Sandcastles for Pele (part 3 of 4) Author: JL (formerly JaimeLyn) Rating: PG-13 Category: post IWTB, MSR Disclaimer: Apparently, I'm allowed to play with them but I can't keep them. Damn it. (Do action figures count?) Anyway. Please don't sue. Summary: As they play a waiting game, Mulder and Scully call upon the past and embark on their own little adventure. Feedback: jaimerockifies@yahoo.com Author's note: This is the post-movie fic I wanted to write after realizing that "I Want to Believe" might be the last time we'd ever see Mulder and Scully. And as with most X- Files endings, I thought there were a few untied ends that I really wanted to tackle. If I had to describe this story, I would say that it is... not at all what you think it is. Take from that what you will. Almost at the end, guys - just one more to go! Don't bail now! Thanks to Alyssa for the honest feedback, and to my sister for the late night marathons. --- Sandcastles for Pele By JL "Aloha mai no, aloha aku; o ka huhu ka mea e ola 'ole ai." - When love is given, love should be returned; anger is the thing that gives no life. - ancient Hawaiian proverb -- Scully stood on an empty beach, her bare toes sinking into the sand. The ocean crashed behind her, speaking to her in a language familiar from childhood. Inexplicably, she thought of car trips across the Midwest with her family. How she'd fall asleep to the murmur of the engine and the lull of an empty highway, and awaken to tall buildings, trees, and throngs of people, unsure as to when all of that had happened. Scully turned in place, expecting at any moment the violence of wind, the inevitable thunder. But the world remained silent. A breeze pushed past; her breathing quickened. "Mulder?" No answer. "Hello?" Scully shielded her eyes against the breeze blowing sand off the ocean. She searched for trees, grass, buildings, stairs, a boardwalk, any sign of civilization, of the life that had so comforted her when waking in the car - and Mulder, her beautiful, imperfect Mulder. But instead there was only sand, miles and miles of sand the color of clouded honey, and silence like a cage, like the plastic case of a snow-globe. And Scully, trapped inside. As a doctor, Scully processed the panic before her nerve endings could hit the actual alarm: shortness of breath, vertigo, tingling in the arms, legs, a sudden drop in carbon dioxide, an intake of too much oxygen, she was going to -- "Oh." She doubled over, palms on her knees. "Help," thinking of noise, of loud, precious noise, of sunrises, of waking beside Mulder on a Sunday morning and feeling his cold toes beneath the sheets. "Please." She clawed for oxygen and saw bursts of color behind her own eyes. "Mul -- " When she turned, she found herself standing face to face with a little boy. "Jesus!" Her hand flew over her mouth and she doubled back, nearly falling to her knees in the sand. The boy gazed at her thoughtfully, his ivory skin seeming to glow, his blue eyes filled with wonder and a thousand questions. He smiled and reached for her hand, carrying with him the scent of talcum powder and fresh cotton sheets. "Oh," whispered Scully. "Oh, my God." -- Mulder stood in the middle of the road, soaked and dizzy, and listened for any sign that he wasn't alone. He shielded his eyes, squinted up at the road-marker for King's Hwy, and tilted his chin sideways in defense against the rain. The rental car sat empty, its doors opened to the night like fairy wings. Mulder turned in a furious circle. "Scully?" He felt panic rising to the surface like a cork that had been pushed too far down. "Scully!" They'd been headed for the turnoff -- bridge or beach, bridge or beach (he hadn't yet decided -- arguing with Scully only ever made his indecision worse) and then -- "Right, left, or straight?" Mulder startled and whirled and nearly fell to the wet pavement. Cancerman, his leisurely brace against the car door - as if waiting for a drive-in movie, the smoke from his cigarette curling up and up into the night. Mulder growled in anger and immediately tried to picture Scully, to will himself into calm. He thought of the day she'd first told him she was sick - He'd brought her flowers that took half an hour to arrange, later fibbing that they were stolen, which had sounded comfortably flippant and had made her smile. In Scully's hand was the X-ray, and on that X-ray a black and white skull, and inside that skull a bright cluster, and as he'd stared and stared at that cluster, the force of its dark potential had slammed him, and he'd known. Even before her eyes met his. Even before her detached voice made it real: "It's a mass located on the wall between my sinus and cerebrum. If it pushes into my brain, statistically, there's about zero chance of --" Overcome with the fear of history repeating itself, Mulder lunged at the Cancerman, slipping and sliding awkwardly on the pavement. He grabbed the man by the lapels of his impossibly dry suit and shoved him hard against the side of the car. "What is it?" Mulder demanded, clutching the man and shaking him as he might shake a container of juice. "What do you WANT from me? Blood? My head on a stake? Do you want her to die? Is that it? You've already taken my family, her sister, our first-born -- there's nothing left! Why can't you just leave us the hell alone already?" "Ah, Mulder. You never do go for simplicity," said the man, his cigarette still absurdly lit between his thumb and forefinger, the smoke swirling, disappearing into the rain. "Clearly, I only want what everyone wants at this stage of the game." He blew smoke from the corner of his lips and finished, "Forgiveness." A memory lit up before Mulder like a match: