cell and feel the grit against my temple. Someone is whispering to me in Russian and the voice could be coming from anywhere. I don't know this place and the old familiar horror is made new and viscerally worse. I can't seem to get control over my body and I just lie there, curled up, the chilly light from the window suggesting morning in the late fall. It doesn't close in on me. It's a surprise to notice it. The walls stay where they are, dirty as they are, and the window's barred pattern on the floor doesn't feel like a searchlight from heaven. I don't know what I am feeling but distantly my waking self chatters in relief that for once I can stand the small space. I shudder and taste my awful breath - my dream self is waking up, with a throbbing fire on my forehead. I touch my tem- ple and see it's blood. Sore all over, and that whispering voice won't shut up - and I don't understand it. I've forgotten my father's tongue and my sense of balance reels in confusion. "I don't speak Russian," I say awkwardly, testily into the air. I don't know my own voice. I look again at my hand - it's not mine. The dream changes, just as the voice switches to accented Eng- lish. A hazy swirl of shadows, and I lie on my back in res- traints. The phobia returns like a mongoose writhing inside my ribcage and involuntarily I flex and feel hexagons cutting into my flesh. I know exactly where I am and I know there is no reason for me to be here. My waking self protests - but you already know I'm immune! - but the dream takes over and all I can do is gasp, wide-eyed, as the screams start down the row. The chicken wire burns cold into my forehead and my nose and there is no purchase, no quarter, just me and the fear creeping through my bloodstream like the Cancer and suddenly I'm screaming too, hysterical, paralyzed. I can tell I'm dreaming, but that doesn't make it any better. I am somewhere else again, in the woods, my back against a tree as I stare into the darkling sky. It has been raining so I can't guess my location by the stars, and my head swivels suddenly at the sound of movement near me. A boy emerges from the evening gloom, his sweater tied in that useless knot I know so well, where his left arm should be. My waking self clenches tight, begging not to relive this again. But my dream self is nodding familiarity, and a name swims into my mind: Vasili. My smile widens as his mother steps into view; she speaks my language. This is not that same stretch of woods as in my life. My dream self scratches with my left hand and it sends a rush of power and quivering joy and sadness through me. I can hear the foreign thoughts in my head, the planning, the case back in Washington, the bewilderment of dependence on a translator, and under it all a deep, abiding hatred for the traitor Alex Krycek. Oh, God. That's me. Me, I, I don't know who my dream self is, just a foreigner, just anybody, and I hate me with a glowing, vibrant passion. It's a passion that has kept my dream self alive, a passion I rely on, a passion I enjoy. I have reached the limits of my self- reference and I can't make sense of anything. A shift, a spasm of cold color, and another rainy night takes me. I am being led roughly by men in military uniforms, and my dream self follows blankly, thoughts a jumble. A sergeant is cursing black and blue and he mentions a prisoner - at the word my ears prick up, but the knowledge is not there. The bright lights hurt my eyes and remind me of some other bright light, but that too is not there, as if something has been erased. I can't think straight so I let them lead this body, their fingertips squeezing my elbows, to a waiting car. I am slung into the back seat and the ambient sounds are closed away. I put my hand to my eyes to fend off the flashing lights. A woman's voice asks me what happened. My waking self trembles, unable to supply an answer, but my dream self doesn't know either, just sitting there, and I can feel frustrated tears on my cheeks. She reaches out and pulls my hand away, firm and powerful, and I see her for the first time. Dana Scully, small and sharp, poised and calm and sadly compassionate. And I know for sure who my dream self is and it kills me a little even as I am trying and failing to respond to her questioning eyes. She melts into beauty and squeezes my hand and I can do nothing but look at her and know she would hate me if she knew who I really am. I can tell I'm dreaming, but that doesn't make it any better. It is later, but I think it is the same night. Still cold, still raining, and she is still at my side. What a thing this constancy is. This must be her apartment, the one she moved to after I left the country so I have never seen it in life. In this dream I know it like I know her wardrobe. She unlocks it as I stand, too tall, next to her, and when she gestures me in I follow. At least I can say I have not laid in wait in this living room, have not been a party to her attempted assassination here. I don't know what to do but Mulder apparently doesn't know either; in his body I drift towards the framed photos on the walls. She takes off her coat, looks at me expectantly and I find myself looking back at her with the same feeling. "Come here," she says, like an order, and I do, stumbling awkward across the carpet. I am too near her, invading her space, but as I make to withdraw she puts a hand on my forearm. "Are you sure you're all right?" Her cheeks are round and she shakes her hair away from her face. I close my eyes against her loveliness. I'm not supposed to like her. Her fingertips touch my face, painfully soft. I can feel my brows wrinkling in despair and the thoughts fly through my head: de- feat, loss, confusion, a muted resentment of that maniacal Krycek. I just don't know what to do any more and I hope she can lead me. Scully stands in front of me; I can feel her there without seeing her. She has my chin between her fingers and she tugs down and when I open my eyes she kisses me. Quickly, sweetly, and she withdraws with that little sad smile I seem to know so well. I could interpret it as something between friends if I at all wanted to. Something inside me shudders - dimly I can recall having a self other than the one standing here - and then I am falling apart, tangling in her shape, kissing her helplessly, two whole arms circling the flare of her hips. I map her body as if it is the first time with her for my dream self and maybe it is. Maybe I am violating the rules of dreaming, changing the plot. And when we stagger into her bedroom, and when I fall atop her in frantic reverence, and when, in the dimness, her thighs glow pale with blue veins from the rain on the window, I know these arms aren't mine but I don't care any more. It is only in the swirling edges of sleep, afterwards, that I wonder if she can tell the difference, if she knows it was I who made her yell like that instead of him. But my jealousy drowns in comfort. It is not what I expected - I don't know what I expected - and now I know this body, these sounds, the way I burrow my head in her neck in safety. He and I together gasped at her athletic willingness. I know those cramps in Mulder's calves and that pressure point and his deeply guarded desperation for her. I know him, in this second, as well as I know myself, better, and that intimacy curls hot inside of me. She sighs next to me and her eyes move behind closed lids - she is dreaming. I kiss her cheek, like I kissed his but with his own lips, and she moves to fit better next to me. I can tell I'm dreaming, and that makes it far worse. end.