Cancerman, a fossil in the dark, the smoke from his cigarette rising up like a noose towards the ceiling. In his slithery, bored sounding voice, he rattled off every sensible reason why Mulder should probably want to, but would not actually kill him, meanwhile Mulder, his gun unsteady in his hands, could think of nothing but Scully, her pale face trapped in sleep, and those blue eyes that might never open again. The darkness of such a past threatened to crack the ice- thin surface of Mulder's already misfiring brain; ten years later, and he still raged for Scully. He raged with the force of a man in love, and he wanted the past taken back - - all of it -- he wanted it unraveled and detangled and begun again. And if that couldn't happen, if God couldn't see fit to reconstruct this thing that had been viciously chopped down, Mulder would rage and rage until the impossible was possible, until he'd destroyed everything else and his frustration was so overpowering it could longer be singular. Mulder shoved Cancerman even harder against the car. "Forgiveness? Forgiveness for what? For the things that can't be taken back? You're full of SHIT! You regret NOTHING!" "Ah," said Cancerman. "But I happen to regret a great many things." Mulder's bared his teeth dangerously. "Where the hell is Scully?" "I assure you, I have no idea." Trembling now with the force of his rage, Mulder shoved Cancerman so hard against the car that his head banged the hood and bounced back, ridiculously. "Tell me where she is!" Cancerman gestured at the road in response, vaguely waving the hand with the cigarette, but otherwise said nothing. Against his better judgment, Mulder turned to look. "What the - " Just below the sign for King's Hwy, on the wet pavement, something bright orange had begun to paint itself onto the cement. Mulder blinked. No, that couldn't be right. That couldn't be real. He felt suddenly unsteady, and his grip on Cancerman loosened. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded. His brain, clearly, was losing control of this vehicle. "You and your questions," said Cancerman. "All these years, and you're still asking these absurdist questions, questions nobody can answer. Here I thought you were looking for Scully." Something in Mulder finally snapped, like a matchstick. His hands found their way to Cancerman's throat, and as the storm screamed all around them, he pressed down, the force of what he felt so great that he thought it might consume him. "SHUT UP!" he yelled, losing his tenuous hold on reality. "I SWEAR - " "Well, this certainly ought to be a novel experience," said Cancerman, as an explosion of darkness filled Mulder's field of vision, "Especially since I'm already dead, and you only have a few more moments to find your precious Scully." --- In the terrifying minutes after Scully's son was born, Scully had been too disoriented and too weak to hold him. By the time Mulder had finally come for them, a burst of fear and passion and something much more primal driving him as he fell to his knees, Scully had already lost almost a liter of blood, and been blinking in and out of consciousness. "Baby," she had managed, and when Mulder somewhat dazedly took hold of her hand and brought her fingers to his lips, she shook her head, managed a smile, and pointed to the baby. Mulder sheepishly brought the baby close, and she'd breathed in relief to see his tiny, screaming face, her gentle, beautiful child. This memory cradled Scully as she took hold of the little boy's hand, as more images rushed her like floodwater, and suddenly she was pulled into the eye of them: the boy lying on wet pavement as a man ran to him and scooped him up; the boy and a woman playing piano, the boy poking delightedly at the ivory keys; the boy standing in a batting cage, learning how to hit a ball with the man; the boy collapsing on the playground, his teachers gasping in alarm at his bloody nose; the boy squeezing his eyes shut in the doctor's office as a needle pierced his neck; the boy paragliding high over the beach and the dark blue ocean, squealing in wonder; the boy on a bus with the man and the woman, staring out at the bridge as his nose began to bleed and his body began to seize. Beneath these lightning quick shards of memory, a single comforting sound emerged, a humming, a voice, Scully's own voice getting louder and louder, and suddenly, Scully was staring up at an image of herself, humming and rocking a tiny infant, the window behind her filling the room with a beautiful white light. Scully gasped as something deep within her released, like steam from a pot boiling over; the fluttering, butterfly's kiss of one soul touching another. Through her tears, she managed, "Oh," her bigger hand gripping the boy's impossibly small one. --- Thunder shouted over the rain as Mulder shouted over the thunder, "What in the HELL are you talking about?" and he again thought desperately of Scully, of her frightened blue eyes, of her hand on his forearm as she tried to tell him that she needed him to listen. That she needed him to hear her. She'd come searching for his help just as surely as she'd ever searched for anything, her plea like that flashlight still bobbing frantically along the hard stone walls. And yet. And yet Mulder had turned his back and left her to find her answers alone in the dark. Damn it. Scully. He had to find her. Mulder shoved Cancerman one last time against the hood of the car and stepped away, trying to catch his breath. "Tell me," he ordered. "Tell me. Where. She is." Cancerman shrugged. "What makes you think I know? This is your In-Between, Mulder." Finally out of options, Mulder pounded his fist against the side of the car, and thought, stupidly, of the upstairs bathroom in the house he shared with Scully. The ceiling was high and slightly domed, and he could never change the bulb without standing on the toilet lid and stretching at a dangerous angle. Scully had begged him to buy a stepstool, but Mulder had refused, the idea of a stepstool somehow, ridiculously, like giving up a fight. Mulder spread wide his hands to the sky. "Okay, you know what?" He swiped rain from his face. "I'm done being lead around by the testicles in my own hallucination." He jutted his chin in the direction of Cancerman. "I forgive him." Then he bent back his head and yelled at the sky, "Do you hear that? I forgive him! Ancient history! Water under the bridge! Never again the twains shall meet, and I promise not to kick the shit out of him anymore either, okay?" Mulder waved his arms wildly, not knowing what else to do or say. A fierce energy moved through him. "Look," he called, "I don't know if I've died, or if I'm talking to God, or some form of God, or if this is just me hallucinating about dying and moving into the light, or whatever, but you should probably know that I'll dismantle the afterlife piece by piece if that's what it takes to find her. So you might as well just help me. Before I end up accidentally setting fire to the universe. Or, uh...worse." And for a startling moment it all fell away and he was just lingering there in the bathroom with her, his Scully. She was gazing at him from the doorway, her hands folded across her chest, her brows pinched nervously as he stood on the toilet, fiddling with the light. "A step ladder," she said. "That's really all I ask." And then he was back in the rain again, the harsh night still growling angrily around him, as Cancerman cleared his throat. He gestured at the wet pavement, at the orange line growing into what appeared to be an "X," and Mulder frowned in confusion, not quite understanding the logistics of this hallucination. He whirled to face Cancerman again -- only to discover a glowing red dot where the man had once been. Mulder blinked in surprise. "Follow," said the dot. And not knowing what else to do, Mulder followed. He followed as the dot trailed blood red down the road, across the shoulder, and towards the beach. There, the dot trailed up the trunk of a banana tree and out onto the thick teardrop of a leaf: "Follow, follow, follow," said the little red dot. Mulder followed. Down the beach, past the rocks, beyond the boardwalk, down where the shells made a prickly carpet on the sand. "This way," said the little red dot. "Follow, follow, follow." Mulder followed. His feet sunk deeper with each step, his legs burning with the effort. Finally, after a stretch that felt both like forever and no time at all, he found her at the water's edge, staring out at the ocean. Her flame-red hair blew in tangles across her face, her chin tilted to the sky, her eyes closed. She seemed relatively unharmed, for which Mulder was eternally grateful, and she clutched tightly to the hand of a small child. Relief flowed through Mulder, and he called, "Scully?" But when the child turned and Scully did not, Mulder found himself staring into a pair of familiar Scully-blue eyes, a chin shaped just like his, and a nose that had surely come from his mother. "Oh," whispered Mulder, his skin suddenly much too tight. "Oh." Dumbfounded, Mulder continued to stare, and for a second, he saw himself, his lips pressed in gratitude to an infant's pale, downy head. "Oh." The scent of talcum powder and cotton and the memory of Scully's gentle lullabies in the breeze all around. "Oh, God." In a hoarse voice, he managed, "My little boy." Tears caught in his throat, and he reached out again to Scully. "Our baby. Scully, it's him." --- Scully heard him call for her as if from below the surface of the ocean - a rippling sound, a vague memory. Mulder, she thought, absently. Come watch the ocean with us. "Scully," Mulder was saying, "Scully, please look at me." Why couldn't he hear her? Scully's soul reached out for him, whispering, " You came," as her fingers brushed his, as the sky above them exploded with pink and orange and lavender. "You came for us, Mulder." And then Mulder's arms were tight around her, his lips pressed to her temple. The beach fell away and they were again in her apartment watching the sun rise together, their child cradled between them, as Mulder brokenly whispered promises, vivid landscapes, things that could never, ever be: "We'll go away, we'll have wonderful adventures, we'll leave this all behind, we'll travel the world, just the three of us, Scully." The memory gave way as the little boy reached for Mulder, and suddenly, Scully felt something hot and cold, up and down, right and left, inside and out, pass through her, cramping quickly in her abdomen. With a choked sob, Scully grabbed tight to her stomach and let go of the boy, and the boy began to fade, his mouth moving slowly and carefully around words Scully couldn't hear. "No," she managed. "No, not yet! I can't hear what he's saying --" She gazed desperately up at Mulder, whose tears were in her hair. "Mulder, I can't --" But in another moment the sky erupted in silver and black, and the beach fell away, and language disappeared altogether. Her world, the shaking insides of that snow- globe, had shrunk to the size of she and Mulder, a blanket of space and earth and stars moving through them and into them, as Scully saw herself, fifteen years younger, covering her head with her hands while the radio screamed and the world went white and everything stopped. --- END part 3 Feedback warmly accepted and cuddled at: jaimerockifies@yahoo.com